Chase the snow into the north, O strong of heart and wing,
While we share the robin's rapture, crying, "Spring! it is spring!"
[THE CHARCOAL-BURNERS' FIRE;
OR, EASTER EVE AMONG THE COSSACKS.]
(A Russian Legend.)
BY DAVID KER.
"If you want me to tell you any wonderful stories, Barin, such as you've been telling us," says Ostap Mordenko, shaking his bushy yellow beard, as he finished his cup of tea, "you're just looking for corn upon a rock, as the saying is; for I never had an adventure since the day I was born, except that time when I slipped through a hole in the ice, last winter. But, perhaps, it will do as well if I tell you an old tale that I've heard many a time from my grandfather, that's dead (may the kingdom of heaven be his!), and which will show you how there may be hope for a man, even when everything seems to be at the very worst.
"Many, many years ago, there lived in a village on the Don River, a poor man. When I say he was poor, I don't mean that he had a few holes in his coat at times, or that he had to go without a dinner every now and then, for that's what we've all had to do in our time; but it fairly seemed as if poverty were his brother, and had come to stay with him for good and all. Many a cold day his stove was unlighted, because he couldn't afford to buy wood; and he lived on black bread and cold water from the New Year to the Nativity—it was no good talking to him about cabbage soup, or salted cucumber, or tea with lemon in it.[A]