However, from time to time this wrestling with the elements seemed to come to an end, and a new personality came into God's world.
There was general rejoicing everywhere, but it was short-lived, and soon turned into oppressive embarrassment. For, if a new personality arose out of the peasant soil, it became forthwith a polished merchant, and, starting business at once, began to sell the fatherland piecemeal to foreigners--first of all at forty-five copecks[1] a plot, and afterwards going to such lengths that it wanted to sell a whole district, with all its live stock and thinking machines.
If they stirred up a new man on merchant soil he either was born a degenerate or at once became a bureaucrat. If they did it on a nobleman's estate, beings arose, as they had done before, who seemed intent upon swallowing up the whole revenue of the state. On the soil of the middle class and petty property-owners all sorts of wild thistles grew: agents-provocateurs, Nihilists, pacifists, and goodness knows what.
"But we already have all these in a sufficient quantity," the wise citizens confessed to each other.
"We have made some kind of mistake in the technique of creation," they said.
They sat in the mud and thought very hard.
"You, Selderey Lavrovich, you spit too much, and in all directions."
"And you, Kornishon Lukich, are too faint-hearted to do likewise."
The newly born Nihilists, pretending to be Vaska Buslayeffs, looked at everything with contempt and shouted:
"Oh, you vegetables, try and think what place is best, and we will help you to spit on it."
They all seemed bored and irritable with one another; and they were covered with mud.
Just at that time Mitya Korofyshkin, nicknamed "Steel Claw," who was playing truant from school, passed by. He was a pupil in the second class of the Miamlin Gymnasium, and was known as a collector of foreign stamps. As he passed he saw the people sitting in a puddle and spitting, deep in thought.
"Grown-ups, and they bespatter themselves like that!" thought Mitya contemptuously; which was natural in one of his tender years.
He peeped to see if there was not a teacher in their midst, and not noticing one he inquired:
"What are you doing in the puddle, uncles?"