first house testifieth in incomprehensible Russian figures.

A "soul," be it known, is a different object in the land of the Czars to
that vague protoplasm about which our young persons think such mighty
thoughts, our old men write such famous big books. A soul is namely a
man--in Russia the women have not yet begun to seek their rights and
lose their privileges. A man is therefore a "soul" in Russia, and as
such enjoys the doubtful privilege of contributing to the land-tax and
to every other tax. In compensation for the first-named impost he is
apportioned his share of the common land of the village, and by the
cultivation of this ekes out an existence which would be valueless if he
were a teetotaller. It is melancholy to have to record this fact in the
pages of a respectable volume like the present; but facts--as the orator
who deals in fiction is ever ready to announce--facts cannot be ignored.
And any man who has lived in Russia, has dabbled in Russian humanity,
and noted the singular unattractiveness of Russian life--any such man
can scarcely deny the fact that if one deprives the moujik of his
privilege of getting gloriously and frequently intoxicated, one takes
away from that same moujik the one happiness of his existence.

That the Russian peasant is by nature one of the cheeriest, the
noisiest, and lightest-hearted of men is only another proof of the
Creator's power; for this dimly lighted "soul" has nothing to cheer him
on his forlorn way but the memory of the last indulgence in strong drink
and the hope of more to come. He is harassed by a ruthless
tax-collector; he is shut off from the world by enormous distances over
impracticable roads. When the famine comes, and come it assuredly will,
the moujik has no alternative but to stay where he is and starve. Since
Alexander II. of philanthropic memory made the Russian serf a free man,
the blessings of freedom have been found to resolve themselves chiefly