Wisdom story: The case of the stolen smell

Long ago, in a faraway city, there lived a baker who was so stingy that he wouldn’t even give stale bread crumbs to the birds. Right next to the baker and his bakery lived a kind man who was always glad to share the little he had with anyone in need. He cared more about making friends than he did about making money. The greedy baker was jealous of his cheerful neighbor and asked himself many times, “How can he who has so little be so happy?” One day the baker found out about one of the neighbor’s pleasures that made the baker furious. You see every morning the smell of cinnamon buns and sweet rolls drifted out of the bakery and the wind carried the wonderful aroma right toward the neighbor’s house. As the poor neighbor sat on his porch each morning eating stale bread, the sweet smell filled the air. He took a deep breath and sighed with happiness and ate his stale bread and imagined he was eating freshly baked sweet rolls. As soon as the baker found out what the neighbor was doing he thought, “The smell from my baked goods makes his stale bread taste delicious. That’s not fair. He should have to pay for that.” After seeing this happen many times, the baker went to his neighbor’s house and handed him a bill totaling ten coins for the previous month. The neighbor was shocked and couldn’t say anything as he was not sure if this was a joke or not. The baker continued, “That’s right! you pay nothing…