There were two things which the Frau Directorin found everywhere and in which her soul delighted: marked and courteous attention to the ladies—and automobiles. We took just one street car ride in New York City, having been fairly showered by offers of automobile rides, one form of hospitality of which we have grown quite prodigal.
It was well that we had both the secretary and the automobile; for although I thought I knew where the Russian parish was located I did not reckon with the fact that it was three years since I had last visited it. During that interval the town had so altered that the landscape was quite unrecognizable.
It is the peculiarity of this and neighboring towns that they change their topography over night. What was a hill becomes a hollow, and the reverse process also takes place though more slowly, because of the huge culm piles which accumulate.
The mining of coal being carried on under the town has been so thorough in later years that intervening coal props have been removed, and houses and churches which formerly were above the level are now below it.
We finally found the Russian church and its adjoining parsonage in as uninviting an environment as I have ever seen. The three years since I visited them had not only let them down from their eminence, but had developed a stagnant pool on one side, while refuse from the mines had encroached upon the other. All the glory of red and yellow paint had departed, leaving only a drab dinginess, the prevailing tone of the landscape.
The priest received us in his study, which, besides the Icons and a Samovar had no ornaments. The musty air was full of cigarette smoke, and most diminutive stumps of these “Papirosy” were lying about, adding to the general untidiness. A parish register lay upon the desk. It contained the names of more than a thousand souls with the chronicle of their coming into this world and their going out of it, and also that most important item, when they had attended Holy Communion, the one visible sign of their allegiance to the true faith.
The Holy Father had a strange history. The son of a priest, he naturally was destined for the same calling. Caught by the ever moving tide of revolt he had “sown his wild oats,” which consisted of disseminating revolutionary literature. He was imprisoned, then like many good Russians repented, and, as a penance, came to Pennsylvania.
In desolation and distance from home his parish was not unlike Siberia. It was even worse, for it was an exile from like-minded men, and his suffering on that score was acute. I have watched the manifestation of national or racial characteristics in individuals, and I feel certain that the Russian reflects those characteristics most intensely, whether he be peasant, priest or noble.
Not without reason does he call his country “Mother Russia.” He has for her just that kind of affection, and it is as different from the violent love of the Herr Director for his Fatherland as is the matter-of-fact sentiment of the American for his.
The Russian completely reflects his country, and as both her virtues and her faults are feminine, there is in him something gentle and yielding towards external authority, and yet something unconquerable and defiant. There is a capacity for suffering and sacrifice of which no other people seem to be capable. There is also a confidence in the goodness of humanity, no matter how bad it may seem, which reminds me of the confidence of the woman who is beaten by her drunken husband, yet knows that in his sober moments he is not a bad man.