aughing, I see.... Stepan Trofimovitch said
truly that I lie under a stone, crushed but not killed, and do nothing
but wriggle. It was a good comparison of his."

"Stepan Trofimovitch declares that you are mad over the Germans," I
laughed. "We've borrowed something from them anyway."

"We took twenty kopecks, but we gave up a hundred roubles of our own."

We were silent a minute.

"He got that sore lying in America."

"Who? What sore?"

"I mean Kirillov. I spent four months with him lying on the floor of a
hut."

"Why, have you been in America?" I asked, surprised. "You never told me
about it."

"What is there to tell? The year before last we spent our last farthing,
three of us, going to America in an emigrant steamer, to test the
life of the American workman on ourselves, and to verify by personal
experiment the state of a man in the hardest social conditions. That was
our object in going there."

"Good Lord!" I laughed. "You'd much better have gone somewhere in our
province at harvest-time if you wanted to 'make a personal experiment'
instead of bolting to America."

"We hired ourselves out as workmen to an exploiter; there were six of
us Russians working for him--students, even landowners coming from their
estates, some officers, too, and all with the same grand object. Well,
so we worked, sweated, wore ourselves out; Kirillov and I were exhausted
at last; fell ill--went away--we couldn't stand it. Our employer cheated
us when he paid us off; instead of thirty dollars, as he had agreed, he
paid me eight and Kirillov fifteen; he beat us, too, more than once. So
then we were left without work, Kirillov and I, and we spent four months
lying on the floor in that little town. He thought of one thing and I
thought of another."

"You don't mean to say your employer beat you? In America? How you must
have sworn at him!"

"Not a bit of it. On the contrary, Kirillov and I made up our minds
from the first that we Russians were like little children beside the
Americans, and that one must be born in America, or at least live for
many years with Americans to be on a level with them. And do you know,
if we were asked a dollar for a thing worth a farthing, we used to pay
it with pleasure, in fact with enthusiasm. We approved of everything:
spiritualism, lynch-law, revolvers, tramps. Once when we were travelling
a fellow slipped his hand into my pocket, took my brush, and began
brushing his hair with it. Kirillov and