The Lazy Inventor

Stepan wasn't lazy. No. He simply held that once a man had climbed onto the cart, climbing back down for the sake of a gate was an insult to the intellect. Every evening Odarka would shout after him: "Stepan, the gate!" And he would pretend not to hear. The horse hears, the hens hear, the whole village hears, but Stepan, you see, is a busy man. So one day he decided: the gate must shut itself.

First off, Stepan made himself a "long arm": he tied a rope to the gate and laid its end by the entrance. The idea was brilliant, or so it seemed to him: drive into the yard, tug the rope - the gate shuts, and no need to climb off the cart. But the horse stepped forward just as Stepan was still holding the rope. The rope wound around the wheel, the gate was yanked with such force that the leaf tore clean off its hinges.

It dragged along behind the cart, flew sideways into the neighbor's wattle fence, knocked down two poles and overturned the chicken coop. The hens screamed, the neighbor ran out in nothing but his shirt, and Odarka thought: the Tatars are back. For a week Stepan paid the neighbors in potatoes for the damage, but he didn't give up. Then he decided: if the gate were hung slightly askew, it would fall back and shut on its own. He rehung it. Opened it.

The gate obediently swung back. But it went not quietly - it went with a running start. It slapped its bottom edge into the puddle by the fence, and the village scribe in his white shirt came to look like the starry sky. Only made of mud. Then Stepan looked at his goat, Botsman. The goat was calm, heavy, and had the look of one who had known more than people all his life but kept quiet out of pity.

Stepan tied a rope to his horns: Botsman wanders around the yard, the gate gets gently pulled shut. Brilliant. Right up until Botsman spotted Odarka's cabbage by the fence. He felt the pull, lowered his head and went for the cabbage, gate and all. Odarka came out onto the porch and saw: Stepan sitting in the dust, hugging a torn-off piece of the gate, while Botsman calmly crunched the cabbage. She didn't even shout. She walked over, took the rope out of his hands and said:

"The most reliable mechanism on a farm is two hands and one conscience." Since then Stepan climbs off the cart himself. Because gates and love alike hold best when a man isn't looking for a clever way to run from plain work.