od among those under me, and for the improvement
of my domain, and for the fulfilment of the manifold duties of a
landowner who is at once judge, administrator, and constable of his
people, I should have entrusted my estate to an ignorant bailiff, and
sought to maintain an absentee guardianship over the affairs of serfs
whom I have never met, and of whose capabilities and characters I am
yet ignorant! To think that I should have deemed true estate-management
inferior to a documentary, fantastical management of provinces which lie
a thousand versts away, and which my foot has never trod, and where I
could never have effected aught but blunders and irregularities!"

Meanwhile another spectacle was being prepared for him. On learning
that the barin was approaching the mansion, the muzhiks collected on
the verandah in very variety of picturesque dress and tonsure; and when
these good folk surrounded him, and there arose a resounding shout of
"Here is our Foster Father! He has remembered us!" and, in spite of
themselves, some of the older men and women began weeping as they
recalled his grandfather and great-grandfather, he himself could not
restrain his tears, but reflected: "How much affection! And in return
for what? In return for my never having come to see them--in return for
my never having taken the least interest in their affairs!" And then
and there he registered a mental vow to share their every task and
occupation.

So he applied himself to supervising and administering. He reduced the
amount of the barstchina [40], he decreased the number of working-days
for the owner, and he augmented the sum of the peasants' leisure-time.
He also dismissed the fool of a bailiff, and took to bearing a
personal hand in everything--to being present in the fields, at the
threshing-floor, at the kilns, at the wharf, at the freighting of barges
and rafts, and at their conveyance down the river: wherefore even the
lazy hands began to look to themselves. But this did not last long. The
peasant is an observant individual, and Tientietnikov's muzhiks soon
scented the fact that, though energetic and desirous of doing much, the
barin had no notion how to do it, nor even how to set about it--that, in
short, he spoke by the book rather than out of his personal knowledge.
Consequently things resulted, not in master and men failing to
understand one another, but in their not singing together, in their not
producing the very same note.

That