and improve
their own taste in dress. They are carefully studied individually, and,
while all are educated in school in the same way, special preparation is
given for different callings in life according to the inclination and
aptitude shown by the girls. Many, of course, prefer domestic service as
being simpler and perhaps more in keeping with what they have known
before coming there; but the more enterprising and competent can be, and
are, taught all sorts of things which these very modern nuns do with
such great ability themselves. They play, sing, do all sorts of "white
work" for Russian and French purchasers, and are well up in modern
photography. They carve, paint, make _ikons_, illuminate pictures, and
do wonderful embroidery. There is a wide choice, therefore, for the
girls under their charge, and they avail themselves of it to the full.
Just before I was there a girl with a wonderful voice, after having been
trained, had been launched, at the age of twenty-six, upon her career as
a member of the Russian Imperial Opera.

I described this very modern work as carried out by the nuns of a very
ancient convent, on my return, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who
remarked significantly, as I daresay many of my readers will, "And
_that_ is in Siberia!"

From Abbess let me pass to Abbot, but to a very different community. At
Tiumen, the farthest point I reached in North Siberia, and where I had
been to give services to a family living alone there, and from Scotland
originally, I went out in the afternoon to see an old church outside the
town where there had formerly been a fairly large monastery. It is very
small and humble now, I am sure, from the few we saw there, and their
neglected appearance as they went about their work in old and well-worn
habits. The church was locked, but one of their number fetched the keys
and showed us over the church, explaining their oldest _ikons_. As we
walked towards the gate and our little carriage, he was full of
curiosity about ourselves and our Church, and at last, as he questioned
me rather closely, my friend could keep it in no longer, and
explained:--

"He's a bishop, an English bishop, and he has come from London to give
us lonely folk a service!"

The effect was extraordinary.

"An English bishop! Do you say it? Only to think of it! And I in my
dirty clothes like any common labourer! And I am the Abbot! I beg of
you! Oh! yes, I must insist. Do not deny me. Enter my humbl