The Candle Stub
Teacher Zhou, knowing a poor boy reads by his school's candle-stubs, leaves one extra candle each night and sets out cakes blamed on mice. When Zhou grows old and poor, Wang—now a governor—returns in plain clothes to care for him to the end, saying all he has was lit by the teacher's stubs.
Old Zhou, a Confucian, kept a village school; his tuition was very thin, yet he taught without weariness. There was a poor boy, Wang, clever but unable to afford lamp oil, who read at night by the school's candle-stubs. Zhou knew it and pretended not to see; each night he left one candle more, and often set cakes on the desk, saying, "The mice must have dropped them." Wang wept with gratitude and studied without cease.
Later Zhou grew old and ill, the school closed, his house bare to the walls. Wang, by then passed in the examinations and made a governor of a region, heard of it, returned home in plain clothes, kept the disciple's rite, and took the teacher in to care for him to the end of his days. Asked why he repaid his teacher so, Wang said, "My teacher once kept me alive on cold nights with a candle and a cake; that grace is not to be measured by rank or salary. All I have now is lit by my teacher's candle-stubs."
The Chronicler of the Strange says: Zhou's kindness was but a candle and a cake, yet he blamed it on mice and pretended not to see, sparing the boy's face — this is the heart of the benevolent. To give kindness without shaming, to repay virtue without forgetting the root — teacher and disciple each found their way. Today some teachers begrudge a single word of instruction; some disciples forget half a day's grace. Set beside Zhou and Wang, can they not blush? A single candle, though small, can light a whole life — not the candle lighting it, but virtue.