The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-03-26
PETER THE GREATS MEMORY
ALMOST 4 WORSHIP OF THE GREAT
 CAR OF THE RUSSIAs.

Where He Planned the Creation of a Power That Rules Half the world-He it Was Who Started Russia in Her World Influencing Career.
 Peter has become almost a cult in Russia. Go to his cottage on the banks of the Neva on a Russian holiday, and you will have to fall in queue and | squeeze your way into his little rooms, | ostensibly to kiss a holy picture, but this holy picture is mixed up in the Russians mind with Peter the Great. | The MoNjik looks around on the little home Peter built for himself on the | Neva marshes as if he looked on the relies of a saint. Peter was essentially a man or action-an artisan of genius as his handiwork and the tools he used prove; yet a born commander, rest less, ruthless. When near the site of his future St. Petersburg he saw a tree scared with mark high above the l ground, and he asked of the peasants | near:
 What is that?"
 ''The height to which the waters rose in l6SO," replied peasant
 1 You lle! cried Peter. He cut the tree down. He was not to be deterred by the fact that floods had swept over his chosen site, and his masterfulness is to-day felt by the Russians until they have nearly made a god of him. It is impossible now to see the exterior of Peters Cottage on the Neva's banks, for stone house was built by Catha- rine II over it as a shell to preserve this little wooden cottage, and so the outward appearance is gone. Inside this stone building you see the wooden building, but this has very foolishly lately been painted to initiate bricks; but inside you can see in one room the type of place Peter lived and worked in. Here in this one little room-there are but two in the cottage-are the oak furniture, old leather chairs, little cooking service, some of the sails of his boat, and the worn little wooden bench seat on which he sat at his door and dreamed of the future capital or raved at those who carried out his orders or failed to do so. In this room he transacted business with his Minis ters of State and received foreign Ambassadors.
 The very greatness of the man forces itself upon one by this act alone. He, the Czar, with all the jewelled group of the Kremlin to enshroud himself with, sitting on this bench, or in his timber hut, and creating a power that in less than two centuries was to rule half the world. The other room of the cottage is also greatly transformed; it was Peter's sleeping and dining room; now it is chapel, and a picture of our Saviour which Peter took with him upon all his travels, and which he bore
 with him at the famous battle of Polt-
 ava, hangs here. It is in a gilt frame
 with a jewelled crown that, as is usual
 in Russian towns, quite overshadows
 the picture.
 Not long ago I went out to this cot
 tage on a Russian saints day, and
 service was being performed in the
 chapel. A small choir of men in ordi- I nary dress were squeezed in behind the 5 little altar, and a priest in robes was u chanting the service. The people were
 packed 1atly together in the room an6 . outside around the door, and under the ; passage of the outer building that pro tects the cottage Some tried to ge1 2 others to pass in lighted candles tt . place before the picture, and others
 crushed and squeezed until some nov ? ing on gave a chance to get in. Al ~ devoutly blessed the picture an( = crossed themselves continuously, ant when they got out went with reveren = tial air and looked at Peters room anc s the boat he built, this latter placed be a tween his cottage and the outer build l. ing. The heat in the little chapel Q with the lighted candles and the packe, V little mass of not too clean humanity e was excessive, and the perspiratiol e stood out on the faces of priests an,
 choir, who went about their work in d. quiet, business-like fashion; but tn " devotion of the crowd to memory, t d a something they themselves perchanc d could not explain, was very apparent 1t Ostensibly it was the holy picture d but it is the link between the picture
 and Peter that gives it so much valu . and makes it so revered.
 This Peter who built St. Peters
  and started her on her world -influenc ID ing career. The fierce, remorseles.
 indomitable restlessness of the ma a- and his crimes are forgotten; all tn
 boodshed he caused in seizing upo the sole rule and in his ill-planne 'l campaigns-event the one great terribl ed crime of the murder of his own so
 Alexis, which rumor and tradition la a to his charge-all is forgotten in tn i, memory of the man who by that sam indomitable will and force of characte
 started Russia on her aggrandizin lg career. Everything that is associate
 with him, his clothes, his trapping
 his jewels, the tools with which " worked, his writings, his books, every or thing is treasured up and looked upo e. with such reverence by the Russian ths i ONE 0eIAR-