Honour Your Parents

Once upon a time an old man had lost his wife and lived by himself. He had worked so hard as a tailor all his life, but misfortunes had left him in bankruptcy, and now he was so old that was unable to work.

His hands trembled so much that he could not thread a needle, and his vision had turn too cloudy to do a straight seam. He had three male children, but the three of them had grown up and had married, and were so busy with their own lives that only had time to get dinner with their father once a week.

The old man was weaker and weaker, and his children visited him less and less.
"They do not want to be with me now," he said to himself. "because they're afraid that I become a burden to them."

He passed a night without sleeping thinking what would be of him and finally he devised a plan. The next morning he went to see his friend the carpenter and asked him to fabricate a big coffer. Then he went to see his friend, the locksmith and asked him to give him an old bolt and lock. Finally he went to see his friend the glassmaker, and asked him for all the fragments of broken glass he had.

The old man took the coffer home and filled it to the brim with broken glass, he locked it up and put it underneath the kitchen table. When his children went to dine with him, they touched it with their feet.

"What is in that coffer?" they asked looking under the table.

"Oh, nothing," answered the old man, "only some little things I have saved."

His children pushed it and saw that it was too heavy. They kicked it and heard a clinking.

"It must be full with the gold he saved along his years ." they whispered.

They deliberated and understood they should guard the treasure. They decided to take turns to live with the old man, and thus they could take care of him too. The first week the younger son moved into the father's home, and took care and cooked for him. The following week he was replaced by the second son, and the next week came the oldest one. Thus they continued for a time.

Finally the old father got sick and died.

The sons made for him a nice funeral, because they knew that a fortune was awaiting under the kitchen's table, and they could afford a big expense with the old man. When the ceremony ended, they looked around the house until they found the key and opened the coffer. Of course, they found it full of broken glass.

"What a wicked trick! " exclaimed the oldest son. "What a cruelty towards his children!"

"But, what could he do? " asked sadly the second son. "Let's be frank. Were not for the coffer, we could have neglected him until the end of his days."

"I am ashamed of myself ." wept the younger son. "We forced our father to lower himself to deceitfulness, because we did not observe the commandment he taught us when we were little. But the oldest son tipped over the coffer to be sure that there were not any object of value hidden among the glass. He scattered the glass on the floor until he emptied the coffer."

The three brothers looked silently inside, where they read an inscription that the father had left for them at the bottom:

"Honor thy father and thy mother."