Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 09 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/481

Rh labors. It is the custom for wealthy merchants (who, more than the nobility, keep up certain ancient traditions) to bequeath large sums to free soup-kitchens and night lodging-houses. The recipient of the bounty murmurs a prayer for the soul of his benefactor as he eats the generous portion of savory cabbage-soup and hulled boiled buckwheat (kasha), and sour, black rye bread, which is provided. That is one form of relief—only temporary of course; and also, of course, in Russia, as elsewhere, there are people who prefer a wretched, precarious existence to systematic labor.

One of the many more vigorous and extensive efforts to cope with the misery of Moscow, which I might cite, is a free, permanent lodging-house for widows and their children, with the most approved and modern arrangements for cooking and washing enjoyed in common by all the inhabitants. There is even a private church, with its priest, in the house. This princely gift to his town by a Moscow merchant-prince is only one of many noble deeds of men who do their good deeds with absolute modesty. But the problem of misery still remains unsolved, except in tiny oases.

The history of this present translation is interesting. The publication of Count Tolstoy's Manuscript in its entirety was not permitted in Russia. A firm in Switzerland, which makes a business of printing forbidden books and pamphlets, issued the first half, and I made my translation from that Swiss pamphlet. After long and vain endeavors to obtain the second half from the same source, I was briefly informed, without explanations, that the firm had decided not to publish it. I then had recourse to the Russian edition, authorized by the censor, for the second half. In that edition the censor's omissions of words, phrases, and entire paragraphs, were sometimes indicated thus: Sometimes (as I found by comparison) no indication was given. The original publication in English, therefore (1887), consisted of a perfect first half and of a mangled second half, as I explained in a foot-note.

Shortly after my arrival in St. Petersburg, in the