the amelioration of the situation of those unfortunate beings who
have called forth my compassion. The whole point lies here,--that I
am a very kind, amiable man, and that I wish to do good to my
neighbors." And I began to think out a plan of beneficent activity,
in which I might exhibit my benevolence. I must confess, however,
that while devising this plan of beneficent activity, I felt all the
time, in the depths of my soul, that that was not the thing; but, as
often happens, activity of judgment and imagination drowned that
voice of conscience within me. At that juncture, the census came up.
This struck me as a means for instituting that benevolence in which I
proposed to exhibit my charitable disposition. I knew of many
charitable institutions and societies which were in existence in
Moscow, but all their activity seemed to me both wrongly directed and
insignificant in comparison with what I intended to do. And I
devised the following scheme: to arouse the sympathy of the wealthy
for the poverty of the city, to collect money, to get people together
who were desirous of assisting in this matter, and to visit all the
refuges of poverty in company with the census, and, in addition to
the work of the census, to enter into communion with the unfortunate,
to learn the particulars of their necessities, and to assist them
with money, with work, by sending them away from Moscow, by placing
their children in school, and the old people in hospitals and
asylums. And not only that, I thought, but these people who
undertake this can be formed into a permanent society, which, by
dividing the quarters of Moscow among its members, will be able to
see to it that this poverty and beggary shall not be bred; they will
incessantly annihilate it at its very inception; then they will
fulfil their duty, not so much by healing as by a course of hygiene
for the wretchedness of the city. I fancied that there would be no
more simply needy, not to mention abjectly poor persons, in the town,