girls carrying a
flower-bedecked coffin, half a dozen elders, and a pack of children
carrying candles--a sight at once terrible and diurnal, a child's
funeral.

Russian churches, having no chairs, have the appearance of being
almost empty. In the centre of this emptiness at Gagri church two
trestles were put up, and the open coffin placed upon them; in the
coffin, lying in a bed of fresh flowers and dressed in delicate white
garments, was a little dead child. The coffin was perfectly and even
marvellously arranged; it would be difficult to imagine anything more
beautiful, and at the same time more terrible.

A girl of about four years, she lay in the coffin as in bed, with her
head somewhat raised, and the face looking directly at the altar and
at the sorrowful pictures; on her head was a cream silk embroidered
bonnet, on her forehead, from ear to ear, a paper _riza_ with delicate
line drawings of the story of the girl's angel, St. Olga. A high
lighted candle stood at her head, two little ones at each side, and
two at her feet. The bonnet and the dress were tied with little bits
of pink ribbon; the child's hands, small, white, all lovely, lay one
upon another, and in one of them was a little white cross. The face
and arms were the colour of fine grey wax, the lips thin, dark red and
set--the little dead girl looked steadfastly at the Ikons.

I stood and wondered. Round about the coffin were a score of people,
mostly little children, who every now and then nicked away flies that
were about to settle on the dead body. The grey church and its beauty
melted away. There was only a little grey wax figure lying poised
before the face of Christ, and little children flicking away flies.

Among the flowers in the coffin I noticed a heavy metal cross--it
would be buried with her. Hanging over the trestles at each of the
four corners were gorgeous hand-embroidered towels. "This is some rich
person's child," I thought as I waited--it was twenty minutes before
the father, the mother, and the priest arrived. I was mistaken; this
was the child of ordinary peasants.

* * * * *

I wonder the mother was allowed to come to church; she was frantic
with grief. When she came into the church she fell down on her knees
and hugged the dead body and kissed it and sobbed--sobbed so horribly
that except for the children there was no one present who kept dry
eyes. The husband stood with his hands dangling at hi