CREATURES THAT ONE DAY SHALL BE MEN.



I ought to like Russia better than I do, if only for the sake of the
many good friends I am proud to possess amongst the Russians. A
large square photograph I keep always on my mantel-piece; it helps me
to maintain my head at that degree of distention necessary for the
performance of all literary work. It presents in the centre a
neatly-written address in excellent English that I frankly confess I
am never tired of reading, around which are ranged some hundreds of
names I am quite unable to read, but which, in spite of their strange
lettering, I know to be the names of good Russian men and women to
whom, a year or two ago, occurred the kindly idea of sending me as a
Christmas card this message of encouragement. The individual Russian
is one of the most charming creatures living. If he like you he does
not hesitate to let you know it; not only by every action possible,
but, by what perhaps is just as useful in this grey old world, by
generous, impulsive speech.

We Anglo-Saxons are apt to pride ourselves upon being
undemonstrative. Max Adeler tells the tale of a boy who was sent out
by his father to fetch wood. The boy took the opportunity of
disappearing and did not show his face again beneath the paternal
roof for over twenty years. Then one evening, a smiling, well-
dressed stranger entered to the old couple, and announced himself as
their long-lost child, returned at last.