tires off your wheels and sell them to get drink, and stick bolts into your winnowing-machines so as to render them useless. Everything that is not done in their way is nauseous to them. And thus the affairs of our estates go from bad to worse. The lands are neglected, and go to weeds, or else are abandoned to the muzhiks. Instead of producing millions of tchetverts[1] of wheat, you can raise only a few hundred thousand. The public wealth is diminishing. If they were going to free the serfs, they should have done it gradually." ....
And he developed his own scheme of emancipation whereby all these difficulties would have been avoided.
This plan did not interest Levin, but when the gentleman had finished he returned to his first proposition, with the hope of inducing Sviazhsky to tell what he seriously thought about it. He said, addressing Sviazhsky:—
"It is very true that the level of our agriculture is growing lower and lower, and that in our present relations with the peasantry, it is impossible to carry on our estates rationally," he said.
"I am not of that opinion," said Sviazhsky, seriously. "I only see that we are not up to the point of managing our estates, and that on the contrary, since serfage was abolished, agriculture has decayed; I argue that in those days it was very wretched, and very low. We never had any machines, or good oxen or decent supervision. We did not even know how to make up our accounts. Ask a proprietor: he could not tell you what a thing cost, or what it would bring him."
"Italian book-keeping!" said the old proprietor ironically. "Reckon all you please, and get things mixed as much as you please, there will be no profit in it."
"Why get things mixed up? Your miserable flail, your Russian topchachek, will break all to pieces; my steam-thresher will not break to pieces. Then your wretched nags; how are they? A puny breed that you can pull by the tails, comes to nothing; but our Percherons are vigorous horses, they are worth something.
- ↑ A tchetvert is 5.775 English bushels.
