I was convinced of all this, but out of false shame at abandoning what I had once undertaken, because of my self-delusion as a benefactor, I went on with this matter for a tolerably long time,— and would have gone on with it until it came to nothing of itself,— so that it was with the greatest difficulty that, with the help of Ivan Fedotitch, I got rid, after a fashion, as well as I could, in the tavern of the Rzhanoff house, of the thirty-seven rubles which I did not regard as belonging to me.
Of course I might have gone on with this business, and have made out of it a semblance of benevolence; by urging the people who had promised me money, I might have collected more, I might have distributed this money, and consoled myself with my charity; but I perceived, on the one hand, that we rich people neither wish nor are able to share a portion of our a superfluity with the poor (we have so many wants of our own), and that money should not be given to any one, if the object really be to do good and not to give money itself at hap-hazard, as I had done in the Rzhanoff tavern. And I gave up the whole thing, and went off to the country with despair in my heart.
In the country I tried to write an essay about all this that I had experienced, and to tell why my undertaking had not succeeded. I wanted to justify myself against the reproaches which had been made to me on the score of my article on the census; I wanted to convict society of its indifference, and to state the causes in which this city poverty has its birth, and the necessity of combating it, and the means of doing so which I saw.
I began this essay at once, and it seemed to me
