“You talk about inventions—you’re right there; there’s no end to what they’ve invented nowadays! One day, when I was in Petersburg, I was going along the Isàkievskaya Square, and there was a grand sledge driving past, with a beautiful horse; it must have cost thousands, for harness and everything was splendid; and the driver was just like a figure in a picture. And what do you think, mates! they’d got stuck on to that driver, just here like—it’s as true as I live ... just in this place....” “Where?” “Here, I tell you!... It’s the truth. What do you think he’d got stuck on?... A watch!...” “Stuck on to him there?” “A great watch, half as big as my hand.... That’s so the gentleman in the sledge can always see it. I should have felt ashamed, if I’d been the driver.” “I suppose the gentleman was so grand he couldn’t take the trouble to unbutton his coat.” “I s’pose he wanted to know, to a second, how long he was driving; his time must have been precious! I dare say he had a lot of business.” “Well!” interposed the poultry-farmer, contemptuously; “if that’s what you call an invention! There are inventions of quite another sort nowadays, my friend! People are getting too clever to live with their inventions.” The tone in which these words were uttered plainly showed that the poultry-farmer was an ordinary hard-up peasant who found a difficulty in paying taxes. “When I lived, as a merchant’s driver, in Moscow, my master used to pay me two roubles to go from Nikòlsk to Nìzhegorod.... ‘Only make haste,’ he would say; ‘I want to know if the goods have come in.’... But nowadays he can just mumble something into a pipe, and it goes along a wire, and there you are.... You can talk on a wire to people in Nìzhegorod, or Smolensk, or anywhere you like; and as for us poor drivers!”... “That’s what they call a telephone,” remarked the poultry-farmer. “Agafòn, or Falalèï, or anything you like ... all their inventions only make it worse for us poor peasants. Wherever we go, there are always inventions in the way, taking the bread out of our mouths! But it’s all one to the tax-gatherer.” All the gloomy images called up by the tragedy of the morning, and all the fantastic ideas suggested by the lecture on souls, were put out of everybody’s head by this peasant’s comment. His remark had brought back the thoughts of all the group to the realities of life; and thus put an end to this conversation of chance-met strangers, in the right and proper manner—the manner in which, in our days, all kinds of discussions end, no matter how they begin. THE STORY of A KOPECK. [Illustration] BY S. STEPNIAK. PUBLISHED BY THE SECRET PRESS.