seem
to have been periodically visited from time immemorial. If good
harvests were ever experienced, they must have faded from the popular
recollection. Then there were certain ancient traditions which might
have been lessened in bulk and improved in quality by being subjected to
searching historical criticism. More than once, for instance, a leshie,
or wood-sprite, had been seen in the neighbourhood; and in several
households the domovoi, or brownie, had been known to play strange
pranks until he was properly propitiated. And as a set-off against these
manifestations of evil powers, there were well-authenticated stories
about a miracle-working image that had mysteriously appeared on the
branch of a tree, and about numerous miraculous cures that had been
effected by means of pilgrimages to holy shrines.

But it is time to introduce the principal personages of this little
community. Of these, by far the most important was Karl Karl'itch, the
steward.

First of all I ought, perhaps, to explain how Karl Schmidt, the son of
a well-to-do Bauer in the Prussian village of Schonhausen, became Karl
Karl'itch, the principal personage in the Russian village of Ivanofka.

About the time of the Crimean War many of the Russian landed proprietors
had become alive to the necessity of improving the primitive,
traditional methods of agriculture, and sought for this purpose German
stewards for their estates. Among these proprietors was the owner of
Ivanofka. Through the medium of a friend in Berlin he succeeded in
engaging for a moderate salary a young man who had just finished his
studies in one of the German schools of agriculture--the institution at
Hohenheim, if my memory does not deceive me. This young man had arrived
in Russia as plain Karl Schmidt, but his name was soon transformed into
Karl Karl'itch, not from any desire of his own, but in accordance with
a curious Russian custom. In Russia one usually calls a man not by his
family name, but by his Christian name and patronymic--the latter being
formed from the name of his father. Thus, if a man's name is Nicholas,
and his father's Christian name is--or was--Ivan, you address him as
Nikolai Ivanovitch (pronounced Ivan'itch); and if this man should happen
to have a sister called Mary, you will address her--even though she
should be married--as Marya Ivanovna (pronounced Ivanna).

Immediately on his arrival young Schmidt had set himself vigorously
to reorganise the estate and im