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MEN, MONKEYS, HORSES, AND BOYS. 159
under cultivation. When the rice harvest was good
the taxes were easily paid by the farmers, and when
crops failed and food was short the local government
opened its store-house of rice and fed the people free,
for which all were grateful.
It was a time of general prosperity, yet, strange to
say, people began
to remember and talk about the
old saying handed down by tradition, "
When the
spade has reached the top of the hills, war will
break out."