236 CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS 



Russian moujik is so very far behind the English 

 peasant in the tortoise race. Our ignoramuses progress 

 as fast as our preachers and reformers will allow them, 

 and it is much the same in Russia. 



Nailed up on the wooden wall of the tiny dwelling 

 was the household icon, a brilliant oleograph of a saint 

 set in a tawdry gilt frame, and before it on a primitive 

 bracket a little light flickered in a saucer of oil, like a 

 drowning glow-worm. Some sort of an illumination 

 flames before the icon in every household, and icons 

 from one to a dozen are in every room. Sometimes 

 they are heirlooms, dark and dirty with age and lack 

 of a duster. 



To the moujik his sacred picture ranks above 

 all other of his lares et penates. " If your house 

 takes fire save the icon and samovar first, and then, 

 if you have time, the children," is an old saying, and a 

 good one, too, an old man told us, for "there are plenty 

 of children ; children are easily come by, but a samovar 

 costs some roubles, and the Saints would show anger 

 if an icon was burnt." 



Many of the flat-topped roofs were summer gardens 

 aU a-blowing and a-growing. Small vegetables sprouted 

 from a few inches of soil, but potatoes we saw none of. 

 The dwellings with agricultural aspirations were not 

 Muscovite habitations. It is the Tatar who husbands 

 his resources so carefully. The pioneer instinct, the 

 desire to be a settler, to see things grow, to sow for the 

 sake of the reaping, is lacking in the Russian tempera- 

 ment. And that proverb about scratching a Russian 

 and finding a Tatar was manufactured by an ignoramus. 



