Looking at the confusion, listening to the uproar, one fancied that
in this living hotch-potch no one understood anyone, that everyone
was looking for something and would not find it, and that this
multitude of carts, chaises and human beings could not ever succeed
in getting off.

More than ten thousand people flocked to the Holy Mountains for the
festivals of St. John the Divine and St. Nikolay the wonder-worker.
Not only the hostel buildings, but even the bakehouse, the tailoring
room, the carpenter's shop, the carriage house, were filled to
overflowing. . . . Those who had arrived towards night clustered
like flies in autumn, by the walls, round the wells in the yard,
or in the narrow passages of the hostel, waiting to be shown a
resting-place for the night. The lay brothers, young and old, were
in an incessant movement, with no rest or hope of being relieved.
By day or late at night they produced the same impression of men
hastening somewhere and agitated by something, yet, in spite of
their extreme exhaustion, their faces remained full of courage and
kindly welcome, their voices friendly, their movements rapid. . . .
For everyone who came they had to find a place to sleep, and to
provide food and drink; to those who were deaf, slow to understand,
or profuse in questions, they had to give long and wearisome
explanations, to tell them why there were no empty rooms, at what
o'clock the service was to be where holy bread was sold, and so on.
They had to run, to carry, to talk incessantly, but more than that,
they had to be polite, too, to be tactful, to try to arrange that
the Greeks from Mariupol, accustomed to live more comfortably than
the Little Russians, should be put with other Greeks, that some
shopkeeper from Bahmut or Lisitchansk, dressed like a lady, should
not be offended by being put with peasants There were continual