One day a man went into the forest to buy firewood. A gentleman drives past and asks a man:
- Tell me, are there many fools in the world among your brother?
The man answers:
- Half and half, but gentlemen are all fools.
The master got angry and drove away, but his dear anger flared up so much that he ordered the coachman to turn around and go back to the peasant in order to properly teach him a lesson for such speeches.
But the man was no fool. Seeing that the master was driving back, he knocked down a healthy birch tree across the road, rested its top against another tree, and stood under it himself, as if holding it on himself. The gentleman drove up and, not recognizing the man behind the branches, asked:
-Have you seen a guy here?
He answers - he hasn’t seen it, they say.
Then the master says to the man:
- Aren't you going to look for him? Maybe he ran into the swamp?
The man agreed, but only with the understanding that the master would hold the birch tree on his shoulder all this time. The master agreed, and the man, when he handed the top to him, pushed it off another trunk, so that it was very difficult for the master to hold it.
Soon the man comes running back and says:
“Master, give me a couple of horses, then I’ll catch up with him, otherwise he ran too far.”
The master gives one horse, but does not want to give the other. The man says:
- How can we both ride on one horse, let’s both!
The master has nothing to do, he has to give. The man took the horses and rode off to his home, leaving the master to hold the birch tree.
The master waits and waits, he just can’t wait. He tells the coachman to hold the birch tree. But he refuses, he says his stomach hurts; It’s true, his stomach hurt from laughing.
The master got angry and, without waiting for the man, he harnessed himself into the carriage and drove him home.
At home, the coachman says to the master:
- Well, now remember, didn’t the man tell you that all gentlemen are complete fools?
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru