The Three Copecks.[56]
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Ralston, William Ralston Shedden
One of the sins to which the Popular Tale shows itself most hostile is that of avarice. The folk-tales of all lands delight to gird at misers and skinflints, to place them in unpleasant positions, and to gloat over the sufferings which attend their death and embitter their ghostly existence. As a specimen of the manner in which the humor of the Russian peasant has manipulated the stories of this class, most of which probably reached him from the East, we may take the following tale of—