w there would certainly be some scandal at the
factory--some one would be beaten or would die of drinking too
much vodka, and she would be fretted by pangs of conscience; and
after the holidays Nazaritch would turn off some twenty of the
workpeople for absence from work, and all of the twenty would hang
about at the front door, without their caps on, and she would be
ashamed to go out to them, and they would be driven away like dogs.
And all her acquaintances would say behind her back, and write to
her in anonymous letters, that she was a millionaire and exploiter
--that she was devouring other men's lives and sucking the blood
of the workers.

Here there lay a heap of letters read through and laid aside already.
They were all begging letters. They were from people who were hungry,
drunken, dragged down by large families, sick, degraded, despised
. . . . Anna Akimovna had already noted on each letter, three roubles
to be paid to one, five to another; these letters would go the same
day to the office, and next the distribution of assistance would
take place, or, as the clerks used to say, the beasts would be fed.

They would distribute also in small sums four hundred and seventy
roubles--the interest on a sum bequeathed by the late Akim
Ivanovitch for the relief of the poor and needy. There would be a
hideous crush. From the gates to the doors of the office there would
stretch a long file of strange people with brutal faces, in rags,
numb with cold, hungry and already drunk, in husky voices calling
down blessings upon Anna Akimovna, their benefactress, and her
parents: those at the back would press upon those in front, and
those in front would abuse them with bad language. The clerk would
get tired of the noise, the swearing, and the sing-song whining and
blessing; would fly out and give some one a box on the ear to the
delight of all. And her own people, the factory hands, who received
nothing at Christmas but their wages, and had already spent every
farthing of it, would stand in the middle of the yard, looking on
and laughing--some enviously, others ironically.

"Merchants, and still more their wives, are fonder of beggars than
they are of their own workpeople," thought Anna Akimovna. "It's
always so."

Her eye fell upon the roll of money. It would be nice to distribute
that hateful, useless money among the workpeople tomorrow, but it
did not do to give the workpeople anything for nothing, or they
would demand i