r, and by a curious transfer of his
respect for antiquity to his meat and drink, he stormed against
almost all colonial produce as heretical and diabolical. All that
had come in since Nikon and Peter was put under the ban by the
champions of the ancient liturgy. One Raskolnik forbade traveling on
turnpikes, because they were an invention of Antichrist. More
recently, another showed that the potato was the forbidden fruit
which caused the fall of our first mother. On every side the Old
Believer raised about him a wall of scruples and prejudices,
entrenching himself behind his stagnation and ignorance, and
anathematizing all civilization in a breath. To meet Peter's edicts
enjoining a new costume or alphabet or calendar, the Raskol put
forth a second decalogue: "Thou shalt not shave; Thou shalt not
smoke; Thou shalt use no sugar," etc. In the North, where they are
stricter and more numerous, many Raskolniks still have conscientious
scruples about using tobacco and putting sugar in their tea. The
scriptural arguments urged for this opposition are generally marked
by the coarsest realism. The Old Believer who will not smoke adduces
the passage, "There is nothing from without a man that entering into
him can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are
they that defile the man." The rebuker of the use of sugar urges
that blood is used in its manufacture; whereas Scripture forbids the
eating of the blood of animals--a prohibition, by the way, which
seems to have been maintained longer in Russia than in any other
Christian country. The true ground of the opposition to this or that
article or habit is to be sought not in these theological arguments,
but in its novelty and late introduction. As regards his way of life
and his faith, his table and his devotions, he is minded to tread in
his forefathers' footsteps. A Raskolnik and a member of the orthodox
Church were drinking together, when the latter took a cigar. "Out on
the infernal poison!" cried the Raskolnik.--"What do you, think of brandy?"
asked his companion. "Oh! Wine" (_vino_, the Russian name for
brandy)--"wine was Noah's favorite drink."--"Very good!" said the
other: "now prove to me that Noah was not a smoker." These folk are
still in the patriarchal stage, and an appeal to antiquity is an end
of controversy, "Jeer not at the old," says one of their proverbs,
"for the old man knows old things and teaches justice."

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