Krilof and His Fables/The Mechanician
The Mechanician.
A certain smart young fellow bought a big house; an oldish one, it is true, but capitally constructed. The house had every merit in the way of solidity and com fort, and it would have been suited to his taste in everything had it not been for this drawback: it was rather a long way off from any water.
"Well, anyhow," he thought, "I may do what I like with my own. So I will have my house, just as it stands, moved to the river by machinery"—our friend, as you can see, had a passion for mechanics—"I shall only have to dig under its foundations, put runners under its walls, set it upon rollers, and then, by means of a windlass, comfortably handle, so to speak, the whole building, and set it down just where I like. And what's more—a thing the world has never yet seen—when my house is being moved, I will go in it to my new place of residence, riding as if in a carriage, and feasting, with friends around me, to the sound of music."
Bewitched by this folly, our Mechanician instantly set to work. He hired workmen, he dug and dug beneath his house. Neither money nor pains did he spare in the least. But he could not manage to move his house, and all that he attained to was this—that his house tumbled to pieces.