Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/219

Rh of the threshed grain from the barns to the granaries; in the woods the chopping and sawing of timber, the carting of bricks and materials for the building in the spring. Why, I am simply incapable of dealing with it all. Such variety of work! One goes here and there to look: to the mill, to the workyard, and to the factory and to the threshing floor; you go to have a look at the peasants, too, how they are working for themselves—that's a trifling matter, too, I suppose! But it's a festival for me to see a carpenter using his axe well; I could stand for a couple of hours watching him, the work delights me so. And if you see too with what object all this is created, how everything around you is multiplying and multiplying, bringing fruit and revenue, why, I can't tell you what a pleasure it is. And not because your money's growing—money is only money—but because it is all the work of your hands; because you see that you are in a way the cause and creator of it all, and you, like some magician, are scattering abundance and welfare on every side. Where will you find me a delight equal to that?' said Skudronzhoglo, and he looked up; all the lines in his face had vanished. He beamed like a triumphant emperor on the day of his coronation. 'Why, you couldn't find anything so delightful in the whole world! It's in this, just in this, that a man imitates God. God chose for Himself the work of creation as the highest delight, and requires the same of man,