•
Because his horse refused to advance, a traveller in the state of Song drove it into a stream, then mounted to set off again. Still the horse refused to go, and he punished it once more in the same way. This happened three times in all.
•
After the fall of the house of Fan, a man got hold of a bronze bell. It was too big to carry away on his back, and when he tried to break it with a hammer it made such a din that he feared others might hear and take it away from him. So…
•
A man walking along the river bank saw someone about to throw a small boy into the water. The child was screaming with terror.
•
A man of the state of Chu was ferrying across a river when his sword fell into the water. He lost no time in marking the hull.
•
Dr. Ju was a famous physician of the state of Qin. He had cut a tumour for Emperor Xuan and healed haemorrhoids for Emperor Hui.
•
There was once a man of southern Xia Shou by the name of Juan Shuliang who was both slow-witted and cowardly.
•
A man in the state of Song felt the shoots in his fields were not growing fast enough. So he pulled them all up, then went home quite exhausted.
•
“I have done my best for the state,” King Hui of Liang told Mencius. ”When the crops fail west of the river, I move the people east or bring grain from the east to relieve them. If the crops are poor in the east, I do the same. When I look at the rulers…