I have perhaps devoted too much time to the festivals, ghosts and unexciting incidents of a country life. But I have done this in order to explain many subsequent happenings which would be otherwise incomprehensible to an English public. These events cannot, and must not, be judged entirely from an English standpoint. We are a race apart, our country is one of extreme mysticism and superstition. It is a land of miracles, where the holy pictures are believed to shed tears, and where every village possesses its seer and its saint. It would be possible to cover the length and breadth of England in a week’s motoring tour, thus England is of necessity more circumscribed. One could not see Russia in such a manner. It is a country of vast distances, of densely populated cities, and lonely tracts which extend for thousands of miles. You cannot contrast the mode of life prevalent at Tooting with that of Tobolsk, or compare the customs of Moscow with those of Manchester. Our upbringing is entirely un-English. True, we are citizens of the world, we are indeed cosmopolitan, but--once a Russian, always a Russian. The Tsaritsa told me that, when she first came to Russia, she was greatly surprised to find that Russian servants did not understand the art of blackleading grates. She had always been accustomed to see shining grates in England when she stayed with her grandmother at Windsor--in Petrograd, shining grates were non-existent. We are miles apart from English ways in little things like these, and no Englishwoman worthy of the name has ever been known to be ignorant of the use of blacklead. But _we_ ought not to be condemned for the non-recognition of its virtue. It is merely a question of outlook. In connection with these differences of outlook, I cannot do better than quote the words of a contributor to the “Daily Mail”; they will plead for my opinions, as the writer possesses the peculiar gift of racial and temperamental understanding: “We have,” he writes, “in England a cold fish-minded way of affecting to laugh at what we are prone to call local superstition. Let me tell you that this point of view will not work in Africa.” (He is dealing, I fancy, with Morocco.) “What is obviously a childish hallucination in Hampstead or Newcastle is sober reality under this immense blue sky. You can disbelieve a lot of truths you do not understand as you strap-hang homewards, but you will learn to believe everything in Africa.” Might not this also apply to Russia? CHAPTER II