ook fed him, and because I gave
him some cast-off clothing to wear. The boy staid a week. During that
week I said a few words to him as I passed on two occasions and in the
course of my strolls, I went to a shoemaker of my acquaintance, and
proposed that he should take the lad as an apprentice. A peasant who was
visiting me, invited him to go to the country, into his family, as a
laborer; the boy refused, and at the end of the week he disappeared. I
went to the Rzhanoff house to inquire after him. He had returned there,
but was not at home when I went thither. For two days already, he had
been going to the Pryesnensky ponds, where he had hired himself out at
thirty kopeks a day in some procession of savages in costume, who led
about elephants. Something was being presented to the public there. I
went a second time, but he was so ungrateful that he evidently avoided
me. Had I then reflected on the life of that boy and on my own, I should
have understood that this boy was spoiled because he had discovered the
possibility of a merry life without labor, and that he had grown unused
to work. And I, with the object of benefiting and reclaiming him, had
taken him to my house, where he saw--what? My children,--both older and
younger than himself, and of the same age,--who not only never did any
work for themselves, but who made work for others by every means in their
power, who soiled and spoiled every thing about them, who ate rich,
dainty, and sweet viands, broke china, and flung to the dogs food which
would have been a tidbit to this lad. If I had rescued him from the
_abyss_, and had taken him to that nice place, then he must acquire those
views which prevailed in the life of that nice place; but by these views,
he understood that in that fine place he must so live that he should not
toil, but eat and drink luxuriously, and lead a joyous life. It is true
that he did not know that my children bore heavy burdens in the
acquisition of the declensions of Latin and Greek grammar, and that he
could not have understood the object of these labors. But it is
impossible not to see that if he had understood this, the influence of my
children's example on him would have been even stronger. He would then
have comprehended that my children were being educated in this manner, so
that, while doing no work now, they might be in a position hereafter,
also profiting by their diplomas, to work as little as possible, and to
enjoy t