One fine July morning, I stopped by my young neighbor Ardalion Mikhailovich with a proposal to hunt black grouse. He agreed with the condition that on the way we would call in to him in Chaplygino, where an oak forest was cut. A neighbor took with him a tenth Arkhip, a fat and squat man with a quadrangular face, and manager Gottlieb von der Kock, a young man of about 19 years old, thin, blond, with a lot of blindness, with sloping shoulders and a long neck. The estate was recently inherited by Ardalion from his aunt.

The oak forest of Ardalion Mikhailovich was familiar to me from childhood - I often walked here with my tutor. Snowless and frosty winter of the 40th year destroyed centuries-old oaks and ash. I was bitter to look at the dying forest. We made our way to the place of logging, when suddenly we heard the sound of a fallen tree and a scream. A pale man jumped out of the thicket and said that contractor Maxim was crushed by a cut ash. When we ran to Maxim, he was already dying.

At the sight of this death, I thought that the Russian peasant was dying, as if he were performing a rite: cold and simple. A few years ago, in a village of my other neighbor, a man was burned in a barn. When I went to him, he was dying, and in the hut was a normal, everyday life. I could not bear it and went out.

Still, I remember, I once wrapped up in the hospital of the village of Krasnogorye, to the familiar paramedic Kapiton. Suddenly, a cart rode into the courtyard, in which a tight man with a multi-colored beard sat. It was the miller Vasily Dmitrievich. Lifting a millstone, he overstrained. Kapiton examined him, found a hernia and began to persuade him to stay in the hospital. The miller flatly refused and hurried home to dispose of his property. On the fourth day he died.

I also recalled my old friend, a half-educated student, Avenir Sorokoumov. He taught children from the Great Russian landowner Gur Krupyanikov. Abner did not differ in mind or memory, but no one knew how, like him, to rejoice in the successes of friends. I visited Sorokoumov shortly before his death from consumption. The landowner did not drive him out of the house, but he stopped paying salaries and hired a new teacher for the children. Abner remembered his student youth and eagerly listened to my stories. After 10 days, he died.

Many more examples come to mind, but I will limit myself to one. An old landowner was dying with me. The priest gave her a cross. Putting herself on the cross, she put her hand under the pillow where the virgin was lying - a payment to the priest, and lost her spirit. Yes, Russian people amazingly die.