ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 81 



is a limpness and a streak of recklessness in the 

 Russian character that makes for moral surrender in 

 the face of difficulties that the Teuton or the Anglo- 

 Saxon would stand up to and attempt to overcome. 



Undoubtedly the lower strata of the Russian popu- 

 lation are the drunkenest people under the sun. Look- 

 ing back over our road, as the thought occurs to me, I 

 remember no village in which drunken people were not 

 very much in evidence. At every wayside traktir 

 where we stayed over night, the forepart of the night 

 would be more or less of a pandemonium from the 

 shouting and singing of roystering moujiks filled with 

 vodka. I have seen gangs of gray-haired old men, see- 

 sawing, flinging their arms about, and making fools of 

 themselves generally, in the sight of the whole village, 

 yet not attracting to themselves so much as the curious 

 or reproachful gaze of a single woman. 



On Sunday all the men seemed to be drinking and 

 carousing, and all the women were sitting in little cir- 

 cles in front of the houses gossiping. The one sex 

 seemed to be absolutely oblivious of the proceedings 

 or even the presence of the other. The drunkenness 

 was sad enough, but the indifference of the women to 

 it was the saddest of all. 



Sometimes, but not often, were drunken women. 

 Near one village we met a crowd of drunken men and 

 women, as merry and picturesque a set of subjects as 

 Bacchus himself could wish. Hand in hand they reeled 

 along and sang ; now and then they stopped to dance 

 and to express their joy in wild laughter. They halted 

 and sung for us a melodious bacchanalian song, well 

 worth listening to, as we rode past. The men were in 



