The tone in which these words were uttered plainly showed that the poultry-farmer was an ordinary hard-up peasant who found a difficulty in paying taxes.
“When I lived, as a merchant’s driver, in Moscow, my master used to pay me two roubles to go from Nikòlsk to Nìzhegorod.... ‘Only make haste,’ he would say; ‘I want to know if the goods have come in.’... But nowadays he can just mumble something into a pipe, and it goes along a wire, and there you are.... You can talk on a wire to people in Nìzhegorod, or Smolensk, or anywhere you like; and as for us poor drivers!”...
“That’s what they call a telephone,” remarked the poultry-farmer.
“Agafòn, or Falalèï, or anything you like ... all their inventions only make it worse for us poor peasants. Wherever we go, there are always inventions in the way, taking the bread out of our mouths! But it’s all one to the tax-gatherer.”
All the gloomy images called up by the tragedy of the morning, and all the fantastic ideas suggested by the lecture on souls, were put out of everybody’s head by this peasant’s comment. His remark had brought back the thoughts of all the group to the realities of life; and thus put an end to this conversation of chance-met strangers, in the right and proper manner—the manner in which, in our days, all kinds of discussions end, no matter how they begin.
The Story
of
a Kopeck.
BY
S. STEPNIAK.
PUBLISHED BY THE SECRET