The field of the Russian woman's activity is as wide as it is in western Europe or in America. In some respects there is in Russia less prejudice against woman's adopting a professional career than is found in more civilized countries. Women compose the ranks of the teachers in the public schools throughout Russia. There are many women physicians and registered minor medical practitioners and trained nurses whose services are particularly valuable to the Mohammedan female population. Many a Russian woman wears the uniform of the government telegraph operator. She has legal right to practise law. She takes part in local government on the same level as men when there is no one to represent her interests. She has won her position by her energy and talents as well as by her moderation, tact, deep earnestness, unselfishness, and readiness to sacrifice herself for the welfare of her fellow men and women. In Russia there are several business firms conducted wholly by women. They once startled the former famous minister of finance, Witte, by sending him a petition requesting him to allow them to do business on their own account in the stock exchange instead of employing brokers. The minister asked for time to consider the petition. The change which has taken place in the condition of the woman of the well-to-do classes during the last two hundred years has not affected the most numerous class of the Russian population, the peasant woman. For years, while special schools were being founded for the daughters of the noble, the merchant, and the burgher families, she bore with her husband and family the yoke of servitude, at times degrading and intolerable, was the lord's property, body and soul, was worked like a domestic animal, sometimes sold away from her family and otherwise abused. When the emancipation came with the imperial decree of February 19, 1861, she began to breathe more freely. Now the elementary education, at least, is accessible to her, and when means allow there is nothing to keep her from obtaining the highest education to be had in the country. Even in her modest station throughout the centuries the peasant woman has not remained intellectually inactive. When students of Russian literature became interested in the national folklore and began to collect it, they found a large number of peasant women in the northern provinces of Russia who possessed astonishing memories and who dictated one long epic poem after another to the collectors. These female Homers took pride in their accomplishment and were highly respected for it in their neighborhoods. While the chief merit of these poem singers lies in their highly retentive memory, women singers of another type, the professional mourners at funerals, display creative genius in composing and improvising songs. The names of peasant women who composed some of the most popular Russian songs are known, and in the latter part of the nineteenth century one of them was living in a