Thoughts Evoked By The Census Of Moscow | Page 4

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This etext was produced by David Price, email [email protected],
from the 1887 Thomas Y. Crowell edition.

THE MOSCOW CENSUS--FROM "WHAT TO DO?" by Count Lyof
N. Tolstoi

Translated from the Russian by Isabel F. Hapgood

THOUGHTS EVOKED BY THE CENSUS OF MOSCOW.

[1884-1885.]

And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then?
He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him
impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do
likewise--LUKE iii. 10. 11.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust
doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy
whole body shall be full of light.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If
therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that
darkness!
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love
the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye
cannot serve God and mammon.
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall
eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.
Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?--MATT. vi.
19-25.
Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall
we drink? Or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all
these things shall be added unto you.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof.--MATT. vi. 31-34.
For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich
man to enter into the kingdom of God.--MATT. xix. 24; MARK x. 25;
LUKE xviii. 25.

CHAPTER I

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I had lived all my life out of town. When, in 1881, I went to live in
Moscow, the poverty of the town greatly surprised me. I am familiar
with poverty in the country; but city poverty was new and
incomprehensible to me. In Moscow it was impossible to pass along the
street without encountering beggars, and especially beggars who are
unlike those in the country. These beggars do not go about with their
pouches in the name of Christ, as country beggars are accustomed to do,
but these beggars are without the pouch and the name of Christ. The
Moscow beggars carry no pouches, and do not ask for alms. Generally,
when they meet or pass you, they merely try to catch your eye; and,
according to your look, they beg or refrain from it. I know one such
beggar who belongs to the gentry. The old man walks slowly along,
bending forward every time he sets his foot down. When he meets you,
he rests on one foot and makes you a kind of salute. If you stop, he
pulls off his hat with its cockade, and bows and begs: if you do not halt,
he pretends that that is merely his way of walking, and he passes on,
bending forward in like manner on the other foot. He is a real Moscow
beggar, a cultivated man. At first I did not know why the Moscow
beggars do not ask alms directly; afterwards I came to understand why
they do not beg, but still I did not understand their position.
Once, as I was passing through Afanasievskaya Lane, I saw a
policeman putting a ragged peasant, all swollen with dropsy, into a cab.
I inquired: "What is that for?"
The policeman answered: "For asking alms."
"Is that forbidden?"
"Of course it is forbidden," replied the policeman.
The sufferer from dropsy was driven off. I took another cab, and
followed him. I wanted to know whether it was true that begging alms
was prohibited and how it was prohibited. I could in no wise
understand how one man could be forbidden to ask alms of any other
man; and besides, I did not believe that it was prohibited, when
Moscow is full of beggars. I went to the station-house whither the
beggar had been taken. At a table in the station-house sat a man with a