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                              THREE DAYS

                                IN THE

                                VILLAGE

                          AND OTHER SKETCHES


                                  BY

                              LEO TOLSTOY


                      These sketches are written
                       in the style of Tolstoy's
                    "Popular Stories and Legends,"
                          and give the reader
                     various glimpses into modern
                        village life in Russia


                          THE FREE AGE PRESS
                        Publisher: C. W. DANIEL
                     3 Amen Corner, London, E. C.




                       THREE DAYS IN THE VILLAGE

                        _And Other Sketches_




                       _No Rights Reserved_




                             THREE DAYS IN
                              THE VILLAGE


                         _And Other Sketches_
              _Written from September 1909 to July 1910_


                                  BY
                              LEO TOLSTOY


                   _Translated by_ L. _and_ A. MAUDE


                                LONDON
                          THE FREE AGE PRESS
                            (C. W. DANIEL)
                         3 AMEN CORNER, E. C.
                                 1910




                               CONTENTS


                                                 PAGE

  THREE DAYS IN THE VILLAGE--

       FIRST DAY--TRAMPS                            7

       SECOND DAY--THE LIVING AND THE DYING        20

       THIRD DAY--TAXES                            33

       CONCLUSION--A DREAM                         41

  SINGING IN THE VILLAGE                           55

  TRAVELLER AND PEASANT                            63

  A TALK WITH A WAYFARER                           75

  FROM THE DIARY                                   79




                       THREE DAYS IN THE VILLAGE


                              _FIRST DAY_

                                TRAMPS

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.

"When you sit down to table yourself," an old peasant householder told
me, "it's impossible not to invite him too, or your own soul accepts
nothing. So one feeds him and gives him a drink of tea."

Those are the nightly visitors. But during the day, not two or three,
but ten or more such visitors call at each hut, and again it is: "Why,
it is impossible...," etc.

And for almost every tramp the housewife cuts a slice of bread, thinner
or thicker according to the man's appearance--though she knows her rye
will not last till next harvest.

"If you were to give to all who come, a loaf [the big peasant loaf of
black bread] would not last a day," some housewives said to me. "So
sometimes one hardens one's heart and refuses!"

And this goes on every day, all over Russia. An enormous
yearly-increasing army of beggars, <DW36>s, administrative exiles,
helpless old men, and above all unemployed workmen, lives--that is to
say, shelters itself from cold and wet--and is actually fed by the
hardest-worked and poorest class, the country peasants.

We have Workhouses,[1] Foundlings' Hospitals, Boards of Public Relief,
and all sorts of philanthropic organisations in our towns; and in all
those institutions, in buildings with electric light, parquet floors,
neat servants, and various well-paid attendants, thousands of helpless
people of all sorts are sheltered. But however many such there may
be, they are but a drop in the ocean of the enormous (unnumbered, but
certainly enormous) population which now tramps destitute over Russia,
and is sheltered and fed apart from any institutions, solely by the
village peasants whose own Christian feelings induce them to bear this
heavy and gigantic tax.

       [1] Not in the English sense, for there is no Poor-Law system
       entitling the destitute to demand maintenance.

Just think what people who are not peasants would say, if--even once
a week--such a shivering, starving, dirty, lousy tramp were placed in
each of their bedrooms! But the peasants not only house them, but feed
them and give them tea, because "one's own soul accepts nothing unless
one has them to table."

In the more remote parts of Sarátof, Tambóf, and other Provinces, the
peasants do not wait for the policeman to bring these tramps, but
always receive them and feed them of their own accord.

And, as is the case with all really good deeds, the peasants do this
without knowing that they are doing a good deed; and yet it is not
merely a good deed "for one's soul," but is of enormous importance
for the whole of Russian society. It is of such importance for Russian
society because, but for this peasant population and the Christian
feeling that lives so strongly in it, it is difficult to imagine
what the fate would be, not only of these hundreds of thousands
of unfortunate, houseless tramps, but of all the well-to-do--and
especially of the wealthy who have their houses in the country.

It is only necessary to see the state of privation and suffering to
which these homeless tramps have come or have been brought, and to
imagine the mental condition they must be in, and to realise that it
is only this help rendered to them by the peasants that restrains
them from committing violence, which would be quite natural in their
position, upon those who possess in superfluity all the things these
unfortunates lack to keep themselves alive.

So that it is not the philanthropic organisations, not the Government
with its police and all its juridical institutions, that protects
us, the well-to-do, from being attacked by those who wander, cold,
hungry, and homeless, after having sunk--or, for the most part, having
been brought--to the lowest depths of poverty and despair; but we are
protected, as well as fed and supported, by that same basic strength of
the Russian nation--the peasantry.

Yes! Were it not that there is among Russia's vast peasant population
a deep religious consciousness of the brotherhood of all men, not
only would these homeless people, having reached the last stages of
despair, have long since destroyed the houses of the rich, in spite
of any police force (there are and must be so few of them in country
districts), but they would even have killed all who stood in their
way. So that we ought not to be horrified or surprised when we hear or
read of people being robbed, or killed that they may be robbed, but we
should understand and remember that if such things happen as seldom as
they do, we owe this to the unselfish help rendered by the peasants to
this unfortunate tramping population.

Every day from ten to fifteen people come to our house to beg. Some
among them are regular beggars, who for some reason have chosen that
means of livelihood, and having clothed and shod themselves as best
they might, and having made sacks to hold what they collect, have
started out to tramp the country. Among them some are blind, and
some have lost a leg or an arm; and sometimes, though rarely, there
are women and children among them. But these are only a small part.
The majority of the beggars that come now are passers-by, without a
beggar's sack, mostly young, and not crippled. They are all in a most
pitiable state, barefoot, half-naked, emaciated, and shivering with
cold. You ask them, "Where are you going?" The answer is always the
same: "To look for work"; or, "Have been looking for work, but found
none, and am making my way home. There's no work; they are shutting
down everywhere." Many of these people are returning from exile.

A few days ago I was barely awake when our servant, Ilyá Vasílyevitch,
told me:

"There are five tramps waiting near the porch."

"Take some money there is on the table, and give it them," said I.

Ilyá Vasílyevitch took it, and, as is the custom, gave each of them
five copecks [five farthings]. About an hour passed. I went out into
the porch. A dreadfully tattered little man with a sickly face, swollen
eyelids, restless eyes, and boots all falling to pieces, began bowing,
and held out a certificate to me.

"Have you received something?"

"Your Excellency, what am I to do with five copecks?... Your
Excellency, put yourself in my place! Please, your Excellency, look
... please see!" and he shows me his clothing. "Where am I to go to,
your Excellency?" (it is "Excellency" after every word, though his face
expresses hatred). "What am I to do? Where am I to go?"

I tell him that I give to all alike. He continues to entreat, and
demands that I should read his certificate. I refuse. He kneels down. I
ask him to leave me.

"Very well! That means, it seems, that I must put an end to myself!
That's all that's left me to do.... Give me something, if only a
trifle!"

I give him twenty copecks, and he goes away, evidently angry.

There are a great many such peculiarly insistent beggars, who feel they
have a right to demand their share from the rich. They are literate
for the most part, and some of them are even well-read persons on whom
the Revolution has had an effect. These men, unlike the ordinary,
old-fashioned beggars, look on the rich, not as on people who wish
to save their souls by distributing alms, but as on highwaymen and
robbers who suck the blood of the working classes. It often happens
that a beggar of this sort does no work himself and carefully avoids
work, and yet considers himself, in the name of the workers, not merely
justified, but bound, to hate the robbers of the people--that is to
say, the rich--and to hate them from the depths of his heart; and if,
instead of demanding from them, he begs, that is only a pretence.

There are a great number of these men, many of them drunkards, of whom
one feels inclined to say, "It's their own fault"; but there are also
a great many tramps of quite a different type: meek, humble, and very
pathetic, and it is terrible to think of their position.

Here is a tall, good-looking man, with nothing on over his short,
tattered jacket. His boots are bad and trodden down. He has a good,
intelligent face. He takes off his cap and begs in the ordinary way. I
give him something, and he thanks me. I ask him where he comes from
and where he is going to.

"From Petersburg, home to our village in Toúla Government."

I ask him, "Why on foot?"

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

I ask him to tell it me. He relates it with evident truthfulness.

"I had a good place in an office in Petersburg, and received thirty
roubles [three guineas] a month. Lived very comfortably. I have read
your books _War and Peace_ and _Anna Karénina_," says he, again smiling
a particularly pleasant smile. "Then my folks at home got the idea
of migrating to Siberia, to the Province of Tomsk." They wrote to
him asking whether he would agree to sell his share of land in the
old place. He agreed. His people left, but the land allotted them in
Siberia turned out worthless. They spent all they had, and came back.
Being now landless, they are living in hired lodgings in their former
village, and work for wages. It happened, just at the same time, that
he lost his place in Petersburg. It was not his doing. The firm he was
with became bankrupt, and dismissed its employees. "And just then, to
tell the truth, I came across a seamstress." He smiled again. "She
quite entangled me.... I used to help my people, and now see what a
smart chap I have become!... Ah well, God is not without mercy; maybe
I'll manage somehow!"

He was evidently an intelligent, strong, active fellow, and only a
series of misfortunes had brought him to his present condition.

Take another: his legs swathed in strips of rag; girdled with a rope;
his clothing quite threadbare and full of small holes, evidently
not torn, but worn-out to the last degree; his face, with its high
cheek-bones, pleasant, intelligent, and sober. I give him the customary
five copecks, and he thanks me and we start a conversation. He has been
an administrative exile in Vyátka. It was bad enough there, but it is
worse here. He is going to Ryazán, where he used to live. I ask him
what he has been. "A newspaper man. I took the papers round."

"For what were you exiled?"

"For selling forbidden literature."

We began talking about the Revolution. I told him my opinion, that the
evil was all in ourselves; and that such an enormous power as that of
the Government cannot be destroyed by force. "Evil outside ourselves
will only be destroyed when we have destroyed it within us," said I.

"That is so, but not for a long time."

"It depends on us."

"I have read your book on Revolution."

"It is not mine, but I agree with it."

"I wished to ask you for some of your books."

"I should be very pleased.... Only I'm afraid they may get you into
trouble. I'll give you the most harmless."

"Oh, I don't care! I am no longer afraid of anything.... Prison is
better for me than this! I am not afraid of prison.... I even long for
it sometimes," he said sadly.

"What a pity it is that so much strength is wasted uselessly!" said I.
"How people like you destroy your own lives!... Well, and what do you
mean to do now?"

"I?" he said, looking intently into my face.

At first, while we talked about past events and general topics, he had
answered me boldly and cheerfully; but as soon as our conversation
referred to himself personally and he noticed my sympathy, he turned
away, hid his eyes with his sleeve, and I noticed that the back of his
head was shaking.

And how many such people there are!

They are pitiable and pathetic, and they, too, stand on the threshold
beyond which a state of despair begins that makes even a kindly man
ready to go all lengths.

"Stable as our civilisation may seem to us," says Henry George,
"disintegrating forces are already developing within it. Not in deserts
and forests, but in city slums and on the highways, the barbarians are
being bred who will do for our civilisation what the Huns and Vandals
did for the civilisation of former ages."

Yes! What Henry George foretold some twenty years ago, is happening
now before our eyes, and in Russia most glaringly--thanks to the
amazing blindness of our Government, which carefully undermines the
foundations on which alone any and every social order stands or can
stand.

We have the Vandals foretold by Henry George quite ready among us in
Russia. And, strange as it may seem to say so, these Vandals, these
doomed men, are specially dreadful here among our deeply religious
population. These Vandals are specially dreadful here, because we have
not the restraining principles of convention, propriety, and public
opinion, that are so strongly developed among the European nations. We
have either real, deep, religious feeling, or--as in Sténka Rázin and
Pougatchéf--a total absence of any restraining principle: and, dreadful
to say, this army of Sténkas and Pougatchéfs is growing greater and
greater, thanks to the Pougatchéf-like conduct of our Government
in these later days, with its horrors of police violence, insane
banishments, imprisonments, exiles, fortresses, and daily executions.

Such actions release the Sténka Rázins from the last remnants of moral
restraint. "If the learned gentlefolk act like that, God Himself
permits us to do so," say and think they.

I often receive letters from that class of men, chiefly exiles. They
know I have written something about not resisting evil by violence, and
for the greater part they retort ungrammatically, though with great
fervour, that what the Government and the rich are doing to the poor,
can and must be answered only in one way: "Revenge, revenge, revenge!"

Yes! The blindness of our Government is amazing. It does not and will
not see that all it does to disarm its enemies merely increases their
number and energy. Yes! These people are terrible, terrible for the
Government and for the rich, and for those who live among the rich.

But besides the feeling of terror these people inspire, there is also
another feeling, much more imperative than that of fear, and one we
cannot help experiencing towards those who, by a series of accidents,
have fallen into this terrible condition of vagrancy. That feeling is
one of shame and sympathy.

And it is not fear, so much as shame and pity, that should oblige us,
who are not in that condition, to respond in one way or other to this
new and terrible phenomenon in Russian life.[2]

       [2] One of the most depressing features of L. N. Tolstoy's
       environment is the large number of unemployed and beggars
       from the adjacent highway. They wait outside the house for
       hours every day for the coming of Leo Nikolayevich. The
       consciousness of his inability to render them substantial aid
       weighs heavily upon him, as does also the fact that, owing
       to insurmountable obstacles, he cannot even feed them, and
       allow them to sleep in the house in which he himself lives.
       These unfortunates surround Leo Nikolayevich at the steps,
       and besiege him with their importunate requests, just at the
       time when he seeks the fresh air and is most in need of mental
       rest and solitude after long-continued and strenuous mental
       labour. In view of this fact, the idea has occurred to some
       of Leo Nikolayevich's friends, of establishing in the village
       of Yásnaya Polyána a lodging- and eating-house for tramps,
       the use of which by the latter would save L. N. unnecessary
       trouble. The establishment of such premises--L. N. has viewed
       the idea very favourably--would at least afford some temporary
       relief to the wandering poor who are in dire need. At the
       same time the peasantry of Yásnaya Polyána would be relieved
       of the too heavy burden of supporting the passing unemployed
       described by Tolstoy in his article. Lastly, it would afford
       Tolstoy, in his declining years, considerable mental relief,
       which it would seem that he has more than deserved by his
       incessant labours on behalf of distressed mankind. Perhaps
       among those who read the present sketches some will be found
       who, prompted by the impulses animating the author, may desire
       to render some material help towards the practical realisation
       of the projected undertaking.

       Contributions may be sent to the following address: V.
       Tchertkoff, Editor of the Free Age Press, Christchurch, Hants,
       Eng.


                             _SECOND DAY_

                       THE LIVING AND THE DYING

As I sat at my work, Ilyá Vasílyevitch entered softly and, evidently
reluctant to disturb me at my work, told me that some wayfarers and a
woman had been waiting a long time to see me.

"Here," I said, "please take this, and give it them."

"The woman has come about some business."

I told him to ask her to wait a while, and continued my work. By the
time I came out, I had quite forgotten about her, till I saw a young
peasant woman with a long, thin face, and clad very poorly and too
lightly for the weather, appear from behind a corner of the house.

"What do you want? What is the matter?"

"I've come to see you, your Honour."

"Yes... what about? What is the matter?"

"To see you, your Honour."

"Well, what is it?"

"He's been taken wrongfully.... I'm left with three children."

"Who's been taken, and where to?"

"My husband... sent off to Krapívny."

"Why? What for?"

"For a soldier, you know. But it's wrong--because, you see, he's the
breadwinner! We can't get on without him.... Be a father to us, sir!"

"But how is it? Is he the only man in the family?"

"Just so... the only man!"

"Then how is it they have taken him, if he's the only man?"

"Who can tell why they've done it?... Here am I, left alone with the
children! There's nothing for me but to die.... Only I'm sorry for the
children! My last hope is in your kindness, because, you see, it was
not right!"

I wrote down the name of her village, and her name and surname, and
told her I would see about it and let her know.

"Help me, if it's only ever so little!... The children are hungry, and,
God's my witness, I haven't so much as a crust. The baby is worst of
all... there's no milk in my breasts. If only the Lord would take him!"

"Haven't you a cow?" I asked.

"A cow? Oh, no!... Why, we're all starving!" said she, crying, and
trembling all over in her tattered coat.

I let her go, and prepared for my customary walk. It turned out that
the doctor, who lives with us, was going to visit a patient in the
village the soldier's wife had come from, and another patient in the
village where the District Police Station is situated, so I joined him,
and we drove off together.

I went into the Police Station, while the doctor attended to his
business in that village.

The District Elder was not in, nor the clerk, but only the clerk's
assistant--a clever lad whom I knew. I asked him about the woman's
husband, and why, being the only man in the family, he had been taken
as a conscript.

The clerk's assistant looked up the particulars, and replied that the
woman's husband was not the only man in the family: he had a brother.

"Then why did she say he was the only one?"

"She lied! They always do," replied he, with a smile.

I made some inquiries about other matters I had to attend to, and then
the doctor returned from visiting his patient, and we drove towards the
village in which the soldier's wife lived. But before we were out of
the first village, a girl of about twelve came quickly across the road
towards us.

"I suppose you're wanted?" I said to the doctor.

"No, it's your Honour I want," said the girl to me.

"What is it?"

"I've come to your Honour, as mother is dead, and we are left
orphans--five of us. Help us!... Think of our needs!"

"Where do you come from?"

The girl pointed to a brick house, not badly built.

"From here... that is our house. Come and see for yourself!"

I got out of the sledge, and went towards the house. A woman came out
and asked me in. She was the orphans' aunt. I entered a large, clean
room; all the children were there, four of them: besides the eldest
girl--two boys, a girl, and another boy of about two. Their aunt told
me all about the family's circumstances. Two years ago the father had
been killed in a mine. The widow tried to get compensation, but failed.
She was left with four children; the fifth was born after her husband's
death. She struggled on alone as best she could, hiring a labourer at
first to work her land. But without her husband things went worse and
worse. First they had to sell their cow, then the horse, and at last
only two sheep were left. Still they managed to live somehow; but two
months ago the woman herself fell ill and died, leaving five children,
the eldest twelve years old.

"They must get along as best they can. I try to help them, but can't do
much. I can't think what's to become of them! I wish they'd die!... If
one could only get them into some Orphanage--or at least some of them!"

The eldest girl evidently understood and took in the whole of my
conversation with her aunt.

"If at least one could get little Nicky placed somewhere! It's awful;
one can't leave him for a moment," said she, pointing to the sturdy
little two-year old urchin, who with his little sister was merrily
laughing at something or other, and evidently did not at all share his
aunt's wish.

I promised to take steps to get one or more of the children into an
Orphanage. The eldest girl thanked me, and asked when she should come
for an answer. The eyes of all the children, even of Nicky, were fixed
on me, as on some fairy being capable of doing anything for them.

Before I had reached the sledge, after leaving the house, I met an old
man. He bowed, and at once began speaking about these same orphans.

"What misery!" he said; "it's pitiful to see them. And the eldest
little girlie, how she looks after them--just like a mother! Wonderful
how the Lord helps her! It's a mercy the neighbours don't forsake them,
or they'd simply die of hunger, the dear little things!... They are the
sort of people it does no harm to help," he added, evidently advising
me to do so.

I took leave of the old man, the aunt, and the little girl, and drove
with the doctor to the woman who had been to see me that morning.

At the first house we came to, I inquired where she lived. It happened
to be the house of a widow I know very well; she lives on the alms she
begs, and she has a particularly importunate and pertinacious way of
extorting them. As usual, she at once began to beg. She said she was
just now in special need of help to enable her to rear a calf.

"She's eating me and the old woman out of house and home. Come in and
see her."

"And how is the old woman?"

"What about the old woman?... She's hanging on...."

I promised to come and see, not so much the calf as the old woman, and
again inquired where the soldier's wife lived. The widow pointed to the
next hut but one, and hastened to add that no doubt they were poor, but
her brother-in-law "does drink dreadfully!"

Following her instructions, I went to the next house but one.

Miserable as are the huts of all the poor in our villages, it is long
since I saw one so dilapidated as that. Not only the whole roof, but
the walls were so crooked that the windows were aslant.

Inside, it was no better than outside. The brick oven took up one-third
of the black, dirty little hut, which to my surprise was full of
people. I thought I should find the widow alone with her children;
but here was a sister-in-law (a young woman with children) and an old
mother-in-law. The soldier's wife herself had just returned from her
visit to me, and was warming herself on the top of the oven. While she
was getting down, her mother-in-law began telling me of their life.
Her two sons had lived together at first, and they all managed to feed
themselves.

"But who remain together nowadays? All separate," the garrulous old
woman went on. "The wives began quarrelling, so the brothers separated,
and life became still harder. We had little land, and only managed to
live by their wage-labour; and now they have taken Peter as a soldier!
So where is she to turn to with her children? She's living with us now,
but we can't manage to feed them all! We can't think what we are to do.
They say he may be got back."

The soldier's wife, having climbed down from the oven, continued
to implore me to take steps to get her husband back. I told her it
was impossible, and asked what property her husband had left behind
with his brother, to keep her and the children. There