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73. WHAT PRICE A COWRIE
A poor man who was a retail trader had a windfall once, he earned plenty of money in gold and silver. He kept all his earnings in a purse as he started homewards along with a group of traders. But he was careful enough to obtain small change for silver coins so that he could buy food during the journey. The small change was in cowries. He had almost as many cowries as the days the journey would last and every day he ate food worth only one cowrie. But unfortunately he lost the last cowrie some where on the road. He did not like to take out another coin from his purse merely to get a cowrie for his food. He thought it would be much better to retrace his steps and look for the cowrie that had fallen on the road. But in the meantime his companions marched ahead. He went back to look for the lost cowrie but took care to see that he had carefully hidden his purse under a stone. He could not retrieve his lost cowrie and when he came back to the stone to get his purse before he proceeded home, he was shocked to see that the purse also was lost.
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