Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/112

108 clothes are put on them like dead men's shrouds! Then what do they do with their own hands all the while?

This is a feature of slothfulness no one could have imagined, if it had not been true.

122. How these peasant-slaves suffer! The very recollection of their sufferings grieves me. I shudder when I think of them. It would have been better for them never to have been born. Had I a thousand tongues, I could not tell all the fatal calamities which befall them, or the torments these martyrs endure.

Human lips could not express their sufferings. But I will tell you one outrage we undergo. It may be that you who listen are yourselves pomestchiks. I will not the less tell the truth, for I would not be accused of falsehood. And I have myself been a laborer with a pomestchik on the Don.

123. Three days in the week, the peasant labors for himself; the other three days he and all his family labor for the pomestchik. His wife, his children scarcely twelve years old, and the old men of sixty, work in their turn, and like beasts of burden. The implements of labor, the plough, the cart, the harrows, the scythes, the axes, etc., all must be bought by the peasant.

If he has involuntarily caused some waste in laboring for the pomestchik, he must repair it at his own expense. He must, besides, thrash the corn in a field far from all habitations, and there, notwithstanding the cold, he must work