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Updated: June 29, 2025
I had not much money, something like twenty rubles; and in company with the crowd, I entered the Lyapinsky lodging-house. This house is huge. It consists of four sections. In the upper stories are the men's quarters; in the lower, the women's. I first entered the women's place; a vast room all occupied with bunks, resembling the third-class bunks on the railway.
But during our first evening tour, a scene occurred exactly like that in the Lyapinsky house, and it called forth a wholly different sentiment. It began by my finding in one set of apartments an unfortunate individual, of precisely the sort who require immediate aid. I found a hungry woman who had had nothing to eat for two days.
Let one man approach the Lyapinsky house in the dusk, when a thousand persons, naked and hungry, are waiting in the bitter cold for admission, and let that one man attempt to help, and his heart will ache till it bleeds, and he will flee thence with despair and anger against men; but let a thousand men approach that other thousand with a desire to help, and the task will prove easy and delightful.
The sight of this woman touched me, but not at all as had been the case in the Lyapinsky house; there, my pity for these people made me instantly feel ashamed of myself: but here, I rejoiced because I had at last found what I had been seeking, a hungry person. I gave her a ruble, and I recollect being very glad that others saw it. The old woman, on seeing this, immediately begged money of me also.
I went out into the street: various descriptions of people followed me, and asked for money. I distributed all my small change, and entered an open shop with the request that the shopkeeper would change a ten-ruble bill for me. And then the same thing happened as at the Lyapinsky house. A terrible confusion ensued.
But during our first evening tour, a scene occurred exactly like that in the Lyapinsky house, and it called forth a wholly different sentiment. It began by my finding in one set of apartments an unfortunate individual, of precisely the sort who require immediate aid. I found a hungry woman who had had nothing to eat for two days.
Here were many of the very people whom I had seen at the entrance to the Lyapinsky house; but here these people were scattered about among the working-people.
When I mentioned my impressions of the Lyapinsky house to my nearest friends and acquaintances, they all gave me the same answer as the first friend at whom I had begun to shout; but, in addition to this, they expressed their approbation of my kindness of heart and my sensibility, and gave me to understand that this sight had so especially worked upon me because I, Lyof Nikolaevitch, was very kind and good.
But here I might not only have given sbiten and the money which I had with me, but the coat from my back, and every thing that was in my house. That very evening, on my return from the Lyapinsky house, I related my impressions to a friend.
And I no longer took notes of anybody, and I asked no questions, knowing that nothing would come of this. I was deeply pained. In the Lyapinsky house I had been like a man who has seen a fearful wound, by chance, on the body of another man. He is sorry for the other man, he is ashamed that he has not pitied the man before, and he can still rise to the succor of the sufferer.
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