_strada_ (suffering). Nearly all the summer work must be done together,
and, with their primitive appliances, suffering is the inevitable
result. They set out for the fields before sunrise, and return at
indefinite hours, but never early. Sometimes they pass the night in the
fields, under the shelter of a cart or of the grain sheaves. Men and
women work equally and unweariedly; and the women receive less pay than
the men for the same work, in the bad old fashion which is, unhappily,
not yet unknown in other lands and ranks of life. Eating and sleeping
join the number of the lost arts. The poor, brave people have but little
to eat in any case,--not enough to induce thought or anxiety to return
home. Last year's store has, in all probability, been nearly exhausted.
They must wait until the grain which they are reaping has been threshed
and ground before they can have their fill.

One holiday they observe, partly perforce, partly from choice, though it
is not one of the great festivals of the church calendar,--St. Ilya's
Day. St. Ilya is the Christian representative of the old Slavic god of
Thunder, Perun, as well as of the prophet Elijah. On or near his name
day, July 20 (Old Style), he never fails to dash wildly athwart the sky
in his chariot of fire; in other words, there is a terrific
thunderstorm. Such is the belief; such, in my experience, is the fact,
also.

Sundays were kept so far as the field work permitted, and the church was
thronged. Even our choir of ill-trained village youths and boys could
not spoil the ever-exquisite music. There were usually two or three
women who expected to become mothers before the week was out, and who
came forward to take the communion for the last time, after the newborn
babes and tiny children had been taken up by their mothers to receive
it.

Every one was quiet, clean, reverent. The cloth-mill girls had
discovered our (happily) obsolete magenta, and made themselves hideous
in flounced petticoats and sacks of that dreadful hue. The sister of our
Lukerya, the maid who had been assigned to us, thus attired, felt
distinctly superior. Lukerya would have had the bad taste to follow her
example, had she been permitted, so fast are evil fashions destroying
the beautiful and practical national costumes. Little did Lukerya dream
that she, in her peasant garb, with her thick nose and rather unformed
face, was a hundred times prettier than Annushka, with far finer
features and "fashionab