The Kalousni, or "Reapers," start out on their begging trips in their wagons immediately after harvest. All of them who can move, excepting the very oldest and youngest, depart for "the work," as it is called. Those who have no blind or deformed children of their own rent them in neighboring villages. The village of Akchenas is the center of this trade, and peasants send their deformed children there to be marketed off. In the Galitzin village, in the government of Penza, amounting to three hundred cabins, five hundred of the inhabitants are peasant beggars; in Akchenas, one hundred and twenty cabins, there are only four persons who are not "Reapers"; in Germakoff, another hamlet of the district, there is not an inhabitant who does not go kalit (begging). The return of these bands to their homes is celebrated by fêtes and orgies. The main one is on November 8, St. Michael's day, when they spend every copeck they have collected. The next trip takes place in winter, and they return to their villages by Lent. The third return is just before Pentecost. Although I did not tramp in Siberia, I traveled there and heard much of the local tramps. They are not so definitely organized as in European Russia,--many travel entirely alone,--but I saw and heard of several categories. On the highway between Ekaterinburg and Tiumen the traveler is accosted by beggars known as the "Kossoulinski." They live exclusively by begging, and in summer sleep out of doors along the route between the towns mentioned. At Ekaterinburg there are also unnamed gangs of young men and little boys and girls who are continually begging of the inhabitants. They are generally the children of deported convicts, or those of peasants who were driven by famine out of neighboring districts. If I could have got into the wooded parts of Siberia I might also have made the acquaintance of that queer product of Siberian prison life, the runaway convict tramp. Early in the spring he makes a dash for liberty, sometimes being shot down in the attempt, and then again succeeding. He runs to the woods and lives there until autumn, when, if there is no hope of getting back to European Russia, he gives himself up and returns to prison again. In the spring, "when the birds call him," as one of his songs pathetically relates, he makes another dash for the trees. Only at night does he venture into the villages, and then merely for a moment to snatch the food left for him on the window-sills by the generous-hearted peasants. He grabs the bread, or whatever it is that they have set out, and then scampers back to the woods like a wolf. III Religious beggars in Russia are a class by themselves. In giving alms to them the average Russian thinks that he is making so much more likely his welcome in heaven, and they, of course, stand by him in the conceit. If you give them a ruble they will swear that you are going to heaven, and even twenty copecks make one's chance pretty good.