During Easter week a peasant went out to see whether the ground was all thawed out. He went into the garden and touched the soil with a stick. The earth was soft. The peasant went into the woods; here the catkins were already swelling on the willows. The peasant thought: "I will fence my garden with willows; they will grow up and will make a good hedge!" He took his ax, cut down a dozen willows, sharpened them at the end, and stuck them in the ground. All the willows sent up sprouts with leaves, and underground let out just such sprouts for roots; and some of them took hold of the ground and grew, and others did not hold well to the ground with their roots, and died and fell down. In the fall the peasant was glad at the sight of his willows: six of them had taken root. The following spring the sheep killed two willows by gnawing at them, and only two were left. Next spring the sheep nibbled at these also. One of them was completely ruined, a...
When I talked to my town friends about this pauperism which surrounded them, they always replied, “Oh! you have seen nothing yet! You should go to the Khitrof Market, and visit the lodging-houses there, if you want to see the genuine ‘Golden Company.’” One jovial friend of mine added, that the number of these paupers had so increased, that they already formed not a “Golden Company,” but a “Golden Regiment.” My witty friend was right; but he would have been yet nearer the truth had he said that these men formed, in Moscow, not a company, nor a regiment, but a whole army,—an army, I should judge, of about fifty thousand. The regular townspeople, when they spoke to me about the pauperism of the city, always seemed to feel a certain pleasure or pride in being able to give me such precise information. I remember I noticed, when visiting London, that the citizens there seemed also to find a certain sat...
At my request, there had been assigned to me for the census, a portion of the Khamovnitchesky quarter, at the Smolensk market, along the Prototchny cross-street, between Beregovoy Passage and Nikolsky Alley. In this quarter are situated the houses generally called the Rzhanoff Houses, or the Rzhanoff fortress. These houses once belonged to a merchant named Rzhanoff, but now belong to the Zimins. I had long before heard of this place as a haunt of the most terrible poverty and vise, and I had accordingly requested the directors of the census to assign me to this quarter. My desire was granted. On receiving the instructions of the City Council, I went alone, a few days previous to the beginning of the census, to reconnoiter my section. I found the Rzhanoff fortress at once, from the plan with which I had been furnished. I approached from Nikolsky Alley. Nikolsky Alley ends on the left in a gloomy house, without any gates on that si...