The Boy Who Began with a Dead Mouse

In a busy trading town there lived a wise old merchant, famous for his fortune. One day, walking through the market, he said aloud to a friend, “A clever person with their wits about them can build a fortune from anything. Why, even from a dead mouse lying in the street.”

Now, a poor orphan boy happened to be sweeping nearby, and he heard those words. And he thought to himself, “Well then. Let us see.” And right there in the gutter lay a dead mouse. The boy picked it up.

He carried it to a shopkeeper whose cat was always hungry. “A bit of food for your cat?” he offered, and the shopkeeper, amused, gave him two small copper coins. With those two coins the boy bought a lump of sweet jaggery and filled a pot with cool water. Then he carried them to the edge of town, where the flower-pickers came trudging in from the gardens, hot and thirsty after a long day. “Sweet water? A taste of jaggery?” he called. The tired pickers were so grateful that each one handed him a small bunch of flowers in thanks.

The boy sold the flowers in the market and bought more jaggery and more water, and the next day there were even more flowers. And so it went. After a great storm one night, he offered to clear the fallen branches and leaves from a rich man’s garden, and was told he could keep whatever he carted away. He sold the wood to the bakers for their ovens. With those coins he bought a little more, and traded a little higher, day after patient day.

Season after season, the boy worked and traded and saved, always with that same bright eye for a chance that others walked straight past. And in time, that orphan with two copper coins became one of the richest merchants in the whole town. He never forgot how he had started. And he went, at last, to find the wise old merchant, and bowed low, and thanked him. “You did not know it,” he said, “but you began my fortune. With a dead mouse.”