Some years ago a party of ladies and gentlemen, while spending the summer in the country, determined upon getting up a succession of theatrical amusements, just to try their effect upon the minds of the lower class. They accordingly fitted up a hall with great care, took immense pains to learn their parts, and when all was ready they invited the serfs as their audience, and gave them a holiday for the purpose of attending. The ignorant boors stood with open eyes and mouths wondering what it was all about, and what the gentry could mean by coming in and going out, and chattering so much to each other. After the play was over, the gentlemen asked them how they liked it. “O, very well, Barinia,” was the reply, “but we hope you will pay us for the time we have lost in coming to see it!” It need scarcely be said that the entertainment was not repeated, their plan being thus stifled at the commencement. In the autumn the women belonging to the estates have a very busy time; they help to reap the corn, cut the flax, and pull up the hemp-stalks, and then prepare them for sale by beating them with flat pieces of wood, which is extremely fatiguing, but they enliven their work by singing their national ballads. In the winter both men and women employ themselves in weaving the Russian linen and canvas; the girls also in some villages make a pretty kind of lace. The produce of their winter industry is either sent to the proprietor, who disposes of it to the shopkeepers, or the women carry it about and offer it for sale in the same manner as the hawkers of Irish cloth do in England. In the dark days or evenings, having no candles, they make use of slips of pine-wood or the bark of the birch-tree, which are very inflammable and emit a strong light that enables them to continue their work. They make the thread in the ancient manner with the distaff, which has quite a classic appearance. In some of the villages all the females make lace, in others there is nothing but linen manufactured. I saw some beautiful samples of the former, the work of the peasants belonging to the Princess L., which would be admired even in London or Paris; and a woman once offered to sell me a scarf for sixty roubles (10_l._), which she assured me took her three entire years to make. Some of the serfs are trained as hunters on the estates: their whole lives are devoted to killing and ensnaring game in the forests, which is sold, and becomes a part of the revenue of the property. When a very fine bear is slain, his skin is generally presented to the proprietor, together with the head. The skin is made into a magnificent rug, the head into a foot-stool, forming a handsome ornament to the drawing-room.