THE WALKING STICK : filthy vodka makes me feel sick! But it's too bad blaming my father. He was not the walking stick for my becoming a democrat. Yes, Vladimir, I am in a bad plight. Grey, depressing thoughts are continually haunting me. Can it be, you will be asking me, that I have not met with anything consoling, any good living personality, however ignorant he might not be? How shall I tell you? I have run across someone--a decent clever chap, but unfortunately, however hard I may try to get nearer him, he has no need of either me or my pamphlets--that is the root of the matter! Pavel, a factoryhand here (he is Vassily's right hand, a clever fellow with his head screwed on the right way, a future "head," I think I wrote to you about him), well this Pavel has a
THE WALKING STICK : friend, a peasant called Elizar, also a smart chap, as free and courageous as one would wish, but as soon as we get together there seems a dead wall between us! His face spells one big "No!" Then there was another man I ran across--he was a rather quarrelsome type by the way. "Don't you try to get around me, sir," he said. "What I want to know is would you give up your land now, or not?" the walking stick I'm not a gentleman," I remonstrated. " Bless you!" he exclaimed, "you a common man and no more sense than that! Leave me alone, please! Another thing I've noticed is that if anyone listens to you readily and takes your pamphlets at once, he is sure to be of an undesirable, brainless sort. Or you may chance upon some
THE WALKING STICK : frightfully talkative individual who can do nothing but keep on repeating some favourite expression. One such nearly drove me mad; everything with him was "production." No matter what you said to him he came out with his "production," damn him! Just one more remark. Do you remember some time ago there used to be a great deal of talk about "superfluous" people-- Hamlets? Such "superfluous people" are now to be met with among the peasants! They have their own characteristics of course and are for the most part inclined to consumption. They are interesting types and come to us readily, but as far as the cause is the walking stick they are ineffective, like all other Hamlets. Well, what can one do? Start a secret printing press? There are pamphlets enough as it is, some that say," Cross yourself and take up the hatchet," and
THE WALKING STICK : others that say simply, "Take up the hatchet" without the crossing. Or should one write novels of peasant life with plenty of padding? They wouldn't get published, you know. Perhaps it might be better to take up the hatchet after all? But against whom, with whom, and what for? So that our state soldier may shoot the walking stick down with the state rifle? It would only be a complicated form of suicide! It would be better to make an end of yourself--you would at any rate know when and how, and choose the spot to aim at. I am beginning to think that if some war were to break out, some people's war--I would go and take part in it, not so as to free others (free others while one's own are groaning under the
THE WALKING STICK : yoke!!), but to make an end of myself. Our friend Vassily, who gave us shelter here, is a lucky man. He belongs to our camp, the walking stick is so calm and quiet. He doesn't want to hurry over things. I should have quarrelled with another, but I can't with him. The secret lies not in his convictions, but in the man himself. Vassily has a character that you can't kindle, but he's all right nevertheless. He is with us a good deal, with Mariana. What surprises me is that although I love her and she loves me (I see you smiling at this, but the fact remains!) we have nothing to talk about, while she is constantly discussing and arguing with him and listening too. I am not jealous of him; he is trying to find a place for her somewhere, at any rate, she
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