I began to examine the matter from a third and wholly personal point
of view. Among the phenomena which particularly impressed me, during
the period of my charitable activity, there was yet another, and a
very strange one, for which I could for a long time find no
explanation. It was this: every time that I chanced, either on the
street on in the house, to give some small coin to a poor man,
without saying any thing to him, I saw, or thought that I saw,
contentment and gratitude on the countenance of the poor man, and I
myself experienced in this form of benevolence an agreeable
sensation. I saw that I had done what the man wished and expected
from me. But if I stopped the poor man, and sympathetically
questioned him about his former and his present life, I felt that it
was no longer possible to give three or twenty kopeks, and I began to
fumble in my purse for money, in doubt as to how much I ought to
give, and I always gave more; and I always noticed that the poor man
left me dissatisfied. But if I entered into still closer intercourse
with the poor man, then my doubts as to how much to give increased
also; and, no matter how much I gave, the poor man grew ever more
sullen and discontented. As a general rule, it always turned out
thus, that if I gave, after conversation with a poor man, three
rubles or even more, I almost always beheld gloom, displeasure, and
even ill-will, on the countenance of the poor man; and I have even
known it to happen, that, having received ten rubles, he went off
without so much as saying "Thank you," exactly as though I had
insulted him.

And thereupon I felt awkward and ashamed, and almost guilty. But if
I followed up a poor man for weeks and months and years, and assisted