eople.

The mother always returned to Nikolay from her travels delightfully
exhilarated by what she had seen and heard on the road, bold and
satisfied with the work she had accomplished.

"It's good to go everywhere, and to see much," she said to Nikolay in
the evening. "You understand how life is arranged. They brush the
people aside and fling them to the edge. The people, hurt and wounded,
keep moving about, even though they don't want to, and though they keep
thinking: 'What for? Why do they drive us away? Why must we go hungry
when there is so much of everything? And how much intellect there is
everywhere! Nevertheless, we must remain in stupidity and darkness.
And where is He, the merciful God, in whose eyes there are no rich nor
poor, but all are children dear to His heart.' The people are
gradually revolting against this life. They feel that untruth will
stifle them if they don't take thought of themselves."

And in her leisure hours she sat down to the books, and again looked
over the pictures, each time finding something new, ever widening the
panorama of life before her eyes, unfolding the beauties of nature and
the vigorous creative capacity of man. Nikolay often found her poring
over the pictures. He would smile and always tell her something
wonderful. Struck by man's daring, she would ask him incredulously,
"Is it possible?"

Quietly, with unshakable confidence in the truth of his prophecies,
Nikolay peered with his kind eyes through his glasses into the mother's
face, and told her stories of the future.

"There is no measure to the desires of man; and his power is
inexhaustible," he said. "But the world, after all, is still very slow
in acquiring spiritual wealth. Because nowadays everyone desiring to
free himself from dependence is compelled to hoard, not knowledge but
money. However, when the people will have exterminated greed and will
have freed themselves from the bondage of enslaving labor--"

She listened to him with strained attention. Though she but rarely
understood the meaning of his words, yet the calm faith animating them
penetrated her more and more deeply.

"There are extremely few free men in the world--that's its misfortune,"
he said.

This the mother understood. She knew men who had emancipated
themselves from greed and evil; she understood that if there were more
such people, the dark, incomprehensible, and awful face of life would
become more kindly and simple,