In the village of Nikólskoe, the people went on a holiday to mass. In the manor yard were left the cow-tender, the elder, and the groom. The cow-tender went to the well for water. The well was in the yard itself. She pulled out the bucket, but could not hold it. The bucket pulled away from her, struck the side of the well, and tore the rope. The cow-tender returned to the hut and said to the elder: "Aleksándr! Climb down into the well,—I have dropped the bucket into it." Aleksándr said: "You have dropped it, so climb down yourself." The cow-tender said that she did not mind fetching it herself, if he would let her down. The elder laughed at her, and said: "Well, let us go! You have an empty stomach now, so I shall be able to hold you up, for after dinner I could not do it." The elder tied a stick to a rope, and the woman sat astride it, took hold of the rope, and began to climb down into the well, w...
When I mentioned this poverty of the town to inhabitants of the town, they always said to me: “Oh, all that you have seen is nothing. You ought to see the Khitroff market-place, and the lodging-houses for the night there. There you would see a regular ‘golden company.’” [21a] One jester told me that this was no longer a company, but a golden regiment: so greatly had their numbers increased. The jester was right, but he would have been still more accurate if he had said that these people now form in Moscow neither a company nor a regiment, but an entire army, almost fifty thousand in number, I think. [The old inhabitants, when they spoke to me about the poverty in town, always referred to it with a certain satisfaction, as though pluming themselves over me, because they knew it. I remember that when I was in London, the old inhabitants there also rather boasted when they spoke of the poverty of London.