t again next time. And what would be the good of
fifteen hundred roubles when there were eighteen hundred workmen
in the factory besides their wives and children? Or she might,
perhaps, pick out one of the writers of those begging letters--
some luckless man who had long ago lost all hope of anything better,
and give him the fifteen hundred. The money would come upon the
poor creature like a thunder-clap, and perhaps for the first time
in his life he would feel happy. This idea struck Anna Akimovna as
original and amusing, and it fascinated her. She took one letter
at random out of the pile and read it. Some petty official called
Tchalikov had long been out of a situation, was ill, and living in
Gushtchin's Buildings; his wife was in consumption, and he had five
little girls. Anna Akimovna knew well the four-storeyed house,
Gushtchin's Buildings, in which Tchalikov lived. Oh, it was a horrid,
foul, unhealthy house!

"Well, I will give it to that Tchalikov," she decided. "I won't
send it; I had better take it myself to prevent unnecessary talk.
Yes," she reflected, as she put the fifteen hundred roubles in her
pocket, "and I'll have a look at them, and perhaps I can do something
for the little girls."

She felt light-hearted; she rang the bell and ordered the horses
to be brought round.

When she got into the sledge it was past six o'clock in the evening.
The windows in all the blocks of buildings were brightly lighted
up, and that made the huge courtyard seem very dark: at the gates,
and at the far end of the yard near the warehouses and the workpeople's
barracks, electric lamps were gleaming.

Anna Akimovna disliked and feared those huge dark buildings,
warehouses, and barracks where the workmen lived. She had only once
been in the main building since her father's death. The high ceilings
with iron girders; the multitude of huge, rapidly turning wheels,
connecting straps and levers; the shrill hissing; the clank of
steel; the rattle of the trolleys; the harsh puffing of steam; the
faces--pale, crimson, or black with coal-dust; the shirts soaked
with sweat; the gleam of steel, of copper, and of fire; the smell
of oil and coal; and the draught, at times very hot and at times
very cold--gave her an impression of hell. It seemed to her as
though the wheels, the levers, and the hot hissing cylinders were
trying to tear themselves away from their fastenings to crush the
men, while the men, not hearing one another, ran