merely to baptize. But
perhaps he might be persuaded to manage that also, if I had better
clothes."

He wore a light print shirt, tolerably clean, belted outside his dark
trousers, and his shoes and cap were respectable enough.

I recalled instances which I had heard from the best authority--a
priest--of priests finding sponsors for Jews, and receiving medals or
orders in reward for their conversion. I recalled an instance related to
me by a Russian friend who had acted, at the priest's request, as
godmother to a Jewess so fat that she stuck fast in the receptacle used
for the baptism by immersion; and I questioned the man a little. He said
that he had a sister living in New York, and gave me her name and
address in a manner which convinced me that he knew what he was saying.
He had no complaint to make of his treatment by either Russians or Jews;
and when I asked him why he did not join his sister in America, he
replied,

"Why should I? I am well enough off here."

Perhaps I ought to state that he was a plumber by trade. On the other
hand, justice demands the explanation that Russian plumbing in general
is not of a very complicated character, and in Minsk it must be of a
very simple kind, I think.

He intended to return to Minsk as soon as he was baptized. How he
expected to attend the Russian Church in Minsk when he had found it
inexpedient to be baptized there was one of the points which he omitted
to explain.

I was at last obliged to bid him a decisive "good-day," and leave the
church. He followed, and passed me in the garden, his cap cocked
jauntily over his tight bronze curls, and his hips swaying from side to
side in harmony. Under the long arch of the belfry-tower gate hung a
picture, adapted to use as an _ikona_, which set forth how a mother had
accidentally dropped her baby overboard from a boat on the Dnyepr, and
coming, disconsolate, to pray before the image of St. Nicholas, the
patron of travelers, she had found her child lying there safe and sound;
whence this holy picture is known by the name of St. Nicholas the Wet.

Before this _ikona_ my Jew pulled off his cap, and crossed himself
rapidly and repeatedly, watching me out of the corner of his eye,
meanwhile, to see how his piety impressed me. It produced no particular
effect upon me, except to make me engage a smart-looking cabby to take
me to my hotel, close by, by a roundabout route. Whether this Jew
returned to Minsk as Vladimir or as Isaac