Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/111

NUMBER STORIES “That depends,” replied he of the curious book. “Remember the Question Box. What shall it be to-night?”

“I hope that it will be something that we all like,” answered Maude.

“Then it must be fractions,” guessed the Story-Teller, with a smile.

“Fractions!” gasped the Crowd.

“Fractions,” smiled the Story-Teller. “Just listen to the story of Ahmes and Heron (hē'rŏn) and Jakob (yä'kṓp), and see if there is not something interesting about fractions in spite of the fact that you once found them hard.”

The Crowd looked doubtful, but the curious book was closed, a new log was put on the fire, and the Story-Teller began:

When Ahmes had learned from the priest in the temple by the Nile how to read and write numbers, he felt that he knew a great deal about arithmetic; and when the priest had taught him to add and subtract, he felt that there was not much more to learn. As he grew older, however, he found that he needed to know about fractions. But no one in Egypt at that time used any fractions with a 84