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Photo by Gilbert H. Grosvenor 



A RUSSIAN PRIEST, WITPI HIS WIPE AND TWO CHILDREN, VISITING THE MUSEUM 



"The clergy forms a caste apart; priests and deacons marry the daughters of priests and 

 deacons, and it very often happens that an old priest on retiring passes his parish on to his 

 son-in-law. The priest's wife brings with her a tradition of good housekeeping that has 

 been handed down in the families of the clergy from generation to generation, made neces- 

 sary by the poor salaries paid and the large families to provide for. The children are 

 educated in special schools for the clergy, and if, as sometimes happens, the children do not 

 follow their parent's profession, they often enter the government service as clerks or teach- 

 ers." See H. W. Williams' admirable book, "Russia of the Russians" (Scribners). 



years they are entitled to retire on a gov- 

 ernment pension, and if they die and are 

 survived by husbands, the pensions con- 

 tinue during their husbands' Hves. 



There are ten government universities 

 in Russia, the largest that of Petrograd, 

 with 10,364 students. The one at Mos- 

 cow has 9,000 students, and the one at 

 Kharkov 5,274. A popular university 

 was established in 1909 at Moscow under 

 a fund left by General Shaniavsky. 



But with all these universities the 

 average Russian is as illiterate as the 

 statistics cited above show. We had 

 numerous experiences revealing his illit- 

 eracy and his indisposition to confess it. 

 On several occasions our guide had told 

 our drosky driver, a different man each 



time, to take us to a certain store and 

 had given him the street and number. 

 He immediately set off and drove to the 

 street, but continued driving slowly up 

 that thoroughfare, looking back at us oc- 

 casionally for further directions Finally 

 he reached the end of the street and, to 

 our surprise, turned and slowly retraced 

 the ground traversed, asking us by signs, 

 for we understood no Russian, which 

 store we wished to visit. We finally 

 realized that the drosky driver could not 

 even read figures, the numbers on the 

 doors. It was then that we fully under- 

 stood the necessity for the pictorial 

 rather than written signs before many 

 of the stores, more especially in the poor 

 sections. These signs show coats, hats, 

 shoes, caps, trousers, sausages, etc. The 



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