in conformity with this.' I should have said to him. 'Imagine that you were carrying on an estate like that of my old man by the roadside, that you had found a way of interesting your laborers in the success of their work, and had found that by means of improvements such as they would acknowledge to be improvements, you had succeeded in doubling or trebling your returns without exhausting the soil; then suppose you make a division and give a half to your working force. The residue which you would have would be larger, and that which would come to the working force would be larger.' But to do this, there must be a coming down from anything like ideal management and the laborers must be interested in the success of the management. How can it be done? This is a question of details, but there is no doubt that it is possible."
This idea kept Levin in a state of agitation. Half the night he did not sleep, thinking of the details connected with carrying out his new plans and schemes. He had not intended to leave so soon, but now he decided to go home on the morrow. Moreover, the memory of the young lady with the open dress came over him with a strange sense of shame and disgust. But the main thing that decided him was his desire to lay before his muzhiks his new project before the autumn harvests, so that they might reap under the new conditions. He decided to reform his whole method of administration.
CHAPTER XXIX
The carrying out of Levin's plan offered many difficulties; but he persevered, and finally succeeded in persuading himself without self-deception that the enterprise was worth the labor even though he should not succeed in doing all that he wanted to do. One of the principal obstacles which met him was the fact that his estate was already in running order, and that it was impossible to come to a sudden stop and begin anew, but that he had to remodel his machine while it was going.
