It was hard for me to come to this confession, but when I had come to
it I was shocked at the error in which I had been living. I stood up
to my ears in the mud, and yet I wanted to drag others out of this
mud.

What is it that I wish in reality? I wish to do good to others. I
wish to do it so that other people may not be cold and hungry, so
that others may live as it is natural for people to live.

[I wish this, and I see that in consequence of the violence,
extortions, and various tricks in which I take part, people who toil
are deprived of necessaries, and people who do not toil, in whose
ranks I also belong, enjoy in superabundance the toil of other
people.

I see that this enjoyment of the labors of others is so arranged,
that the more rascally and complicated the trickery which is employed
by the man himself, or which has been employed by the person from
whom he obtained his inheritance, the more does he enjoy of the
labors of others, and the less does he contribute of his own labor.

First come the Shtiglitzy, Dervizy, Morozovy, the Demidoffs, the
Yusapoffs; then great bankers, merchants, officials, landed
proprietors, among whom I also belong; then the poor--very small
traders, dramshop-keepers, usurers, district judges, overseers,
teachers, sacristans, clerks; then house-porters, lackeys, coachmen,
watch-carriers, cab-drivers, peddlers; and last of all, the laboring
classes--factory-hands and peasants, whose numbers bear the relation
to the first named of ten to one. I see that the life of nine-tenths