In the stories that we listened to in the evenings, gathered around the burning peat, there was always something new and instructive for us children. Once upon a time, and it was a long time ago, there lived in a certain valley a tyrant lord. He forced him to work for himself just for a pittance - people bent their backs on him, broke their hearts, and he just got fatter and richer.
And one fine day a young mountaineer, a rustic man, came to him, with a flail on his shoulder, and asked for work. This lord thought that this was another opportunity to trick the simpleton, and said:
- I already have enough workers, but oh well, if you don’t ask for much, then work!
The guy replied:
- If I hire you to thresh for seven years and for this I ask for as many wheat grains as I can catch in my mouth from under the flail, and also land to plant these grains, and those that will be born from them during the entire time of our agreement, will it be a lot, in your opinion, or not?
The lord knew very well the habit of good plowmen to catch grains in their mouths that fly out from under the flail and chew them while threshing is going on, and he seized the happy opportunity to hire them - and for free! - a simpleton for seven whole years, apparently with strong hands, but not with a strong mind.
“Deal with each other,” said the landlord.
Well, in the first year of threshing the guy caught exactly seven grains of wheat. The next year - only six. The next one - five. Then four. Then three. Then two. And in the last year - only one grain.
But each grain of wheat gave him three hundred grains, and then three hundred times three hundred, so that very soon all ten thousand acres of the landlord's land were under the worker's wheat. And the landlord ended up in a charity home, and he owed the guy more land than all of Ireland, England, Scotland, Spain and France combined!
In the old days they said:
He woos a girl and marries money.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru