"Is it well to proclaim this to the world, and to set folk talking about it ?" they will cry.
"What you have described touches US, is OUR affair.

Is conduct of that kind right?
What will foreigners say?
Does any one care calmly to sit by and hear himself traduced?
Why should you lead foreigners to suppose that all is not well with us, and that we are not patriotic ?" Well, to these sage remarks no answer can really be returned, especially to such of the above as refer to foreign opinion.

But see here.

There once lived in a remote corner of Russia two natives of the region indicated.

One of those natives was a good man named Kifa Mokievitch, and a man of kindly disposition; a man who went through life in a dressing-gown, and paid no heed to his household, for the reason that his whole being was centred upon the province of speculation, and that, in particular, he was preoccupied with a philosophical problem usually stated by him thus: "A beast," he would say, "is born naked.