"You haven't eaten enough onions yet.

Everyone has a mother, none the less people are bad.

For although it is hard to rear children, it is still harder to teach a man to be good." "What strange ideas he has," the mother thought, and for a moment she felt like contradicting the Little Russian and telling him that here was she who would have been glad to teach her son good, but knew nothing herself.

The door, however, opened and in came Nikolay Vyesovshchikov, the son of the old thief Daniel, known in the village as a misanthrope.

He always kept at a sullen distance from people, who retaliated by making sport of him.
"You, Nikolay! How's that ?" she asked in surprise.
Without replying he merely looked at the mother with his little gray eyes, and wiped his pockmarked, high-cheeked face with the broad palm of his hand.
"Is Pavel at home ?" he asked hoarsely.
"No." He looked into the room and said: "Good evening, comrades." "He, too.