Xu Hou, a villager, was a miserly man. In former years he ran an inn in the county seat and kept more than a dozen hired hands there year-round, all of them honest and simple peasants, yet never once did anyone remain at his inn for long. Why was that? To save money, Xu Hou fed them only the leftovers that had failed to sell each day, and often delayed paying their wages on one pretext or another. His favorite trick was to tell new hands that they were still on trial, then dismiss them on some excuse just before the trial period ended, spending not a coin. He believed this saved him a great deal of money, but he did not realize that the workers all harbored resentment. Some stole ingredients, some wasted produce on purpose when chopping vegetables, and when pouring oil they would rather use two ladles than one and a half. By the end of the year, the cost of all this waste canceled out the inn’s net profits, leaving him more loss than gain.
Later Xu Hou finally understood this much, and called in several kinsmen to serve solely as overseers. From then on the workers swallowed their anger and did their jobs properly, yet ingredients in the kitchen still went missing with alarming frequency. One night, after Xu Hou returned drunk, he was woken at midnight by a commotion. Carrying a lamp, he made his way into the kitchen, only to see more than a dozen foxes leaping up and down, standing in rows like men, carrying sacks of rice and flour out the door. Xu Hou was seized with terror and fainted dead away. Not long afterward, the inn shut down for good.
Miserliness was not originally a term of reproach. It meant simply living frugally. But once miserliness reaches the point where righteousness itself is forgotten, even the fox spirits will not tolerate it.