一個雙目失明的男孩坐在大樓前的臺階上，腳邊擺著一頂帽子。他立了一塊牌子，上面寫著：“我是瞎子，請幫助我。”那帽子里只有寥寥幾枚硬幣。
A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.
一個路人從旁邊走過，他從口袋里拿出幾枚硬幣，放在帽子里。然后，他拿起牌子，翻到另一面寫了些字。隨后他把牌子放回去，讓所有路過的人都能看見牌子上新寫的字。
Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked," Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?"
很快，帽子里的錢就多起來了。越來越多的人把錢給這個失明的孩子。下午，改寫牌子的人回來看看情況，男孩聽出了他的腳步聲，問道：“您是早上幫我改寫牌子的人么?您寫了什么?”
The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said, but in a different way. I wrote: 'Today is a beautiful day, but I cannot see it.'"
那人說：“我只是寫出了事實。我表達的意思和你一樣，只是用了另一種方式。我寫的是：‘今天是美好的一天，而我卻無法看見。’”
Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people that they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?
兩個牌子都告訴人們男孩是盲人，但第一個牌子只是簡單地講述了這一事實;而第二個牌子卻告訴人們，他們是如此幸運，因為他們不是盲人。所以說，第二個牌子效果更佳，并沒有什么好驚訝的不是嗎?
