All that is nonsense though. Write what you like. If you haven't facts make
up with lyricism.




TO A. S. KISELYOV.

MELIHOVO,
STATION LOPASNYA,
MOSCOW-KURSK LINE.
March 7, 1892.


This is our new address. And here are the details for you. If a peasant
woman has no troubles she buys a pig. We have bought a pig, too, a big
cumbersome estate, the owner of which would in Germany infallibly be made a
_herzog_. Six hundred and thirty-nine acres in two parts with land not
ours in between. Three hundred acres of young copse, which in twenty years
will look like a wood, at present is a thicket of bushes. They call it
"shaft wood," but to my mind the name of "switch wood" would be more
appropriate, since one could make nothing of it at present but switches.
There is a fruit-garden, a park, big trees, long avenues of limes. The
barns and sheds have been recently built, and have a fairly presentable
appearance. The poultry house is made in accordance with the latest
deductions of science, the well has an iron pump. The whole place is shut
off from the world by a fence in the style of a palisade. The yard, the
garden, the park, and the threshing-floor are shut off from each other in
the same way. The house is good and bad. It's more roomy than our Moscow
flat, it's light and warm, roofed with iron, and stands in a fine position,