you have? It’s habit, and one knows it’s how it should be. And what’s more,” the landowner went on, leaning his elbows on the window and chatting on, “my son, I must tell you, has no taste for it. There’s no doubt he’ll be a scientific man. So there’ll be no one to keep it up. And yet one does it. Here this year I’ve planted an orchard.”
“Yes, yes,” said Levin, “that’s perfectly true. I always feel there’s no real balance of gain in my work on the land, and yet one does it. … It’s a sort of duty one feels to the land.”
“But I tell you what,” the landowner pursued; “a neighbor of mine, a merchant, was at my place. We walked about the fields and the garden. ‘No,’ said he, ‘Stepan Vassilievitch, everything’s well looked after, but your garden’s neglected.’ But, as a fact, it’s well kept up. ‘To my thinking, I’d cut down that lime-tree. Here you’ve thousands of limes, and each would make two good bundles of bark. And nowadays that bark’s worth something. I’d cut down the lot.’ ”