Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/19

NUMBER STORIES “Just one,” begs the Crowd.

“Well, just one,” says the Story-Teller, who knew all the time that he would submit.

“Take your chairs, then, put a new log on the fire, and listen to the story of Ching and An-am (än äm) and Menes (mē'nēz).”

The logs burned, the Crowd sat by the fire, and he of the curious book told this story:

It is so very, very long ago that not even the wisest men of China can tell the year or the century in which little Ching, the king’s oldest son, played in the forests at the foot of Mount Yu, and painted a face on the shell of his biggest turtle, and told the soldier who guarded him what a lot of turtles he had. To be sure, Ching had only three turtles, but he didn’t know a word for “three,” and the soldier didn’t, and not even the king could do more than say, “Yes, there are a lot of turtles.”

For all this was so long ago that even in the oldest parts of the earth, of which China was one, most people could not count. It was before kings had palaces or crowns or royal robes, and when they were little more than savages. So we do not wonder 2