A charcoal-burner carried on his trade in his own house. One day he met a friend, a Fuller, and entreated him to come and live with him, saying that they should be far better neighbors and that their housekeeping expenses would be lessened. The Fuller replied, “The arrangement is impossible as far as I am concerned, for whatever I should whiten, you would immediately blacken again with your charcoal.”
Credits
Aesop was an ancient Greek storyteller, believed to have lived around the 6th century BC, whose fables have been retold across cultures for over two millennia. His tales typically feature animals or tradespeople to deliver sharp moral lessons in just a few lines. "The Charcoal-Burner And The Fuller" is one of his rare fables grounded entirely in human craftsmanship, using the incompatibility of soot and whitening to make its point with quiet precision.
