A Russian priest must marry once; but if his wife dies, he cannot marry again.
This law fills my soul with an unholy delight. It persuades a man to appreciate his wife's virtues and to condone her faults. Whatever may be her sins in sight of him and heaven, she is the only one, so far as he is concerned. It must be she, or nobody, to the end of his days. She may fill his soul with rage, but he may not even relieve his feelings by killing her.
The result of this unique religious law is that Russian priests are uncommonly kind and indulgent to their wives.
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," said one who was on the Dora, in answer to a question, "I have a wife. She lives in Paris, where my daughter is receiving her education. I am going this year to visit them. Yes, yes, yes."
However, with all the petting and indulgence which the Russian priest lavishes upon his wife, if what I heard be true,—that he is permitted neither to cut nor to wash his hair and beard,—God wot she is welcome to him.
The old graveyard on the hill above Kodiak tempts the visitor, and one may loiter among the old, neglected graves with no fear of snakes in the tall, thick grasses.
At first, a woman receives the statement that there are no snakes in Alaska with open suspicion. It has the sound of an Alaskan joke.
When I first heard it, I was unimpressed. We were nearing a fine field of red-top, already waist-high, and I waited for the gentleman from Boston, who believed everything he heard, and imagined far more, to go prancing innocently through the field.
He went—unhesitatingly, joyously; giving praise to God for his blessings—as, he vowed, he loved to ramble through deep grass, yet would rather meet a hippopotamus alone in a mire than a garter-snake five inches long. The field was the snakiest-looking place imaginable, and when he had passed safely through, I began to have faith in the Alaskan snake story.
The climate of Kadiak Island is delightful. The island is so situated that it is fully exposed to the equalizing influences of the Pacific. The mean annual temperature is four degrees lower than at Sitka, and there is twenty per cent less rainfall.