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 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?" "But 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 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
concerned 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 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 stat