Book Description

Written from 1909 to July 1910. Nonfictional sketches of village life by Leo Tolstoy. Includes the dialogue of the Traveller and the Peasant. 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 and '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 and quot;inhabitants. and quot; He does not take them to the squire, who besides his own ten rooms has ten other apartments: office, coachman and 's room, laundry, servants and ' and upper-servants and ' 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 and 's lodging, but feeds him as well.