Vassily Ivanovitch. 'You must not imagine,
Yevgeny, I want to appeal, so to speak, to our guest's sympathies by
making out we live in such a wilderness. Quite the contrary, I maintain
that for a thinking man nothing is a wilderness. At least, I try as far
as possible not to get rusty, so to speak, not to fall behind the age.'

Vassily Ivanovitch drew out of his pocket a new yellow silk
handkerchief, which he had had time to snatch up on the way to Arkady's
room, and flourishing it in the air, he proceeded: 'I am not now
alluding to the fact that, for example, at the cost of sacrifices not
inconsiderable for me, I have put my peasants on the rent-system and
given up my land to them on half profits. I regarded that as my duty;
common sense itself enjoins such a proceeding, though other proprietors
do not even dream of it; I am alluding to the sciences, to culture.'

'Yes; I see you have here _The Friend of Health_ for 1855,' remarked
Bazarov.

'It's sent me by an old comrade out of friendship,' Vassily Ivanovitch
made haste to answer; 'but we have, for instance, some idea even of
phrenology,' he added, addressing himself principally, however, to
Arkady, and pointing to a small plaster head on the cupboard, divided
into numbered squares; 'we are not unacquainted even with Schenlein and
Rademacher.'

'Why do people still believe in Rademacher in this province?' asked
Bazarov.

Vassily Ivanovitch cleared his throat. 'In this province.... Of course,
gentlemen, you know best; how could we keep pace with you? You are here
to take our places. In my day, too, there was some sort of a
Humouralist school, Hoffmann, and Brown too with his vitalism--they
seemed very ridiculous to us, but, of course, they too had been great
men at one time or other. Some one new has taken the place of
Rademacher with you; you bow down to him, but in another twenty years
it will be his turn to be laughed at.'

'For your consolation I will tell you,' observed Bazarov, 'that
nowadays we laugh at medicine altogether, and don't bow down to any
one.'

'How's that? Why, you're going to be a doctor, aren't you?'

'Yes, but the one fact doesn't prevent the other.'

Vassily Ivanovitch poked his third finger into his pipe, where a little
smouldering ash was still left. 'Well, perhaps, perhaps--I am not going
to dispute. What am I? A retired army-doctor, _volla-too_; now fate has
made me take to farming. I served in your grandfather's brigade,' he
ad