multifarious populace. The service was
read in hollow, oracular tones, and every now and then a storm of
glorious bass voices broke forth in response. Evidently the Ikon of
the Virgin named _Izbavelnitsa_ was being thanked for her protection
of the Tsar in a storm. So much I could make out; and every now and
then the crowd sang thanks to the Virgin. At the end of the service
the Archimandrite, who had had his back to the people all the time--or
rather, to put it more truly, had all the time looked the same way,
_with_ the people--turned, and lifting and lowering the gold cross
which he held in his hands, gave blessing. The heads and bodies of the
worshippers bowed as the Cross pointed toward them.

The service was over. As the abbot Ieronym resumed his ordinary
attire, and left the temple, the hundred or so peasant men and women
pressed around him, and fervently kissed his little old fingers, white
and delicate. I watched the old man give his hand to them--I watched
their eagerness. Religion was proved to be Love.

IV

What struck me particularly on entering Novy Afon was the new tone in
the every day. There was less of the _barin_ and servant, officer
and soldier feeling, less noisy commandings and scoldings, even less
beating of the patient horses that have to carry such heavy loads in
Russia. Instead of these, a gentleness and graciousness, something of
that which one finds in artistic and mystic communities in Russia, in
art and in pictures, but which one seldom meets with in public life.
Here at New Athos breathes a true Christianity. It was strange how
even the undying curiosity of the Russian had been conquered; for here
I was not asked the thousand and one impertinent questions that it is
usually my lot to smile over and answer. There was even a restraint in
asking me necessary questions lest they should be difficult to answer.

Then not one of the monks possesses any property of his own, even of a
purely transitory kind, such as a bed or a suit of clothes. They have
all in common, and they have not that nicety or necessity of privacy
which would compel an Englishman to claim the right to wear the same
coat and trousers two days running. But the monks are even less
diffident of claiming their own separate mugs and plates at table, and
are unoffended by miscellaneous eating and drinking from one another's
dishes.

Every one is the servant of all--and without hypocrisy--not only in
act but in sentiment and