APPENDIX 133 



night eighteen hours of constant labour. During 

 this time I can braid, as an expert braider, twenty 

 fathoms of straw, or 140 feet. The price paid for this 

 quantity is nine kopeks, or four and one half cents. 

 Many braiders cannot do more than ten or fifteen 

 fathoms in twenty-four hours, reducing their earn- 

 ings to two or three cents daily. ' There she marches, 

 the load on her back, calculating probably in her mind 

 how much flour she can buy from the proceeds of 

 her labour for the children at home! 



Here is the soup kitchen; will you please descend? 

 We enter an old, dilapidated building. It consists 

 of three divisions (I came near saying rooms) ; in the 

 first one, two women are engaged preparing the soup 

 for the day; in the other two were assembled, closely 

 huddled together, some 200 of the most wretched 

 looking beings a vivid imagination can picture. It 

 would require the pen of a Dickens, a Dumas, a Hugo, 

 to do justice to the scene ; even they would fall short of 

 presenting the life we saw. There was the woman with 

 wrinkled face, past three score and ten, holding in 

 her trembling hand the stone jug for her share of the 

 soup ; alongside of her a little girl of twelve, with sweet 

 face, paled by suffering and from want of sufficient 

 nourishment; close by her the mother, holding in her 

 arms the babe of a few months, with its poor, wan 

 cheeks, trying to keep it quiet; the child is evidently 

 hungry. There is the man of stalwart frame, but 

 shrunk to a mere skeleton. There are the boys and 



