Outside, on the steps of those churches, the stranger encounters innumerable gangs of beggars, who watch his incoming and his outgoing with the most intense eagerness—rushing toward him with outstretched hands, calling upon all the saints to bless him and his issue forever and ever, and sometimes bowing down to the earth before him, in their accustomed way, as if he himself partook of some sacred attributes. Apart from the wretched aspect of these poor creatures, among which were the lame, the halt, and the blind from all the purlieus of Moscow, there was something very revolting in the debasement of their attitudes. To assist them all was impossible; and I often had to struggle through the crowds with feelings akin to remorse in being compelled to leave them thus vainly appealing to my charity. When alone, hours after, the weary and pathetic strain of their supplications would haunt me, bearing in its sorrowful intonations a weird warning that we are all bound together in the great fellowship of sin.
And now, while we are taking our last lingering look at the Kremlin, the mighty bells of the tower toll forth a funeral knell. A priest lies dead in one of the churches, his coffin draped in the habiliments of woe. The chanting rises ever and anon above the death-knell that sweeps through the air. Standing aloof, we listen to the solemn sounds of mourning. The funeral cortége comes forth from the church. The hearse, with its plumed horses all draped in black, receives the coffin; priests and mourners, bearing lighted tapers, lead the way, chanting a requiem for the departed; and thus they pass before us—the living and the dead—till they reach the Holy Gate. Then the priests and the crowd bow down and pray; and when they have passed out from under the sacred arch, they turn before the image of the Savior and pray again; then rising, they cross themselves devoutly and pass on to the last earthly resting-place of their friend and brother.
Surely death draws us nearer together in life. I thought no more of forms. What matters it if we are all true to our Creator and to our convictions of duty! Life is too short to spend in earthly contentions.
“In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down and withereth.”
CHAPTER XV.
RUSSIAN MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
Rude and savage as the lower orders are in their external appearance, they certainly can not be considered deficient in politeness, if the habit of bowing be taken as an indication. In that branch of civilization they are well entitled to take rank with the Germans and French, from whom, doubtless, they have acquired many of their forms of etiquette. Something, however, of Asiatic gravity and courtliness mingles with whatever they may have adopted from the more sprightly and demonstrative races of the South; and a certain degree of dignity, accompanied though it may be with rags and filth, is always observable in their manners. The alacrity, good nature, and enthusiasm so characteristic of the Germans, and the dexterous play of muscles and vivacious suavity of the French, are wholly deficient in the Russians—such of them, at least, as have retained their nationality. The higher classes, of course, who frequently spend their summers at the watering-places of Germany and their winters in Paris, come home, like all traveled gentlemen, with a variety of elegant accomplishments, the chief of which is a disgust for their own language and customs. This, indeed, seems to be a characteristic of several other nations—an inordinate desire to become denationalized by imitating whatever is meretricious and absurd in other people; and you need not be surprised should you fail to recognize even your unpretending friend and correspondent on his return to California; for although I still pretend to write a little English, I no longer speak it except in broken accents. Having also worn out three good hats practicing the art of bowing on the boulevards of Paris and the glacis of Frankfort, I never pretend now to recognize any body without striking the top of my tile against the cap of my knee.
