A Hard Grain's A-Gonna Fall...

Long ago in China, there lived an emperor who had a daughter that he loved above all else. When his daughter fell sick and seemed unlikely to recover, the emperor was inconsolable. He called upon all the healers and shamans in the land, but none of their tinctures or arcane rituals improved her condition.

As a last resort, the emperor had the wise old woman who lived in the hills brought in. The wise woman brought an herb from the mountains that was unfamiliar to the valley dwellers, and ground it into the sick girl's gruel every morning for a week. At the end of this time, it was clear that the girl's condition was improving and the wise woman packed her bags for the long trip back to her mountain home.

The emperor was beside himself with joy at his daughter's return to health and presented the wise woman with a large basket and invited her into the royal treasury to fill it with any precious metals or stones she wished.

The wise woman returned the basket, insisting that she had no use for such worldly riches. The emperor was unwilling to allow her to leave empty-handed and asked her what she thought would be a suitable reward.

The wise woman told him that what she could use more than anything else was a month of grain. He was to deliver a single grain of rice on the first day of the month, and each day thereafter would double the amount of grain delivered until the end of the month.

Now, the emperor was feeling very magnanimous after winning back both the life of his daughter and a small fortune in precious gems. He thought a few handfuls of rice was small thanks for all the wise woman had done, and declared that he would deliver grain through the end of the year, about four months away.

The wise woman smiled and nodded her silent assent before leaving the emperor's palace for her humble home in the hills.

The emperor kept his promise and on the sixth day delivered a scant quarter teaspoon full of rice to the wise old woman.

On the twelfth day, he delivered a scant cup of rice-- still not enough grain to feed the old woman for a single day.

On the eighteenth day, he delivered less than a gallon of rice, and was still feeling slightly guilty about his agreement with the old wise woman.

The next week, as he began loading horse-drawn carts with rice to deliver, he began to understand that he had underestimated the wise old woman. At the end of the month, the wise old woman's grain storage shed was over-flowing. She told the emperor on the last day of the month that she would not expect him to keep his word and continue payments until the end of the year if he agreed to fill her shed once a year for the remainder of her life.

The emperor readily agreed, and that is for the best since this is what would have happened had he continued:

[Many thanks to Jim for his project inspiration. We worked with long grain brown rice... I'd imagine variety could skew results significantly.]