Page:The Richest Man In Babylon (1930).pdf/22

 we learned and knew, and the other being in the training that aught us how to find out what we did not know.

Therefore, did I decide to find out how one might accumulate wealth, and when I had found out, to make this my task and do it well. For, is it not wise that we should enjoy while we dwell in the brightness of the sunshine, for sorrows enough shall descend upon us when we depart for the darkness of the world of spirit.

I found employment as scribe in the hall of records, and long hours each day I labored upon the clay tablets. Week after week, and month after month, I labored, yet for my earnings I had naught to show. Food and clothing and penance to the gods, and other things of which I could remember not what, absorbed all my earnings. But my determination did not leave me.

And one day Algamish, the money lender, came to the house of the city master and ordered a copy of the Ninth Law, and he said to me, ‘I must have this in two days, and if the task is done by that time, two coppers will I give to thee.’

So I labored hard, but the law was long, and when Algamish returned the task was unfinished. He was angry, and had I been his slave he would have beaten me. But knowing the city master would not permit him to injure me, I was unafraid, so I said to him:

‘Algamish, you are a very rich man. Tell me how I may also become rich, and all night I will carve upon the clay, and when the sun rises it shall he completed.’

He smiled at me and replied. ‘You ate a forward knave, but we will call it a bargain.’

All that night I carved, though my back pained and the smell of the wick made my head ache until my eyes could hardly see. But when he returned at sunup the tablets were complete.