were blessed by their parents on their marriage, and any others which
they might have acquired, with possibly a branch of their Palm Sunday
pussy willows. A narrow room, monopolizing one of the windows, opened
from the living-room, beyond the oven, and served as pantry and kitchen.
A wooden trough, like a chopping-tray, was the washtub. The ironing or
mangling apparatus consisted of a rolling-pin, round which the article
of clothing was wrapped, and a curved paddle of hard wood, its
under-surface carved in pretty geometrical designs, with which it was
smoothed. This paddle served also to beat the clothes upon the stones,
when the washing was done in the river, in warm weather. A few wooden
bowls and spoons and earthen pots, including the variety which keeps
milk cool without either ice or running water, completed the household
utensils. Add a loom for weaving crash, the blue linen for the men's
trousers and the women's scant _sarafans_, and the white for their
aprons and chemises, and the cloth for coats, and the furnishing was
done.

The village granaries, with wattled walls and thatched roofs, are placed
apart, to lessen the danger from fire, near the large gates which give
admission to the village, through the wattled fence encircling it. These
gates, closed at night, are guarded by peasants who are unfitted,
through age or infirmities, for field labor. They employ themselves, in
their tiny wattled lean-tos, in plaiting the low shoes of linden bark,
used by both men and women, in making carts, or in some other simple
occupation. An axe--a whole armory of tools to the Russian peasant--
and an iron bolt are their sole implements.

We were cut off from intercourse with one of the neighboring estates by
the appearance there of the Siberian cattle plague, and were told that,
should it spread, arrivals from that quarter would be admitted to the
village only after passing through the disinfecting fumes of dung fires
burning at the gate.

Incendiaries and horse-thieves are the scourges of village life in
Russia. Such men can be banished to Siberia, by a vote of the Commune of
peasant householders. But as the Commune must bear the expense, and
people are afraid that the evil-doer will revenge himself by setting the
village on fire, if he discovers their plan, this privilege is exercised
with comparative rarity. The man who steals the peasant's horse condemns
him to starvation and ruin. Such a man there had been in our frien