【英】《伊索寓言》第40集：The Miser and His Gold

A man once gathered much gold throughout his lifetime. He never spent a cent but took great joy in watching it pile up and up. Then the old miser grew afraid. What would he do if someone stole his beautiful gold? The old man fretted and fussed until he could neither eat nor sleep. He had to find a safe place for his gold.

Finally the old miser dug a deep hole under a tree in his garden and buried all his gold there. Then he went to bed and slept very well. But a few days later, the man began to worry again. How did he know his gold was still there?

In the dark of night, the old man went back to the tree and dug up his gold again. He looked down into the hole at all the gleaming gold and felt content again. Then he filled the hole back up and went to bed.

This happened time after time until a thief happened to be slinking around on one of the nights when the man dug up his gold.

“Oh, this is perfect,” the thief whispered.

When the old man returned to his house to sleep, the thief dug up the gold and carried it away. When the miser next came out to look over his treasure, he found only the hole. He raised a great cry and neighbors from all around came to hear his story.

“Did you ever spend any of the gold?” asked one of his neighbors.

“No!” the man said.

“Did you ever give any of it to the needy?” asked another neighbor.

“No!” the man said.

“Then you should come out and enjoy the hole,” the third neighbor said. “It is doing you as much good as the gold since wealth without use might as well not exist.”