oor people there are even some
ingenuous persons who say in all seriousness, that the poor are very
grateful to us for supporting them by this luxury.] {96}

But poor people are not devoid of human understanding simply because they
are poor, and they judge precisely as we do. As the first thought that
occurs to us on hearing that such and such a man has gambled away or
squandered ten or twenty thousand rubles, is: "What a foolish and
worthless fellow he is to uselessly squander so much money! and what a
good use I could have made of that money in a building which I have long
been in need of, for the improvement of my estate, and so forth!"--just
so do the poor judge when they behold the wealth which they need, not for
caprices, but for the satisfaction of their actual necessities, of which
they are frequently deprived, flung madly away before their eyes. We
make a very great mistake when we think that the poor can judge thus,
reason thus, and look on indifferently at the luxury which surrounds
them.

They never have acknowledged, and they never will acknowledge, that it
can be just for some people to live always in idleness, and for other
people to fast and toil incessantly; but at first they are amazed and
insulted by this; then they scrutinize it more attentively, and, seeing
that these arrangements are recognized as legitimate, they endeavor to
free themselves from toil, and to take part in the idleness. Some
succeed in this, and they become just such carousers themselves; others
gradually prepare themselves for this state; others still fail, and do
not attain their goal, and, having lost the habit of work, they fill up
the disorderly houses and the night-lodging houses.

Two years ago, we took from the country a peasant boy to wait on table.
For some reason, he did not get on well with the footman, and he was sent
away: he entered the service of a merchant, won the favor of his master,
and now he goes about with a vest and a watch-chain, and dandified boots.
In his place, we took another peasant, a married man: he became a
drunkard, and lost money. We took a third: he took to drunk, and, having
drank up every thing he had, he suffered for a long while from poverty in
the night-lodging house. An old man, the cook, took to drink and fell
sick. Last year a footman who had formerly been a hard drinker, but who
had refrained from liquor for five years in the country, while living in
Moscow without his wife who en