ird day after Christmas, the priest gave in
our honour a grand Siberian ball, to which all the inhabitants of
the four villages were invited, and for which the most elaborate
preparations were made. A ball at the house of a priest on Sunday
night struck me as implying a good deal of inconsistency and I
hesitated about sanctioning so plain a violation of the fourth
commandment. Dodd, however, proved to me in the most conclusive manner
that, owing to difference in time, it was Saturday in America and not
Sunday at all; that our friends at that very moment were engaged in
business or pleasure and that our happening to be on the other side
of the world was no reason why we should not do what our antipodal
friends were doing at exactly the same time. I was conscious that
this reasoning was sophistical, but Dodd mixed me up so with his
"longitude," "Greenwich time," "Bowditch's _Navigator_," "Russian
Sundays" and "American Sundays," that I was hopelessly bewildered, and
could not have told for my life whether it was today in America or
yesterday, or when a Siberian Sunday did begin. I finally concluded
that as the Russians kept Saturday night, and began another week at
sunset on the Sabbath, a dance would perhaps be sufficiently innocent
for that evening. According to Siberian ideas of propriety it was just
the thing.

A partition was removed in our house, the floor made bare, the room
brilliantly illuminated with candles stuck against the wall with
melted grease, benches placed around three sides of the house for the
ladies, and about five o'clock the pleasure-seekers began to assemble.
Rather an early hour perhaps for a ball, but it seemed a very long
time after dark. The crowd which soon gathered numbered about forty,
the men being all dressed in heavy fur _kukhlankas,_ fur trousers,
and fur boots, and the ladies in thin white muslin and flowery calico
prints. The costumes of the respective sexes did not seem to harmonise
very well, one being light and airy enough for an African summer,
while the other seemed suitable for an arctic expedition in search of
Sir John Franklin. However, the general effect was very picturesque.
The orchestra which was to furnish the music consisted of two rudely
made violins, two _ballalaikas_ (bal-la-lai'-kahs) or triangular
native guitars with two strings each, and a huge comb prepared with
a piece of paper in a manner familiar to all boys. Feeling a little
curiosity to see how an affair of