Gymnastics are cultivated everywhere, and each school has a large hall devoted to calisthenics, and to exercises upon the bars, ladders, vaulting-horse, swinging-rings, trapeze, etc.; while many schools have out-of-door apparatus to be used in warm weather, such as that which appears in one of the illustrations. Everybody must go through these exercises, and some excel greatly in them, as you would expect of the sons of Cossacks, as many of them are. Holidays are much more numerous than with us, and on these school is suspended, and parades and marches take their place. Then the school assembles, "company front," on the play-ground. All the principals, teachers, and drill-masters are here in full uniform; a band is borrowed from the garrison post, and after a few evolutions the young regiment marches away, to stirring drum and bugle notes, to some rural grove, where they have competition drills and athletic games, and then break ranks for a frolic. Lunch-time brings them all to headquarters at the roll of the drum, when every young soldier winds up with tumblers of weak tea, the hot water coming from the great brass urn, called a _samovar_, which is never far from a Russian gathering of any kind at any time of year. Christmas in Siberia is the great day of the year for the youngsters--nowhere greater--and the soldier lads and quaint, gray girls look forward to it for weeks as they do elsewhere. I happened to be in Chita, the capital of the trans-Baikal province, at Christmas, and was invited to one of the festivals. Imagine a large and lofty room, where three or four hundred children were packed in a dense circle around a large Christmas tree ablaze with candles and loaded with good things. Outside of this circle were as many older persons as could find room--rich and poor, noble and simple--the army officer in his gold-embroidered coat jostling the peasant in sheepskin, and the grand dame in silk and sables beside the plain peasant mother, all equal in their happy interest as fathers and mothers. The exercises opened with the national anthem, led by the priests, who are very successful in teaching the children those choral songs so common and enjoyable in Russia. Dialogues and recitations followed, sometimes by little tots, and after that came games and dances--especially that curious, active, national dance, a sort of quadrille, performed by quaint little couples in uniform, with immense zest. By this time everybody was moving about, and all who wished, old and young, began waltzing to the music of the soldier band, the Governor himself, gorgeous with gold lace and orders, taking out one shy little maiden after another to spin about the polished floor. At last it was time to stop, and then everybody stood still while the children sang a final soul-stirring patriotic song to the accompaniment of blazing red lights, the older ones joining in the chorus and ending each refrain with a roar of "_h'ras!_" THE CROWN OF AN AMERICAN QUEEN.