f the serfs was
at hand, Karl Karl'itch confidently predicted that the country would
inevitably go to ruin. He knew by experience that the peasants were lazy
and improvident, even when they lived under the tutelage of a master,
and with the fear of the rod before their eyes. What would they become
when this guidance and salutary restraint should be removed? The
prospect raised terrible forebodings in the mind of the worthy steward,
who had his employer's interests really at heart; and these forebodings
were considerably increased and intensified when he learned that
the peasants were to receive by law the land which they occupied on
sufferance, and which comprised about a half of the whole arable land
of the estate. This arrangement he declared to be a dangerous and
unjustifiable infraction of the sacred rights of property, which
savoured strongly of communism, and could have but one practical result:
the emancipated peasants would live by the cultivation of their own
land, and would not consent on any terms to work for their former
master.

In the few months which immediately followed the publication of the
Emancipation Edict in 1861, Karl Karl'itch found much to confirm his
most gloomy apprehensions. The peasants showed themselves dissatisfied
with the privileges conferred upon them, and sought to evade the
corresponding duties imposed on them by the new law. In vain he
endeavoured, by exhortations, promises, and threats, to get the most
necessary part of the field-work done, and showed the peasants the
provision of the law enjoining them to obey and work as of old until
some new arrangement should be made. To all his appeals they replied
that, having been freed by the Tsar, they were no longer obliged to
work for their former master; and he was at last forced to appeal to
the authorities. This step had a certain effect, but the field-work was
executed that year even worse than usual, and the harvest suffered in
consequence.

Since that time things had gradually improved. The peasants had
discovered that they could not support themselves and pay their taxes
from the land ceded to them, and had accordingly consented to till the
proprietor's fields for a moderate recompense. "These last two years,"
said Karl Karl'itch to me, with an air of honest self-satisfaction, "I
have been able, after paying all expenses, to transmit little sums to
the young master in St. Petersburg. It was certainly not much, but it
shows that