dering his servants to stop the first passing travellers,
whoever they might be, and bring them in by persuasion or force, as
circumstances might demand. If the travellers refused to accept
such rough, undesired hospitality, a wheel would be taken off their
tarantass, or some indispensable part of the harness would be secreted,
and they might consider themselves fortunate if they succeeded in
getting away next morning.*

* This custom has fortunately gone out of fashion even in
outlying districts, but an incident of the kind happened to
a friend of mine as late as 1871. He was detained against
his will for two whole days by a man whom he had never seen
before, and at last effected his escape by bribing the
servants of his tyrannical host.

In the time of serfage the domestic serfs had much to bear from their
capricious, violent master. They lived in an atmosphere of abusive
language, and were subjected not unfrequently to corporal punishment.
Worse than this, their master was constantly threatening to "shave their
forehead"--that is to say, to give them as recruits--and occasionally he
put his threat into execution, in spite of the wailings and entreaties
of the culprit and his relations. And yet, strange to say, nearly all of
them remained with him as free servants after the Emancipation.

In justice to the Russian landed proprietors, I must say that the class
represented by Dimitri Ivan'itch has now almost disappeared. It was the
natural result of serfage and social stagnation--of a state of society
in which there were few legal and moral restraints, and few inducements
to honourable activity.

Among the other landed proprietors of the district, one of the best
known is Nicolai Petrovitch B----, an old military man with the rank of
general. Like Ivan Ivan'itch, he belongs to the old school; but the two
men must be contrasted rather than compared. The difference in their
lives and characters is reflected in their outward appearance. Ivan
Ivan'itch, as we know, is portly in form and heavy in all his movements,
and loves to loll in his arm-chair or to loaf about the house in a
capacious dressing-gown. The General, on the contrary, is thin, wiry,
and muscular, wears habitually a close-buttoned military tunic, and
always has a stern expression, the force of which is considerably
augmented by a bristly moustache resembling a shoe-brush. As he paces up
and down the room, knitting his brows