But the Englishmen say to him; "Stay with us, we will transmit to you great instruction, and you will turn out a wonderful master-expert." But to that the left-handed man did not agree: "I have parents at home," says he. The Englishmen offered to send his parents money, but the left-handed man would not accept it. "We," says he, "are devoted to our country, and my daddy is already an old man, and my mother is an old woman, and they are used to going to church in their own parish, and besides, I should be very lonely all by myself, for I am still in the vocation of a bachelor." "You'll get used to it," say they,--"accept our law[30] and we will marry you off." "That," replies the left-handed man, "can never be." "Why so?" "Because," he replies, "our Russian faith is the most correct, and as the ancestors have believed, so, also, should the descendants believe." "You do not know our faith," say the Englishmen; "we hold to the same Christian law and the same Gospels." "The Gospels," replies the left-handed man, "are, indeed, the same among all, but our books are thicker than yours, and our faith is more complete, also." "How do you make that out?" "Because," he replies, "we possess all the visible proofs." "What proofs?" "These," says he: "that we have God-sent holy images, and grave-oozing heads,[31] and relics, but you have nothing, and even no extra holidays, nothing beyond Sunday; and for the second reason, even if I were married to an Englishwoman, it would confuse me to live with her." "Why so?" they ask. "Do not scorn her--our women also dress very neatly and are good housewives." But the left-handed man says: "I don't know them." The Englishmen reply: "That's not a weighty matter--you can learn to know them: we will arrange a grendezvous for you." The left-handed man was abashed. "Why," says he, "worry the girls vainly?" and he refused. "A grendezvous," says he, "is a matter for the gentry, and not suitable for such as me, and if folks were to hear of that at home, in Tula, they would ridicule me greatly." The Englishmen became curious: "But if you don't have grendezvous," say they, "how do you manage in such cases to make a pleasing choice?" The left-handed man explained to them our position. "With us," says he, "when a man wishes to display a more particular intention with regard to a girl, he sends the confabulation-woman, and when she makes the proposal, then we go together, very politely, to the house, and we look the girl over, not in secrecy, but in the presence of all her relatives." They understood, but answered that they had no confabulation-women, and such a custom was not in practice, but the left-handed man said: "That's all the more agreeable, because if you are going to occupy yourself with such a matter, it must be with a definite intention, and as I do not feel that towards a foreign nation, then why torment the girls?"