ny of them) is to submit and forbear. With a
little schooling our people ought, to a greater extent than at present, to
be able to co-operate in large numbers in firms and corporations where the
members and stockholders shall themselves do all the work and receive all
the profits, and so avoid the two extremes of making profits for
capitalists and paying their earnings to officers and directors.

AUSTIN BIERBOWER.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

NOTES FROM MOSCOW.

JUNE 1 (May 20, Russian style), 1877.

This diversity in the matter of dates is unpleasantly perplexing at times.
With every sensation of interest and pleasure I set myself about the task
of describing, I must at once begin to reckon. Twelve days' difference!
Yes, I have already grasped that fact, but then in which direction must the
deduction begin?--backward or forward? Such is the question that instantly
arises, and if we are at the fag end of one month and the beginning of
another, the amount of reckoning involved seems somewhat inadequate to the
occasion. The Russian clergy, it is said--those, at any rate, of the lowest
class, designated as "white priests," many of them peasants by birth and
marvellously illiterate--have ever been averse to any change being made in
the calendar, in order that their seasons of fasting and feasting may not
be disturbed.

_Apropos_ of priests and priesthood. Whilst quietly at work yesterday
morning my attention was suddenly called off, first by a hurried
exclamation, and then the inharmonious--ah, how utterly
discordant!--ding-donging of church-bells. "Listen!" fell upon my ear: "one
of the secular priests belonging to St. Gregory's church died two days ago,
and is to be buried this morning. They are still saying masses over his
body, the church is packed, and it is a sight such as you may possibly not
have an opportunity of again witnessing." In half an hour we were within
the church-walls. The place was already thronged, and the air close almost
to suffocation. Never can one forget that peculiar heat, the sort of
indescribable vapor, that arose, and the perspiration that streamed down
the faces of all present, each of whom, from the oldest to the youngest,
carried a lighted candle. After many vigorous efforts, and occasional
collisions with the flaring tapers, the wax or tallow dropping at intervals
upon our cloaks, we found ourselves at last in the centre of the edifice,
immediately behind a dozen or more officiating