The Old Man Who Sold The Stones

I always deeply remember when I was in my childhood. The railway in Taipei hadn’t been underground. There was always an old man vendor sold lots of beautiful stones at the grade crossing near the intersection.　

“Wow, how beautiful are these stones! Are they natural? ” someone passed through usually asked him excited like that.

“Of course, these stones were found in a mystery cave.” the old man answered.

Gradually, the reputation of the old man who sold the beautiful stones had spread throughout the town. More and more people went to buy his stone from far away due to his remarkable fame.

However, it was dangerous and busy when selling something at the grade crossing. The old man did not only spend a lot of time on digging the stone, but also necessary to pay attention to ensure whether or not the train would pass through. The old man could only use the time of the trivial interval to sell the beautiful stones

“Old man！Let us stop the train to help you save more time to sell the stones?” a kid brought out a good opinion.

The old man accepted.

Thus, each time, when he was selling the stones, there would be a group of children who stopped the train hand in hand all together until the end of the old man sell out all of his stones.

After the all-day works finished, the old man always hadn’t forgotten to give some candies to thank these children who helped him a lot.

As a result, these children wanted to eat candies, so they hadn’t gone to school anymore. After getting up, all of them went the grade crossing to help the old man to stop the trains.

“Hey, it would take lots of time to dig the stones also!” another group of children wanted to help the old man afterwards.

However, they found out the secret after helping dig the stones. All of these stones were from the river beside the train station. The only thing the old man had done was just to paint the beautiful color on them.

These children known the secret were afraid of talking the truth all along. In fact, at that time, all the school nearby had already closed down because there were few students in the class. These children were not in the well arrangement, so the things they could only do were to stop the train and paint the beautiful stones, or on the other word, earned the small candies.

After a month, all people in the neighborhood had their own beautiful stones. There were no guys who wanted to buy the stones.

The old man hadn’t sold the stones, but he hadn’t told the children the truth. The children were still there until they found out that their salary hadn’t risen up in these ten years.