{161a}
Wood floors are laid down. The windows consist of one sheet of glass.
There are rich rugs and costly furniture. The roads around the house are
macadamized, the ground is levelled, flower-beds are laid out, croquet-
grounds are prepared, swinging-rings for gymnastics are erected,
reflecting globes, often orangeries, and hotbeds, and lofty stables
always with complicated scroll-work on the gables and ridges.

And here, in the country, an honest educated official, or noble family
dwells. All the members of the family and their guests have assembled in
the middle of June, because up to June, that is to say, up to the
beginning of mowing-time, they have been studying and undergoing
examinations; and they live there until September, that is to say, until
harvest and sowing-time. The members of this family (as is the case with
nearly every one in that circle) have lived in the country from the
beginning of the press of work, the suffering time, not until the end of
the season of toil (for in September sowing is still in progress, as well
as the digging of potatoes), but until the strain of work has relaxed a
little. During the whole of their residence in the country, all around
them and beside them, that summer toil of the peasantry has been going
on, of whose fatigues, no matter how much we may have heard, no matter
how much we may have heard about it, no matter how much we may have gazed
upon it, we can form no idea, unless we have had personal experience of
it. And the members of this family, about ten in number, live exactly as
they do in the city.

At St. Peter's Day, {161b} a strict fast, when the people's food consists
of kvas, bread, and onions, the mowing begins.

The business which is effected in mowing is one of the most important in
the commune. Nearly every year, through the lack of hands and time, the
hay crop may be lost by rain; and more or less strain of toil decides the
question, as to whether twenty or more per cent of hay is to be added to
the wealth of the people, or whether it is to rot or die where it stands.
And additional hay means additional meat for the old, and additional milk
for the children. Thus, in general and in particular, the question of
bread for each one of the mowers, and of milk for himself and his
children, in the ensuing winter, is then decided. Every one of the
toilers, both male and female, knows this; even the children know that
this is an important matter, and tha