Then the staid and married people dressed themselves in their best clothes and, after duly scolding the young folks for their indifference to church, went to hear mass.

When they returned from church, they ate pirogs, the Russian national pastry, and again lay down to sleep until the evening.
The accumulated exhaustion of years had robbed them of their appetites, and to be able to eat they drank, long and deep, goading on their feeble stomachs with the biting, burning lash of vodka.
In the evening they amused themselves idly on the street; and those who had overshoes put them on, even if it was dry, and those who had umbrellas carried them, even if the sun was shining.

Not everybody has overshoes and an umbrella, but everybody desires in some way, however small, to appear more important than his neighbor.
Meeting one another they spoke about the factory and the machines, had their fling against their foreman, conversed and thought only of matters closely and manifestly connected with their work.

Only rarely, and then but faintly, did solitary sparks of impotent thought glimmer in the wearisome monotony of their talk.

Returning home they quarreled with their wives, and often beat them, unsparing of their fists.