ink? Or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all
these things shall be added unto you.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof.--MATT. vi. 31-34.

For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a
rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.--MATT. xix. 24; MARK x. 25;
LUKE xviii. 25.

CHAPTER I.

I had lived all my life out of town. When, in 1881, I went to live in
Moscow, the poverty of the town greatly surprised me. I am familiar with
poverty in the country; but city poverty was new and incomprehensible to
me. In Moscow it was impossible to pass along the street without
encountering beggars, and especially beggars who are unlike those in the
country. These beggars do not go about with their pouches in the name of
Christ, as country beggars are accustomed to do, but these beggars are
without the pouch and the name of Christ. The Moscow beggars carry no
pouches, and do not ask for alms. Generally, when they meet or pass you,
they merely try to catch your eye; and, according to your look, they beg
or refrain from it. I know one such beggar who belongs to the gentry.
The old man walks slowly along, bending forward every time he sets his
foot down. When he meets you, he rests on one foot and makes you a kind
of salute. If you stop, he pulls off his hat with its cockade, and bows
and begs: if you do not halt, he pretends that that is merely his way of
walking, and he passes on, bending forward in like manner on the other
foot. He is a real Moscow beggar, a cultivated man. At first I did not
know why the Moscow beggars do not ask alms directly; afterwards I came
to understand why they do not beg, but still I did not understand their
position.

Once, as I was passing through Afanasievskaya Lane, I saw a policeman
putting a ragged peasant, all swollen with dropsy, into a cab. I
inquired: "What is that for?"

The policeman answered: "For asking alms."

"Is that forbidden?"

"Of course it is forbidden," replied the policeman.

The sufferer from dropsy was driven off. I took another cab, and
followed him. I wanted to know whether it was true that begging alms