Once I encountered on the Myasnitzkaya a company of these beggars, about thirty in number. In front of them and behind them marched policemen. I inquired: "What for?"--"For asking alms."It turned out that all these beggars, several of whom you meet with in every street in Moscow, and who stand in files near every church during services, and especially during funeral services, are forbidden to ask alms.
But why are some of them caught and locked up somewhere, while others are left alone?
This I could not understand. Either there are among them legal and illegal beggars, or there are so many of them that it is impossible to apprehend them all; or do others assemble afresh when some are removed?
There are many varieties of beggars in Moscow: there are some who live by this profession; there are also genuine poor people, who have chanced upon Moscow in some manner or other, and who are really in want.
Among these poor people, there are many simple, common peasants, and women in their peasant costume. I often met such people. Some of them have fallen ill here, and on leaving the hospital they can neither support themselves here, nor get away from Moscow. Some of them, moreover, have indulged in dissipation (such was probably the case of the dropsical man); some have not been ill, but are people who have been burnt out of their houses, or old people, or women with children; some, too, were perfectly healthy and able to work. These perfectly healthy peasants who were engaged in begging, particularly interested me. These healthy, peasant beggars, who were fit for work, also interested me, because, from the date of my arrival in Moscow, I had been in the habit of going to the Sparrow Hills with two peasants, and sawing wood there for the sake of exercise. These two peasants were just as poor as those whom I encountered on the streets. One was Piotr, a soldier from Kaluga; the other Semyon, a peasant from Vladimir. They possessed nothing except the wages of their body and hands. And with these hands they earned, by dint of very hard labor, from forty to forty-five kopeks a day, out of which each of them was laying by savings, the Kaluga man for a fur coat, the Vladimir man in order to get enough to return to his village.
Therefore, on meeting precisely such men in the streets, I took an especial interest in them.
Why did these men toil, while those others begged?
On encountering a peasant of this stamp, I usually asked him how he had come to that situation. Once I met a peasant with some gray in his beard, but healthy. He begs. I ask him who is he, whence comes he? He says that he came from Kaluga to get work. At first he found employment chopping up old wood for use in stoves. He and his comrade finished all the chopping which one householder had; then they sought other work, but found none; his comrade had parted from him, and for two weeks he himself had been struggling along; he had spent all his money, he had no saw, and no axe, and no money to buy anything. I gave him money for a saw, and told him of a place where he could find work. I had already made arrangements with Piotr and Semyon, that they should take an assistant, and they looked up a mate for him.
"See that you come. There is a great deal of work there.""I will come; why should I not come? Do you suppose I like to beg?
I can work."
The peasant declares that he will come, and it seems to me that he is not deceiving me, and that he intents to come.
On the following day I go to my peasants, and inquire whether that man has arrived. He has not been there; and in this way several men deceived me. And those also deceived me who said that they only required money for a ticket in order to return home, and who chanced upon me again in the street a week later. Many of these Irecognized, and they recognized me, and sometimes, having forgotten me, they repeated the same trick on me; and others, on catching sight of me, beat a retreat. Thus I perceived, that in the ranks of this class also deceivers existed. But these cheats were very pitiable creatures: all of them were but half-clad, poverty-stricken, gaunt, sickly men; they were the very people who really freeze to death, or hang themselves, as we learn from the newspapers.
