What to Do? Thoughts Evoked By the Census of MoscowTolstoy, Leo, graf
Philosophy
What to Do? Thoughts Evoked By the Census of Moscow
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Moscow (Russia) -- Social conditions; Social problems
Thus I walked along, and scrutinized these factory-hands, as long as they
roamed the streets, which was until eleven o’clock. Then their movements
began to calm down. Some drunken men remained here and there, and here
and there I encountered men who were being taken to the station-house.
And then carriages began to make their appearance on all sides, directing
their course toward one point.
On the box sits a coachman, sometimes in a sheepskin coat; and a footman,
a dandy, with a cockade. Well-fed horses in saddle-cloths fly through
the frost at the rate of twenty versts an hour; in the carriages sit
ladies muffled in round cloaks, and carefully tending their flowers and
head-dresses. Every thing from the horse-trappings, the carriages, the
gutta-percha wheels, the cloth of the coachman’s coat, to the stockings,
shoes, flowers, velvet, gloves, and perfumes,—every thing is made by
those people, some of whom often roll drunk into their dens or
sleeping-rooms, and some stay with disreputable women in the
night-lodging houses, while still others are put in jail. Thus past them
in all their work, and over them all, ride the frequenters of balls; and
it never enters their heads, that there is any connection between these
balls to which they make ready to go, and these drunkards at whom their
coachman shouts so roughly.
These people enjoy themselves at the ball with the utmost composure of
spirit, and assurance that they are doing nothing wrong, but something
very good. Enjoy themselves! Enjoy themselves from eleven o’clock until
six in the morning, in the very dead of night, at the very hour when
people are tossing and turning with empty stomachs in the night-lodging
houses, and while some are dying, as did the laundress.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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