"Christians who believe in public prayer, and who claim that we should be instant in prayer, would consider it a severe tax upon their energies to pray seventy times a day--they don't care to do it! "Then there is the _democracy_ of the church. There are no pews to be sold to the highest bidder--no 'reserved seats;' the oneness and equality before God are always recognized. A Russian gentleman, as he prays, does not look around, and move away from the poor beggar next to him. At St. Peter's the crowd stands or kneels--at St. Isaac's they stand; and they stand literally on the same plane. "I noticed in the crowd at St. Isaac's, one festival day, young girls who were having a friendly chat; but their religion was ever in their thoughts, and they crossed themselves certainly once a minute. Their religion is not an affair of Sunday, but of every day in the week. "The drosky-driver, certainly the most stupid class of my acquaintance in Russia, never forgets his prayers; if his passenger is never so much in a hurry, and the bribe never so high, the drosky-driver will check his horse, and make the sign of the cross as he passes the little image of the Virgin,--so small, perhaps, that you have not noticed it until you wonder why he slackens his pace. "Then as to government. We boast of our national freedom, and we talk about universal suffrage, the 'Home of the Free,' etc. Yet the serfs in Russia were freed in March, 1861, just before our Civil war began. They freed their serfs without any war, and each serf received some acres of land. They freed twenty-three millions, and we freed four or five millions of blacks; and all of us, who are old enough, remember that one of the fears in freeing the slaves was the number of lawless and ignorant blacks who, it was supposed, would come to the North. "We talk about _universal_ suffrage; a larger part of the antiquated Russians vote than of Americans. Just as I came away from St. Petersburg I met a Moscow family, travelling. We occupied the same compartment car. It was a family consisting of a lady and her three daughters. When they found where I had been, they asked me, in excellent English, what had carried me to St. Petersburg, and then, why I was interested in Pulkova; and so I must tell them about American girls, and so, of course, of Vassar College. "They plied me with questions: 'Do you have women in your faculty? Do men and women hold the same rank?' I returned the questions: 'Is there a girl's college in Moscow?' 'No,' said the youngest sister, with a sigh, 'we are always _going_ to have one.' The eldest sister asked: 'Do women vote in America?' 'No,' I said. 'Do women vote in Russia?' She said 'No;' but her mother interrupted her, and there was a spicy conversation between them, in Russian, and then the mother, who had rarely spoken, turned to me, and said: 'I vote, but I do not go to the polls myself. I send somebody to represent me; my vote rests upon my property.'