liquor at the tavern like a fool; and there's no conversation, no
manners, no formality, nothing but ignorance! He lives in filth,
his wife lives in filth, and his children live in filth. What he
stands up in, he lies down to sleep in; he picks the potatoes out
of the soup with his fingers; he drinks kvass with a cockroach in
it, and doesn't bother to blow it away!"

"It's their poverty, of course," my sister put in.

"Poverty? There is want to be sure, there's different sorts of want,
Madam. If a man is in prison, or let us say blind or crippled, that
really is trouble I wouldn't wish anyone, but if a man's free and
has all his senses, if he has his eyes and his hands and his strength
and God, what more does he want? It's cockering themselves, and
it's ignorance, Madam, it's not poverty. If you, let us suppose,
good gentlefolk, by your education, wish out of kindness to help
him he will drink away your money in his low way; or, what's worse,
he will open a drinkshop, and with your money start robbing the
people. You say poverty, but does the rich peasant live better? He,
too, asking your pardon, lives like a swine: coarse, loud-mouthed,
cudgel-headed, broader than he is long, fat, red-faced mug, I'd
like to swing my fist and send him flying, the scoundrel. There's
Larion, another rich one at Dubetchnya, and I bet he strips the
bark off your trees as much as any poor one; and he is a foul-mouthed
fellow; his children are the same, and when he has had a drop too
much he'll topple with his nose in a puddle and sleep there. They
are all a worthless lot, Madam. If you live in a village with them
it is like hell. It has stuck in my teeth, that village has, and
thank the Lord, the King of Heaven, I've plenty to eat and clothes
to wear, I served out my time in the dragoons, I was village elder