Explore "From the Diary" by Leo Tolstoy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I am again staying with my friend, Tchertkóff, in the Moscow Government, and am visiting him now for the same reason that once caused us to meet on the border of the Orlóf Government, and that brought me to the Moscow Government a year ago. The reason is that Tchertkóff is allowed to live anywhere in the whole world, except in Toúla Government. So I travel to different ends of it to see him.
Before eight o'clock I go out for my usual walk. It is a hot day. At first I go along the hard clay road, past the acacia bushes already preparing to crack their pods and shed their seeds; then past the yellowing rye-field, with its still fresh and lovely cornflowers, and come out into a black fallow field, now almost all ploughed up. To the right an old man, in rough peasant-boots, ploughs with a sohá342 and a poor, skinny horse; and I hear an angry old voice shout: "Gee-up! " and, from time to time, "Now, you devil! " and again, "Gee-up, devil! " I want to speak with him; but when I pass his furrow, he is at the other end of the field. I go on. There is another ploughman further on. This one I shall probably meet when he reaches the road. If so, I'll speak to him, if there is a chance. And we do meet just as he reaches the road.