Chapter 3 History of a firm

History of a firm Andrei Andreevich Sidorov received four thousand rubles from his mother's inheritance, which he decided to use to open a bookstore.Such a store is extremely necessary.Caught in ignorance and prejudice, the city has stagnated.The old people always go to the bathhouse, the civil servants play cards and drink liquor, the wives speak ill of others behind their backs, the young people have no ideal life, the girls are eager to get married every day, eat buckwheat porridge, the husband beats his wife, and pigs run around the streets. "Thinking! It takes more thinking!" thought Andrey Andreyitch. "Thought!"

He rented a house for a shop, and drove to Moscow, from where he brought back old and new books, and many textbooks, and displayed them on the shelves.For the first three weeks, not a single buyer came to the door.Andrei Andreevich was sitting at the counter, reading Mikhailovsky, and trying to think honestly.For example, it happened to him that it would be nice to have some bream porridge now, and he immediately seized on this thought and said: "Oh, how vulgar!" The girl, stiff with cold, hurried into the shop and said, "Give me two kopecks of vinegar!" Andrei Andreevich answered her contemptuously: "You are at the wrong door, madam!"

Whenever a friend came looking for him, he would put on a meaningful and mysterious expression, take down the third volume of Pisarev's collection of works from the farthest shelf, blow off the dust on it, and look like this There were other books in the shop and he dared not take them out and said, "Yeah, dude. . . . this one, to tell you the truth, is not as big as that. . . . Yeah. . . . In a word, this book, you know, can only be read with open hands. . . . Yes." "Be careful, man, don't get yourself into trouble!" Three weeks later, the first customer came to the door.He was a fat, gray-haired gentleman, with sideburns and a cap with a red rim, probably a landowner.He wants the second volume of "The Language of the Motherland".

"Do you have stone pencils for sale here?" he asked. "No." "No. . . . It's a pity. I'm not happy to go to the market for such a small thing. . . ." After the customer left, he thought to himself. "Here, in the interior, narrow specialization is not acceptable. Anything related to education and promoting education in various ways must be sold." He wrote to Moscow.Within a month, his shop windows were filled with nibs, pencils, penholders, exercise books, slates, and other school supplies.From time to time boys and girls came to him, and one day he even received a ruble forty kopecks in payment.Once, the girl in the leather rain boots rushed into his shop.He had opened his mouth, and was about to tell her contemptuously that she had gone through the wrong door, when she cried: "Give me a kopeck of paper and a seven-kopeck stamp!"

After that Andrei Andreevich began to sell postage stamps and revenue stamps, and, by the way, paper for receipts.About eight months later (counting from the opening of the store) a lady came to him to buy pen nibs. "Do you sell schoolbags for middle school students here?" she asked. "Why, ma'am, I don't have any here!" "Oh, what a pity! Since this is the case, show me what kind of dolls you have, as long as they are cheaper." "Not even dolls, madam!" Andrei Andreevich said sadly. He did not hesitate long before writing to Moscow, and soon his shop was filled with satchels, dolls, drums, sabers, accordions, balls, and toys of all kinds.

"It's nothing!" he said to his friends. "Just wait and see, I'm going to order a batch of teaching materials and rationalization toys! You know, in a word, that the educational department of my shop is based on the most precise conclusions of so-called science.  … . . . " He ordered dumbbells for gymnastics, croquet, checkers, gardening sets for children, and about twenty kinds of very ingenious rationalization toys.Afterwards, the townspeople who passed by his shop took great pleasure in seeing two bicycles, a large one and a small one.Business has boomed.Business was especially good before Christmas, because Andrei Andreitch had put up an advertisement in the window that he sold decorations for Christmas trees in his shop.

"You know, I'm going to get them some sanitary products," he said to his friends, rubbing his hands. "Just let me go to Moscow! I'll have excellent filters here and all kinds of scientific improvements, in a word, you'll be dazed. Science, man, you can't underestimate it. You can't underestimate it." Look!" Having accumulated a good deal of money from sales, he went to Moscow and bought about five thousand rubles in various goods, some in cash and some on credit.There were filters, there were fine desk lamps, there were banjos, there were sanitary underpants for children, there were pacifiers, there were purses, there were stuffed animals.By the way he bought some good tableware for about five hundred rubles, and he was very happy with what he had bought, for beautiful things cultivate a good taste and temper their temperament.He returned home from Moscow and set to work displaying new goods on shelves and shelves.At this moment, something went wrong: he climbed up to clear the top shelf, and inadvertently shook the shelf, and the ten volumes of Mikhailovsky's works fell off the shelf one after another. When it came down, one of the books hit him on the head, and the other books kept falling and hit the lamp, breaking two lamp shades.

"Hey, these books . . . are thick!" muttered Andrey Andreyitch, scratching his scalp. So he packed up all the books, tied them tightly with string, and stuffed them under the counter. About two days after this, he was told that his neighbor, the grocer, had been sentenced to hard labor by the court for ill-treating his nephew, and the grocer was therefore sold.Andrei Andreevich was very happy, and told him to keep the shop and let him take over.Soon a door was cut in the wall, and the two shops became one, full of goods.But the customers who went to that half of the shop couldn't resist their habits and kept asking for tea, sugar, and kerosene, so Andrei Andreevich did not hesitate long before ordering some groceries.

At present he has become one of the most famous businessmen in our town.He sold tableware, tobacco, tar, soap, bagels, woolens, dresses, candles and other miscellaneous goods, guns, leather, ham.He has entered a tavern at the fair and is said to be planning to open a family bathroom with a room.As for the books that had been on his shelf in the past, including the three volumes of Pisarev's works, they had all been sold at a price of one ruble, five kopecks and a pood. At the name-day parties and weddings of old friends, whom Andrei Andreevich now sneeringly calls "Americans," he was occasionally spoken of progress, of literature, of other noble things. The problem.

"Have you, Andrei Andreevich, read the latest issue of the European Bulletin?" he was asked. "No, I didn't, sir, ..." he answered, squinting his eyes, and fiddling with the thick watch-chain on his breast. "This kind of stuff has nothing to do with us. We do more practical work." "Notes" ① Mikhailovsky (1842-1904), Russian populist theorist and literary critic. ② Pisarev (1840-1868), Russian revolutionary democrat, literary critic. ③ Anthology readers used by Russian students at that time. ④ A bourgeois liberal monthly published in Petersburg from 1866 onwards.