Gogol wrote a play called “The Inspector-General,” which tells how a government representative is expected to visit a small provincial town, and all the functionaries are in a state of terror for fear their various stealings will be exposed. It is understood that the inspector-general will come in disguise, and so they mistake a youthful traveler for this functionary, and insist on doing him honor, to his great bewilderment. Finally the postmaster of the town, following his custom of secretly reading the mail, opens a letter from the young man to a friend, telling about his adventures and ridiculing the town functionaries. The postmaster reads this aloud in the hearing of the functionaries, to their great dismay. Somebody read this play to the tsar, and he was so delighted that he ordered it produced. You remember King Louis of France, the “grand monarch,” taking delight in Moliere’s ridicule of his courtiers. The monarch can afford to laugh, or at least thinks he can; it is only the functionaries who realize the destructive power of laughter. Then Gogol wrote a long novel, “Dead Souls.” He introduces us to a young man who might be a graduate of any one of a thousand schools and colleges and universities of “salesmanship” in the United States. So brilliant are this young man’s talents: Whatsoever the conversation might be about, he always knew how to support it. If people talked about horses, he spoke about horses; if they began talking about the best hunting dogs, here also Tchitchikov would make remarks to the point. If the conversation related to some investigation which was being made by the government, he would show that he also knew something about the tricks of the civil service functionaries. When the talk was about billiards, he showed that in billiards he could keep his own; if people talked about virtue, he also spoke about virtue, even with tears in his eyes; and if the conversation turned on making brandy, he knew all about brandy. This expert in the psychology of salesmanship had a truly Yankee idea to make his fortune. At that time the Russian peasants were sold with the land, and the landlord had to pay taxes on all his serfs. A reckoning was made at certain periods, and if any serfs died in between the periods of reckoning, the landlord had to pay taxes just the same. Now, said the salesman to himself, any landlord will be glad to sell me these “dead souls”; and when I have bought a great number of them, I will get hold of a piece of land, and move all these “dead souls” to that land, and some bank will lend me a great sum of money, not knowing they are dead.