My friend and I sat down. The mother of the dead one came, deep in crape and laden with gifts. We planted our candles, and on this grave as on all the others round about the wan flames flickered. We took bright-coloured eggs—our Easter eggs dyed purple and crimson and brown,—dug holes in the mould with our fingers, buried the eggs, covered their brightness over with mould again. Then we put down slices of Easter cake on the grave, and emptied there saucers of rice—that the dead one might share in. We sat on the crazy wooden seats around, and looked at the earth and were silent. The mother went away to find a priest, and presently brought a purple-cloaked greybeard to sing over the grave and burn incense. His red and wrinkled face was all red and fresh from the open air, for he had been in the graveyard all day singing over the graves. He was tired, but he raised his head and his voice and called forth his little memorial prayer in an antique musical bass: “Grant to her who has passed away, O Christ, to obtain Thy unspeakable glory.... Give rest, O Christ, to the soul of Thy servant....” We all stood around, silent and awe-stricken, and listened and crossed ourselves, and kissed the cross in the priest’s hand. He received a rouble, then went away to another grave; beggars besought us; and as if they had not been satisfied at the church door, but were taking enough to last them a whole year, they received helping after helping of rice and cake and eggs. This, I felt, was the great beggars’ day in the year. They were important people. They were necessary to the feast. Strange that they should appear as proxies for the dead and eat for them. A beautiful reminder that in the living we find all our dead again. We had stood to meet the priest and to give the beggars the food we had brought, so now that the beggars had eaten all the rice and raisins and rice and jam and had gone farther to eat at other graves, we sat down again in the still presence of the green mound and we talked of the virtues of the dead one, of how old she would have been and how beloved she was, and of how often she had been remembered, and how soon we should join her. Evidently the mother assumed that what she said was heard by her whose body lay in the earth. We were all quietly joyful—not sad. We had the spirit of children making believe; we had also the calm faith and knowledge of elders—that there is no death, that those who have passed out of sight have not ceased but are alive for evermore. I felt the Russians, and indeed mankind altogether, to be very dear at this festival; they were doing things that must touch those invisible ones who know more than we do and look on, bring tears to the eyes of angels, and not as often in man’s history and the spectacle of his civilisation and abomination call down the wrath of higher powers. We talked ... and then as we became silent again we heard the music of man’s life, and listened with our souls.