The Rich Man and the Tanner
Once upon a time, a rich man lived in a pretty town with narrow stone streets. This man had a huge and very beautiful house with a garden. But right next to the house stood an old tanner's workshop. Every day the tanner washed animal skins with water and dried them in the sun. So a very bad and heavy smell spread from the workshop into the neighbourhood. The rich man was not happy at all about this bad smell. One day he could not bear it and went to his neighbour the tanner.
"Please move your workshop somewhere else, this smell bothers me a lot," he said. The hard-working tanner looked at his neighbour with a smile and answered. "You are right, neighbour, give me one week and I will move at once," he said. The rich man believed these words and decided to wait with patience. But after a week the tanner did not move and asked for a little more time. The days followed the weeks, but the workshop always stayed there. Every day the rich man went on walking past the workshop.
In time that bad smell seemed less heavy to him than before. After a few months the rich man did not smell anything at all. When the tanner finally spoke about moving, the rich man smiled. "You do not need to move now, because I got used to this smell," he said. In time people can get used even to the hardest and most unpleasant things. Time heals all wounds.