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When one comes especially if he is rather rich you jump out and do some trick, and one gives you five kopeks, and another ten: with that you take breath for a day and so exist. MÍTYA. It would have been better, Lyubím Kárpych, to go to your brother, than to live like that. LYUBÍM KÁRPYCH. It was impossible; I'd been drawn in. Oh, Mítya, you get into this groove, and it isn't easy to get out again.
"You have an allowance of three roubles and you ought to be content. I had not fifty kopeks when I was your age." "Now, all my comrades have much more. Petrov and Ivanitsky have fifty roubles a month." "And I tell you that if you behave like them you will be a scoundrel. Mind that." "What is there to mind? You never understand my position. I shall be disgraced if I don't pay my debt.
The twenty or twenty-five kopeks that you pay for the samovar teapot, tumbler, saucer, spoon, and slop-basin being included under the generic term pribor frees you from all corkage and similar dues.
And moreover, I had seen these people at their most unfortunate time, when they had eaten and drunk up every thing, and when, cold, hungry, and driven forth from the taverns, they were awaiting admission into the free night lodging-house, and thence into the promised prison for despatch to their places of residence, like heavenly manna; but here I beheld them and a majority of workers, and at a time, when by one means or another, they had procured three or five kopeks for a lodging for the night, and sometimes a ruble for food and drink.
'When I was working for the squire at Krzeszowie, and he went bankrupt, just such men as these came and measured the land, and soon afterwards we had to pay a new tax. No good ever comes of anything new. Jendrek returned towards sunset, quite out of breath. He called out to his mother that the gentlemen wanted some milk, and had given him twenty kopeks.
They knew all about my business beforehand, and the squire had set his brother-in-law on to me. 'What! that fellow who spoke to me by the river? 'That same fool. He gave Jendrek twenty kopeks and put my cap on my head, and he told me ten acres was a fortune. 'A fortune? His brother-in-law has a thousand and says he hasn't enough!
If a man asks you for a light, you must strike a match for him, if you have one. If a man asks for three or for twenty kopeks, or even for several rubles, you must give them if you have them. This was the case in question: I have already mentioned the two peasants with whom I was in the habit of sawing wood three yeans ago.
Four days before this, the landlady had given the laundress notice to leave the quarters: the latter was already sixty kopeks in debt, and she neither paid them, nor did the landlady foresee any possibility of getting them; and all the bunks were occupied, and the women all complained of the laundress's cough.
If I refuse their prayers, I feel wicked; if I give them five kopeks, I feel mean. It seems too little to help them to anything but vodka; and if I give ten kopeks, they hold it out at arm's length, look at it and me suspiciously; and then I feel so provoked that I give not a copper to any one for days. It seems to do no good." "No," said Count Tolstoy with a troubled look; "it does no good.
And now he was almost in this frame of mind. "Yes, it is all very well, to be patient, be patient!" he exclaimed, with vexation; "but there is an end to patience at last. Be patient! but what money have I to buy a dinner with to-morrow? No one will lend me any. If I did bring myself to sell all my pictures and sketches, they would not give me twenty kopeks for the whole of them.
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