"HOLY RUSSIA." 285 



gaudily decorated with brass, silver, tinsel, or wax 

 flowers. 



The peasants burn tapers before it, and place offer- 

 ings of food, etc., before it, much as the Hindoo ryot 

 of India does before his household idol. And the place 

 that the ikon holds in the Russian moujik's mind 

 seemed to me to differ very little indeed from that of 

 the idol in the ryot's. 



One day, in the province of Kurskh, while drinking 

 kwass in a peasant's house, I asked the housewife why 

 she kept a taper burning before the Nicholai ikon. 



She immediately made the sign of the Cross. The 

 ikon had been very good to them that summer, she 

 said ; the crops were good, and the eldest son, who had 

 been away several years in the army, had returned and 

 brought home thirty rubles. I asked her if the ikon 

 was a living thing, capable of influencing the affairs of 

 the family. She seemed almost frightened at the ques- 

 tion, as some good old soul in America, who from in- 

 fancy had lived and prayed in simple faith, would if sud- 

 denly challenged to prove the existence of God. Again 

 she rapidly made the sign of the Cross, but gave no an- 

 swer. I asked her the question in another form. She 

 shook her head. 



" Such things are not for ignorant people like me to 

 say," she replied. Determined to corner her if pos- 

 sible, I then asked her how many rubles she had paid 

 for it, and where she had bought it. But it was a 

 family heirloom, inherited from her husband's people. 



Although Christianity has been the religion of Rus- 

 sia for more than eight centuries, the customs and 

 superstitions of old pagan times continue to exercise 



