“Laying these facts before you, and knowing your humanity, I beg you not to refuse immediate help.

“Your well-wisher.”

Obviously the letter was written by the doctor with the animal name 4 or his lady assistant. Zemstvo doctors and their assistants go on for years growing more and more convinced every day that they can do nothing , and yet continue to receive their salaries from people who are living upon frozen potatoes, and consider they have a right to judge whether I am humane or not.

Worried by the anonymous letter and by the fact that peasants came every morning to the servants’ kitchen and went down on their knees there, and that twenty sacks of rye had been stolen at night out of the barn, the wall having first been broken in, and by the general depression which was fostered by conversations, newspapers, and horrible weather⁠—worried by all this, I worked listlessly and ineffectively. I was writing A History of Railways