This story is true. It happened last September, and was recorded in the newspapers, with many more details than I have told. And at the station of Kozlov, as I have already related, in the government of Tambov, between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m., a railway guard told it to myself and a newsvendor, and when he had finished telling it he sighed and bewailed the blindness of his fellow-creatures, the peasants of Russian villages, who, as he wisely said, had so much kindness in their hearts, but were often led through their ignorance to do dreadful deeds. “DIRGE IN MARRIAGE” The following story was told me by a doctor. It happened in the village in the government of Tambov. There was a peasant called Vichareff who had three daughters; one of them was called Anoushka, one Douniasha, and the third Natasha. Their father was well off, but extraordinarily close-fisted; his thirst for land and his ambition to accumulate were unlimited. He arranged an advantageous match for his eldest daughter, Douniasha, and was exerting all his wits to find a husband for his younger daughter who should be equally well-to-do, so that the two weddings might take place on the same day, and thereby save him trouble and expense. His third daughter was considered to be too young as yet to marry. Now Anoushka repeated over and over again, not without tears, that she did not wish to be married; but her father and her mother (whose will, always feeble, had now completely ceased to work, owing to years of unceasing compliance with the views and the wishes of her domineering husband) paid no attention to this.