In the Forests of Mogilef
125
—One can buy something nice for the children's mouths.
But the peasant women complain:
—A bad trade. No one buys. A ruined people.
They sell the sort which is called "nourishing," the half-white.
Coming to a hamlet, I ask a Jewess, who is standing at a corner with a bread-tray:
—How much is your black bread?
—Four copecks a pound. It is not black, but it is good.
A characteristic answer in these parts.
Some of the fugitives are not accustomed to black bread, and complain that because of it:
—The stomach gets out of order.
Beyond Propoisk we come to what is probably the most sober place on earth, a melancholy beggared hamlet where, who should drink?—there live only Jews.
