sists of a number of
persons seizing hold of these cables, running round the mast until
sufficient impetus is acquired, and then swinging through the air in a
circle. The Tzarevitch* who had driven over from the great camp at
Krasnoe Selo, and whom I had seen in the church of the Old Palace that
morning at a special mass, with the angelic imperial choir and the
priests from the Winter Palace sent down from Petersburg for the
occasion, was now sailing through the air high up toward the apex of the
mast. One of his imperial aunts, clad in a fleecy white gown, occupied a
similar position on another cable. It was plain that they could not have
done their own running to gain impetus, and that the gardeners must have
towed them by the ends of the ropes. The other grand dukes and duchesses
were managing their own cables in the usual manner. The party included
the king and queen of Greece and other royal spectators. What interested
me most was to hear them all shrieking and conversing in Russian, with
only occasional lapses into French, instead of the reverse.

* The present Emperor, Nicholas II.

But everything is not royal in the vicinity of these summer parks and
palaces. For example, just outside of Tzarskoe Selo, on the Petersburg
highway, lies a Russian village called Kuzmino, whose inhabitants are as
genuine, unmodified peasants as if they lived a hundred miles from any
provincial town. Here in the north, where timber is plentiful, cottages
are raised from the ground by a half-story, without windows, which
serves as a storeroom for carts, sledges, and farming implements. The
entrance is through a door beside the large courtyard gate, which rears
its heavy frame on the street line, adjoining the house, in Russian
fashion. A rough staircase leads to the dwelling-rooms over the shed
storeroom. Three tiny windows on the street front, with solid wooden
shutters, are the ordinary allowance for light. In Kuzmino, many of the
windows had delicate, clean white curtains, and all were filled with
blooming plants. A single window, for symmetry, and a carved balcony
fill in the sharp gable end of such houses, but open into nothing, and
the window is not even glazed. Carved horses' heads, rude but
recognizable, tuft the peak, and lacelike wood carving droops from the
eaves. The roofs also are of wood.

This was the style of the cottages in Kuzmino. The name of the owner was
inscribed on the corner of each house; and there appeared t