answer: "Who can tell? It's in God's hands. Can you find out beforehand
what the water will be like?"

But the well, like the pond, was a great success, and the water turned out
to be excellent.

He began seriously planning to build a new house and farm buildings.
Creative activity was his passion. He was never satisfied with what he had
ready-made; he longed to make something new. He planted little trees,
raised pines and fir-trees from seed, looked after them as though they were
his children, and, like Colonel Vershinin in his "Three Sisters," dreamed
as he looked at them of what they would be like in three or four hundred
years.

The winter of 1893 was a severe one with a great deal of snow. The snow was
so high under the windows that the hares who ran into the garden stood on
their hind-legs and looked into the window of Chekhov's study. The swept
paths in the garden were like deep trenches. By then Chekhov had finished
his work in connection with the cholera and he began to live the life of a
hermit. His sister found employment in Moscow; only his father and mother
were left with him in the house, and the hours seemed very long. They went
to bed even earlier than in the summer, but Chekhov would wake up at one in
the morning, sit down to his work and then go back to bed and sleep again.
At six o'clock in the morning all the household was up. Chekhov wrote a
great deal that winter. But as soon as visitors arrived, life was
completely transformed. There was singing, playing on the piano, laughter.
Chekhov's mother did her utmost to load the tables with dainties; his
father with a mysterious air would produce various specially prepared
cordials and liqueurs from some hidden recess; and then it seemed that
Melihovo had something of its own, peculiar to it, which could be found in