orn in some districts of Novgorod.

Now listen to the cause of this frightful waste of human life: "It is
the great mortality in July and August that causes the terrible
destruction of infant life in Russia. Those months are the months of
harvest, when the peasant-women are forced by necessity to leave their
newborn infants to be nursed by children four or five years old, or by
old women whose hands can no longer grasp the reaping-hook. Fed on sour
rye bread and cabbage- or mushroom-water, working as much as the men,
having less sleep, keeping more religious fasts, the peasant-women are
only exceptionally capable of rearing their children by the natural
process."... "I have seen children not a year old left for twenty-four
hours entirely alone, and in order that they should not die of hunger
feeding-bottles were attached to their hands and feet." In other cases
poultices of rye bread, oatmeal, curds, etc. are placed over the
infants' mouths by the miserable mothers who are obliged to leave them
to work in the fields. These poultices frequently choke or suffocate the
child. Domestic animals invade the hut, and deprive the infant of even
this wretched food. The cries of the child for sustenance produce
internal distensions which result in hernia and other disorders of a
like nature, which are very common in Russia. We shall see presently to
what degree these sad marks of neglect affect the strength and physical
capacity of those who survive such an infancy and become men.

Meanwhile, let us regard for a moment the sufferings of the peasant
mothers. Their confinement frequently takes place in a hut devoted to
the purposes of a steam-bath, or, in summer, in a barn, stable or
outhouse. Many a poor woman is obliged to bear her great trial
unattended--perhaps even without those appliances the absence of which
will compel her, even against her better nature, to follow the instinct
of brutes. In three days, at the utmost, she leaves the scene of her
unspeakable agony and resumes her household duties, even her hard
field-work. Cases occur in which the mother of only one day is forced by
the hardship of circumstances to take to the field. Of course, these
women, so cruelly enslaved, are to the last degree ignorant. What time,
even if opportunity offered, have they for schooling, or even discourse?
None whatever. They are but little superior in intellect to animals.
Naturally, this ignorance begets superstition, and from this sourc