"Is a shining coin of gold."

"A thousand ducats of yellow gold,
A thousand, if there be one;
O master! the wonderful sight behold
In the radiant light of the sun."
The peasant lifted his tear-dimmed eyes
To the shining sheaf o'erhead;
"'Tis a gift from the loving hand of God,
And a miracle wrought," he said.
"For the Father of all, who reigneth o'er,
His children will ne'er forsake,
When they feed the birds from their scanty store,
For the blessed Christ-child's sake."

"The fields of kindness bear golden grain,"
Is a proverb true and tried;
Then scatter thine alms, with lavish hand,
To the waiting poor outside;
And remember the birds, and the song they sang,
When the year rolls round again:
"The Christ-child came on earth to bless
The birds as well as men."

--_Mrs. A.M. Tomlinson._

CHAPTER V.

[Illustration]

YULE-TIDE IN RUSSIA

"Light--in the heavens high,
And snow flashing bright;--
Sledge in the distance
In its lonely flight."

--_Shenshin._

In this enormous kingdom which covers one-sixth of the land surface of
the globe, and where upwards of fifteen million human beings
celebrate in various ways the great winter festival of Yule-tide, it
will be found that the people retain many traditions of the
sun-worshipers, which shows that the season was once observed in honor
of the renewal of the sun's power. With them, however, the sun was
supposed to be a _female_, who, when the days began to lengthen,
entered her sledge, adorned in her best robes and gorgeous head-dress,
and speeded her horses summerward.

Russian myths indicate a connection with the Aryans in the remote
past; their songs of the wheel, the log, the pig or boar, all show a
common origin in centuries long gone by.

Russia to most minds is a country of cold, darkness, oppression, and
suffering, and this is true to an altogether lamentable extent. But it
is also a country of warmth, brightness, freedom, and happiness. In
fact, there are so many phases of life among its vast population that
descriptions of Russian life result about as satisfactorily as did
those of Saxe's "Three blind men of Hindustan," who went to see the
elephant. Each traveler describes the part he sees, just as each blind
man described the part he felt, and each believes he knows the whole.

There are certain general features of th