________________
his heart to give her some little help, even though the iron had not turned into gold.
The gentleman called his treasurer and told him to weigh the piece of iron. It was full twenty-five tolas. Twenty-five tolas of gold! He could ill spare so much in his present state. He had given unstintingly when he could spare it. "But then,” he thought to himself, “if you give what you can easily spare, it is no charity; it is just the overflow of your affluence; you don't miss what you give. It is like the overflow of surplus water; anyone is free to help himself to it, since you don't need it for yourself. But if you are thirsty and you have only a limited quantity of water, and yet you part with some to quench another's thirst, more unbearable than yours, then and then alone it is true compassion, true charity. 'Give a little from your little,' Bhagwan Mahavira had said. You, who have striven all your life to carry out Bhagwan's precepts, how can you now turn a deaf ear to this woman's piteous appeal:" A beaming smile lit up his face. The woman saw it and took heart.
The gentleman ordered his treasurer to weigh the piece of iron against a nugget of gold and within minutes the woman was grasping it in her skinny hands. She tied it with shaking fingers in her tattered garment and her eyes streaming with tears, she muttered some incoherent words! “God grant him prosperity. What they said is true. He is a living philosopher's stone, and no doubt.”
..
.
99
