Page 1420 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘New it may be, but nobility it isn’t. They’re
proprietors of a sort, but we’re the landowners. As
noblemen, they’re cutting their own throats.’
‘But you say it’s an institution that’s served its time.’

‘That it may be, but still it ought to be treated a little
more respectfully. Snetkov, now...We may be of use, or
we may not, but we’re the growth of a thousand years. If
we’re laying out a garden, planning one before the house,
you know, and there you’ve a tree that’s stood for
centuries in the very spot.... Old and gnarled it may be,
and yet you don’t cut down the old fellow to make room
for the flowerbeds, but lay out your beds so as to take
advantage of the tree. You won’t grow him again in a
year,’ he said cautiously, and he immediately changed the
conversation. ‘Well, and how is your land doing?’
‘Oh, not very well. I make five per cent.’
‘Yes, but you don’t reckon your own work. Aren’t you
worth something too? I’ll tell you my own case. Before I
took to seeing after the land, I had a salary of three
hundred pounds from the service. Now I do more work
than I did in the service, and like you I get five per cent
on the land, and thank God for that. But one’s work is
thrown in for nothing.’
‘Then why do you do it, if it’s a clear loss?’

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