no GOD nothing will
happen to me at all.' Then he took the _ikon_ and spat upon it and broke
it to bits, and said to the peasants, 'You see GOD has not killed me.'
'No,' said the peasants, 'GOD has not killed you, but we will'; and they
killed him."

It is not difficult to imagine that closing scene, knowing Russia. There
would be no excitement, but all would be quickly and effectually done.

The same writer draws our attention to Turgenieff's wonderfully
appealing sketches of country life, though not many of his works have
been translated for English readers as yet. He alludes especially in an
essay of last year on "The Fascination of Russia" to his description of
the summer night, when on the plain the children tell each other bogey
stories; or the description of that July evening, when out of the
twilight from a long way off a voice is heard calling, "Antropk-a-a-a!"
and Antropka answers, "Wha-a-a-at?" and far away out of the immensity
comes the answering voice, "Come home, because daddy wants to whip you!"

Perhaps the reader may _feel_ nothing as he reads, but all who know and
love Russia, and are stirred by thoughts of its life and people will
feel that it was abundantly worth while to write down such a simple
incident. They will understand and feel that stirring within, which
Russia never fails to achieve again and again for those who have once
lived and moved amongst her peasantry, and come under her strange spell
and felt her charm.

Gogol, the greatest of Russian humorists, has a passage in one of his
books, where, in exile, he cries out to his country to reveal the secret
of her fascination:--

"'What is the mysterious and inscrutable power which lies hidden in
you?'" he exclaims. "'Why does your aching and melancholy song echo
unceasingly in one's ears? Russia, what do you want of me? What is there
between you and me?' This question has often been repeated not only by
Russians in exile, but by others who have merely lived in Russia.

"There are none of those spots where nature, art, time, and history have
combined to catch the heart with a charm in which beauty, association,
and even decay are indistinguishably mingled; where art has added the
picturesque to the beauty of nature; and where time has made magic the
handiwork of art; and where history has peopled the spot with countless
phantoms, and cast over everything the strangeness and glamour of her
spell.

"Such places you will find in France an