Russian Rambles

cents a pound, or currants at a cent less. She would wring her hands, long and fleshless as fan handles, and, her great green eyes phosphorescent with distress above her hollow cheeks and projecting bones, she would cry:-

'Oh, barynya, they have cheated you, cheated you shamefully! You must let me protect you.'

'Come, don't you think it is worth a few kopeks to be called 'a pearl,' 'a diamond,' 'an emerald'?'

'Is that all they called you?' she inquired, with a disdainful sniff.

'No; they said that I was 'a real general-ess.' They knew their business, you see. And they said 'madame' instead of 'sudarynya.' [7] Was there any other title which they could have bestowed on me for the money?'

She confessed, with a pitying sigh, that there was not, but returned to her plaint over the sinfully wasted kopeks. Once I offered her some 'tea-money' in the shape of a basket of raspberries, which she wished to preserve and drink in her tea, with the privilege of purchasing them herself. As an experiment to determine whether bargaining is the outcome of thrift and economy alone, or a distinct pleasure in itself, it was a success. I followed her from vender to vender, and waited with exemplary patience while she scrutinized their wares and beat down prices with feverish eagerness, despite the fact that she was not to pay the bill. I put an end to the matter when she tried to persuade a pretty peasant girl, who had walked eight miles, to accept less than four cents a pound for superb berries. I think it really spoiled my gift to her that I insisted on making the girl happy with five cents a pound. After that I was not surprised to find Russian merchants catering to the taste of their customers by refusing to adopt the one-price system.

It was vulgar to go to market, of course. Even the great mastiff who acted as yard dog at the bazaar made me aware of that fact. He always greeted me politely, like a host, when he met me in the court at market hours. But nothing could induce him even to look at me when he met me outside. I tried to explain to him that my motives were scientific, not economical, and I introduced Katiusha to him as the family bargainer and scapegoat for his scorn. He declined to relent. After that I understood that there was nothing for it but to shoulder the responsibility myself, and I never attempted to palliate my unpardonable conduct in the eyes of the servants of my friends whom I occasionally encountered there.

The market was held in the inner courtyard of the Gostinny Dvor, near the chapel, which always occupies a conspicuous position in such places. While the shops under the arcade, facing on the street, sold everything, from 'gallantry wares' (dry goods and small wares) to nails, the inner booths were all devoted to edibles. On the rubble pavement of the court squatted peasants from the villages for many versts round about, both Russian and Finnish, hedged in by their wares, vegetables, flowers, fruit, and live poultry. The Russians exhibited no beautiful costumes; their proximity to the capital had done away with all that. At first I was inexperienced, and went unprovided with receptacles for my marketing. The market women looked up in surprise.

'What, have you no kerchief?' they asked, as though I were a peasant or petty merchant's wife, and could remove the typical piece of gayly colored cloth from my head or neck. When I objected to transporting eggs and berries in my only resource, my handkerchief, they reluctantly produced scraps of dirty newspaper, or of ledgers scrawled over with queer accounts. I soon grew wise, and hoarded up the splint strawberry baskets provided by the male venders, which are put to multifarious uses in Russia.

After being asked for a kerchief in the markets, and a sheet when I went to get my fur cloak from its summer storage at a fashionable city shop, and after making divers notes on journeys, I was obliged to conclude that the ancient merchant fashion in Russia had been to seize the nearest fabric at hand,-the sheet from the bed, the cloth from the table,-and use it as a traveling trunk.

The Finns at the market were not to be mistaken for Russians. Their features were wooden; their expression was far less intelligent than that of the Russians. The women were addicted to wonderful patterns in aprons and silver ornaments, and wore, under a white head kerchief, a stiff glazed white circlet which seemed to wear away their blond hair. These women arrived regularly every morning, before five o'clock, at the shops of the baker and the grocer opposite our windows. The shops opened at that hour, after having kept open until eleven o'clock at night, or later. After refreshing themselves with a roll and a bunch of young onions, of which the green tops appeared to be the most relished, the women made their town toilet by lowering the very much reefed skirt of their single garment, drawing on footless stockings, and donning shoes. At ten o'clock, or even earlier, they came back to fill the sacks of coarse white linen, borne over their shoulders, with necessaries for their households, purchased with the proceeds of their sales, and to reverse their toilet operations, preparatory to the long tramp homeward. I sometimes caught them buying articles which seemed extravagant luxuries, all things considered, such as raisins. One of their specialties was the sale of lilies of the valley, which grow wild in the Russian forests. Their peculiar little trot-trot, and the indescribable semi-tones and quarter-tones in which they cried, 'Land-dy-y-y-shee! ' were unmistakably Finnish at any distance.

The scene at the market was always entertaining. Tzarskoe is surrounded by market gardens, where vegetables and fruits are raised in highly manured and excessively hilled-up beds. It sends tons of its products to the capital as well as to the local market. Everything was cheap and delicious. Eggs were dear when they reached a cent and a half apiece. Strawberries, huge and luscious, were dear at ten cents a pound, since in warm seasons they cost but five. Another berry, sister to the strawberry, but differing from it utterly in taste, was the klubnika, of which there were two varieties, the white and the bluish-red, both delicious in their peculiar flavor, but less decorative in size and aspect than the strawberry.

The native cherries, small and sour, make excellent preserves, with a spicy flavor, which are much liked by Russians in their tea. The only objection to this use of them is that both tea and cherries are spoiled. Raspberries, plums, gooseberries, and currants were plentiful and cheap. A vegetable delicacy of high order, according to Katiusha, who introduced it to my notice, was a sort of radish with an extremely fine, hard grain, and biting qualities much developed, which attains enormous size, and is eaten in thin slices, salted and buttered. I presented the solitary specimen which I bought, a ninepin in proportions, to the grateful Katiusha. It was beyond my appreciation.

Pears do not thrive so far north, but in good years apples of fine sorts are raised, to a certain extent, in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. Really good specimens, however, come from Poland, the lower Volga, Little Russia, and other distant points, which renders them always rather dear. We saw few in our village that were worth buying, as the season was phenomenally cold, and a month or three weeks late, so that we got our strawberries in August, and our linden blossoms in September. Apples, plums, grapes, and honey are not eaten-in theory-until after they have been blessed at the feast of the Transfiguration, on August 18 (N. S.),-a very good scheme for giving them time to ripen fully for health. Before that day, however, hucksters bearing trays of honey on their heads are eagerly welcomed, and the peasant's special dainty-fresh cucumbers thickly coated with honey-is indulged in unblessed. Honey is not so plentiful that one can afford to fling away a premature chance!

When the mushroom season came in, the market assumed an aspect of half-subdued brilliancy with the many sombre and high-colored varieties of that fungus. The poorer people indulge in numerous kinds which the rich do not eat, and they furnish precious sustenance during fasts, when so many viands are forbidden by the Russian Church and by poverty. One of the really odd sights, during the fast of Saints Peter and Paul (the first half of July), was that of people walking along the streets with bunches of pea-vines, from which they were plucking the peas, and eating them, pods and all, quite raw. It seemed a very summary and wasteful way of gathering them. This fashion of eating vegetables raw was imported, along with the liturgy, from the hot lands where the Eastern Church first flourished, and where raw food was suitable. These traditions, and probably also the economy of fuel, cause it to be still persisted in, in a climate to which it is wholly unsuited. Near Tzarskoe I found one variety of pea growing to the altitude of nearly seven feet, and producing pods seven inches long and three wide. The stalks of the double poppies in the same garden were six and seven feet high, and the flowers were the size of peonies, while the pods of the single poppies were nine inches in circumference.

One of the great festivals of the Russian Church is Whitsunday, the seventh Sunday after Easter; but it is called Trinity Sunday, and the next day is 'the Day of Spirits,' or Pentecost. On this Pentecost Day a curious sight was formerly to be seen in St. Petersburg. Mothers belonging to the merchant class arrayed their marriageable daughters in their best attire; hung about their necks not only all the jewels which formed a part of their dowries, but also, it is said, the silver ladles, forks, and spoons; and took them to the Summer Garden, to be inspected and proposed for by the young men.

But the place where this spectacle can be seen in the most charming way is Tzarskoe Selo. We were favored