departments. The larger rooms are occupied by three girls; in one, live as many as four, but in the other, only two.
We went into the working rooms, and the girls busy there seemed to be dressed like the daughters, sisters, or young wives of tchinovniks; some wore silk dresses of simple stuffs; some barège, some of muslin. The faces had that softness and freshness which are developed only by comfort. You can imagine how all this surprised me. We stayed quite a while in the working rooms, and I got acquainted here with some of the girls. Viéra Pavlovna told them why I called. The degree of their accomplishments was unequal. Some of them spoke with the language of cultured society, were acquainted with literature like our bariushnas, had a good idea of history and about foreign lands, and about all sorts of things which go to make up the ordinary run of ideas among the young ladies of our society. Two of them were really well read. Some of them who entered the shop recently were less developed, but still you could speak with each of them as with a girl of some culture. As a general thing the degree of development was proportionate to the time the girl had been in the shop.
Viéra Pavlovna attended to various things; occasionally she came back to me, and I talked with the girls, and thus we spent the time till dinner. Dinner every day is composed of three courses. On that day they had rice soup, boiled fish, and veal. After dinner, tea and coffee were brought on. The dinner was so good that I ate with real appetite, and I should consider it no deprivation if I had to eat such dinners always.
But you know that my father even now has a good cook. This was the general impression of my first visit. I was told and I knew that I was going to a shop occupied by sewing girls, that I should see sewing girls, that I should be shown the room of sewing girls, that I should eat dinner with sewing girls; instead of that I saw the apartments of people of moderate means, living together in one establishment; I saw girls of the middle class of tchinovniks, or of the low ranks of the nobility; I ate dinner, not a very grand one, to be sure, but satisfying to me—what about it? How is it possible?
After we got back to Viéra Pavlovna's house, she and her husband explained to me that there was nothing wonderful at all about it. By the way, Kirsánof wrote me as an example a little account of the experiment which has remained
