书城英文图书英国学生文学读本(套装共6册)
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第57章 HONESTY

1.Long,long ago,in the far-off country ofChina,a man saved up a sum of money and bought a piece of land.Not long afterwards,as hewas ploughing the ground,he came upon a great heap of gold and gems buried in the earth.

2.There was nobody near when he found it,and he might have kept it all to himself.Such a heap of gold and gems would have made him a rich man.But he did not think of being rich;he thought of being honest.

3.Though he had bought the field,and paid a fair treasure price for it,he had not bought this He gathered it together and carried it to the man from whom he had bought the land.

4.“See,”said he,“I have found all this gold and these gems in the field I bought from you.Take them,my friend;they are yours.”

5.“Mine!”said the other.“No,no!they are yours.I sold you the whole field,with all that was in it.They are not mine.I cannot take them.”

He,too,was an honest man.

6.For a long time each tried hard to make the other give way.But both were firm in doing right.Neither of them would take the wealth away from the other,or touch what he thought did not belong to him.

7.All the people heard of this,and praised them both for their honesty;but nobody could settle which one ought to get the treasure.

8.At last the king was asked to say which of the two should be the owner.He said that hecould not decidebetween them,but that it was very plain they were both noble men.

9.Then he asked if they had any children,and he was told that the one had a son and the other a daughter.

10.“Ah!”said the king,“that makes it all right.The best plan will be that the son of theone worthyman should marry the daughter of the other,and that the gold and gems should be given to the young people.”

11.Thus the friendly dispute was happily settled;and that year,it is said,the field bore a rich harvest,and the earsof corn were larger than had ever been seen before.

GRAMMAR EXERCISE

1.Name the first ten nouns in the lesson.

2.Make sentences containing land,plan,and touch,as verbs and as nouns.