Courage   YOU fall  into water. You are not daunted by the great watery mass. You make good use of your arms and legs, grateful to the teacher who taught you how to swim. You grapple with the waves and you escape. You have been brave.   You are asleep. "Fire!" The cry of alarm has awakened you. You leap from your bed and see the red glare of the blaze. You are not stricken with mortal fear. You run through the smoke, the sparks, the flames, to safety. This is courage.    Some time ago I visited an infant school in England. The little school-children were between three and seven years old. There were both boys and girls, who were busy knitting, drawing, listening to stories, si

Modesty        WHO is this corning to the door of this Japanese house?         It is the flower-artist, the man who is skilled in arranging flowers.         The master of the house brings a tray with some flowers, a pair of scissors, a knife, a little saw, and a beautiful vase.         "Sir," he says, "I cannot make a bouquet beautiful enough for such a beautiful vase."         "I am sure you can," replies the master politely as he leaves the room.         Left alone, the artist sets to work, cutting, snipping, twisting and tying until a beautiful bunch of flowers fills the vase — a delight to the eyes.         The master and his friends enter the ro

Sympathy   WHEN is sorrow accompanied by sorrow? When one heart feels it and our heart feels it at the same time.         Duryodhana, the famous warrior, fell on the plain of Kurukshetra and his friends were so full of grief that when he lay on the ground and died, all Nature seemed in disorder. Headless creatures with many arms and legs danced dreadful dances over the earth; in lakes and wells the water was turned to blood; rivers flowed upstream instead of downstream; women looked like men, and men like women.         Here the poet teaches us that the suffering undergone by one being spreads through a wide, wide world. There was sympathy between the fallen king and thousands

 PUBLISHER'S NOTE   During her stay in Japan (1916-1920) the Mother translated and adapted some stories written by Mr. F. J. Gould, which had been published in his Youth's Noble Path in 1911. The Mother's versions, written in French, were first published as Belles Histories in 1946. An English translation, entitled Tales of All Times, was brought out in 1951. That translation was revised when the book was included in Words of Long Ago, Volume 2 of the Mother's Collected Works in 1978; at that time five additional chapters were translated and added as an appendix. The text of the present edition is the same as appeared in the Collected Works. The illustrations in this book, which first appea

The Family   A TRAVELLER in Morocco noticed that in the evening when the flocks of ewes and the flocks of lambs were brought together after having been separated all day, the good creatures ran eagerly here and there as if they were looking for something. In fact, each ewe was looking for its lamb, each lamb was looking for its mother.         A monkey had young ones and she loved them, but her love was like a fountain, giving drink not only to her own children, but pouring out on all. She found other little monkeys and was kind to them. Not only that, she took puppies and kittens with her as if she had adopted them. And when she had food to give, she shared it between her own lit

Prudence   "GOOD shot!" the cry rang out as the young Indian let fly his arrow and hit his mark.   "Yes," someone said, "but it is broad daylight. The archer can see his target. He is not so skilled as Dasaratha."   "And what does Dasaratha do?"   "He is Sabdabhedi."    "What is that?"         "He shoots by sound."    "What do you mean?"         "Well, he can shoot in the dark. At night he goes out into the jungle and listens, and when he has judged, from the sound of wings or footsteps, what kind of game he has encountered he lets fly his arrow and hits it as surely as if he had shot by day."         Thus the reputation of Dasaratha,

  APPENDIX             Stories not published in previous editions of   Tales of All Times Page-91

Cheerfulness   ONE afternoon, in a large town in a rainy country, I saw seven or eight vehicles full of children. That morning they had been taken into the country to play in the fields, but the bad weather had made them return home early in the rain.   And yet they were singing, laughing and waving merrily to the passers-by.   They had kept their cheerfulness in this gloomy weather. If one of them had felt sad, the songs of the others would have cheered him. And for the people hurrying by, who heard the children's laughter, it seemed that the sky had brightened for a moment.   ⁂   Amir was a prince of Khorasan, and he lived in a grand style. When he set out

Order   MEN in ancient India had a very poetic idea about the earth and the world — an idea intended to express order.         The land inhabited by men was called Jambu Dvipa and it was surrounded by a sea of salt. Then came a ring of land and then a sea of milk. Another ring of land, and a sea of butter. More land, and a sea of curds. Land again, and a sea of wine. More land, and after that a sea of sugar. Still more land, and at last, the seventh and final ring of pure water: the sweet, the sweetest of all seas!         If you look at a map of the world like the ones we now use in schools, you will not find the sea of sugar, or the sea of milk, or the others. Nor did the Indian

Right Judgment   CHOOSE a good straight stick and dip it halfway into some water: the stick will appear to be bent in the middle. But that is an illusion, and if you were to think that the stick was actually bent, your judgment would be wrong. Pull out the stick and you will see that in fact it is still straight.         On the other hand, it is possible for a stick that is actually bent in the middle to appear straight if it is carefully placed in a particular way in the water.         Well, men are often like sticks. If you look at them from a certain angle, you may not see them as straight as they are, and sometimes too, they may have a deceptive appearance and seem