well myself, I must needs reform the lives of others; and so I began
to reform the lives of others. I lived in the city, and I wished to
reform the lives of those who lived in the city; but I soon became
convinced that this I could not by any possibility accomplish, and I
began to meditate on the inherent characteristics of city life and
city poverty.

"What are city life and city poverty? Why, when I am living in the
city, cannot I help the city poor?"

I asked myself. I answered myself that I could not do any thing for
them, in the first place, because there were too many of them here in
one spot; in the second place, because all the poor people here were
entirely different from the country poor. Why were there so many of
them here? and in what did their peculiarity, as opposed to the
country poor, consist? There was one and the same answer to both
questions. There were a great many of them here, because here all
those people who have no means of subsistence in the country collect
around the rich; and their peculiarity lies in this, that they are
not people who have come from the country to support themselves in
the city (if there are any city paupers, those who have been born
here, and whose fathers and grandfathers were born here, then those
fathers and grandfathers came hither for the purpose of earning their
livelihood). What is the meaning of this: TO EARN ONE'S LIVELIHOOD
IN THE CITY? In the words "to earn one's livelihood in the city,"
there is something strange, resembling a jest, when you reflect on
their significance. How is it that people go from the country,--that
is to say, from the places where there are forests, meadows, grain,
and cattle, where all the wealth of the earth lies,--to earn their
livelihood in a place where there are neither trees, nor grass, nor