Once there were three boys going into town to buy some playthings: their names were Shallow, Selfish, and Wise. Each had half a dollar. Shallow carried his in his hand, tossing it up in the air, and catching it, as he went along. Selfish kept teasing his mother to give him some more money: half a dollar, he said, was not enough. Wise walked along quietly, with his cash safe in his pocket.

Presently Shallow missed catching his half dollar, and—chink—it went, on the sidewalk, and it rolled along down into a crack under a building. Then he began to cry. Selfish stood by, holding his own money tight in his hands, and said he did not pity Shallow at all; it was good enough for him; he had no business to be tossing it up. Wise came up, and tried to get the money out with a stick, but he could not. He told Shallow not to cry; said he was sorry he had lost his money, and that he would give him half of his, as soon as they could get it changed at the shop.

So they walked along to the toy-shop.

Their mother said that each one might choose his own plaything; so they began to look around on the counter and shelves.

After a while, Shallow began to laugh very loud and heartily at something he found. It was an image of a grinning monkey. It looked very droll indeed. Shallow asked Wise to come and see. Wise laughed at it too, but said he should not want to buy it, as he thought he should soon get tired of laughing at any thing, if it was ever so droll.

Shallow was sure that he should never get tired of laughing at so very droll a thing as the grinning monkey; and he decided to buy it, if Wise would give him half of his money; and so Wise did.

Selfish found a rattle, a large, noisy rattle, and went to springing it until they were all tired of hearing the noise.

"I think I shall buy this," said he. "I can make believe that there is a fire, and can run about springing my rattle, and crying, 'Fire! Fire!' or I can play that a thief is breaking into a store, and can rattle my rattle at him, and call out, 'Stop thief!'"

"But that will disturb all the people in the house," said Wise.

"What care I for that?" said Selfish.

Selfish found that the price of his rattle was not so much as the half dollar; so he laid out the rest of it in cake, and sat down on a box, and began to eat it.

Wise passed by all the images and gaudy toys, only good to look at a few times, and chose a soft ball, and finding that that did not take all of his half of the money, he purchased a little morocco box with an inkstand, some wafers, and one or two short pens in it. Shallow told him that was not a plaything; it was only fit for a school; and as to his ball, he did not think much of that.

Wise said he thought they could all play with the ball a great many times, and he thought, too, that he should like his little inkstand rainy days and winter evenings.

So the boys walked along home. Shallow stopped every moment to laugh at his monkey, and Selfish to spring his rattle; and they looked with contempt on Wise's ball, which he carried quietly in one hand, and his box done up in brown paper in the other.

When they got home, Shallow ran in to show his monkey. The people smiled a little, but did not take much notice of it; and, in fact, it did not look half so funny, even to himself, as it did in the shop. In a short time, it did not make him laugh at all, and then he was vexed and angry with it. He said he meant to go and throw the ugly old baboon away; he was tired of seeing that same old grin on his face all the time. So he went and threw it over the wall.

Selfish ate his cake up, on his way home. He would not give his brothers any, for he said they had had their money as well as he. When he got home, he went about the house, up and down, through parlor and chamber, kitchen and shed, springing his rattle, and calling out, "Stop thief! Stop thief!" or "Fire! Fire!" Every body got tired, and asked him to be still; but he did not mind, until, at last, his father took his rattle away from him, and put it up on a high shelf.

Then Selfish and Shallow went out and found Wise playing beautifully with his ball in the yard; and he invited them to play with him. They would toss it up against the wall, and learn to catch it when it came down; and then they made some bat-sticks, and knocked it back and forth to one another, about the yard. The more they played with the ball, the more they liked it, and as Wise was always very careful not to play near any holes, and to put it away safe when he, had done with it, he kept it a long time, and gave them pleasure a great many times all summer long.

And then his inkstand box was a great treasure. He would get it out in the long winter evenings, and lend Selfish and Shallow, each, one of his pens; and they would all sit at the table, and make pictures, and write little letters, and seal them with small bits of the wafers. In fact, Wise kept his inkstand box safe till he grew up to be a man.

That is the end of the story.