“Alone, with my own strength, I shall evidently never come out anywhere. Like a fool I shall keep on tramping about among people, mocked and offended by all. If they would only jostle me aside; if they would only hate me, then--then--I would go out into the wide world! Whether I liked or not, I would have to go!” From one of the landing wharves the merry “dubinushka” [“Dubinushka,” or the “Oaken Cudgel,” is a song popular with the Russian workmen.] had already been smiting the air for a long time. The carriers were doing a certain work, which required brisk movements, and were adapting the song and the refrain to them. “In the tavern sit great merchants Drinking liquors strong,” narrated the leader, in a bold recitative. The company joined in unison: “Oh, dubinushka, heave-ho!” And then the bassos smote the air with deep sounds: “It goes, it goes.” And the tenors repeated: “It goes, it goes.” Foma listened to the song and directed his footsteps toward it, on the wharf. There he noticed that the carriers, formed in two rows, were rolling out of the steamer’s hold huge barrels of salted fish. Dirty, clad in red blouses, unfastened at the collar, with mittens on their hands, with arms bare to the elbow, they stood over the hold, and, merrily jesting, with faces animated by toil, they pulled the ropes, all together, keeping time to their song. And from the hold rang out the high, laughing voice of the invisible leader: “But for our peasant throats There is not enough vodka.” And the company, like one huge pair of lungs, heaved forth loudly and in unison: “Oh, dubinushka, heave-ho!” Foma felt pleased and envious as he looked at this work, which was as harmonious as music. The slovenly faces of the carriers beamed with smiles, the work was easy, it went on smoothly, and the leader of the chorus was in his best vein. Foma thought that it would be fine to work thus in unison, with good comrades, to the tune of a cheerful song, to get tired from work to drink a glass of vodka and eat fat cabbage soup, prepared by the stout, sprightly matron of the company. “Quicker, boys, quicker!” rang out beside him someone’s unpleasant, hoarse voice. Foma turned around. A stout man, with an enormous paunch, tapped on the boards of the landing bridge with his cane, as he looked at the carriers with his small eyes and said: “Bawl less and work faster.” His face and neck were covered with perspiration; he wiped it off every now and then with his left hand and breathed heavily, as though he were going uphill. Foma cast at the man a hostile look and thought: “Others are working and he is sweating. And I am still worse than he. I’m like a crow on the fence, good for nothing.”