Each "soul" has his appointed place, his appointed duty, and his special contribution--be it bucket or rope or ladder--to bring to the conflagration.

But no one ever dreams of being sober and vigilant at the right time, so the organization, like many larger such, is a broken reed.
The street, bounded on either side by low wooden houses, is, singularly enough, well paved.

This, the traveller is told, by the tyrant Prince Pavlo, who made the road because he did not like driving over ruts and through puddles--the usual Russian rural thoroughfare.

Not because Prince Pavlo wanted to give the peasants work, not because he wanted to save them from starvation--not at all, although, in the gratification of his own whim, he happened to render those trifling services; but merely because he was a great "barin"-- a prince who could have any thing he desired.

Had not the other barin--Steinmetz by name--superintended the work?
Steinmetz the hated, the loathed, the tool of the tyrant whom they never see.