d elsewhere practices the mutilation of masculine believers,
and steals children for adoption into their families. Against all
these fanatics the government exercises its despotic power.

The peasants are generally very devout, and keep all the days of the
church with becoming reverence. There is a story that a moujik waylaid
and killed a traveler, and while rifling the pockets of his victim
found a cake containing meat. Though very hungry he would not eat the
cake, because meat was forbidden in the fast then in force.

[Illustration: RUSSIAN PRIEST.]

The government is endeavoring to diminish the power and influence of
the priests, and the number of saints' days, when men must abstain
from, labor. Heretofore the priests have enjoyed the privilege of
recruiting the clergy from their own members. When a village priest
died his office fell to his son, and if he had no male heir the
revenues went to his eldest daughter until some priest married her and
took charge of the parish. By special order of the emperor any
vacancy is hereafter to be filled by the most deserving candidate.

It is said that during the Crimean war the governor of Moscow notified
the pastor of the English church in that city that the prayer for the
success of Her Brittanic Majesty's armies must be omitted. The pastor
appealed to the emperor, who replied that prayers of regular form
might continue to be read, no matter what they contained. The governor
made no further interference.

About three o'clock in the afternoon of the second day from Kazan, the
yemshick pointed out the spires of Nijne Novgorod, on the southern
bank of the Volga. A fleet of steamers, barges, and soudnas lay sealed
in the ice along the shore, waiting for the moving of the waters. The
road to the north bank was marked with pine boughs, that fringed the
moving line of sleighs and sledges. We threaded our way among the
stationary vessels, and at length came before the town. A friend had
commended me to the Hotel de la Poste, and I ordered the yemshick to
drive there. With an eye to his pocket the fellow carried me to an
establishment of the same name on the other side of the Oka. I had a
suspicion that I was being swindled, but as they blandly informed me
that no other hotel with that title existed, I alighted and ordered my
baggage up.

This was the end of my sleigh ride. I had passed two hundred and nine
stations, with as many changes of horses and drivers. Nearly seven
hund