A peasant once went to the gardener’s, to steal cucumbers. He crept up to the cucumbers, and thought: “I will carry off a bag of cucumbers, which I will sell; with the money I will buy a hen.”
“The hen will lay eggs, hatch them, and raise a lot of chicks. I will feed the chicks and sell them; then I will buy me a young sow, and she will bear a lot of pigs.”
“I will sell the pigs, and buy me a mare; the mare will foal me some colts. I will raise the colts, and sell them.”
“I will buy me a house, and start a garden. In the garden I will sow cucumbers, and will not let them be stolen, but will keep a sharp watch on them. I will hire watchmen, and put them in the cucumber patch, while I myself will come on them, unawares, and shout: ‘Oh, there, keep a sharp lookout!'”
And this he shouted as loud as he could. The watchmen heard it, and they rushed out and beat the peasant.
Credits
Leo Tolstoy was a 19th-century Russian author celebrated for sweeping novels like War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but he also wrote a rich body of short moral fables and folk tales. "The Peasant and the Cucumbers" reflects his lifelong interest in the lives of ordinary rural people and the human tendency toward self-deception. Its sharp, comedic twist delivers a moral punch in under two hundred words.
