Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/577

Rh one is always ashamed of going to look at suffering which one knows is about to take place, but cannot avert; and so I kept putting off my visit.

But a little while ago I met on the road a butcher returning to Tula after a visit to his home. He was not as yet an experienced butcher, and his duty was to stab with a knife. I asked him whether he did not feel sorry to kill animals. And he gave me the usual answer: "Why should I feel sorry? It is necessary."

But when I told him that eating meat is not necessary, but is only a luxury, he agreed, and then he admitted that he was sorry.

"But what can I do? I must earn my bread," he said. "At first I was afraid to kill. My father, he never even killed a chicken in all his life."

The majority of Russians cannot kill, they feel pity, and express it by the words "to be afraid." This man had also been afraid, but he was so no longer. He told me that most of the work was done on Fridays, when it continues until the evening.

Not long ago I also talked with a retired soldier, a butcher, and he too was astonished at my assertion that it was a pity to kill, and said the usual things about its being ordained; but afterward he agreed with me: "Especially when they are quiet, tame cattle. They come, poor things, and trust you. It is very pitiful."

This is dreadful. Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that a man suppresses within himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity, that of sympathy and pity toward living creatures like himself, and by violating himself becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to kill animals!

Once, when walking near Moscow, I was offered a lift by some carmen who were going from Serpukhovo to a neighboring forest to fetch wood. It was the Thursday before Easter. I was seated in the first cart, with the izvoshchik, a strong, red, coarse muzhik, who evidently drank. On entering one village we saw a well-fed, naked, pink pig being dragged out of the first yard to be slaughtered. It was squealing in a desperate