Write a story with the moral that money doesn't bring happiness?

Answer 1

Once upon a time there lived a man named Midas. He lived on a small island near the coast of Greece, and that whole island was his kingdom. King Midas had a large and comfortable palace, many guards and servants, and a family that loved him. Still, he was not a happy man. The reason that King Midas was not happy was that he loved gold more than anything else, and he was always thinking of ways to get more gold, and no matter how much gold he collected he always wanted more. King Midas had many things in his palace decorated with gold. He ate and drank from golden plates and cups. He wore golden bracelets and a golden crown. The fastenings of his robes were made of gold. He even had a golden ****. No matter where he went, he could always see and touch something of gold. King Midas also had a treasure room piled high with gold coins and gold jewelry and bricks of solid gold. Every day he went into his treasure room to count and sort the coins. He would often play with them as well, shuffling the coins from hand to hand and building little golden towers of stacked-up coins. Despite all of this, King Midas was not happy. No matter how much gold he had, he always wanted more. One night, as King Midas lay sleeping in his huge king-size bed (which was made of wood, but had gold knobs on the bedposts), he had a dream in which he was visited by Hermes, the messenger of the Olympians. In the dream, Hermes told Midas that he had been granted a favor by Zeus, the ruler of Olympus, and that any one wish that he made would be granted. Midas smiled in his sleep as he told Hermes of his fondest wish, to be able to turn everything that he touched into gold. Hermes nodded, reached out to tap Midas's hands with his staff, and then was gone. This story is presented here as a supplement to my article, "Storytelling 101 - Part 1: Learning a stock of easy-to-tell stories," which is included in the April 1998 issue of Circle Time e-zine. You may wish to simply read this story to your children, or to learn the essential parts so that you can tell the story to your children in your own words, as suggested in my article. To make it easy for you to learn the essential substance of the story without memorizing every bit of plot and dialogue