Having created the filth, they wallowed in it, like hogs, and grunted with enjoyment when they soiled what was beautiful, strange, unintelligible, and therefore comical to them. The whole Gostinui Dvor, the whole of its population of merchants and shopmen, lived a strange life, full of stupid, puerile, and always malicious diversions. If a passing peasant asked which was the nearest way to any place in the town, they always gave him the wrong direction. This had become such a habit with them that the deceit no longer gave them pleasure. They would catch two rats, tie their tails together, and let them go in the road. They loved to see how they pulled in different directions, or bit each other, and sometimes they poured paraffin-oil over the rats, and set fire to them. They would tie an old iron pail on the tail of a dog, who, in wild terror, would tear about, yelping and growling, while they all looked on, and laughed. There were many similar forms of recreation, "and it seemed to me that all kinds of people, especially country people, existed simply for the amusement of the Gostinui Dvor. In their relations to other people, there was a constant desire to make fun of them, to give them pain, and to make them uncomfortable. It was strange that the books I had read were silent on the subject of this unceasing, deep-seated tendency of people to jeer at one another. One of the amusements of the Gostinui Dvor seemed to me peculiarly offensive and disgusting. Underneath our shop there was a dealer in woolen and felt footwear, whose salesman amazed the whole of Nijni by his gluttony. His master used to boast of this peculiarity of his employee, as one boasts of the fierceness of a dog, or the strength of a horse. He often used to get the neighboring shopkeepers to bet. "Who will go as high as ten rubles? I will bet that Mishka devours, ten pounds of ham in two hours!" But they all knew that Mishka was well able to do that, and they said: "We won't take your bet, but buy the ham and let him eat it, and we will look on." "Only let it be all meat and no bones!" They would dispute a little and lazily, and then out of the dark storehouse crept a lean, beardless fellow with high cheek-bones, in a long cloth coat girdled with a red belt all stuck round with tufts of wool. Respectfully removing his cap from his small head, he gazed in silence, with a dull expression in his deep-set eyes, at the round face of his master which was suffused with purple blood. The latter was saying in his thick harsh voice: "Can you eat a gammon of ham?" "How long shall I have for it?" asked Mishka practically, in his thin voice. "Two hours." "That will be difficult." "Where is the difficulty?" "Well, let me have a drop of beer with it." "All right," said his master, and he would boast: "You need not think that he has an empty stomach. No! In the morning he had two pounds of bread, and dinner at noon, as you know."