Dead Souls

And in fact Tentetnikov began managing and giving orders in earnest. He saw on the spot that the steward was an old woman and a fool, with all the qualities of a rotten steward—that is, he kept a careful account of the hens and the eggs, of the yarn and linen the women brought, but did not know a blessed thing about harvesting and sowing, and on top of that suspected the peasants of making attempts on his life. He threw out the fool steward and chose another to replace him, a perky one. He disregarded trifles and paid attention to the main things, reduced the corvée, decreased the number of days the muzhiks had to work for him, added more time for them to work for themselves, and thought that things would now go most excellently. He began to enter into everything himself, to appear in the fields, on the threshing floor, in the barns, at the mills, on the wharf where barges and flatboats were loaded and sent off.