case of the dropsical man); some have not been ill, but are people
who have been burnt out of their houses, or old people, or women with
children; some, too, were perfectly healthy and able to work. These
perfectly healthy peasants who were engaged in begging, particularly
interested me. These healthy, peasant beggars, who were fit for
work, also interested me, because, from the date of my arrival in
Moscow, I had been in the habit of going to the Sparrow Hills with
two peasants, and sawing wood there for the sake of exercise. These
two peasants were just as poor as those whom I encountered on the
streets. One was Piotr, a soldier from Kaluga; the other Semyon, a
peasant from Vladimir. They possessed nothing except the wages of
their body and hands. And with these hands they earned, by dint of
very hard labor, from forty to forty-five kopeks a day, out of which
each of them was laying by savings, the Kaluga man for a fur coat,
the Vladimir man in order to get enough to return to his village.
Therefore, on meeting precisely such men in the streets, I took an
especial interest in them.

Why did these men toil, while those others begged?

On encountering a peasant of this stamp, I usually asked him how he
had come to that situation. Once I met a peasant with some gray in
his beard, but healthy. He begs. I ask him who is he, whence comes
he? He says that he came from Kaluga to get work. At first he found
employment chopping up old wood for use in stoves. He and his
comrade finished all the chopping which one householder had; then
they sought other work, but found none; his comrade had parted from
him, and for two weeks he himself had been struggling along; he had
spent all his money, he had no saw, and no axe, and no money to buy
anything. I gave him money for a saw, and told him of a place where