A tourist visited house of a farmer. At night, they started discussing various things about the places the tourist had visited earlier. While they were discussing, the tourist said, "Why are you wasting your time doing such small-scale farming. In Siberia, I saw that the land is so cheap that people just sell it for almost no money. It will be better for you if you sell this small farm and go to Siberia. You will get many acres of land and you will live happily."
The farmer felt the greed for a lot of land hearing this. He sold his farm and left for Siberia. When he reached there, he found the explanation provided by the tourist to be quite true. He asked one of the landlords, "I want to buy some land here. I brought with myself twelve hundred dollars worth of money. What should I do?" The landlord replied, "Okay, you can submit the money to our cashier here. We have a very different way of selling the land. For every hundred dollars, we sell the land worth of one hour." Since the farmer did not understand this, the landlord further explained, "As you have twelve hundred dollars, you are eligible for the land that you can cover within twelve hours. Tomorrow morning after sunrise, you can start walking. You can even run. Just encircle the land as much as possible in the twelve hours duration. All that land will be yours. Remember, you will have to come back to the original point encircling the land within those twelve hours only. Otherwise, all your money will be forfeited and you will have to return empty-handed."
The farmer thought that it was a great deal. He agreed to the condition of the landlord and deposited his money to the cashier. The farmer could not sleep all night thinking about all this. As planned, just after the sunrise, the farmer started walking. He brought with himself enough food and water also. All the villagers started cheering for him. The farmer thought, 'The villagers are so fool that they are cheering me, who would be taking away all their land in few hours.' On covering a little distance, he saw that the land was fertile at some further distance. He got excited to see it and started running. But the burden of food and water was making his running difficult. He threw away all the food and water and started running. He thought, 'This is the only chance in my life. After getting enough land, I will eat like a king.'
He kept on walking briskly for six continuous hours. He had planned that he would return back after six hours so that he could reach back to original point within twelve hours. But, he found that the land further away was even more fertile and green. He thought, 'Let me cover that part of land too. Will run a little faster while returning. I will live very comfortably after that.' He kept on covering further land and around eight hours got over. Now, the farmer started feeling a sense of urgency for returning. But now his body was paining badly, and he was sweating profusely. He started making all efforts to return. But the time left was getting over quite quickly compared to his efforts. However, he made all attempts and ultimately started getting closer to the point he started. The villagers were once again visible to him in front. He looked at the villagers. They all were cheering for him to return. However, it was getting quite late and just a few minutes were left. He started scrawling towards the original point. There, as the time of twelve hours got over, he put his hand on the starting point, and died. Most probably, he got a fatal heart attack.
All the villagers, whom he thought to be foolish, started laughing. They took the man and buried him in the cemetery. That cemetery had many people buried who had come with the desire of capturing land in Siberia, but none of them were able to return.
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