press said nothing the position would be still more awful, you'll admit
that.

Your letter and your scheme for buying the cattle from the peasants has
stirred me up. I am ready with all my heart and all my strength to follow
your lead and do whatever you think best. I have thought it over for a long
time, and this is my opinion: it is no use to reckon upon the rich. It is
too late. Every wealthy man has by now forked out as many thousands as he
is destined to. Our one resource now is the middle-class man who subscribes
by the rouble and the half-rouble. Those who in September were talking
about private initiative will by now have found themselves a niche in
various boards and committees and are already at work. So only the
middle-class man is left. Let us open a subscription list. You shall write
a letter to the editors, and I will get it printed in _Russkiya Vyedomosti_
and _Novoye Vremya_. To combine the two elements above mentioned, we might
both sign the letter. If that is inconvenient to you from an official point
of view, one might write in the third person as a communication that in the
fifth section of the Nizhni Novgorod district this and that had been
organized, that things were, thank God! going successfully and that
subscriptions could be sent to the Zemsky Natchalnik, E. P. Yegorov, or to
A. P. Chekhov, or to the editor of such and such papers. We need only to
write at some length. Write in full detail, I will add something, and the
thing will be done. We must ask for subscriptions and not for loans. No one
will come forward with a loan; it is uncomfortable. It is hard to give, but
it is harder still to take back.

I have only one rich acquaintance in Moscow, V. A. Morozov, a lady
well-known for her philanthropy. I went to see her yesterday with your
letter. I talked with her and dined with her. She is absorbed now in the
committee of education, which is organizing relief centres for the