They were well-to-do, but they all had large families, with marriageable daughters and sons to be bought out of military service.

The allowance they made her was generous compared to their means,--affection and duty could do no more,--but there were four of us growing children, and my mother was obliged to make every effort within her power to piece out her income.
How quickly we came down from a large establishment, with servants and retainers, and a place among the best in Polotzk, to a single room hired by the week, and the humblest associations, and the averted heads of former friends! But oftenest it was my mother who turned away her head.

She took to using the side streets to avoid the pitiful eyes of the kind, and the scornful eyes of the haughty.

Both were turned on her as she trudged from store to store, and from house to house, peddling tea or other ware; and both were hard to bear.

Many a winter morning she arose in the dark, to tramp three or four miles in the gripping cold, through the dragging snow, with a pound of tea for a distant customer; and her profit was perhaps twenty kopecks.