Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/23

NUMBER STORIES their countries could count in the days when the world was only just coming out of savagery, when money was unknown, and when no one measured land or buildings or the things which they traded with one another.

But many hundreds of years later other boys played in the forest at the foot of Mount Yu, and they counted “one, two, two and one, two twos, two twos and one, a lot.” The world was growing, and people needed larger numbers, and so they counted as far as “two twos and one,” which we call “five,” and all beyond that was simply called a “lot.”

And other boys helped to tend the flocks of Babylon, and their fathers taught them to count by threes, — “one, two, three, three and one, three and two, two threes, two threes and one, two threes and two, three threes, three threes and one, three threes and two, many,” for they did not know a word for four, so they couldn’t say “four threes,” and they just said “many”; but of course they said another word, using the language of ancient Babylon. The world of Mesopotamia was growing older, and people needed more