The Tacoma times. [volume] (Tacoma, Wash.) 1903-1949, 1904-02-25

ten when they are in the army, but for
them the long winter is usually spent keep
ing drunk. The peasants used to make
their own vodka from spoiled potatoes,
but lately the government has prevented
this by making the production of alcohol
government monopoly. At the same
time vodka is exceedingly plentiful, very
intoxicating and s the usual relief prac-
ticed during the winter.
To traveller one of the most extraordin-
try things in Russia is that nobody seems
to have the slightest idea on the subject
of ventilation. Most of the buildings are
Theoretically sealed in October and not
aired until May, so that by midwinter the
stencil even in fairly good hotels is over
powering. Churches and many public build
ings are just as bad, but for the climax
in bad air you have to visit the home
of peasant. The average peasants house.
is a crude structure of logs and thatch;
sometimes with only one room and some
times with two. In the living room is q
great stove of brick SO constructed that
very small amount of fuel will heat it
and it will continue to give out heat long
after the fire has gone out.
BY failing to ventilate, the peasant is
able to economic on fuel, and though it
is plentiful enough this seems a great OBJ
ject to him. His windows are always
built SO that they cannot be opened. The
door is never opened except when some
one goes in or out, and then only wide
enough to admit the person, when it is
closed Immediately. Sometimes in one
small room with the stove filling nearly
quarter of it, twelve persons will live.
To enter such room in winter almost
knocks over the uninitiated, so suffocat-
ing is it. The only marvel is that every
one is not asphyxiated. The explanation
is that the houses are not too we'll built
and somewhere there is crack through
which a tiny allowance of oxygen creeps in.
Poor oxygen Living under such condi-
tions probably accounts for the fact that
the people like to get drunk and that
they get drunk so easily.
BY spring the peasants are as pale az
ghosts and weak for lack of air In ad-
dition to the other terrors, there is an
immense and noisome population of in
sects. Somehow the peasants are used to
them and do not give them much thought.
The chief outside influence in the peas
ants life is religion but this is in many
cases degraded to mere superstition.
Each house has its own little icon or pic
| ture of a saint and this is often literally
| worshiped. The peasants also hold strange
pagan ideas on many subjects which have
survived from the darker ages of Russia.
| Witches are implicitly believed in, and in
extreme cases, where the water wheel Of
| a mill, for instance, is supposed to beibe4
witched, the miller will go to the length
OF kidnapping a child and drowning 10
under the wheel so as to appease the sor-
Gerry. n
with so religious a people, it might be
| supposed that the priests would have great
power. 70 a certain extent they do have.
1t was a device of Peter the Great to abol-
| lsh the system of Russian church govern
ment by which the Greek church was ruled
by one patriarch and to make the car head
Of the church. Today there are three
metropolitan bishops of equal rank and
the car is the head of all. The idea is
to teach the people that the car is the
anointed head of the church and the re-
| llgious machinery of the country is worked
| to this end
The priest does not have the same
authority as in other places As matter
OF fact, Russian peasants think that all
| priests possess the evil eye, and whenever
priest comes into their house or speaks
to them in the street. they always cross
their fingers until he has gone away. If
they did not cross their fingers when a
priest was about they would expect all
| sorts of trouble
The degraded condition of the Russian
peasants is especially discouragng to those
who hope for a revolution. 1t is hopeless
to talk about the rights of man to dirty.
superstitious savage who cannot read and
write, whose vocabulary is seldom moro
than 100 words, who does not even know
how to ventilate his house, and who in his
moments of leisure is engrossed, not in
sorting out ideas inside his head, but In
catching insects which worry the outside
of it.
JOHN VANDEPCOOK