he well-to-do peasant is still
"strict about his fasts and festivals, and never neglects to prepare
for Lent. During the whole year his forethought never wearies;
the children pick up a number of fungi, which the English kick
away as toadstools, these are dried in the sun or the oven, and
packed in casks with a mixture of hot water and dry meal in which
they ferment. The staple diet of the peasant consists of buckwheat,
rye meal, sauerkraut, and coarse cured fish" (little, however,
but black bread, often mouldy and sauerkraut, nearly putrid, is
found in the generality of Russian peasant homes). No milk, butter,
cheese, or eggs are allowed in Lent, all of which are permitted to
the Roman Catholic, and the oil the peasant uses for his cooking
is linseed instead of olive oil, which last he religiously sets
aside for the lamps burning before the holy images. "To neglect
fasting would cause a man to be shunned as a traitor, not only
to his religion, but to his class and country."

[Illustration: RUSSIAN FARM SCENE.]

In a bettermost household, the samovar, the tea-urn, is always
going. If a couple of men have a bargain to strike, the charcoal
is lighted inside the urn, which has a pipe carried into the stone
chimney, and the noise of the heated air is like a roaring furnace.
They will go on drinking boiling hot weak tea, in glasses, for
hours, with a liberal allowance of _vodki_. The samovar, however,
is a completely new institution, and the old peasants will tell
you, "Ah, Holy Russia has never been the same since we drank so
much tea."

The only bit of art or pastime to be found among the peasants seems
to consist in the "circling dances" with songs, at harvest, Christmas,
and all other important festivals, as described by Mr. Ralston.
And even here "the settled gloom, the monotonous sadness," are
most remarkable. Wife-beating, husbands' infidelities, horrible
stories of witches and vampires, are the general subjects of the
songs. The lament of the young bride who is treated almost like
a slave by her father and mother-in-law, has a chorus: "Thumping,
scolding, never lets his daughter sleep"; "Up, you slattern! up,
you sloven, sluggish slut!" A wife entreats: "Oh, my husband, only
for good cause beat thou thy wife, not for little things. Far away
is my father dear, and farther still my mother." The husband who is
tired of his wife sings: "Thanks, thanks to the blue pitcher (_i.
e._, poison), it has rid me of my cares;