I had never visited the Wilna estates of Count Kourásoff, but in the summer of 18--, being engaged in making studies of Russian village life, I presented myself at Ivánofka. Count Loris was at home when I arrived, and was overjoyed to see me. The house was very much like French chateaux of the best class, and maintained in a state of order and repair not always found in Russia. Everything showed a generous but wise expenditure. The village gave evidences of thrift and industry. The communal land, as well as that belonging to Count Kourásoff, was under an excellent system of husbandry. Instead of the complicated agricultural machinery for which the Russian proprietors have a mania, while their plows are made after the model of those used in the time of Iwan the Terrible, I found at Ivánofka that they had judiciously improved on their common tools and implements. The barley was of a superior order, and the cattle were fat and well-shaped. All the credit for this state of things was awarded to Count Kourásoff. It was he who had given Iwan Tiska a horse when his own died of lockjaw; it was he who had paid Mother Karlitch for her flax when it was all burned up; it was he who had given them seed in the year of the bad harvest. In short, the inhabitants of Ivánofka regarded Count Kourásoff as the general benefactor of the human race. The only dissatisfied man in the village appeared to be the parish priest. The contempt in which the "White" or married clergy are generally held is well known, and in this instance the dislike of the parishioners was warmly reciprocated; but, in spite of the head-shakings and evident disgust of my village friends, I had formed a sort of intimacy with the old fellow, and sometimes amused myself by listening to his hearty denunciations of the souls committed to his charge. Once he said, shrugging his shoulders: "Count Loris is a man of sense, but he treats them like rational human beings, when, to show you how little they deserve it, about once a year the howling sickness breaks out among them. It begins with some woman whose husband has given her an extra beating--not a blow too much, I dare say" (the priest was accused of using this method of persuasion on his own wife occasionally)--"and in two days the whole village is howling." "Well," I asked, "what happens then?" "I will tell you. The first time it broke out, some disguised men--of course _I_ knew nothing of it, you understand," said he, opening his eyes and shutting them again with a cunning look--"took seven of these howling devils in the middle of the night, and, cutting a hole in the ice of the lake, dipped them in two or three times. One of them--old Mother Petroff--died the next day, but that was no great loss--the village has been twice as peaceable ever since." "The remedy was severe, but does not appear to have been effectual," said I.