"Yes, why do I? What shall I say? Habit, and because I know it has got to be done. I will tell you something besides," continued the proprietor, leaning his elbow on the window-seat and falling into a tone of monologue, "my son has no taste for farming.[1] He is evidently going to be a scholar. So there'll be no one to carry it on after me. And yet one goes ahead. Here I've just planted a garden."
"Yes, yes," said Levin. "You are quite right. I always am conscious that there's no real economy in my farming, but still I go on with it. .... But one feels that one owes a certain duty to the land."
"Now I will tell you another thing," continued the proprietor. "A neighbor, a merchant, came to see me. We went over the farm, and then the garden. 'Well, Stepan Vasilyevitch, your place is in order,' said he, 'but your garden has too much shade.' But he found it in order, mind you. 'My advice would be, cut down those lindens. Just for the bark. Here are a thousand lindens. Each one will make two excellent basts, and basts sell well. If I were you, I should cut some of that linden trash down and sell it.'"
"Yes, and with the money he would buy cattle, or perhaps a bit of ground cheap, and he would lease it to the peasants," said Levin, with a smile, for evidently he had more than once come in contact with similar cases. "And so he makes a fortune. But you and I thank God if we keep our land, and are able to leave it to our children."
"You are married, I have heard?"
"Yes," replied Levin, with proud satisfaction. "It is wonderful! We live without making any profit, obliged, like ancient vestals, to watch some holy fire."
The old gentleman smiled under his white mustache.
"Some people, like our friend Sviazhsky and Count Vronsky, pretend to make something by agriculture; but so far they have only succeeded in eating into their capital."
"Why shouldn't we imitate the merchants, and cut
- ↑ Khozyaïstvo.
