ich he was willing to contribute,
I was obliged to fix it myself, and to ask: "So I may count on you for
three hundred, or two hundred, or one hundred, or twenty-five rubles?"
And not one of them gave me any money. I mention this because, when
people give money for that which they themselves desire, they generally
make haste to give it. For a box to see Sarah Bernhardt, they will
instantly place the money in your hand, to clinch the bargain. Here,
however, out of all those who agreed to contribute, and who expressed
their sympathy, not one of them proposed to give me the money on the
spot, but they merely assented in silence to the sum which I suggested.
In the last house which I visited on that day, in the evening, I
accidentally came upon a large company. The mistress of the house had
busied herself with charity for several years. Numerous carriages stood
at the door, several lackeys in rich liveries were sitting in the ante-
chamber. In the vast drawing-room, around two tables and lamps, sat
ladies and young girls, in costly garments, dressing small dolls; and
there were several young men there also, hovering about the ladies. The
dolls prepared by these ladies were to be drawn in a lottery for the
poor.

The sight of this drawing-room, and of the people assembled in it, struck
me very unpleasantly. Not to mention the fact that the property of the
persons there congregated amounted to many millions, not to mention the
fact that the mere income from the capital here expended on dresses,
laces, bronzes, brooches, carriages, horses, liveries, and lackeys, was a
hundred-fold greater than all that these ladies could earn; not to
mention the outlay, the trip hither of all these ladies and gentlemen;
the gloves, linen, extra time, the candles, the tea, the sugar, and the
cakes had cost the hostess a hundred times more than what they were
engaged in making here. I saw all this, and therefore I could
understand, that precisely here I should find no sympathy with my
mission: but I had come in order to make my proposition, and, difficult
as this was for me, I said what I intended. (I said very nearly the same
thing that is contained in my printed article.)

Out of all the persons there present, one individual offered me money,
saying that she did not feel equal to going among the poor herself on
account of her sensibility, but that she would give money; how much money
she would give, and when, she did not say. Anoth