RUSSIAN WOMEN. 319 



good lady had fifteen children of her own. Yet she 

 had adopted two orphans ; and, at the time I made 

 her acquaintance, was watching over, with motherly 

 solicitude, a parrot that had had one eye knocked out, 

 and a daw with a broken wing! 



Ladies of quality rarely nurse their own children. 

 The nurse, with her charge, is always a conspicuous 

 figure on the streets of a Russian city. The fantastic 

 garb and coronet of beads constitute one of the most 

 picturesque costumes in Russia; and you can tell by 

 its color whether her charge is a boy or a girl. If a 

 boy, the prevailing color will be blue ; if a girl, pink. 



Vanity is not one of the Russian lady's cardinal sins. 

 Though bad complexions are the rule, as a result of 

 the climate, bad ventilation, irregular living, and want 

 of exercise, no well-bred lady paints. Small feet and 

 hands are common, and if the Russian lady takes pride 

 in any particular part of her person it would be the 

 smallness and shapeliness of these extremities. 



Though the Russian does not, like the Sultan of 

 Morocco, fatten his wife by forced feeding, as poul- 

 terers gorge turkeys for Christmas, his idea of 

 womanly beauty is still somewhat Oriental. He pre- 

 fers a fat wife, with a pink and white skin, and is very 

 apt to break the second clause of the Tenth Command- 

 ments if his neighbor's wife comes nearer this ideal 

 than his own. 



Among the merchants and peasant class many old- 

 fashioned, conservative Muscovite notions in regard to 

 women still prevail. The Russian merchant thinks it 

 no disgrace to knock his wife down with a blow of his 

 huge fist, and the moujik beats his better half with a 



