How Much Land Does a Man Need?

This novella would do well as an illustrated children’s book. It’s entirely plot-driven, as if it’s meant to be read aloud, and is told in a very simple style.

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A peasant man overhears his wife and her rich sister chatting about the positives and negatives of living a life of wealth and anxiety vs. a hard life of working the land but never going hungry.

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Pahom, the master of the house, was lying on the top of the oven, and he listened to the women's chatter.

"It is perfectly true," thought he. "Busy as we are from childhood tilling Mother Earth, we peasants have no time to let any nonsense settle in our heads. Our only trouble is that we haven't land enough. If I had plenty of land, I shouldn't fear the Devil himself!”

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Of course the Devil hears the comments made by the man under his breath and constructs a string of events that brings the previously-secure peasant to his ruin. It’s a well-constructed teaching fable about the dangers of greed. Well worth the hour or so it takes to read this.

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