Once upon a time there lived a rich and noble man. One day his friend came to visit him, and the owner received him very cordially. After they had eaten and drunk, the rich man said to his guest:
— I have only one jug of old wine. I have been saving it for a long time for a friend like you.
“Well, bring it here,” the guest suggested.
And the owner said to his son, who was squinting in one eye:
- Go up to the attic, there is a jug of wine there. Bring it here, we'll drink the wine. But be careful not to break the jug.
When the cross-eyed man went up to the attic, it seemed to him that there were two jugs in front of him. He returned to his father and asked which of the two jugs to bring. This made the father very angry: after all, the guest might have thought that he was lying when he said that he had only one jug of wine.
- How stupid you are! - the father shouted. - If there are two jugs, then break one and bring the second.
The boy took a stick and broke one jug, but the second one immediately disappeared... And he said to his father:
“I broke one jug, but I don’t know where the second one went.”
The father replied:
- It's not your fault. The trouble is that you are cross-eyed, you see double. I shouldn't have given you such an assignment.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru