Russian Rambles Part 19

The milking-pails are of tin or of oak wood, and, like the oaken k.u.mys churn, have been boiled in strong lye to extract the acid, and well dried and aired. In addition to the daily was.h.i.+ng they are well smoked with rotten birch trunks, in order to destroy all particles of k.u.mys which may cling to them.

The next step after the milk is obtained is to ferment it. The ferment, or yeast, is obtained by collecting the sediment of the k.u.mys which has already germinated, and was.h.i.+ng it off thoroughly with milk or water. It is then pressed and dried in the sun, the result being a reddish-brown ma.s.s composed of the micro-organisms contained in k.u.mys ferment, casein, and a small quant.i.ty of fat. Twenty grains of this yeast are ground up in a small quant.i.ty of freshly drawn milk in a clean porcelain mortar, and shaken in a quart bottle with one pound of fresh milk,--all mare's milk, naturally,--after which it is lightly corked with a bit of wadding and set away in a temperature of +22 degrees to +26 degrees Reaumur. In about twenty-four hours small bubbles begin to make their appearance, accompanied by the sour odor of k.u.mys. The bottle is then shaken from time to time, and the air admitted, until it is in a condition to be used as a ferment with fresh milk. Sometimes this ferment fails, in which case an artificial ferment is prepared.

One pint of ferment is allowed to every five pints of fresh milk in the cask or churn, and the whole is beaten with the dasher for about an hour, when it is set aside in a temperature of +18 degrees to +26 degrees Reaumur. When, at the expiration of a few hours, the milk turns sour and begins to ferment vigorously, it is beaten again several times for about fifteen minutes, with intervals, with a dasher which terminates in a perforated disk, after which it is left undisturbed for several hours at the same temperature as before, until the liquid begins to exhale an odor of spirits of wine. The delicate offices of our Tatar beauty, the taster, come in at this point to determine how much freshly drawn and cooled milk is to be added in order rightly to temper the sour taste. After standing over night it is ready for use, and is put up in seltzer or champagne bottles, and kept at a temperature of +8 degrees to +12 degrees Reaumur. At a lower temperature vinegar fermentation sets in and spoils the k.u.mys, while too high a temperature brings about equally disastrous results of another sort. k.u.mys has a different chemical composition according to whether it has stood only a few hours or several days, and consequently its action differs, also.

The weak k.u.mys is ready for use at the expiration of six hours after fermentation has been excited in the mare's milk, and must be put into the strongest bottles. The medium quality is obtained after from twelve to fourteen hours of fermentation, and, if well corked, will keep two or three days in a cool atmosphere. The third and strongest quality is the product of diligent daily churning during twenty-four to thirty-six hours, and is thinner than the medium quality, even watery. When bottled, it soon separates into three layers, with the fatty particles on top, the whey in the middle, and the casein at the bottom. Strong k.u.mys can be kept for a very long time, but it must be shaken before it is used. It is very easy for a person unaccustomed to k.u.mys to become intoxicated on this strong quality of milk wine.

The nouris.h.i.+ng effects of this spirituous beverage are argued, primarily, from the example of the Bashkirs and the Kirghiz, who are gaunt and worn by the hunger and cold of winter, but who blossom into rounded outlines and freshness of complexion three or four days after the spring pasturage for their mares begins. Some persons argue that life with these Bashkirs and an exclusive diet of k.u.mys will effect a speedy cure of their ailments. Hence they join one of the nomad hordes.

This course, however, not only deprives them of medical advice and the comforts to which they have been accustomed, but often gives them k.u.mys which is difficult to take because of its rank taste and smell, due to the lack of that scrupulous cleanliness which its proper preparation demands.

There are establishments near St. Petersburg and Moscow where k.u.mys may be obtained by those who do not care to make the long journey to the steppe; but the quality and chemical const.i.tuents are very different from those of the steppe k.u.mys, especially at the best period, May and June, when the plumegra.s.s and wild strawberry are at their finest development for food, and before the excessive heats of midsummer have begun.

As I have said, when people wish to make the cure on their own estates, the indispensable Tatar is sent for, and the requisite number of middle-aged mares, of which no work is required, are set aside for the purpose. But from all I have heard, I am inclined to think that benefit is rarely derived from these private cures, and this for several reasons. Not only is the k.u.mys said to be inferior when prepared in such small quant.i.ties, but no specialist or any other doctor can be constantly on hand to regulate the functional disorders which this diet frequently occasions. Moreover, the air of the steppe plays an important part in the cure. When a person drinks from five to fifteen or more bottles a day, and sometimes adds the proper amount of fatty, starchy, and saccharine elements, some other means than the stomach are indispensable for disposing of the refuse. As a matter of fact, in the hot, dry, even temperature of the steppe, where patients are encouraged to remain out-of-doors all day and drink slowly, they perspire k.u.mys.

When the system becomes thoroughly saturated with this food-drink, catarrh often makes its appearance, but disappears at the close of the cure. Colic, constipation, diarrhoea, nose-bleed, and bleeding from the lungs are also present at times, as well as sleeplessness, toothache, and other disorders. The effects of k.u.mys are considered of especial value in cases of weak lungs, anaemia, general debility caused by any wasting illness, ailments of the digestive organs, and scurvy, for which it is taken by many naval officers.

In short, although it is not a cure for all earthly ills, it is of value in many which proceed from imperfect nutrition producing exhaustion of the patient. There are some conditions of the lungs in which it cannot be used, as well as in organic diseases of the brain and heart, epilepsy, certain disorders of the liver, and when gallstones are present. It is drunk at the temperature of the air which surrounds the patient, but must be warmed with hot water, not in the sun, and sipped slowly, with pauses, not drunk down in haste; and generally exercise must be taken. Turn where we would in those k.u.mys establishments, we encountered a patient engaged in a.s.siduous promenading, with a bottle of k.u.mys suspended from his arm and a gla.s.sful in his hand.

Coffee, chocolate, and wine are some of the luxuries which must be renounced during a k.u.mys cure, and though black tea (occasionally with lemon) is allowed, no milk or cream can be permitted to contend with the action of the mare's milk unless by express permission of the physician.

"Cream k.u.mys," which is advertised as a delicacy in America, is a contradiction in terms, it will be seen, as it is made of cow's milk, and cream would be contrary to the nature of k.u.mys, even if the mare's milk produced anything which could rightly pa.s.s as such. Fish and fruits are also forbidden, with the exception of _klubniki_, which accord well with k.u.mys. _Klubnika_ is a berry similar to the strawberry in appearance, but with an entirely different taste. Patients who violate these dietary rules are said to suffer for it,--in which case there must have been a good deal of agony inside the tall fence of our establishment, judging by the thriving trade in fruits driven by the old women, who did not confine themselves to the outside of the gate, as the rules required, but slipped past the porter and guardians to the house itself.

We found the k.u.mys a very agreeable beverage, and could readily perceive that the patients might come to have a very strong taste for it. We even sympathized with the thorough-going patient of whom we were told that he set oft regularly every morning to lose himself for the day on the steppe, armed with an umbrella against possible cooling breezes, and with a basket containing sixteen bottles of k.u.mys, his allowance of food and medicine until sundown. The programme consisted of a walk in the sun, a drink, a walk, a drink, with umbrella interludes, until darkness drove him home to bed and to his base of supplies.

We did not remain long enough, or drink enough k.u.mys, to observe any particular effects on our own persons. As I have said, we ate in town, chiefly, after that breakfast of k.u.mys-mare beefsteak and potatoes of the size and consistency of bullets. During our food and shopping excursions we found that Samara was a decidedly wide-awake and driving town, though it seemed to possess no specialties in buildings, curiosities, or manufactures, and the statue to Alexander II., which now adorns one of its squares, was then swathed in canvas awaiting its unveiling. It is merely a sort of grand junction, through which other cities and provinces sift their products. In k.u.mys alone does Samara possess a characteristic unique throughout Russia. Consequently, it is for k.u.mys that mult.i.tudes of Russians flock thither every spring.

The soil of the steppe, on which grows the nutritious plume-gra.s.s requisite for the food of the k.u.mys mares, is very fertile, and immense crops of rye, wheat, buckwheat, oats, and so forth are raised whenever the rainfall is not too meagre. Unfortunately, the rainfall is frequently insufficient, and the province of Samara often comes to the attention of Russia, or even of the world, as during the dearth in 1891, because of scarcity of food, or even famine, which is no novelty in the government. In a district where the average of rain is twenty inches, there is not much margin of superfluity which can be spared without peril. Wheat grows here better than in the government just north of it, and many peasants are attracted from the "black-bread governments" to Samara by the white bread which is there given them as rations when they hire out for the harvest.

But such a singular combination of conditions prevails there, as elsewhere in Russia, that an abundant harvest is often more disastrous than a scanty harvest. The price of grain falls so low that the cost of gathering it is greater than the market value, and it is often left to fall unreaped in the fields. When the price falls very low, complaints arise that there is no place to send it, since, when the ruble stands high, as it invariably does at the prospect of large crops, the demand from abroad is stopped. The result is that those people who are situated near a market sell as much grain and leave as little at home as possible in order to meet their bills. The price rises; the unreaped surplus of the districts lying far from markets cannot fill the ensuing demand. The income from estates falls, and the discouraged owners who have nothing to live on resolve to plant a smaller area thereafter. Estates are mortgaged and sold by auction; prices are very low, and often there are no buyers.

The immediate result of an over-abundant harvest in far-off Samara is that the peasants who have come hither to earn a little money at reaping return home penniless, or worse, to their suffering families. Some of them are legitimate seekers after work; that is to say, they have no grain of their own to attend to, or they reap their own a little earlier or a little later, and go away to earn the ready money to meet taxes and indispensable expenditures of the household, such as oil, and so on.

"_Pri khlyeby bez khlyeby_" is their own way of expressing the situation, which we may translate freely as "starvation in the midst of plenty." Thus the extremes of famine-harvest and the harvest which is an embarra.s.sment of riches are equally disastrous to the poor peasant.

Samara offers a curious ill.u.s.tration of several agricultural problems, and a proof of some peculiar paradoxes. The peasants of the neighboring governments, which are not populated to a particularly dense degree,-- twenty male inhabitants to a square verst (two thirds of a mile), and not all engaged in agriculture,--have long been accustomed to look upon Samara as a sort of promised land. They still regard it in that light, and endeavor to emigrate thither, for the sake of obtaining grants of state land, and certain immunities and privileges which are accorded to colonists. This action is the result of the paradox that overproduction exists hand in hand with too small a parcel of land for each peasant!

Volumes have been written, and more volumes might still be written, on this subject. But I must content myself here with saying that I believe there is no province which ill.u.s.trates so thoroughly all the distressing features of these manifold and complicated problems of colonization, of permanent settlements, with the old evils of both landlords and peasants cropping up afresh, abundant and scanty harvests equally a.s.sociated with famine, and all the troubles which follow in their train, as Samara.

Hence it is that I can never recall the k.u.mys, which is so intimately connected with the name of Samara, without also recalling the famine, which is, alas, almost as intimately bound up with it.

XII.

MOSCOW MEMORIES.

St. Petersburg is handsome, grand, impressive. Moscow is beautiful, poetic, sympathetic, and pervaded by an atmosphere of ancient Russia, which is indescribable, though it penetrates to the marrow of one's bones if he tarry long within her walls. Emperor Peter's new capital will not bear comparison, for originality, individuality, and picturesqueness with Tzar Peter's Heart of Holy Russia, to which the heart of one who loves her must, perforce, often return with longing in after days,--"white-stoned golden-domed, Holy Mother Moscow."

But a volume of guide-book details, highly colored impressionist sketches, and dainty miniature painting combined would not do justice to Moscow. Therefore, I shall confine myself to a few random reminiscences which may serve to ill.u.s.trate habits or traits in the character of the city or the people.

"'Eography," says Mrs. b.o.o.by, in one of the famous old Russian comedies which we were so fortunate as to witness on the Moscow stage: "Ah! good heavens! And what are cabmen for, then? That's their business. It's not a genteel branch of learning. A gentleman merely says: 'Take me to such or such a place,' and the cabman drives him wherever he pleases."

Nowadays, it is advisable to be vulgar and know the geography of Moscow, if one is really enjoying it independently. It is a trifle less complicated than the geography of the Balkan Princ.i.p.alities, and, unlike that of the Balkan Princ.i.p.alities, it has its humorous side, which affords alleviation. The Moscow cabby has now, as in the time of Mrs.

b.o.o.by, the reputation of being a very hard customer to deal with. He is not often so ingenuous, even in appearance, as the man who drove close to the sidewalk and entreated our custom by warbling, sweetly: "We must have work or we can't have bread." He is only to be dreaded, however, if one be genteelly ignorant, after Mrs. b.o.o.by's plan. I cannot say that I ever had any difficulty in finding any place I wanted, either with the aid (or hindrance) of an _izvostchik_, or on foot, in Moscow or other Russian towns. But for this and other similar reasons I acquired a nickname among the natives,--_molodyetz_, that is to say, a das.h.i.+ng, enterprising young fellow, the feminine form of the word being nonexistent. A Russian view of the matter is amusing, however.

"I never saw such a town in which to hunt up any one," said a St.

Petersburg man in Moscow to me. "They give you an address: 'Such and such a street, such a house.' For instance, 'Green Street, house of Mr.

Black.' You go. First you get hold of the street in general, and discover that the special name applies only to one block or so, two or three versts away from the part where you chance to have landed. Moscow is even more a city of magnificent distances, you know, than St.

Petersburg. Next you discover that there is no 'house of Mr. Black.' Mr.

Black died, respected and beloved, G.o.d be with him! a hundred years ago or less, and the house has changed owners three times since. So far, it is tolerably plain sailing. Then it appears that the house you are in search of is not in the street at all, but tucked in behind it, on a parallel lane, round several corners and elbows." (I will explain, in parenthesis, that the old system of designating a house by the name of the owner, which prevailed before the introduction of numbers, still survives extensively, even in Petersburg.)

"The next time you set out on a search expedition," continued my informant, after a cup of tea and a cigarette to subdue his emotions, "you insist on having the number of the house. Do you get it? Oh yes!

and with a safeguard added, 'Inquire of the laundress.' [This was a parody on, "Inquire of the Swiss," or "of the yard-porter."] You start off in high feather; number and guide are provided, only a fool could fail to find it, and you know that you are a person who is considered rather above the average in cleverness. But that is in Petersburg, and I may as well tell you at once that clever Petersburgers are fools compared to the Moscow men, in a good many points, such as driving a hard bargain. Well, suppose that the house you want is No. 29. You find No. 27 or No. 28, and begin to crow over your cleverness. But the next house on one side is No. 319, and the house on the other side is No. 15; the one opposite is No. 211, or No. 7, or something idiotic like that, and all because the city authorities permit people to retain the old district number of the house, to affix the new street number, or to post up both at their own sweet will! As you cannot find the laundress to question, under the circ.u.mstances, you interview every Swiss [hall-porter], yard-porter, policeman, and peasant for a verst round about; and all the satisfaction you get is, 'In whose house? That is Mr.

Green's and this is Mr. Bareboaster's, and yonder are Count Thingumbob's and Prince Whatyoumaycall's.' So you retreat once more, baffled."

Fortifying himself with more tea and cigarettes, the victim of Moscow went on:--

"But there is still another plan. [A groan.] The favorite way to give an address is, 'In the parish of Saint So-and-So.' It does n't pin you down to any special house, street, or number, which is, of course, a decided advantage when you are hunting for a needle in a haystack. And the Moscow saints and parishes have such names!" Here the narrator's feelings overcame him, and when I asked for some of the parochial t.i.tles he was too limp to reply. I had already noticed the peculiar designations of many churches, and had begun to suspect myself of stupidity or my cabman and other informants of malicious jesting. Now, however, I investigated the subject, and made a collection of specimens.

These extraordinary names are all derived--with one or two exceptions for which I can find no explanation--from the peculiarities of the soil in the parish, the former use to which the site of the church was put, or the avocations of the inhabitants of its neighborhood in the olden times, when most of the s.p.a.ce outside of the Kremlin and China Town was devoted to the purveyors and servants of the Tzars of Muscovy.

St. Nicholas, a very popular saint, heads the list, as usual. "St.

Nicholas on Chips" occupies the spot where a woodyard stood. "St.

Nicholas on the Well," "St. Nicholas Fine Chime," are easily understood.

"St. Nicholas White-Collar" is in the ancient district of the court laundresses. "St. Nicholas in the Bell-Ringers" is comprehensible; but "St. Nicholas the Blockhead" is so called because in this quarter dwelt the imperial hatmakers, who prepared "blockheads" for shaping their wares. "St. Nicholas Louse's Misery" is, probably, a corruption of two somewhat similar words meaning Muddy Hill. "St. Nicholas on Chickens'

Legs" belonged to the poulterers, and was so named because it was raised from the ground on supports resembling stilts. "St. Nicholas of the Interpreters" is in the quarter where the Court interpreters lived, and where the Tatar mosque now stands. Then we have: "The Life-Giving Trinity in the Mud," "St. John the Warrior" and "St. John the Theologian in the Armory," "The Birth of Christ on Broadswords," "St. George the Martyr in the Old Jails," "The Nine Holy Martyrs on Cabbage-Stalks," on the site of a former market garden, and the inexplicable "Church of the Resurrection on the Marmot," besides many others, some of which, I was told, bear quite unrepeatable names, probably perverted, like the last and like "St. Nicholas Louse's Misery," from words having originally some slight resemblance in sound, but which are now unrecognizable.

Great stress is laid, in hasty books of travel, on the contrasts presented by the Moscow streets, the "palace of a prince standing by the side of the squalid log hut of a peasant," and so forth. That may, perhaps, have been true of the Moscow of twenty or thirty years ago. In very few quarters is there even a semblance of truth in that description at the present day. The cl.u.s.ters of Irish hovels in upper New York among the towering new buildings are much more picturesque and noticeable. The most characteristic part of the town, as to domestic architecture, the part to which the old statements are most applicable, lies between the two lines of boulevards, which are, in themselves, good places to study some Russian tastes. For example, a line of open horse-cars is run all winter on the outer boulevard, and appreciated. Another line has the centre of its cars inclosed, and uninclosed seats at the ends. The latter are the most popular, at the same price, and as for heating a street-car, the idea could never be got into a Russian brain. A certain section of the inner boulevard, which forms a sort of slightly elevated garden, is not only a favorite resort in summer, but is thronged every winter afternoon with people promenading or sitting under the snow-powdered trees in an arctic fairyland, while the mercury in the thermometer is at a very low ebb indeed. It is fas.h.i.+onable in Russia to grumble at the cold, but unfas.h.i.+onable to convert the grumbling into action. On the contrary, they really enjoy sitting for five hours at a stretch, in a temperature of 25 degrees below zero, to watch the fascinating horse races on the ice.

In the districts between the boulevards, one can get an idea of the town as it used to be. In this "Earth Town" typical streets are still to be found, but the chances are greatly against a traveler finding them. They are alleys in width and irregularity, paved with cobblestones which seem to have been selected for their angles, and with intermittent sidewalks consisting of narrow, carelessly joined flagstones. The front steps of the more pretentious houses must be skirted or mounted, the street must be crossed when the family carriage stands at the door, like the most characteristic streets in Nantucket. Some of the doorplates--which are large squares of tin fastened over the _porte cochere_, or on the gate of the courtyard--bear t.i.tles. Next door, perhaps, stands a log house, flush with the sidewalk, its moss calking plainly visible between the huge ribs, its steeply sloping roof rising, almost within reach, above a single story; and its serpent-mouthed eave-spouts ingeniously arranged to pour a stream of water over the vulgar pedestrian. The windows, on a level with the eyes of the pa.s.ser-by, are draped with cheap lace curtains. The broad expanse of cotton wadding between the double windows is decorated, in middle-cla.s.s taste, with tufts of dyed gra.s.ses, colored paper, and other execrable ornaments. Here, as everywhere else in Moscow, one can never get out of eye-shot of several churches; white with brilliant external frescoes, or the favorite mixture of crushed strawberry and white, all with green roofs and surmounted with domes of ever-varying and original forms and colors, crowned with golden crosses of elaborate and beautiful designs. Ask a resident, whether prince or peasant, "How many churches are there in 'Holy Moscow town'?" The answer invariably is, "Who knows? A forty of forties," which is the old equivalent, in the Epic Songs, of incalculable numbers. After a while one really begins to feel that sixteen hundred is not an exaggerated estimate.

Very few of the streets in any part of the town are broad; all of them seem like lanes to a Petersburger, and "they are forever going up and down," as a Petersburg cabman described the Moscow hills to me, in serious disapproval. He had found the ground too excitingly uneven and the inhabitants too evenly dull to live with for more than a fortnight, he confessed to me. Many of the old mansions in the centre of the town have been converted into shops, offices, and lodgings; and huge, modern business buildings have taken the places formerly occupied, I presume, by the picturesque "hovels" of the travelers' tales.

One of the most interesting places in the White Town to me was the huge foundling asylum, established by Katherine II., immediately after her accession to the throne. There are other inst.i.tutions connected with it, such as a school for orphan girls. But the hospital for the babies is the centre of interest. There are about six hundred nurses always on hand. Very few of them have more than one nursling to care for, and a number of babies who enter life below par, so to speak, are accommodated with incubators. The nurses stand in battalions in the various large halls, all clad alike, with the exception of the woolen _kokoshnik_,-- the coronet-shaped headdress with its cap for the hair,--which is of a different color in each room. It requires cords of "cartwheels"--the big round loaves of black bread--to feed this army of nurses. If they are not fed on their ordinary peasant food, cabbage soup and sour black bread, they fall ill and the babies suffer, as no bottles are used.

The fact that the babies are washed every day was impressed on my mind by the behavior of the little creatures while undergoing the operation.

They protested a little in gentle squeaks when the water touched them, but quieted down instantly when they were wiped. It is my belief that Russian children never cry except during their bath. I heard no infantile wailing except in this asylum, and very little there. Many Russian mothers of all ranks still tie up their babies tightly in swaddling clothes, on the old-fas.h.i.+oned theory that it makes their limbs straight. But these foundlings are not swaddled. After its bath, the baby is laid on a fresh, warm, linen cloth, which is then wrapped around it in a particular manner, so that it is securely fastened without the use of a single pin. Two other cloths, similarly wrapped, complete the simple, comfortable toilet. This and another Russian habit, that of allowing a baby to kick about in its crib clad only in its birthday suit, I commend to the consideration of American mothers.

The last thing in the asylum which is shown to visitors is the manner in which the babies are received, washed, weighed, and numbered. It was early in December when I was there, but the numbers on the ivory disks suspended from the new arrivals' necks were a good many hundred above seventeen thousand. As they begin each year with No. 1, I think the whole number of foundlings for that particular year must have been between eighteen and nineteen thousand. The children are put out to board, after a short stay at the asylum, in peasant families, which receive a small sum per month for taking care of them. When the boys grow up they count as members of the family in a question of army service, and the sons of the family can escape their turn, I was told, if matters are rightly managed. The girls become uniformed servants in the government inst.i.tutions for the education of girls of the higher cla.s.ses, or marry peasants.

The most famous of the gates which lead from the White Town through the white, machicolated walls into China Town* is the Iversky, or gate of the Iberian Virgin. The gate has two entrances, and between these tower-crowned openings stands a chapel of malachite and marble, gilded bronze and painting. The Iversky Virgin who inhabits the chapel, though "wonder-working," is only a copy of one in the monastery on Mount Athos.

She was brought to Russia in 1666, and this particular chapel was built for her by Katherine II. Her garment and crown of gold weigh between twenty-seven and twenty-eight pounds, and are studded with splendid jewels. But the Virgin whom one sees in the chapel is not even this copy, but a copy of the copy. The original Virgin, as we may call the first copy for convenience, is in such great demand for visits to convents and monasteries, to private houses and the shops of wealthy and devout merchants, that she is never at home from early morn till late at night, and the second copy represents her to the thousands of prayerful people of all cla.s.ses, literally, who stop to place a candle or utter a pet.i.tion. The original Virgin travels about the town, meanwhile, in a blue coach adorned with her special device, like a coat of arms, and drawn by six horses; and the persons whom she honors with a visit offer liberal gifts. The heads of her coachman, postilions, and footman are supposed to be respectfully bared in all weathers, but when it is very cold these men wind woolen shawls, of the nondescript, dirt color, which characterizes the hair of most peasants, adroitly round their heads, allowing the fringe to hang and simulate long locks. The large image of the Virgin, in its ma.s.sive frame, occupies the seat of honor. A priest and a deacon, clad in crimson velvet and gold vestments, their heads unprotected, even in the most severe weather, by anything but their own thick hair, sit respectfully with their backs to the horses. When the Virgin drives along, pa.s.sers-by pause, salute, and cross themselves.

Evidently, under these circ.u.mstances, it is difficult for a foreigner to get a view of the original Virgin. We were fortunate, however. Our first invitation in Moscow was from the Abbess of an important convent to be present at one of the services which I have mentioned,--a sort of invocation of the Virgin's blessing,--in her cell, and at the conclusion of the service we were asked if we would not like to "salute the Virgin" and take a sip of the holy water "for health." Of course we did both, as courtesy demanded. Some time after that, as we were driving along the princ.i.p.al street of China Town, I saw an imposing equipage approaching, and remarked, "Here comes the Iversky Virgin."

* Ancient Moscow, lying in a walled semicircle just outside the walls of the Kremlin. All the trading was done on the "Red Square," where the Gostinny Dvor now stands, and all Oriental merchants were known by the common designation of "Chinese." At the present day "Chinese" has been replaced by "German," to designate foreigners in general.

"Excuse me, madam," said my cabman,--I had not addressed him, but as I had spoken involuntarily in Russian he thought I had,--"it is not the Virgin, it is only the Saviour. Don't you see that there are only four horses?"

"Very true; and St. Sergius drives with three, and St. Pantaleimon with two,--do they not? Tell me, which of them all would you ask to visit you, if you wished a blessing?"

"St. Pantaleimon is a good, all-round saint, who helps well in most cases," he replied thoughtfully. This seemed a good opportunity to get a popular explanation of a point which had puzzled me.

"Which," I asked, "is the real miraculous Iversky Virgin?--the one in the chapel, the one who rides in the carriage, or the original on Mount Athos?"