all room, before the large and chief living-room.
There will be two or more small square windows in the latter, an _ikon_
in a corner with a lamp before it and a shelf for flowers below--every
one on entering looks towards it, bowing reverently and making the sign
of the Cross--a very large stove of bricks, whitewashed, upon the top of
which rests a wide shelf, carried along the wall as far as is necessary
for the whole family to be able to find sleeping-space upon it. There
will also be a long wooden bench, a great table, a few wooden stools,
and a great cupboard, and, nearly always, cheap coloured pictures of the
Emperor and Empress, whose portraits are to be found in all shops, inns,
post offices, and places of public resort.

These are the simple surroundings described and made familiar to us by
all writers of Russian stories of which peasants form a part, and all
over the empire they are found just as Tolstoi, Dostoviesky, Turgenieff,
and others bring them before us in their interesting tales. Take for
example Tolstoi's _Where Love is there God is also_, _Master and Man_,
and other parables and tales. When Martin Avdeitch is looking out from
his small abode through his one small window upon the passers-by as
simply as man could do, and yet with shrewd and discerning eyes, he is
ready for the old pilgrim who comes into his life just at the right
moment, and shows him the way to God.

Or take Nikita in _Master and Man_, in the same volume. In some ways he
is extraordinarily simple, and does not appear to know how shamefully he
is being exploited by his avaricious and grasping master. We are told in
the story that he _does_ know even though he goes on as if he didn't,
and does his duty by him as if he were the best of masters, just as he
does by an unfaithful and unfeeling wife. It would be difficult to
imagine a peasant one would more love to know and understand than
Nikita, strong, capable, affectionate, and shrewd, as he comes running
before us in the story, to harness the horse for his master, the only
man on the place that day not drunk, talking to the little brown cob
which noses him affectionately, and in the end making a tremendous
struggle for his own and his master's life, and winning through himself.
Thus he goes on steadily as long as he lives, with no other thought but
that of duty, until he lies down beneath the _ikon_, and, with the wax
candle in his hand just as he had always wished, passes away at pea