POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



427 



fact that all earlier determinations give less 

 than 18,000 feet for the height of Mount St. 

 Elias, Prof. Heilprin intimates that "geog- 

 raphers will probably consider the question 

 of absolute height as still an open one. 

 That the mountain closely approximates the 

 giants of the Mexican plateau is almost cer- 

 tain, but it seems equally probable that its 

 true position is after, aud not before, the 

 Peak of Orizaba." 



Bulgarian House Communities. The 



Bulgarian house communities, according to 

 Mr. J. E. Gueshov, called there kupshtina, 

 are very like the zadrugas of the Serbs and 

 Croats. The head of the society is called 

 domakin, the man of the house, and is usu- 

 ally either married or a widower, but may 

 be a single man. The domakina, or lady of 

 the house, is generally the wife of the doma- 

 kin, or the widow of a previous one, or, if 

 there be no such person, the oldest woman 

 of the community is elected to the place. 

 She regulates the work to be done by the 

 women of the household ; as, for instance, 

 who is to bake or cook on particular days ; 

 and she arranges the domestic labor so as to 

 allow the women time for attention to their 

 children and to other duties. The principle 

 of the community is that each member must 

 work according to his capacity, for the com- 

 mon good. Any one who is dissatisfied with 

 the work assigned to him can leave the com- 

 munity, but the only goods which he is 

 allowed to carry away as his own are his 

 clothes. If one of the women contracts a 

 second marriage with a man who is not a 

 member of the community, her children by 

 her first husband remain in the society, 

 although she herself quits it. When the 

 girls marry, they receive nothing from the 

 community, except a zeslra of clothes and 

 bed-furniture, for which the bridegroom 

 makes a money payment. These house com- 

 munities are spread over Bulgaria from Les- 

 kovatz on the north to Macedonia. Details 

 are given by Mr. Gueshov of the community 

 of Gornya-Banga, not far from Sofia. Its 

 head is a priest. Some four years ago it 

 consisted of twenty-eight and thirty-five 

 members. With the domaki?i, Todorin, 

 work his six brothers, one of whom is a 

 priest, the second a farmer, the third a 

 shepherd, a fourth the keeper of an inn, 



and another a tailor. No property is private 

 among them except their clothes. All w T ork 

 for the house community ; even the priest, if 

 he gets money from any quarter, from a 

 wedding, christening, or funeral, is obliged 

 to bring it into the common fund. The 

 domakina, the wife of Todorin, arranges 

 which of her sisters-in-law shall bake one 

 day and which shall cook. One oven and 

 one kettle suffice for all. Concord and love 

 prevail in the community; and the priest 

 assured Mr. Gueshov that, if they had pos- 

 sessed in severalty, they could never have 

 passed through the terrible period of the last 

 Russo-Turkish War. No legal sanction has 

 been given since the independence of Bul- 

 garia to this customary right, but it remains 

 deeply rooted as an institution in the public 

 mind. A case is told of a member of a com- 

 munity who bought two plots of land and 

 secured a confirmation from a court of law 

 of his property in them. The whole village 

 rose against him, and he was obliged to hand 

 the plots over to the society to be common 

 property. There are also co-operative mar- 

 ket gardeners in Bulgaria, who travel about 

 and raise vegetables on plots which they 

 hire. The unit of the gardeners' co-opera- 

 tive society is the working gardener. If a 

 man has gained experience in this calling, 

 he can easily enter one of them, even if he 

 has no money. The union, called a taifa, is 

 great or little according to the size of the 

 garden which it is proposed to cultivate, and 

 that of the town which offers a market for 

 their products. The largest shareholders 

 are the master, who holds the purse and 

 keeps the accounts, and the salesman ; but 

 the funds of the society are distributed 

 in proportion among the workers in the 

 garden. Other co-operative societies exist 

 among shepherds, reapers, masons, bakers, 

 tinkers, and potters. 



Good and Bad Novels. Whatever influ- 

 ence novels have upon the mind of a reader 

 is due to giving him a wider acquaintance 

 than his own experience affords with life, 

 or what passes for life. Novels deal only 

 with the interesting parts of life, leaving 

 out of sight the commonplace matters which 

 make up more than three fourths of real life, 

 otherwise they would not be read. Good nov- 

 els represent these interesting features as 



