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."