There is a story of a father who saw that his young son had a tendency to certain vices. He told him often to keep away from them but the boy would not listen. He did everything in his power; in the end, when he was dying, he called his son and said, "Now I will never tell you any more not to do things that you have always liked to do. But will you remember the last words of your father, that whenever you want to gamble you must gamble with the greatest gamblers, and whenever you feel like drinking you must drink with great drunkards."

The son thought these last words more desirable than anything he had heard from his father before. And when he went to gamble he began to ask people, "Who are the great gamblers in the city?" They said, "Great gamblers are not to be found in gambling houses. You must go and look for them outside the city." So when he had heard their names he went there. He found that they were playing with pebbles, because they had lost all the money they had. And he said, "I have heard a great deal about you people, and here you are playing with pebbles. I thought you would be playing for millions of pounds!" They said, "No, we played for millions, and now we are playing for pebbles. Come along, if you wish to play with us. We have nothing more left."

He got a lesson from this and he said, "Nothing doing in this direction. Now I must go somewhere else to find great drunkards." And the people in the city gave him two or three names of well-known drunkards and he went there. He did not find any bottles, any drink, nor anything. And he said to them, "I have heard your names. Everybody talks about you; you are great drunkards. But there are no bottles; what are you drinking?" They said, "All the money we had was spent in drinking. No money is left. We have now some snakes. When we want to drink we let the snakes bite us; that gives us a kind of intoxication. If you like we will bring a snake for you." And he ran away and never came near them again. That gave him another lesson.