we shall continue our work of aid. If I have succeeded in any degree
in expressing what I feel, I am sure that the only impossibility will
be getting the directors and enumerators to abandon this, and that
others will present themselves in the places of those who leave; (3)
That we should collect all those inhabitants of Moscow, who feel
themselves fit to work for the needy, into sections, and begin our
activity now, in accordance with the hints of the census-takers and
directors, and afterwards carry it on; (4) That all who, on account
of age, weakness, or other causes, cannot give their personal labor
among the needy, shall intrust the task to their young, strong, and
willing relatives. (Good consists not in the giving of money, it
consists in the loving intercourse of men. This alone is needed.)

Whatever may be the outcome of this, any thing will be better than
the present state of things.

Then let the final act of our enumerators and directors be to
distribute a hundred twenty-kopek pieces to those who have no food;
and this will be not a little, not so much because the hungry will
have food, but because the directors and enumerators will conduct
themselves in a humane manner towards a hundred poor people. How are
we to compute the possible results which will accrue to the balance
of public morality from the fact that, instead of the sentiments of
irritation, anger, and envy which we arouse by reckoning the hungry,
we shall awaken in a hundred instances a sentiment of good, which
will be communicated to a second and a third, and an endless wave
which will thus be set in motion and flow between men? And this is a
great deal. Let those of the two thousand enumerators who have never
comprehended this before, come to understand that, when going about
among the poor, it is impossible to say, "This is very interesting;"