Last March I was returning home late in the evening. On turning into a bye-lane I perceived on the snow in a distant field some black shadows. I should not have noticed this but for the policeman who stood at the end of the lane and cried in the direction of the shadows, “Vasili, why don't you come along?” “She won't move,” answered a voice; and thereupon the shadows came towards the policeman. I stopped and asked him,— “What is the matter?” He said, “We have got some girls from Rzhanoff's house, and are taking them to the police-station; and one of them lags behind, and won't come along.” A night-watchman in sheepskin coat appeared now driving on a girl who slouched along while he prodded her from behind. I, the watchman and the policeman, were wearing winter coats: she alone had none, having only her gown on. In the dark I could distinguish only a brown dress and a kerchief round her head and n...
Transcribed from the 1887 Tomas Y. Crowell edition by David Price WHAT TO DO? THOUGHTS EVOKED BY THE CENSUS OF MOSCOW by COUNT LYOF N. TOLSTOÏ translated from the russian By ISABEL F. HAPGOOD NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 13 Astor Place 1887 Copyright, 1887, By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. electrotyped and printed BY RAND AVERY COMPANY, boston. TRANSLATOR’S NOTE. Books which are prohibited by the Russian Censor are not always inaccessible. An enterprising publishing-house in Geneva makes a specialty of supplying the natural craving of man for forbidden fruit, under which heading some of Count L. N. Tolstoy’s essays belong. These essays circulate in Russia in manuscript; and it is from one of these manuscripts, which fell into the hands of the Geneva firm, that the first half of the present translation has been made. It i...