Three Days in the Village

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Tolstoy Leo. Three Days in the Village

THREE DAYS IN THE VILLAGE

FIRST DAY. TRAMPS

SECOND DAY. THE LIVING AND THE DYING

THIRD DAY. TAXES

CONCLUSION. A DREAM

SINGING IN THE VILLAGE

TRAVELLER AND PEASANT

A TALK WITH A WAYFARER

FROM THE DIARY

Отрывок из книги

Something entirely new, unseen and unheard-of formerly, has lately shown itself in our country districts. To our village, consisting of eighty homesteads, from half a dozen to a dozen cold, hungry, tattered tramps come every day, wanting a night's lodging.

These people, ragged, half-naked, barefoot, often ill, and extremely dirty, come into the village and go to the village policeman. That they should not die in the street of hunger and exposure, he quarters them on the inhabitants of the village, regarding only the peasants as "inhabitants." He does not take them to the squire, who besides his own ten rooms has ten other apartments: office, coachman's room, laundry, servants' and upper-servants' hall and so on; nor does he take them to the priest or deacon or shopkeeper, in whose houses, though not large, there is still some spare room; but he takes them to the peasants, whose whole family, wife, daughters-in-law, unmarried daughters, and big and little children, all live in one room – sixteen, nineteen, or twenty-three feet long. And the master of the hut takes the cold, hungry, stinking, ragged, dirty man, and not merely gives him a night's lodging, but feeds him as well.

.....

I ask him, "Why on foot?"

"It's a long story," he answers, shrugging his shoulders.

.....