nt women in clean cotton gowns elbowed members of
the Court in silks; fat merchants, with well-greased, odorous hair and
boots, in hot, long-skirted blue cloth coats, stood side by side with
shabby invalid soldiers or smartly uniformed officers. Tiny peasant
children seated themselves on the floor when their little legs refused
further service, and imitated diligently all the low reverences and
signs of the cross made by their parents. Those of larger growth stood
with the preternatural repose and dignity of the adult Russian peasant,
and followed the liturgy independently. One little girl of seven,
self-possessed and serenely unconscious, slipped through the crowd to
the large image of the Virgin near the altar, grasped the breast-high
guard-rail, and kissed the holy picture in the middle of her agile
vault. When some members of the imperial family arrived, the crowd
pressed together still more closely, to make a narrow passage to the
small space reserved for them opposite the choir. After the ever
beautiful liturgy, finely expressed special prayers were offered, during
which the priest also carried flowers.

Another church service on the following day--a day when public offices
are closed and business ceases--completed the religious duties of the
festival. In the afternoon, the whole town began to flock to the
Imperial Park surrounding the Old Palace,--people of the upper circles
included,--the latter from motives of curiosity, of course. Three
bands of the Guards furnished the music. On the great terrace, shaded by
oak-trees hardly beyond the bronze-pink stage of their leafage, played
the hussars. Near the breakfast gallery, with its bronze statues of
Hercules and Flora, which the common people call "Adam and Eve" (the
Ariadne on Naxos, in a neighboring grotto, is popularly believed to be
"a girl of seven years, who was bitten by a snake while roaming the
Russian primeval forest, and died"), were the cuirassiers. The
_stryelki_ (sharpshooters) were stationed near the lake, the central
point for meetings and promenades during the lovely "white nights;"
where boats of every sort, from a sail-boat or a Chinese sampan to an
Astrakhan fishing-boat or a snowshoe skiff, are furnished gratis all
summer, with a sailor of the Guard to row them, if desired. Round and
round and round, unweariedly, paced the girls. They were bareheaded and
in slippered feet, as usual, but had abandoned the favorite ulster,
which too often accompa