Edwards, in fact, used an even more vulgar word. But he was not stopping to weigh words. Magistrates, Inspector, Clerk-he took charge of them all on the spot-a master of men. The Admiral, in the unfathomed dark of the cellar, was indeed uttering language to make your hair creep.

"Oh, cuss away, y' old varmint!" sang down Mr. Edwards, cheerfully. "The louder you cuss, the better hearin'; means ye have air to breathe an' nothin' broke internal. . . . Eh? Oh, I knows th' old warrior. Opened a gate for en once when he was out harehuntin', up St. Germans way-I likes a bit o' sport, I do, when I happens on it. Lord love ye, the way he damned my eyes for bein' slow about it! . . . Ay, ay, Admiral! Cuss away, cuss away-proper quarter-deck you're givin' us! But we're gettin' to you, fast . England can't spare the likes o' you-an' she won't, not if we can help it.

as we can.

The man worked like a demon. What is more, he was making the others work, flailing them all-peer and baronet and parson-with slave-driver's oaths, while they tugged to loosen the timbers under which the magistrate's table lay wedged.

"Lift, I tell ye! Lift! . . . What the

-'s wrong with that end o' the beam? Stuck, is it? Jammed? Jammed your grandmothers! Nobbut a few pounds o' loose lime an' plaster beddin'

it. Get down on your knees an' clear it. That's better! And now pull! Pull, I say! Oh, not that way, you rabbits!-here, let me show you!” By efforts Herculean, first digging the rubbish clear with clawed hands, then straining and heaving till their loins had almost cracked, they levered up the table at length, and released not only the Admiral, but the two remaining magistrates, whom they found pinned under its weight, one unharmed, but in a swoon, the other

moaning feebly with the pain of two broken ribs.

"Whew! What the devil of a smell of brandy!" observed Lord Rattley, mopping his brow in the intervals of helping to hoist the rescued ones up the moraine. At the top of it, the Inspector, lifting his head above the broken flooring to shout for help, broke into furious profanity; for there, in the empty court-room stood young Trudgian and his wife, covered, indeed, with white dust, but blissfully wrapt in their marvellous escape; and young Trudgian for the moment was wholly preoccupied in probing with two fingers for a piece of plaster which had somehow found its way down his Selina's back, between the nape of the neck and the bodice.

own

"Drop it, you fool, and lend a hand!" objurgated the Inspector; whereupon Mrs. Trudgian turned about, bridling. "You leave my Tom alone, please! A man's first call is on his wedded wife, I reckon."

The rescued magistrates were lifted out, carried forth into fresh air, and laid on the turf by the wayside to recover somewhat, while the rescuers again wiped perspiring brows.

"A thimbleful o' brandy might do the Admiral good," suggested the pris

oner.

"Brandy?" cried Lord Rattley, "The air reeks of brandy! Where the?” "The basement's swimmin' with it, m' lord." The fellow touched his hat. "Two casks stove by the edge o' the table. I felt around the staves, an' counted six others, hale an' tight. Thinks I, 'tis what their Worships will have been keepin' for private use, between whiles. Or elst" "Or else?"

"Or else maybe we've tapped a private cellar."

Lord Rattley slapped his thigh. "A cache, by Jove! Old Squire NicholasI remember, as a boy, hearing it whis

After a year spent almost entirely in the company of Russian peasants in villages where there was no railway and no newspaper, and where 80 per cent. of the population could neither read nor write, I have been greatly struck by the compensations of being illiterate. The mujiks are certainly the gainers in many ways if you compare them with those of their own class who in other countries have received elementary education. They are sociable and brotherly; they do things together, sing together, pray together, live together. They like meeting together in public places, in churches and markets. They like great parties at marriages and funerals, and prodigal hospitality at all festivals. They like to wash themselves together in the public baths, and to work together in field and forest. They are more public than we are; less suspicious, less recluse. They would never live next door to anyone and not know all his family and his affairs. They always want to know the whole life and business of a stranger mujik, and the stranger is always willing to tell. They do not shut themselves in; their doors are open, both the doors of their houses and the doors of their hearts. This simple charity is the peasants' heritage. It is what we have lost by our culture. It is a golden virtue, better worth preserving than all other prosperity. Consider how it is we have partly lost it, and how the peasant may lose it also if the ministers of progress are not careful.

Carlyle once observed that the book had now become the church. Men entered into books as formerly they entered churches. This is profoundly true, but it is not a truth of which to be necessarily proud. The book has been a great separating influence.

It

It

has taken us away alone, it has refused to be shared with others, it has taken us from our parents, our wives, our husbands, our friends. has given us riches, and not necessarily given the same riches to others. It has distinguished us; it has individualized us. It has created differences between ourselves and our fellow-men. Hence our pride, our suspicion, our distrust. Churches are not of stone. A church is composed of two or more people gathered together with one accord. The great ideal of a nation has been to be one church, but books have been the disintegration and ruin of that church.

In Russia there are no books. The Church supplies the place of all books -I am of course speaking of the peasantry. Instead of every book being a church, the church is the book. Hence the delight in every tiniest portion of Church ritual; hence the full attendance at the churches; hence the delight in the service and in the music; hence the wonderful singing, that is accomplished without organ and without books of the score. If Russian choirs astonish Western Europe, it is because Russians have loved to come out and sit together on logs in the village street, and sing for hours, night after night. If they learn to play the balalaika well, it is because they all make balalaikas themselves, and play upon them together from boyhood to old age.

Because the peasants have no books to read, they are all forced to read the book of Nature. They do not hear the imitation of the nightingale, therefore they listen to the nightingale itself. They do not look at "real life," as depicted in novels, therefore they look at real life without the novels. If the mujik had books, he would build higher, larger houses, so that he might

have a room into which to retire and read and have silence. But as it is, he lives in one room, and likes to see all his family about him, and as many of his relatives and friends as possible. He rejoices to give hospitality to pilgrims and tramps bringing stores of other lands and other provinces. He rejoices in keeping open house and in visiting. To such an extent has hospitality gone that not only is open house kept, but open village. There is a whole system of festivals throughout the north, and the villages take it in turn to keep open house for the inhabitants of all the villages round. All this is due to the fact that the peasants have what we should call spare time. Because they do not read, they have time to enter into many more relations with their fellow-beings-for spare time, after all, means spare life.

As I have said before, in Russia you may study conditions of life which were once the conditions of England. You can see what England has left behind. Here in the life of this mediæval peasantry is a veracious picture of our own past. It is more instructive than any book.

One is told that in London every shop had formerly its sign. I believe this was due to the fact that the great mass of the people could not read. To-day in Russia all shops have their signs. Outside the baker's shop, beside his printed name-printed name, by the way, often quite unintelligible to himself-is a very lively picture of white loaves and rolls, biscuits, krendels, baranki, cakes. Outside the fishmonger's is a large picture of fish; outside the butcher's, of meat; outside the poulterer's, of chickens and game; outside the teashop, of a samovar, teapot, glasses, and saucers, and so forth. Houses are painted red, green, yellow, blue, so that the peasants may easily differentiate between them, or explain the way. Trains are sent off by bells LIVING AGE. VOL. LII. 2756

at the station, because the peasants cannot read the time-tables. The first bell, one chime, is a quarter of an hour before the train starts; the second, two chimes, is five minutes before; and the third, three chimes, means the train is starting. At post-offices men are employed to write letters for peasants, or read them, at a fixed tariff: For addressing an envelope, one farthing (copeck); for writing a postcard or a short letter, five farthings; for writing a long letter, ten farthings; and for reading a letter aloud, three farthings.

Then every pillar-box has a picture of a letter shown on it, so that the mujik may know it is the place in which to drop his postcard or his envelope. Because the peasant cannot read, there are no hoarding advertisements staring at his eyes, whether he wants to see them or not. This surely the eye-sick Londoner must regard as a tremendous compensation for illiteracy. But the greatest compensation of all is that through his illiteracy the peasant is nearer to reality. He does not read about life, he lives; he does not read about death, he dies; he does not read about God, he prays. He has his own thoughts, and they are not muddled up with other people's thoughts. His mind is not a confusion of a thousand disconnected ideas; he reflects in his soul the deep beauty of Nature itself.

I fell in with a squire's son one day on my travels, and he invited me to drive with him along the road to Viatka, and I agreed. With him I vented this subject. He was one of the intelligentia. "I'd teach them all to read," he said, "print books cheaply and spread them broadcast. Look at the great masters waiting to be read

Shakepeare, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Dickens, Nietzsche. Think what boundless profits the mujiks might have, what new ideals, what develop