Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/111

Rh my thoughts. Since I have taken the right path I will follow it while I live, not deviating to the right nor to the left.

There is a book called The Civil Marriage. I have never read it; but I know that the pomestchik Novossesslky therein complains to his wife of a peasant: "Would you believe," he says, "that this miserable servant has neglected to air my shirt?" (I can scarcely help laughing in writing this) "I have scolded him, and he replies: 'I have always given your late father, the general, a damp shirt, and he never complained.'"

This characteristic confounds me! Idleness has so taken possession of a man that he finds it an insupportable task to put on his own shirts. We must conclude that if he was shown the everlasting fire in which he and his descendants must burn eternally, according to the Christian doctrine, he would consent to be thrown into it, rather than gather one blade of straw or one grain of wheat.

Ah, in what a profound abyss are men plunged by idleness and luxury! Talk to the rich of the divine commandment, and he will bring up eloquently a hundred arguments to prove that he eats his bread in the sweat of his face.

121. I would like to ask (if I knew whom to address) whether the pomestchiks do have their shirts put on them by their servants. It is true, comes the answer from all sides; their