by is laid on a fresh, warm, linen cloth, which is then wrapped around
it in a particular manner, so that it is securely fastened without the
use of a single pin. Two other cloths, similarly wrapped, complete the
simple, comfortable toilet. This and another Russian habit, that of
allowing a baby to kick about in its crib clad only in its birthday
suit, I commend to the consideration of American mothers.

The last thing in the asylum which is shown to visitors is the manner in
which the babies are received, washed, weighed, and numbered. It was
early in December when I was there, but the numbers on the ivory disks
suspended from the new arrivals' necks were a good many hundred above
seventeen thousand. As they begin each year with No. 1, I think the
whole number of foundlings for that particular year must have been
between eighteen and nineteen thousand. The children are put out to
board, after a short stay at the asylum, in peasant families, which
receive a small sum per month for taking care of them. When the boys
grow up they count as members of the family in a question of army
service, and the sons of the family can escape their turn, I was told,
if matters are rightly managed. The girls become uniformed servants in
the government institutions for the education of girls of the higher
classes, or marry peasants.

The most famous of the gates which lead from the White Town through the
white, machicolated walls into China Town* is the Iversky, or gate of
the Iberian Virgin. The gate has two entrances, and between these
tower-crowned openings stands a chapel of malachite and marble, gilded
bronze and painting. The Iversky Virgin who inhabits the chapel, though
"wonder-working," is only a copy of one in the monastery on Mount Athos.
She was brought to Russia in 1666, and this particular chapel was built
for her by Katherine II. Her garment and crown of gold weigh between
twenty-seven and twenty-eight pounds, and are studded with splendid
jewels. But the Virgin whom one sees in the chapel is not even this
copy, but a copy of the copy. The original Virgin, as we may call the
first copy for convenience, is in such great demand for visits to
convents and monasteries, to private houses and the shops of wealthy and
devout merchants, that she is never at home from early morn till late at
night, and the second copy represents her to the thousands of prayerful
people of all classes, literally, who stop to place a candle or utter a