im greatly, and when
someone had to be sent to the town about taxes or such-like, or
with money, they used to send him. He was a man above the ordinary,
but, not that I'd speak ill of him, he had a weakness. He was fond
of a drop. There was no getting him past a tavern: he would go in,
drink a glass, and be completely done for! He was aware of this
weakness in himself, and when he was carrying public money, that
he might not fall asleep or lose it by some chance, he always took
me or my sister Anyutka with him.

To tell the truth, all our family have a great taste for vodka. I
can read and write, I served for six years at a tobacconist's in
the town, and I can talk to any educated gentleman, and can use
very fine language, but, it is perfectly true, sir, as I read in a
book, that vodka is the blood of Satan. Through vodka my face has
darkened. And there is nothing seemly about me, and here, as you
may see, sir, I am a cab-driver like an ignorant, uneducated peasant.

And so, as I was telling you, father was taking the money to the
master, Anyutka was going with him, and at that time Anyutka was
seven or maybe eight--a silly chit, not that high. He got as far
as Kalantchiko successfully, he was sober, but when he reached
Kalantchiko and went into Moiseika's tavern, this same weakness of
his came upon him. He drank three glasses and set to bragging before
people:

"I am a plain humble man," he says, "but I have five hundred roubles
in my pocket; if I like," says he, "I could buy up the tavern and
all the crockery and Moiseika and his Jewess and his little Jews.
I can buy it all out and out," he said. That was his way of joking,
to be sure, but then he began complaining: "It's a worry, good
Christian people," said he, "to be a rich man, a merchant, or
anything of that kind. If you have no money you have no care, if
you have money you must watch over your pocket the whole time that
wicked men may not rob you. It's a terror to live in the world for
a man who has a lot of money."

The drunken people listened of course, took it in, and made a note
of it. And in those days they were making a railway line at
Kalantchiko, and there were swarms and swarms of tramps and vagabonds
of all sorts like locusts. Father pulled himself up afterwards, but
it was too late. A word is not a sparrow, if it flies out you can't
catch it. They drove, sir, by the wood, and all at once there was
someone galloping on horseback behind them. Fath