They went to be teachers or midwives or medical helps in the villages. In order the better to identify themselves with the common folks, some learned the humblest occupations. The trades of carpenter or shoemaker were most usually chosen, as being the easiest to master. Others toiled for fifteen hours a day in the factories, that they might have an opportunity of saying a word in season to their fellow-workers. Ladies and gentlemen, connected with the aristocracy and nurtured in all the refinement of civilisation, patiently endured the nameless trials of living with the Russian peasant. They endeavoured to adopt the rough hands and swarthy weather-beaten complexion, as well as the dress of the peasant, that they might not excite his distrust, for the gulf between the lower classes and the gentlemen in Russia is wide and fixed. The peasants had experience of the gentleman only as the representative of the Government coming with the knout and the police to extort taxes and recruits. No wonder that the sight of a shirt underneath the sheepskin of the socialist missionary was enough to arouse the unconquerable suspicion of the poor people of the country. The success of the missionaries was limited. With all his strong suspicion and his narrow range of ideas, the peasant could not easily understand the meaning and purpose of those strange men teaching strange things. The traditions of the past, as they came down to him dim and confused, contained many a bitter memory of disappointed hopes. He was apathetic as well as suspicious. Moreover, the teacher often delivered his message in half-digested formulas which had a meaning only as connected with the economic development of Western Europe, and which did not rightly attach themselves to anything within the experience of the Russian Peasantry. Above all, the propaganda enjoyed only a very brief period of activity. The teachers went about their work with very little circumspection, in the careless free-and-easy way which seems so natural to the Russian temperament. Consequently, the Government had no difficulty in discovering and following up the traces of the propagandists. Before the year 1876 had ended, nearly all of them were in prison. More than 2000 were arrested during the period 1873-76! Many were detained in prison for years, till the investigations of the police resulted in 50 being brought to trial at Moscow and 193 at St. Petersburg at the end of 1877. Most were acquitted by the courts, yet the Government sent them into exile by administrative process.