Once there were two woodcarvers who lived in a magical forest. In this magical forest, the trees were of a very special kind of wood: when they were crafted correctly, they came to life, with the exact characteristics of the woodcarver who made them. Now, one woodcarver was a very careless woodcarver, and he found a patch of many trees, and he chopped them all down, and he dragged the tallest one away through the bushes, thorns, and briars; and by the time he had gotten his timber to his house, the log had been scratched, battered, and bruised. He split the logs, and set about to make his carving: a little puppet designed after himself. He cut out the torso, the limbs, the head, and he sanded out all the rough places, and set it up in his shop on a stage. The doll came to life, and stood on its feet. But the dummy did not take long before he too had an ax in his wooden hand, and started hacking away carelessly at every wooden thing in sight like the table and then the chair! The woodcarver grew very angry and hated his creation the more he destroyed everything he made. Finally, this woodcarver took his creation, and thrust him into the fire, where the doll shriveled up and became embers. He looked around and saw nothing but destruction and he was very unhappy.

The other woodcarver was not like this one. He walked through the forest eye-ing each tree. He took his time, and picked not the tallest, nor the stoutest, but the one that would be the most suitable. He finally found it, and took great care as his ax struck the tree near the ground—being very careful not to harm any of the other living things around him. Once he had felled the tree, he looked at it with eyes full of care, and lay down a blanket, and wrapped the wood around in it, so it wouldn’t be harmed by the bushes, thorns, and briars. Carefully, and painstakingly, he brought it back to his shop, where he set it up, and began his carving: a doll designed after himself. He split the logs, he cut out the torso, the limbs, the head, and he sanded out all the rough places, and set up his creation on the stage. Just as before, the doll came to life and stood on its feet. But did this dummy take an ax and start destroying everything in sight? No. Instead, he stared at his maker with wooden eyes full of care, and he took the blanket his master had wrapped him in, and wrapped it around his maker’s shoulders. And the woodcarver loved his creation, and they worked together to make more of them. And the maker was very happy.