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Updated: June 17, 2025
... When as a boy I used to stay at my grandfather's on Count Platov's estate, I had to sit from sunrise to sunset by the thrashing machine and write down the number of poods and pounds of corn that had been thrashed; the whistling, the hissing, and the bass note, like the sound of a whirling top, that the machine makes at full speed, the creaking of the wheels, the lazy tread of the oxen, the clouds of dust, the grimy, perspiring faces of some three score of men all this has stamped itself upon my memory like the Lord's Prayer.
Then Iliya formed a close friendship with Dobrinja Nikitich; and saddling their steeds they rode off, and journeyed on for three months without meeting any enemy. At length they fell in with a cripple on the road; his beggar's cloak weighed fifty poods, his bonnet nine poods, and his crutch was six feet long.
The search for silver and lead has diminished since the mines were opened to private enterprise. At one time 40,000 poods of lead were produced here annually, most of it being sent to the Altai mountains to be employed in reducing silver.
Then we have over a million poods of copper, ready for export on the same conditions. But it is clear that if the Western countries are unable to help in the transport, they cannot expect to get raw materials from us." I asked about platinum. He laughed. "That is a different matter. In platinum we have a world monopoly, and can consequently afford to wait.
And this will go on in July also, when the peasants, without obtaining sufficient sleep, reap the oats by night, lest it should fall, and the women rise gloomily to thresh out the straw for the bands to tie the sheaves; when this old woman, already utterly cramped by the labor of mowing, and the woman with child, and the young children, injure themselves overworking and over-drinking; and when neither hands, nor horses, nor carts will suffice to bring to the ricks that grain with which all men are nourished, and millions of poods of which are daily required in Russia to keep people from perishing.
Chaos, waste and a variety of abuses that pressed heavily on the poorer classes marked the efforts made by the Russian Government to cope with the scarcity of fuel, corn and other necessaries which began to be felt soon after the war. The rolling stock, it was complained, was utterly insufficient, yet it was found possible to transport 1,000,000 poods weight of mineral water of doubtful quality.
It is only by the lack of order and organization that one can explain the facts that in Petrograd the inhabitants have no butter, while in the places where butter is made it is being sold cheaper than before, at 12 in lieu of 16 to 18 roubles a pood. In the province of Ekaterinograd, mines which own 800,000 poods of coal cannot get more than a few waggon loads of it every month.
When you enter the hall, seat yourself on the chair numbered One. In the evening, when it is time to retire to rest, remain behind, and as soon as your bed is ready, do not lie down upon it, for Prince Dardavan always lies on his own bed, which weighs a hundred poods. I will provide you with such a bed; and if I delay, strike me in the presence of Mistafor and his daughter.
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