| A village boulevard | A Russian cemetery |
Nicholas, who approached, falteringly, his dress utterly disheveled and spattered with mud.
“Why comest thou so dirty into My presence?” asked the Lord.
“Because I was following St. Cassian, and seeing the muzhik of whom he just spake, I have helped him out of the marsh.”
The Lord hesitated a moment, then said:
“Because thou, Cassian, hast cared so much about thy dress and so little about thy brother, I will give thee thy saint’s day only once in four years. And to thee, Nicholas, for having acted as thou didst, I will give four saint days each year.”
And that is how it comes about that St. Cassian’s day falls on February 29 and St. Nicholas’s day occurs quarterly.
In this case muzhik ethics are illustrated as eminently practical. And so with muzhik morality. Sexual immorality is so commonplace among the officers, and among certain court and aristocratic circles, that it is no longer scandalous. It is accepted. And also in the industrial towns among the proletariat. But among the peasantry an entirely different code exists—a code of sex honor, born of what Americans would call “horse sense.” Early marriages are the rule, to be sure, much earlier than in the towns, but the standard of morality is probably higher among the peasantry than among any other class of people in Russia.