Tennyson, I think, says something about the North being dark and tender and true, and the South false and fickle. I asked a Little Russian gentleman what the main differences were between Little Russians and Big Russians, and he said the Little Russians were more decent people but far lazier than the Big Russians; that the Little Russian was so lazy that he would say to his wife: “Little wife, say ‘woa’ to my horse; I have a pain in my tongue.” On the other hand, I asked a Muscovite who lived in Little Russia, who told me that he infinitely preferred to deal with Big Russians, but that the Little Russians were perhaps cleverer, though they would pretend to be stupid out of laziness. On the score of indolence everybody seemed to be agreed. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any great burst of energy in a country where the sun is so hot in October and the air so mild and so heavily charged with sunny indolence. The country in the government of Kharkov was in distress owing to the want of rain; special services were being held in the village square praying for rain, because if the drought continues next year’s harvest will be ruined, and it is impossible at the present moment to sow. The dryness of the autumn in the government of Kharkov, which was threatening distress and disaster for the future, was in the meantime adding to the beauty of the present. The woods were harmonies in many-coloured golds; the nights were not yet cold, and every evening the sun sank in a cloudless halo of golden dust, making the yellow trees shine like the banners in a cathedral, as though they were the trophies of a triumphant conqueror instead of the last tattered remnants of the robe of a dying king. The little farms painted pale green are clean inside as they are outside. The walls are painted red and blue; the furniture is neatly arranged, and no poultry live in the living-room. Contrary to my expectations the inhabitants, instead of being dressed in their gloriously picturesque South Russian costumes, are far less striking to look at than the inhabitants of Central Russia, and they looked as if they had ordered their clothes from Birmingham or Manchester. The reason of this is the prevalence of large factories in this region, which spread education, civilisation, and the shirt and collars of the “intelligent” middle class. Every now and then, however, you see something which appeals more strongly to that which is primeval in you than to that which is progressive; a thing which may distress the theorising Socialist spirit in you, if you possess it, and please that which in you hankers towards Homer, _Puss in Boots_, and the elementary needs of the human heart. I saw just such a thing. It was a blind beggar. He was sitting on a hill in front of a church, and he was playing an instrument called a “lira,” that is to say, a lyre. But the lyre was not what you imagine when you think of pictures of the lyre of Orpheus or of Apollo. It was a wooden