OVER THE GREAT CHAIN 235 



in the great waste places need her yet. She is their 

 cook, housemaid, nurse, doctor, woodcutter, gardener, 

 samovar-hghter — all ! Nominally the mother of the 

 householder, she is sometimes his mother-in-law ; or 

 again she may be remotely akin to the relative who 

 goes on tour with the self-respecting English actress, 

 a mother by adoption. Her age is always unfathom- 

 able. She looks seventy years young, but she may be 

 a hundred old. Her lined good-humoured face tells 

 little. From morning to night she works patiently 

 until she creeps tired out to her own little reservation 

 on top of the petchka, or oven. Even-temper seems 

 to come with baboushka honours, for the younger 

 specimens of lower-class Russian femininity are not 

 strikingly amiable. 



A meal was just about to commence, and presently 

 the little ones turned their attention from us to black 

 bread and onions. A much greater attraction ! 



It is customary for casual travellers to observe the 

 peculiar dullness and stupidity of the Russian peasant, 

 whom they immerse in a slough of ignorance which is 

 described as unparalleled elsewhere. The uneducated 

 Muscovite is certainly excessively unintelligent-looking, 

 unless it is that the great sculptor Environment who 

 models the clay of their lives has chiselled their 

 features into a mask expressionless as the lives them- 

 selves. 



Let it pass. 



Our own lower orders are not the brilliant mechan- 

 isms that vote-culling politicians at electioneering times 

 would have us believe. Sometimes I wonder if the 



