A long time ago, there lived a very, very wise King. He was so wise that he knew the ways of almost everything.

One day, a tiny bee lost her way, and flew into the King’s beautiful palace. The little bee begged the King, “Please, let me live, and I will offer you help some other day.”

The King was amused（被逗乐的）to think a tiny bee could one day help a great king like him.He let the bee go and said, “Go, be on your way, for I need nothing more from you today.”

Many days later, a queen was coming to visit from a far﹣away land.

“I hear you are wise,” the queen said to the king, “Would you be willing to put your smarts to a test?”

The King agreed and the queen did her test, with puzzles, quizzes, and difficult questions. But the King solved all the problems perfectly.

On the last day of her visit, the queen came up with another plan.She ordered the workers to produce ninety﹣nine fake flowers, but looking so real and natural. When finished, even the queen could not tell they were fake.She was sure the King would make the same mistake. And from the King’s garden, she took just one real flower, and cleverly hid it among all the others.

The queen then said to the King, “My workers created many beautiful flowers. Ninety-nine are fake, but one is real somewhere.Can you find that one?”

The King smelled the flowers, but they were all so sweet, and all so beautiful. Now which one could the real flower be? The King became a bit nervous. Suddenly, he heard a buzzing sound. Something was there flying around. It was the tiny little bee he saved many days before. “I am here to repay the kindness you gave me, sir.”

The little bee quickly flew over the flowers and sopped on the real one. The King picked the flower and handed it to the queen.

Finally, the queen had to give up and told everyone the kind was truly the wisest man in the world.

There was a businessman who was deep in debt（债务）. He sat on a park bench sadly. Suddenly, an old man appeared before him. "I can see that something is troubling you," he said. After listening to the businessman's story, the old man wrote out a check（支票）, and put it in his hand, saying, "Take it and pay me back here exactly one year from today." Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come. The businessman saw in his hand a check for $500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest men in the world! "I can pay off my debts in a second!" he realized. But instead, the businessman decided to put the check in his safe（保险箱）. Just knowing it was there might give him the power to save his business. He went back and worked hard to make his business successful. Within several months, he was out of debt and making money once again.

Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the check. At the agreed-upon time, the old man appeared. Behind the old man was a nurse. The nurse spoke to the businessman and said that the old man was mentally（精神上）ill and was always telling people he was John D. Rockefeller. The businessman was shocked to hear this.

Suddenly, he realized that it wasn't the money, real or imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his newfound self-confidence that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after.

The idea may hit you once or twice a year. You come home on a hot summer day, hoping to have a cool bath, and find out there is no water. Then you see how important water is in your everyday life. However, in many parts of the world, water is not just about one’s everyday needs.

In countries like Tanzania, water is hard to get, and the job of collecting water falls on women’s shoulders. Girls are often kept home from school to collect water while their brothers stay at school studying. Studies show Tanzanian girls who live 15 minutes from clean water spend 12% more time at school than those who live an hour away. More time spent collecting water means less time for learning. For these girls, “Knowledge is power” is not just words; it is a sad fact in real life. With less time spent at school, their chances of getting well-paid jobs are small, and they often have no voice in important matters, like who to marry. These girls are often married into poor families. They have little money or knowledge to take care of their children, who often end up dying young. For the baby girls who are lucky enough to live, their life may still center around “water”, just like it did for their mothers.

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