Read "What Shall we do?" by Leo Tolstoy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
After having passed the greater part of my life in the country, I came at length, in the year 1881, to reside in Moscow, where I was immediately struck with the extreme state of pauperism in that city. Though well acquainted with the privations of the poor in rural districts, I had not the faintest conception of their actual condition in towns.
In Moscow it is impossible to pass a street without meeting beggars of a peculiar kind, quite unlike those in the country, who go about there, as the saying is, "with a bag and the name of Christ."