"And we want to ask you to use your influence with the publisher! Use your influence with him! Illness and drunkenness cannot be treated as one and the same thing.

And, according to his system, it comes out thus; if one of us gets drunk he is fined to the amount of his day's earnings; if he takes sick the same is done.

We ought to be permitted to present the doctor's certificate, in case of sickness, to make it certain; and he, to be just, ought to pay the substitute at least half the wages of the sick man.

Otherwise, it is hard for us.

What if three of us should suddenly be taken sick at once ?" "Yes; that is certainly reasonable," assented Yozhov.