refore standing much higher and having a much firmer
foothold in life than myself; on the other hand, I saw unfortunate people
whom I could not aid because they were exactly like myself. The majority
of the unfortunates whom I saw were unhappy only because they had lost
the capacity, desire, and habit of earning their own bread; that is to
say, their unhappiness consisted in the fact that they were precisely
such persons as myself.

I found no unfortunates who were sick, hungry, or cold, to whom I could
render immediate assistance, with the solitary exception of hungry
Agafya. And I became convinced, that, on account of my remoteness from
the lives of those people whom I desired to help, it would be almost
impossible to find any such unfortunates, because all actual wants had
already been supplied by the very people among whom these unfortunates
live; and, most of all, I was convinced that money cannot effect any
change in the life led by these unhappy people.

I was convinced of all this, but out of false shame at abandoning what I
had once undertaken, because of my self-delusion as a benefactor, I went
on with this matter for a tolerably long time,--and would have gone on
with it until it came to nothing of itself,--so that it was with the
greatest difficulty that, with the help of Ivan Fedotitch, I got rid,
after a fashion, as well as I could, in the tavern of the Rzhanoff house,
of the thirty-seven rubles which I did not regard as belonging to me.

Of course I might have gone on with this business, and have made out of
it a semblance of benevolence; by urging the people who had promised me
money, I might have collected more, I might have distributed this money,
and consoled myself with my charity; but I perceived, on the one hand,
that we rich people neither wish nor are able to share a portion of our a
superfluity with the poor (we have so many wants of our own), and that
money should not be given to any one, if the object really be to do good
and not to give money itself at haphazard, as I had done in the Rzhanoff
tavern. And I gave up the whole thing, and went off to the country with
despair in my heart.

In the country I tried to write an essay about all this that I had
experienced, and to tell why my undertaking had not succeeded. I wanted
to justify myself against the reproaches which had been made to me on the
score of my article on the census; I wanted to convict society of its in
difference, and to s