Krilof and His Fables/The Miller

by Ivan Krylov

 

The Miller.

 

The water began to dribble away through a Miller's dam. At first there would have been no great harm done, if he had taken the matter in hand. But why should he? Our Miller does not think of troubling himself. The leak becomes worse every day, and the water pours out as if from a tap.

"Hallo, Miller! don't stand gaping there! It's time you should set your wits to work."

But the Miller says,

"Harm's a long way off. I don't require an ocean of water, and my mill is rich enough in it for all my time."

He sleeps; but meantime the water goes on running in torrents. And see! harm is here now in full force. The millstone stands still; the mill will not work. Our Miller bestirs himself, groans, troubles himself, and thinks how he can keep the waters back. While he is here on the dam, examining the leak, he observes his fowls coming to drink at the river.

"You stupid, good-for-nothing birds!" he cries. "I don't know where I'm to get water, even when you are out of the question; and here you come and drink the little that remains."

So he begins pelting them with faggots. he do himself by this? What good did Without a fowl left, or a drop of water, he went back home.

 

I have sometimes remarked that there are many proprietors of this kind—and this little fable was composed as a present for them—who do not grudge thousands scent on follies, but who think that they maintain domestic economy by collecting their candle-ends, and are ready to quarrel with their servants about them. With such economy, is it strange that houses rapidly fall utterly to pieces?

 

[It is said that Krilof's own ideas of economy were, for the most part, of the very kind he satirizes here. "Returning from a party with me one evening," says his friend Gniedich, "Krilof wouldn't pay what I did for a good carriage, saying it was wasting money. So he walked half of the way home; but then he became tired, and eventually he was obliged to get into a wretched vehicle, and pay almost as much, for half the distance, as he had been asked at first And this was what he called economy."]