Skip to content

Fables and tales

The Milkmaid and Her Pail

Aesop published 1867 492 characters easy

“The money for which this milk will be sold, will buy at least three hundred eggs. The eggs, allowing for all mishaps, will produce two hundred and fifty chickens. The chickens will become ready for the market when poultry will fetch the highest price, so that by the end of the year I shall have money enough from my share to buy a new gown. In this dress I will go to the Christmas parties, where all the young fellows will propose to me, but I will toss my head and refuse them every one.”

Or simply start typing.

Your record
Day streak
Time so far
0
Words per minute
0
Accuracy
100%

About this text

Townsend calls this fable The Milkmaid and Her Pail, and it is the source of the warning about counting chickens before they hatch. The girl’s arithmetic is part of the joke: three hundred eggs, then two hundred and fifty chickens, then the gown. The story is missing from the oldest Greek collections and reached Europe through medieval Latin and French retellings. Jean de La Fontaine put it into verse in 1678 as La Laitière et le Pot au lait.

Where this text comes fromThe joke is arithmetic. A farmer’s daughter, walking to the farmhouse with a pail of milk on her head, converts milk into eggs, eggs into chickens, chickens into a gown and the gown into suitors, and each step is plausible while the chain as a whole is not, which is precisely the error the fable is about. Townsend keeps the numbers rather than summarizing them, so the reader watches the calculation happen. What you type is the daydream itself, up to the last word before she tosses her head and the pail comes down. English took the moral from this story and turned it into a proverb about counting chickens, which most people can quote without knowing where it came from.

What you might not noticeThe whole fragment is one speech: it opens on a quotation mark and closes on its partner, and nothing outside the quotation marks appears at all. Inside it the girl counts three hundred eggs and two hundred and fifty chickens, both written out as words rather than figures. Source

What it trainsSix commas and four full stops in 492 characters, four sentences averaging twenty-four words, and a single pair of quotation marks holding the whole thing together. Those two marks are the exercise: the opening one is the first keystroke of the passage and the closing one is the last character of it, and both are typed with Shift and the quote key. Eight capitals, four of them inside sentences. Every number here is spelled out, so the digit row stays untouched and the difficulty sits entirely in punctuation and stamina.

From our blogHow to Learn Touch Typing Without Bad Habits

Read the full text at the publisher: Project Gutenberg

A pastel sketch of farm buildings between autumn trees above a pale yellow field, Autumn landscape, George Clausen, 1920.
Wikimedia Commons
Advertisement

Public domain status: published in 1867, more than 125 years ago. public domain, Project Gutenberg

Advertisement

More texts in this category

Tall-masted ships along a wet quay lit by street lamps under a pale green sky, Shipping on the Clyde, John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1881. Fables and talesThe Fox and the GrapesAesop, published 1867A famished fox tries every trick to reach the grapes, then calls them sour.medium303 characters A horse and cart on a wet road under bare trees beside a stone wall at night, A Wet Moon, Putney Road, John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1886. Fables and talesThe Hare and the TortoiseAesop, published 1867The hare mocks the tortoise, agrees to a race, and the tortoise keeps a steady pace.easy488 characters Tall-masted ships along a wet quay lit by street lamps under a pale green sky, Shipping on the Clyde, John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1881. Fables and talesThe North Wind and the SunAesop, published 1867The wind and the sun compete over a traveler’s cloak, and warmth wins.easy468 characters A pastel sketch of farm buildings between autumn trees above a pale yellow field, Autumn landscape, George Clausen, 1920. Fables and talesAlice in Wonderland: down the rabbit holeLewis Carroll, published 1865Alice follows the rabbit into its hole and finds herself falling down a very deep well.easy329 characters Tall-masted ships along a wet quay lit by street lamps under a pale green sky, Shipping on the Clyde, John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1881. Fables and talesAlice in Wonderland: the little doorLewis Carroll, published 1865Alice finds a low curtain, a little door behind it, and a key that fits at last.easy230 characters A horse-drawn wagon stands in a shallow river beside a cottage and tall elms, The Hay Wain, John Constable, 1821. Fables and talesThe Emperor’s New ClothesHans Christian Andersen, published 1837Two impostors arrive in the city and claim they can weave the most beautiful cloth imaginable.medium264 characters