away in outlying
districts of Russia we find the same time-honored quips which have so
long figured in collections of English facetiae. There is the good old
story, for instance, of the dispute between a husband and wife as to
whether a certain rope has been cut with a knife or with scissors,
resulting in the murder of the scissors-upholding wife, who is pitched
into the river by her knife-advocating husband; but not before she
has, in her very death agony, testified to her belief in the scissors
hypothesis by a movement of her fingers above the surface of the
stream.[47] In a Russian form of the story, told in the government of
Astrakhan, the quarrel is about the husband's beard. He says he has
shaved it, his wife declares he has only cut it off. He flings her
into a deep pool, and calls to her to say "shaved." Utterance is
impossible to her, but "she lifts one hand above the water and by
means of two fingers makes signs to show that it was cut."[48] The
story has even settled into a proverb. Of a contradictory woman the
Russian peasants affirm that, "If you say 'shaved' she'll say 'cut.'"

In the same way another story shows us in Russian garb our old friend
the widower who, when looking for his drowned wife--a woman of a very
antagonistic disposition--went up the river instead of down, saying to
his astonished companions, "She always did everything contrary-wise,
so now, no doubt, she's gone against the stream."[49] A common story
again is that of the husband who, having confided a secret to his wife
which he justly fears she will reveal, throws discredit on her
evidence about things in general by making her believe various absurd
stories which she hastens to repeat.[49] The final paragraph of one of
the variants of this time-honored jest is quaint, concluding as it
does, by way of sting, with a highly popular Russian saw. The wife has
gone to the seigneur of the village and accused her husband of having
found a treasure and kept it for his own use. The charge is true, but
the wife is induced to talk such nonsense, and the husband complains
so bitterly of her, that "the seigneur pitied the moujik for being so
unfortunate, so he set him at liberty; and he had him divorced from
his wife and married to another, a young and good-looking one. Then
the moujik immediately dug up his treasure and began living in the
best manner possible." Sure enough the proverb doesn't say without
reason: "Women have long hair and short wi