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In a little town in England, there lived a baker called Harry Smith. He baked the most wonderful cakes, muffins and cookies in town. The cake he baked was so soft that if you pressed its surface with one finger, it would leave a deep impression on the cake. And his sponge cakes bounced back to shape like a rubber ball, when you pressed it slightly.
“What makes your cakes so extra special?” asked many a customer, licking their fingers after tasting a sample.
“Oh, that’s a secret!” Harry would answer with a laugh. And nothing could persuade him to talk about his secret.
Actually, the secret of his wonderful cakes was in the butter that Harry used for baking. He did not trust the butter sold by grocers in his town. He would go all the way to a small village just outside the town and buy his butter from a farmer who lived there. And thanks to that butter, his cakes turned out to be simply delicious.
But not for long. There came a day, when the pound of butter he bought seemed lighter to him than usual. He did not comment on it. The next time he bought a pound of butter, it once again secured a few ounces lighter. This time he had the butter weighed and found it short of a pound. He had the farmer arrested and brought to court.
At the court, the judge questioned the farmer. “How do you weigh the butter? Do you use scales?” he asked.
“Yes, Your Honour! But I do not have weights,” answered the farmer.
“Well, then how do you measure your butter?” asked the puzzled Judge.
“Well, I have a pair of scales. For the weights, I use the pound of bread that I buy from the baker, Henry.”