before mowing-time a small, peculiar-looking cart makes its appearance
in the villages. In this cart sits a man in a long coat, who sells
scythes. He charges one rouble twenty-five copecks--a rouble and a half
in notes--for ready money; four roubles if he gives credit. All the
peasants, of course, take the scythes from him on credit. In two or
three weeks he reappears and asks for the money. As the peasant has
only just cut his oats, he is able to pay him; he goes with the
merchant to the tavern, and there the debt is settled. Some landowners
conceived the idea of buying the scythes themselves for ready money and
letting the peasants have them on credit for the same price; but the
peasants seemed dissatisfied, even dejected; they had deprived them of
the pleasure of tapping the scythe and listening to the ring of the
metal, turning it over and over in their hands, and telling the
scoundrelly city-trader twenty times over, 'Eh, my friend, you won't
take me in with your scythe!' The same tricks are played over the sale
of sickles, only with this difference, that the women have a hand in
the business then, and they sometimes drive the trader himself to the
necessity--for their good, of course--of beating them. But the women
suffer most ill-treatment through the following circumstances.
Contractors for the supply of stuff for paper factories employ for the
purchase of rags a special class of men, who in some districts are
called eagles. Such an 'eagle' receives two hundred roubles in bank-
notes from the merchant, and starts off in search of his prey. But,
unlike the noble bird from whom he has derived his name, he does not
swoop down openly and boldly upon it; quite the contrary; the 'eagle'
has recourse to deceit and cunning. He leaves his cart somewhere in a
thicket near the village, and goes himself to the back-yards and back-
doors, like someone casually passing, or simply a tramp. The women
scent out his proximity and steal out to meet him. The bargain is
hurriedly concluded. For a few copper half-pence a woman gives the