t it is necessary to strain every
nerve to carry the jug of kvas to their father in the meadow at his
mowing, and, shifting the heavy pitcher from hand to hand, to run
barefooted as rapidly as possible, two versts from the village, in order
to get there in season for dinner, and so that their fathers may not
scold them.

Every one knows, that, from the mowing season until the hay is got in,
there will be no break in the work, and that there will be no time to
breathe. And there is not the mowing alone. Every one of them has other
affairs to attend to besides the mowing: the ground must be turned up and
harrowed; and the women have linen and bread and washing to attend to;
and the peasants have to go to the mill, and to town, and there are
communal matters to attend to, and legal matters before the judge and the
commissary of police; and the wagons to see to, and the horses to feed at
night: and all, old and young, and sickly, labor to the last extent of
their powers. The peasants toil so, that on every occasion, the mowers,
before the end of the third stint, whether weak, young, or old, can
hardly walk as they totter past the last rows, and only with difficulty
are they able to rise after the breathing-spell; and the women, often
pregnant, or nursing infants, work in the same way. The toil is intense
and incessant. All work to the extreme bounds of their strength, and
expend in this toil, not only the entire stock of their scanty
nourishment, but all their previous stock. All of them--and they are not
fat to begin with--grow gaunt after the "suffering" season.

Here a little association is working at the mowing; three peasants,--one
an old man, the second his nephew, a young married man, and a shoemaker,
a thin, sinewy man. This hay-harvest will decide the fate of all of them
for the winter. They have been laboring incessantly for two weeks,
without rest. The rain has delayed their work. After the rain, when the
hay has dried, they have decided to stack it, and, in order to accomplish
this as speedily as possible, that two women for each of them shall
follow their scythes. On the part of the old man go his wife, a woman of
fifty, who has become unfit for work, having borne eleven children, who
is deaf, but still a tolerably stout worker; and a thirteen-year-old
daughter, who is short of stature, but a strong and clever girl. On the
part of his nephew go his wife, a woman as strong and well-grown as a
sturdy