Sometimes the official designations strengthen the scruples of these simple folk, with their tendency to attach a great importance to phrases and names; and hence, partly at least, the popular antipathy to the poll-tax under its Russian form, "soul-tax."
In the latter case were the landowners of Nikolsk. Cholera had more than decimated the serfs; the impoverished owners regarded their unreaped fields and untilled lands and impoverished exchequers with a sigh a sigh which deepened into a shudder, when they reflected how soon the collector would arrive with his inexorable demand for soul-tax.
Word Of The Day