o take
the sense of the meeting. On such occasions he may stand back a little
from the crowd and say, "Well, orthodox, have you decided so?" and the
crowd will probably shout, "Ladno! ladno!" that is to say, "Agreed!
agreed!"

Communal measures are generally carried in this way by acclamation; but
it sometimes happens that there is such a diversity of opinion that it
is difficult to tell which of the two parties has a majority. In this
case the Elder requests the one party to stand to the right and the
other to the left. The two groups are then counted, and the minority
submits, for no one ever dreams of opposing openly the will of the Mir.

During the reign of Nicholas I. an attempt was made to regulate by the
written law the procedure of Village Assemblies amongst the peasantry
of the State Domains, and among other reforms voting by ballot was
introduced; but the new custom never struck root. The peasants did
not regard with favour the new method, and persisted in calling it,
contemptuously, "playing at marbles." Here, again, we have one of those
wonderful and apparently anomalous facts which frequently meet the
student of Russian affairs: the Emperor Nicholas I., the incarnation of
autocracy and the champion of the Reactionary Party throughout Europe,
forces the ballot-box, the ingenious invention of extreme radicals, on
several millions of his subjects!

In the northern provinces, where a considerable portion of the male
population is always absent, the Village Assembly generally includes a
good many female members. These are women who, on account of the
absence or death of their husbands, happen to be for the moment Heads of
Households. As such they are entitled to be present, and their right to
take part in the deliberations is never called in question. In matters
affecting the general welfare of the Commune they rarely speak, and if
they do venture to enounce an opinion on such occasions they have little
chance of commanding attention, for the Russian peasantry are as yet
little imbued with the modern doctrines of female equality, and express
their opinion of female intelligence by the homely adage: "The hair is
long, but the mind is short." According to one proverb, seven women
have collectively but one soul, and, according to a still more ungallant
popular saying, women have no souls at all, but only a vapour. Woman,
therefore, as woman, is not deserving of much consideration, but a
particular woman, as Head