Back to Leskov

I suppose we've come a long way. Or have we?

Either way, here's a nice slice of Leskov's "Singlemind":

Conjugal life cost him no more than bachelorhood; on the contrary, now it became even more profitable for him, because, having brought home a wife, he immediately dismissed the hired woman he had paid no less than a copper rouble a month. From then on the copper rouble remained in his pocket, and the house was better kept; his wife's strong hands were never idle: she spun and wove, and also turned out to be good at knitting stockings and growing vegetables. In short, his wife was a simple, capable peasant woman, faithful and submissive, with whom the biblical eccentric could live in a biblical way, and apart from what has been said, there is nothing to say about her.