on the snow, and the whole settlement presented an animated, lively appearance. On the evening of the third day after Christmas, the priest gave in our honour a grand Siberian ball, to which all the inhabitants of the four villages were invited, and for which the most elaborate preparations were made. A ball at the house of a priest on Sunday night struck me as implying a good deal of inconsistency and I hesitated about sanctioning so plain a violation of the fourth commandment. Dodd, however, proved to me in the most conclusive manner that, owing to difference in time, it was Saturday in America and not Sunday at all; that our friends at that very moment were engaged in business or pleasure and that our happening to be on the other side of the world was no reason why we should not do what our antipodal friends were doing at exactly the same time. I was conscious that this reasoning was sophistical, but Dodd mixed me up so with his "longitude," "Greenwich time," "Bowditch's _Navigator_," "Russian Sundays" and "American Sundays," that I was hopelessly bewildered, and could not have told for my life whether it was today in America or yesterday, or when a Siberian Sunday did begin. I finally concluded that as the Russians kept Saturday night, and began another week at sunset on the Sabbath, a dance would perhaps be sufficiently innocent for that evening. According to Siberian ideas of propriety it was just the thing. A partition was removed in our house, the floor made bare, the room brilliantly illuminated with candles stuck against the wall with melted grease, benches placed around three sides of the house for the ladies, and about five o'clock the pleasure-seekers began to assemble. Rather an early hour perhaps for a ball, but it seemed a very long time after dark. The crowd which soon gathered numbered about forty, the men being all dressed in heavy fur _kukhlánkas,_ fur trousers, and fur boots, and the ladies in thin white muslin and flowery calico prints. The costumes of the respective sexes did not seem to harmonise very well, one being light and airy enough for an African summer, while the other seemed suitable for an arctic expedition in search of Sir John Franklin. However, the general effect was very picturesque. The orchestra which was to furnish the music consisted of two rudely made violins, two _ballalaikas_ (bal-la-lai'-kahs) or triangular native guitars with two strings each, and a huge comb prepared with a piece of paper in a manner familiar to all boys. Feeling a little curiosity to see how an affair of this kind would be managed upon Siberian principles of etiquette, I sat quietly in a sheltered corner and watched the proceedings. The ladies, as fast as they arrived, seated themselves in a solemn row along a wooden bench at one end of the room, and the men stood up in a dense throng at the other. Everybody was preternaturally sober. No one smiled, no one said anything; and the silence was unbroken save by an occasional rasping