rom the tables of the rich; and
partly, also, because, when he beholds the care-free, luxurious life,
approved and protected by everybody, he himself becomes desirous of
regulating his life in such a way as to work as little as possible, and
to make as much use as possible of the labors of others.

And so he betakes himself to the city, and finds employment about the
wealthy, endeavoring, by every means in his power, to entice from them
that which he is in need of, and conforming to all those conditions which
the wealthy impose upon him, he assists in the gratification of all their
whims; he serves the rich man in the bath and in the inn, and as
cab-driver and prostitute, and he makes for him equipages, toys, and
fashions; and he gradually learns from the rich man to live in the same
manner as the latter, not by labor, but by divers tricks, getting away
from others the wealth which they have heaped together; and he becomes
corrupt, and goes to destruction. And this colony, demoralized by city
wealth, constitutes that city pauperism which I desired to aid and could
not.

All that is necessary, in fact, is for us to reflect on the condition of
these inhabitants of the country, who have removed to the city in order
to earn their bread or their taxes,--when they behold, everywhere around
them, thousands squandered madly, and hundreds won by the easiest
possible means; when they themselves are forced by heavy toil to earn
kopeks,--and we shall be amazed that all these people should remain
working people, and that they do not all of them take to an easier method
of getting gain,--by trading, peddling, acting as middlemen, begging,
vice, rascality, and even robbery. Why, we, the participants in that
never-ceasing orgy which goes on in town, can become so accustomed to our
life, that it seems to us perfectly natural to dwell alone in five huge
apartments, heated by a quantity of beech logs sufficient to cook the
food for and to warm twenty families; to drive half a verst with two
trotters and two men-servants; to cover the polished wood floor with
rugs; and to spend, I will not say, on a ball, five or ten thousand
rubles, and twenty-five thousand on a Christmas-tree. But a man who is
in need of ten rubles to buy bread for his family, or whose last sheep
has been seized for a tax-debt of seven rubles, and who cannot raise
those rubles by hard labor, cannot grow accustomed to this. We think
that all this appears natural to p