“Servants of great houses,” remarked a lady behind me.
“They used to come themselves,” answered another.
Then followed Franciscan monks in their brown copes, each with a knotted rope for a girdle, and sandals only on his bare feet. After these came the band of musicians, all little boys; and now approached, with measured tread, three priests in rich robes of white brocade, enriched with silver. The middle one, a tall, venerable-looking man, with hoary hair and solemn countenance, held erect in his hands the sacred dolly. As it passed, believers dropped upon their knees. When he reached the high altar, he reverently kissed its feet, and delivered it to its custodian to be carried to the Sacristy!
[CHILDREN UNDER THE SNOW.]
FAR away up in the north, on the shores of that great frozen ocean lying beyond Europe and Asia, you may sometimes catch sight (as I did once) of a huge, gray, pointed thing, standing all alone in the midst of the snowy plain, just like an immense pear with the stalk upward. I should have been puzzled had I not seen a thin curl of smoke creeping from the top of it; but that let me into the secret. This queer-looking thing was a Samoiede tent!
The tent of a Samoiede is almost as simple an affair as that of an Arab. All you have to do is to plant a dozen long poles in the ground, slanted so as to let their tops meet; cover this framework with reindeer skins, leaving a hole at the top to let out the smoke; pile the snow high up around the lower part to keep off the wind—the “house” is complete.