ONCE on a time there was a poor widow who lived in a little cottage with her son Jack.

She and Jack were oddly kind-hearted and affectionate, and thus they grew poor. 
The widow also saw that there was no means of keeping Jack and herself from starvation but by selling her cow.

She said "Jack, you must take the cow to market and sell her."

Jack liked going to market. But as he was on the way, he met a butcher who had some large beans in his hand.
He told the boy that they were of great value, and by that made the boy sell the cow for a handful of beans.

When he brought them home to his mother, she shed many tears and even scolded Jack for his deal.
They both went to bed very sadly that night.

At daybreak Jack rose and went out into the garden.

"At least I'll sow the wonder-beans," he thought. "I may as well sow them."

So he took a piece of stick, and made some holes in the ground, and put in the beans,
knowing that for that day and the next they would have nothing for dinner.

Next day Jack got up at day-dawn and went out into the garden. And what did he see?
The beans had grown up in the night, and climbed up and up,
till they covered the high cliff that sheltered the cottage and disappeared above it!
The stalks had twined and twisted themselves together till they formed his own special ladder.

"It would be easy to climb it," thought Jack.

At once he resolved to do it, and Jack was a good climber.
Still he thought he had better ask his mother for permission first.

Act 2 >>