of
luxury which only nobles and rich merchants could afford, and ordinary
comeliness was a very secondary consideration--so secondary as to be
left almost entirely out of sight. This was likewise the opinion of
Ivan's wife. She had never been comely herself, she used to say, but she
had been a good wife to her husband. He had never complained about her
want of good looks, and had never gone after those who were considered
good-looking. In expressing this opinion she always first bent forward,
then drew herself up to her full length, and finally gave a little jerky
nod sideways, so as to clench the statement. Then Ivan's bright eye
would twinkle more brightly than usual, and he would ask her how she
knew that--reminding her that he was not always at home. This was Ivan's
stereotyped mode of teasing his wife, and every time he employed it he
was called an "old scarecrow," or something of the kind.

Perhaps, however, Ivan's jocular remark had more significance in it than
his wife cared to admit, for during the first years of their married
life they had seen very little of each other. A few days after the
marriage, when according to our notions the honeymoon should be at its
height, Ivan had gone to Moscow for several months, leaving his young
bride to the care of his father and mother. The young bride did not
consider this an extraordinary hardship, for many of her companions had
been treated in the same way, and according to public opinion in that
part of the country there was nothing abnormal in the proceeding.
Indeed, it may be said in general that there is very little romance
or sentimentality about Russian peasant marriages. In this as in other
respects the Russian peasantry are, as a class, extremely practical and
matter-of-fact in their conceptions and habits, and are not at all prone
to indulge in sublime, ethereal sentiments of any kind. They have little
or nothing of what may be termed the Hermann and Dorothea element
in their composition, and consequently know very little about those
sentimental, romantic ideas which we habitually associate with the
preliminary steps to matrimony. Even those authors who endeavour to
idealise peasant life have rarely ventured to make their story turn on
a sentimental love affair. Certainly in real life the wife is taken as a
helpmate, or in plain language a worker, rather than as a companion, and
the mother-in-law leaves her very little time to indulge in fruitless
dreaming.

A