Russian Rambles | Page 2

the customs of the natives.
But, in order to do justice to any foreign country, the traveler must see people and customs not with the eyes of his body only, but with the eyes of his heart, if he would really understand them. Above all things, he must not deliberately buckle on blinders. Of no country is this axiom more true than of Russia. A man who would see Russia clearly must strip himself of all preconceived prejudices of religion, race, and language, and study the people from their own point of view. If he goes about repeating Napoleon I.'s famous saying, "Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar," he will simply betray his own ignorance of history and facts.
In order to understand matters, a knowledge of the language is indispensable in any country. Naturally, very few possess this knowledge in Russia, where it is most indispensable of all. There are guides, but they are a lottery at best: Russians who know very little English, English who know very little Russian, or Germans who are impartially ignorant of both, and earn their fees by relating fables about the imperial family and things in general, when they are not candidly saying, "I don't know." I saw more or less of that in the case of other people's guides; I had none of my own, though they came to me and begged the privilege of taking me about gratuitously if I would recommend them. I heard of it from Russians. An ideal cicerone, one of the attendants in the Moscow Historical Museum, complained to me on this subject, and rewarded me for sparing him the infliction by getting permission to take us to rooms which were not open to the public, where the director himself did the honors for us. Sometimes travelers dispense with the guides, as well as with a knowledge of the language, but if they have a talent for pronouncing what are called, I believe, "snap judgments," that does not prevent their fulfilling, on their return home, their tacitly implied duty of uttering in print a final verdict on everything from soup to government.
If the traveler be unusually lucky, he may make acquaintance on a steamer with a Russian who can talk English, and who can and will give him authentic information. These three conditions are not always united in one person. Moreover, a stranger cannot judge whether his Russian is a representative man or not, what is his position in the social hierarchy, and what are his opportunities for knowing whereof he speaks. "Do you suppose that God, who knows all things, does not know our table of ranks?" asks an arrogant General in one of the old Russian comedies. I have no doubt that the Lord does know that remarkable Jacob's ladder which conducts to the heaven of high public place and the good things of life, and whose every rung is labeled with some appetizing title and privilege. But a newly arrived foreigner cannot know it, or the traditions of the three greater, distinct classes into which the people are divided.
Russians have become so used to hearing and reading remarkable statements about themselves that they only smile indulgently at each fresh specimen of ill-will or ignorance. They keep themselves posted on what is said of them, and frequently quote choice passages for the amusement of foreigners who know better, but never when they would be forced to condescend to explanation. Alexander Dumas, Senior, once wrote a book on Russia, which is a fruitful source of hilarity in that country yet, and a fair sample of such performances. To quote but one illustration,--he described halting to rest under the shade of a great kliukva tree. The kliukva is the tiny Russian cranberry, and grows accordingly. Another French author quite recently contributed an item of information which Russians have adopted as a characteristic bit of ignorance and erected into a standard jest. He asserted that every village in Russia has its own gallows, on which it hangs its own criminals off-hand. As the death penalty is practically abolished in Russia, except for high treason, which is not tried in villages, the Russians are at a loss to explain what the writer can have mistaken for a gallows. There are two "guesses" current as to his meaning: the two uprights and cross-beam of the village swing; or the upright, surmounted by a cross-board, on which is inscribed the number of inhabitants in the village. Most people favor the former theory, but consider it a pity that he has not distinctly pointed to the latter by stating that the figures there inscribed represent the number of persons hanged. That would have rendered the tale bloodthirsty, interesting, absolutely perfect,--from a foreign point of view.
I have not attempted to analyze the