Page:Chernyshevsky.whatistobedone.djvu/400

380 manufactured! How can they help working quickly and gayly? How can they help singing? In such a way I too would become a harvest hand. And all songs, all songs,—unfamiliar ones, new ones; and here they have remembered ours also: I know it:—

But here the work is done, and all go to the edifice. "Let us again go into the hall; let us see how they will dine," says the elder sister. They enter the very largest of the mighty halls. Half of it is occupied with tables; the tables are already laid—how many of them there are! How many people are going to dine here! Yes, a thousand or more: not all are, for those who please dine privately." The old women, the old men, and the children who did not go out into the field got all this ready. "To cook the meals, to keep the house in order, to clean the rooms, this is very easy work for other hands," says the other sister. "Those who are not able to do anything else must do this."

What magnificent dishes! All of aluminum and glass. On the middle aisle are vases of flowers. The dishes are already on the table; the workingmen have come; all sit down at the table, both they and those who got ready the dinner. But who will be the waiters? "When? At dinner-time? Why? There are only five courses: those which must be kept hot are placed where they will not get cold. Do you see these recesses? These are pans filled with boiling water," says the elder sister. "You live comfortably, you like a good table; do you often have such a dinner as this?" "Several times a year. This is an every-day dinner with these people; whoever pleases has a better one, with whatever he may prefer. But then a different account is kept, and whoever does not ask for anything beyond what the rest have, no special account is kept, and all is arranged this way: all which the whole company can afford to enjoy is given without special accounts, but for every special thing or luxury a special account is kept."