Once upon a time, a boy was walking through a forest and he thought he could hear a sad cry. Following the sound he came to a big, round, mysterious, grey fountain (喷泉). The sad sound seemed to be coming from the fountain pool. The boy swept aside the pool’s dirty surface water and saw a group of grey fish swimming in a slow circle through the pool.

Surprised by this, the boy tried to catch one of these unbelievable talking fish. But when he stuck (插) his arm into the water, it turned grey right up to the elbow (肘部). As this happened, a huge sadness came into him, and he suddenly understood how sad the fish were feeling.

He quickly pulled his arm out of the water, and ran from that place. But the arm stayed grey, and the boy continued feeling sad. He tried so many times to cheer himself up, but nothing worked. At last, he realized that happiness would be sent back to him through the earth on his arm if he could make the Earth happy.

From then on, he began looking after countryside. He cared for the plants, and he did what he could to keep the water from being polluted. He encouraged others to do the same. He was so successful that his arm started to recover its normal color. When the grey had disappeared completely, he started feeling happy again, and he decided to go and visit the fountain. When he was still some way from the fountain, he could hear the fish singing happily.

Joe was a boy with a special ability. He could make himself cry in less than a second. In this way, he could get almost everything he wanted.

One day, Joe met Pipo. Pipo had no family and was very poor. He was asking people for some money in the street. When people offered him some money, he would do something for them in return. Joe decided to help him make some money. He took off his hat, put it face-up on the ground and started crying sadly.

In a few minutes, Joe's hat was full of money, but when Joe gave Pipo the money, Pipo declined.

“It's much more fun making an effort to get things. Maybe I haven’t got everything I want, but I've done a lot of interesting things,” said Pipo. Joe walked away sadly. He had got everything he wanted, but he’d done nothing interesting the whole day. He hadn’t even enjoyed himself by spending almost all his time crying.

That evening, Joe wanted a piece of cake for his supper. When his mum refused, he wanted to cry. But he remembered what Pipo said. So he tried to get the cake in some other ways. To the joy and surprise of his parents, Joe spent the whole evening helping his mother with the housework. In the end, there was no cake. But that wasn’t so bad because Joe discovered it was much more fun doing all those things that evening rather than just sitting crying to get a piece of cake.