Page 729 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

And he proceeded to unfold his own scheme of
emancipation by means of which these drawbacks might
have been avoided.
This did not interest Levin, but when he had finished,

Levin went back to his first position, and, addressing
Sviazhsky, and trying to draw him into expressing his
serious opinion:-
‘That the standard of culture is falling, and that with
our present relations to the peasants there is no possibility
of famling on a rational system to yield a profit—that’s
perfectly true,’ said he.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Sviazhsky replied quite seriously; ‘all
I see is that we don’t know how to cultivate the land, and
that our system of agriculture in the serf days was by no
means too high, but too low. We have no machines, no
good stock, no efficient supervision; we don’t even know
how to keep accounts. Ask any landowner; he won’t be
able to tell you what crop’s profitable, and what’s not.’
‘Italian bookkeeping,’ said the gentleman of the gray
whiskers ironically. ‘You may keep your books as you
like, but if they spoil everything for you, there won’t be
any profit.’
‘Why do they spoil things? A poor thrashing machine,
or your Russian presser, they will break, but my steam

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