hich may be vulgarly
rendered into English by "running for luck."

But even more attractive than these house diversions and the village
were the other external features of that sweet country life. The
mushroom season was beginning. Equipped with baskets of ambitious size,
we roamed the forests, which are carpeted in spring with lilies of the
valley, and all summer long, even under the densest shadow, with rich
grass. We learned the home and habits of the shrimp-pink mushroom, which
is generally eaten salted; of the fat white and birch mushrooms, with
their chocolate caps, to be eaten fresh; of the brown and green butter
mushroom, most delicious of all to our taste, and beloved of the black
beetle, whom we surprised at his feast. However, the mushrooms were only
an excuse for dreaming away the afternoons amid the sweet glints of the
fragrant snowy birch-trees and the green-gold flickerings of the pines,
in the "black forest," which is a forest composed of evergreens and
deciduous trees. Now and then, in our rambles, we met and skirted great
pits dug in the grassy roads to prevent the peasants from conveniently
perpetrating thefts of wood. Once we came upon a party of timber-thieves
(it was Sunday afternoon), who espied us in time to rattle off in their
rude _telyega_ with their prize, a great tree, at a rate which would
have reduced ordinary flesh and bones to a jelly; leaving us to stare
helplessly at the freshly hewn stump. Tawny hares tripped across our
path, or gazed at us from the green twilight of the bushes, as we lay on
the turf and discussed all things in the modern heaven and earth, from
theosophy and Keely's motor to--the other extreme.

When the peasants had not forestalled us, we returned home with masses
of mushrooms, flower-like in hue,--bronze, pink, snow-white, green,
and yellow; and Osip cooked them delicately, in sour cream, to accompany
the juicy young blackcock and other game of our host's shooting. Osip
was a _cordon bleu_, and taxed his ingenuity to initiate us into all the
mysteries of Russian cooking, which, under his tuition, we found
delicious. The only national dish which we never really learned to like
was one in which he had no hand,--fresh cucumbers sliced lengthwise
and spread thick with new honey, which is supposed to be eaten after the
honey has been blessed, with the fruits, on the feast of the
Transfiguration, but which in practice is devoured whenever found, as
the village priest was