field-guard, blacksmith, road-mender, &c., all are expected to attend, cap in hand, making their obeisance as before a Czar, thanking the _gromada_ for past favours, which have secured them infinitesimal pay, and humbly supplicating for new, which are, as a rule, granted with a rather pompous and condescending grace. The village homesteads line the common or street on either side, standing gable outwards, as every Wendish house ought to stand. From them radiate in long narrow strips the fields, as originally divided, when the settlers were still a semi-nomad race, when each member was scrupulously assigned his own share of loam, clay, high land, low land, peat, sand, meadow--not only in order that none might be better off than his neighbour, but also that the workers in the fields might at all times make sure of fellowship, to lighten their toil by chat and song, and by taking their meals in company. During the whole of their history the Wends have shown themselves devoted to agriculture. Their social system was based upon agriculture; agriculture occupied their thoughts. Their legends represent their ancient kings, and the saints of their hagiology, as engaged in agriculture. And their girls, thinking of marriage, may be heard to sing: "No, such a suitor I will not have Who writeth with a pen; The husband for me is the man Who plougheth with the plough." By intuitive instinct the Wends prefer cultivating light land, whereas the Germans give the preference to strong. All their implements seem made for light soil. Such are their wooden spades, tastefully edged with steel which, though not perhaps as useful as our all-steel implements, look incomparably more picturesque. And from light soil the Wends know better than any race how to raise remunerative crops. They understand heavy land, too--as witness their excellent tillage in Upper Lusatia, and above all in that German "Land of Goshen," the Duchy of Altenburg. But on sand they are most at home. And in the poorest districts you may make sure that wherever you see a particularly fine patch of corn, or potatoes, or millet, or buckwheat, that patch is peasant's land.