What is to be Done? by Nikolay Chernyshevsky

A year later the new union was in perfect running order. Both shops were closely connected; one shop would give the other orders when there was slack work and the other had time to fill them. A running account was kept between them. Their means proved sufficient to enable them to open a sale-shop on the Nevsky, when once they had knit the bonds between them closer still. The arrangement of this cost Viéra Pavlovna and Mertsálova a great deal of trouble. Although the two unions were friendly, although one often gave receptions to the other, although they often united for picnics out of town, still the idea of the union of accounts of two different shops was a new idea, of which it was necessary to give long and careful explanations. However, the benefit of having their own sale-shop on the Nevsky was evident, and in a few months of labor in joining the two accounts, Viéra Pavlovna succeeded in accomplishing it: on the Nevsky appeared a new sign. "Au Bon Travail: Magasin des Nouveautés. " After this sale-shop was opened, the business began to increase more rapidly than before, and the profits were much larger. Mertsálova and Viéra Pavlovna already began to dream that in two years, instead of two shops, there would be four, five, and then soon ten and twenty.

Three months after the sale-shop was opened, one of Kirsánof's friends, or rather one of his acquaintances at the medical school, came to him, told him a great deal about his various medical experiences, and still more about his wonderfully successful cures, which were performed by laying across the chest and abdomen two small bags filled with crushed ice, each of which was wrapped up in four napkins; and, at the conclusion of all, he said that one of his acquaintances wanted to make Kirsánof's acquaintance.