as an instrument for his welfare; only the unmarried girls are
allowed to amuse themselves. A married woman has to work for her
husband from youth to very old age: his demands on her are the
Oriental ones of submission and labour. In consequence of this
outlook women are strongly developed both physically and mentally,
and though they are--as everywhere in the East--nominally in
subjection, they possess far greater influence and importance in
family-life than Western women. Their exclusion from public life
and inurement to heavy male labour give the women all the more
power and importance in the household. A Cossack, who before
strangers considers it improper to speak affectionately or
needlessly to his wife, when alone with her is involuntarily
conscious of her superiority. His house and all his property, in
fact the entire homestead, has been acquired and is kept together
solely by her labour and care. Though firmly convinced that labour
is degrading to a Cossack and is only proper for a Nogay labourer
or a woman, he is vaguely aware of the fact that all he makes use
of and calls his own is the result of that toil, and that it is in
the power of the woman (his mother or his wife) whom he considers
his slave, to deprive him of all he possesses. Besides, the
continuous performance of man's heavy work and the
responsibilities entrusted to her have endowed the Grebensk women
with a peculiarly independent masculine character and have
remarkably developed their physical powers, common sense,
resolution, and stability. The women are in most cases stronger,
more intelligent, more developed, and handsomer than the men. A
striking feature of a Grebensk woman's beauty is the combination
of the purest Circassian type of face with the broad and powerful
build of Northern women. Cossack women wear the Circassian dress--
a Tartar smock, beshmet, and soft slippers--but they tie their