A farmer has four lambs（羔羊）. One is black, and the other three are white. The black lamb is kind to the white lambs. But the white lambs don’t want to make friends with him. They think he is ugly. The farmer always gives bad food to the black lamb.

One winter day, the four lambs go out to eat grass. They go far away from home. Suddenly, it begins to snow. It is such a heavy snow that the ground is all white soon. They get lost.

When the farmer finds that his lambs are not home, he goes out to look for them. There is snow everywhere. Suddenly, he sees something black. He goes to it. Oh, it is his black lamb! And the white lambs are there, too. The farmer says happily, “Thanks to the black lamb, I can find you!”

Long long ago, there was a little girl living in a small poor house on a hill. When she played in her little garden, she could see a beautiful house high on the other hill. This house had golden windows. They were so nice that the little girl dreamed all day, “How fantastic it would be to grow up and live in a house with golden windows!”

When she was old enough to go outside her garden, she asked her mother if she could go for a walk outside the gate. Her mother agreed, telling her to keep close to the house. The day was beautiful and the little girl walked until she got to the house with golden windows.

As she looked at the house with golden windows, she was so disappointed. All the windows were common and very dirty.

She was so sad that she didn’t go any farther and returned. Her heart was broken. As she went back, she was surprised to see a little house with golden windows as the sun shone (照射) on her own house.

She realized (意识到) that she had been living in the“house with golden windows”all the time. Everything she dreamed was right there under her nose!

There was a king who gave his daughter a beautiful diamond necklace. The necklace was missing and people in the kingdom searched everywhere but could not find it.

So the king put up notices, saying that anyone who found it could get a box of gold coins.

One day, a young man was walking along a river when he saw something shining in the river. When he looked, he saw the diamond necklace. He decided to catch it to get the reward (报酬).

He put his hand in the river and tried to catch the necklace, but missed it. He took his hand out and looked again. The necklace was still there. He tried again. But strangely, he still missed the necklace! He started walking away, feeling sad. Just then, an old man walking by saw him, and asked him what was the matter.

The young man didn’t want to share the secret with him, thinking he might take the necklace for himself, so he refused to tell him anything. The old man could see the young man was in trouble. He asked the young man to tell him the problem again and promised that he would not tell anyone about it. The young man finally told him about the necklace and how he tried hard to catch it, but kept failing.

The old man then told him that perhaps he should try looking upward, toward the tree, instead of in the river. The young man looked up, and the necklace was hanging on the branch of a tree. He had been trying to catch a reflection (倒影) of the necklace all the time.