Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Charlie Kirschner and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Translated from the Russian By CONSTANCE GARNETT
Anyone who has chanced to pass from the Bolhovsky district into theZhizdrinsky district, must have been impressed by the strikingdifference between the race of people in the province of Orel and thepopulation of the province of Kaluga. The peasant of Orel is not tall,is bent in figure, sullen and suspicious in his looks; he lives inwretched little hovels of aspen-wood, labours as a serf in the fields,and engages in no kind of trading, is miserably fed, and wears slippersof bast: the rent-paying peasant of Kaluga lives in roomy cottages ofpine-wood; he is tall, bold, and cheerful in his looks, neat and cleanof countenance; he carries on a trade in butter and tar, and onholidays he wears boots. The village of the Orel province (we arespeaking now of the eastern part of the province) is usually situatedin the midst of ploughed fields, near a water-course which has beenconverted into a filthy pool. Except for a few of theever-accommodating willows, and two or three gaunt birch-trees, you donot see a tree for a mile round; hut is huddled up against hut, theirroofs covered with rotting thatch…. The villages of Kaluga, on thecontrary, are generally surrounded by forest; the huts stand morefreely, are more upright, and have boarded roofs; the gates fastenclosely, the hedge is not broken down nor trailing about; there are nogaps to invite the visits of the passing pig…. And things are muchbetter in the Kaluga province for the sportsman. In the Orel provincethe last of the woods and copses will have disappeared five yearshence, and there is no trace of moorland left; in Kaluga, on thecontrary, the moors extend over tens, the forest over hundreds ofmiles, and a splendid bird, the grouse, is still extant there; thereare abundance of the friendly larger snipe, and the loud-clappingpartridge cheers and startles the sportsman and his dog by its abruptupward flight.
On a visit to the Zhizdrinsky district in search of sport, I met in thefields a petty proprietor of the Kaluga province called Polutikin, andmade his acquaintance. He was an enthusiastic sportsman; it follows,therefore, that he was an excellent fellow. He was liable, indeed, to afew weaknesses; he used, for instance, to pay his addresses to everyunmarried heiress in the province, and when he had been refused herhand and house, broken-hearted he confided his sorrows to all hisfriends and acquaintances, and continued to shower offerings of sourpeaches and other raw produce from his garden upon the young lady'sre