nikolai writes --
> in the good old days people had the common sense to be afraid of the Gentry.
You may notice a love / loathe ambivalence
among the peasants because, on the one hand,
don't they find it agreeable to have such
pretty color'd paper portraits (of Gentry)
crossing their palms after rend'ring service,
.. some mundane service such as, for example,
a routine flaying?
-- While on the other hand, it pays so dearly little
to have -been- flay'd oneself that, well ..
perhaps the experience were quite disagreeable,
I should think.
Squeaking squickly for myself, I neither flay nor pay.
Others happily compete to do it for me.
Isn't it -they- for whom one ought to have such regard,
these eager servants,
and not I?