easantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied."

It is upon coming to write even briefly and in an impressionist kind of
way upon a class which forms the huge majority of Russia's population
that the vastness of her empire and the different conditions under which
her people live begin to be in some small degree apparent. It is no
wonder that thoroughly well-informed and experienced writers, who have
lived long and travelled far in the country and who are evidently quite
to be trusted, should yet write so differently.

[Illustration: _A Village Scene._]

One will write as if the Russian peasant was only a degree better in his
intelligence than the animals which share his filthy hovel, and no less
brutish in temperament and nature. Fearsome pictures are drawn in some
books I have read of the almost impossible conditions and indescribable
filth in which men, women, and children, fowls, pigs, horses, cattle,
and dogs herd together in a stifling atmosphere and sickening stench,
where to enter is out of the question unless one is to be covered with
vermin and contract some illness. All this may be true to the writer's
own experiences, and he can only write and describe things as he has
found them; but I too will do the same.

It is worth while to remember from the first that the lives of the
peasant population of Russia must be as different in summer and winter
as tropical heat is from arctic cold. In the winter all _must_ crowd in
together when the household is poor if life has to be preserved and
defended against that appalling cold, when the one condition of the
survival is warmth, or even heat. All outdoor occupation ceases, of
course, with the one exception, it may be, of cutting, stacking, and
carting wood. A peasant population, with a not very advanced
civilization as yet, and little education--only twenty per cent. of the
whole population can read and write--must, like the animal world,
hibernate, come as it were to a standstill, rest physically and
mentally, and prepare for the unremitting activities of the summer.

I remember once when staying in an inn at the top of an Alpine pass
being impressed with the extraordinary energy and vivacity of the head
waitress. She was simply untiring, always in good spirits, always at
hand when wanted, unfailing in her attentions; however late a guest was
up she was moving cheerfully about, however early one was down she was
down before him hel