still very numerous in the city. Most of them, however, have their business in the surrounding country. For instance, Germans practically control the local dairy industry and they also are prominent in the provision and wholesale fruit trade.

It seemed strange to us to hear these colonists speak the purest Schwabian. Their ancestors came here a hundred years ago or more from Württemberg. In spite of much intermarriage with the natives they still retain the purity of their original language, even though few of them have ever visited Germany itself. The children are educated in German schools at Tiflis, which has a graded school and a high school where this tongue is used. Furthermore, three years German is required in all the Georgian grammar schools. We visited these institutions and were impressed with their excellence. The new government is particularly interested in the educational problem. We sampled the meals which are everywhere furnished school children and inspected the manual training classes. We also witnessed instruction in a branch characteristically Georgian; that is, dancing, which is taught in every school, even in the kindergarten. These national dances are very graceful, and the Georgians are trained in them from childhood.

This taste for dancing thus acquired in early years, becomes a veritable passion with adults. There is no social, religious, or family festival where dancing is not the order of the day. On our arrival at the home of the mayor of Batum, his little six-year-old boy greeted us with one of the national dances, called 'Schamyl's Prayer.' Whenever we dined with a family, singing with dancing always followed the meal. No matter how small the room it was made to serve the purpose. Whenever we visited Socialist friends, as soon as the ice was broken, one of

the children would begin timidly to play some primitive instrument, and as soon as he observed that we were interested would start to dance, this being the invariable honor shown a guest.

We all learned in school - at least it was in the textbooks I studied that the Georgians are the handsomest representatives of the Caucasian race: this was said to be particularly true of the women. My own observation would indicate that this praise should go rather to the men. Most of them have fine physiques and striking countenances. As a rule they are slender and active, strongly built, with an elastic step, and they are magnificent horsemen. They have a blond complexion but black eyes. Their figures are set off by the national costume, the so-called Tscherkesska, a long cloak fitting close to the form, belted with a silver decorated girdle from which invariably hangs a sabre, or at least a long dirk, with a smaller dagger as its companion. Even to-day a majority of the townspeople use this garb. We frequently saw the country people wearing a wide cape of black fur, distended by a wooden rod so that the wearer looked like a great black bell. Their headgear is varied. Tall lambskin caps are the most common. They give the wearer an extraordinary wild appearance. These caps are of all colors, and one is sometimes momentarily at a loss to know whether a man is wearing one or only displaying his own tangled hair. In bad weather when they go abroad, men put on a baschlik, or peculiar hood, which affords excellent protection from wind and rain.

My impression of the women's beauty was not so favorable, though, naturally, beautiful individuals occur among them. As a rule they hardly come up to their reputation. However, they are very gracious and attractive in

their manner. Their features are delicate; their faces oval; their complexion of an ivory pallor; their mouths small; but their most striking feature is their wonderful velvety black eyes. They have a rather apathetic and indolent air, and except for a few of the better educated, with whom I naturally came in contact, they impressed me as easygoing and unprogressive. I frequently heard Georgian men who are acquainted with the women of Western Europe lament the inherited Oriental idleness of their own country women. usual for the man of the family to make all the purchases, and to superintend the home. Our housekeeper was a Socialist woman whose mother was descended from a German colonist. But she had a large portion of Georgian blood in her veins even on her mother's side, and her father was a pure Georgian. Whenever she was asked to make a purchase at the market it evidently worried her, and she would usually say, pleadingly: 'Can't we let that go until to-morrow and have my husband get it?' Yet she was the wife of a man forty years old, and had five grown sons. The only women purchasers one sees in the market are Russians who make much better servants than the Georgians. Women cooks are a rarity, as men prepare most of the food. In fact the Georgians are the most famous cooks of the East, and always enjoyed a high repute in Russia. Every family in Tiflis who can afford it keeps a Georgian cook, even though it has no other servants and although these cooks are a costly institution. They almost invariably keep a boy-apprentice and are as famous for their grafting as for their skill. The Georgians tolerate these unpleasant qualities with the same philosophy with which they contemplate other petty inconveniences. The magic word Nichevo! (no matter) smooths everything over. When we be

came irritated during our stay at the unpunctuality, the indifference, or the stupidity of our servants, they invariably met our reproaches with a surprised inquiring look, as if to say: 'What are you so excited about? No matter. It's not so bad.' In fact this complacent attitude toward life lends the Georgians some of their attractiveness. You never hear harsh words among them. We never observed a single instance of ill-nature or controversy in the public streets. Even the hackmen are polite and obliging. At the same time Georgians are a very unpretending people and never tire of explaining that they have much to learn. They are gifted with a quick intelligence, and are willing and docile; so we may expect them to make rapid progress. Germans, Belgians, Italians, and Frenchmen, who have resided and managed business enterprises in the country for years, commend the Georgians very highly as employees.

Quite naturally I was primarily interested in the condition of the women. A Feminist movement, in the Western sense, does not exist. Yet even before the revolution Georgian women stood shoulder to shoulder with their husbands in the struggle for independence. Many of them were imprisoned or exiled for life to Siberia. Just as we left Tiflis the women were organizing to provide clothing and comforts for the men in the army that was guarding the frontier. The latter are practically all party comrades. It was a difficult task, for there is hardly any cloth in the country. To be sure wool is abundant, but there is no modern machinery to manufacture it. Many women were spinning with the distaff and weaving cloth on primitive hand looms.

As I have said, the Georgians trouble themselves very little about to-morrow. Their wants are simple. A glass of good wine, a merry meal,

contented guests, music and a dance, and their cares vanish. Hospitality is the chief joy of their life. A person will spend his last cent to entertain a guest, and we heard of wealthy families who had impoverished themselves by excessive hospitality. The people sing on every possible occasion. There is choral singing even during dinner parties. At almost any little social gathering an improvisor will turn up among the guests, and often display positive genius in the graceful imagery with which he describes and extols the qualities and history of each one present. No guest is ever omitted in drinking toasts. That would be an insult. Moreover, toasts are drunk not only to those at the table, but to their children and their children's children, and their absent relatives. The last toast is always to the Virgin Mary. Since the custom of the country requires the glass to be drained on each occasion, a strong head is needed to do one's part at these ceremonies. The abundant wine of the country is a heady beverage. People drink it like water, in this waterless land, where the scanty supply is often bad.

Every community has members locally celebrated for their poetic gifts, who are eagerly sought as guests. Our ignorance of the language unhappily prevented us from appreciating the graces of these compositions. Even the most ordinary social courtesies are given poetic garb. If a man drops food on his beard at table, his attention is not directly called to the fact, but the poet of the evening will say: 'A nightingale has lighted on the rosebush!' Thereupon each guest will solemnly wipe his beard, and the person referred to is spared all embarrassment. Several drinking-songs and marching-songs and children's ditties were translated to us, so we got some impression of the poetic forms the Georgians use. I must con

fess that the language itself did not sound poetic in our ears, for it contains many guttural consonants. For instance, the old capital of the country is called Mzchet; the principal coal mines are at Tkivibuli; and a famous poet is named Tschavtschavadse.

Georgia is rich in old literary relics. We saw venerable manuscripts bound in pigskin at the University Library, written by monks in the early Middle Ages, and decipherable to-day only by scholars. The Georgians are very proud of their language. They still resent bitterly the fact that the Russians, after conquering Georgia a hundred years ago, substituted Russian for Georgian in schools and government offices. Many educated Georgians today have a better command of Russian than of their native tongue. The Russians used to call Georgian 'a dog language,' and tried to suppress it, the way the Hohenzollerns tried to banish Polish from Posen, and Danish from Schleswig, and the way the Hapsburgs tried to banish Italian from the Tyrol. But the Georgians clung to their own idiom as obstinately as did the Poles and the Danes and the Italians; and during the three years since the country regained its independence much has been done to restore it to its previous rights. To be sure Russian is still used to some extent in the schools and universities; but a number of Georgian newspapers are now printed, and Georgian and Russian dramas are played alternately in the theatres. Most important of all, Georgian has become the official language of private and public business.

An unusually early and severe winter made it impossible for us to get out into the country. We stayed in Tiflis with the exception of a few days to Kachetia, the best wine district of Georgia, where we visited a government vineyard. Unhappily it rained constantly during

this little excursion, so that we hardly left the hospitable house of the manager. The few sunny hours we were able to be out-of-doors impressed upon us the difficulty of maintaining passable highways in a country subject to so inclement a climate. I was certainly glad when we got back on solid ground, for during our two hours' trip we rode first along the bed of a roaring mountain brook, and then through mud half-ameter deep. Our Georgian companions regarded this as the most natural thing in the world, but I was in constant dread of having an involuntary bath in the river or in a mudhole.

The Georgian government is devoting great attention to the railways. The repair shops which we visited at Tiflis made an excellent impression upon us. The railway servants are the backbone of the Georgian Social Democratic Party. They deserve high honor for successfully defending the railways from robbery and ruin when. the retreating Russian armies swept back through the country in the autumn and winter of 1917. They kept things going in model fashion, and hurried the troops through on their home

ward journey before they had time to do much local damage.

We also visited the buildings of the great Consumers' Coöperative Society, a splendid organization with branches all over the country.

Wherever we went we found the people mentally alert, intensely eager to do their bit for their country. We left Georgia with regret and with tender regard for its noble people. Our chief consolation was our belief that its prosperity was at length assured, and that we might speedily witness here the rise of a proud, prosperous, and progressive Socialist state. This hope has been destroyed by recent events. We have heard with bitterness and pain how the Bolshevist armies swept through peaceful Georgia. Our hearts sink when we think how our comrades and friends must now witness the ruin of the things to which they had been devoting their lives and labor. The half-healed wounds of the war are again torn open, and a plundering and murdering horde is now marching from town to town, and from village to village, converting the beautiful country into a sea of blood and a mass of ruin.

not, ordered two glasses of cognac. A moment afterwards, he motioned to me to have something to eat, and as we sampled the hors-d'œuvres on the diningroom sideboard he ordered a couple of glasses of beer, picked out a cigar for himself and one for me, and our friendship was firmly cemented.

'I want to tell you honestly, without flattery,' said my new friend, when we resumed our seats in the car, 'that you please me. You may believe it or not, but from the first moment I saw you I took a liking to you. I said to myself at once: "There's a man worth talking to." You know, I hate nothing like sitting in a train all day dumb as a clam. That's why I took a third-class ticket. I knew I'd have company. Generally I go second-class. Take my word for it, I could go first-class if I wanted to. Perhaps you think I'm bragging. Now look here.'

As he spoke my new acquaintance pulled a pocketbook from his hip pocket, with a great roll of bills in it, slapped his hand down upon it, and stuck it away again

'Don't be disturbed. There's more where that came from.'

I studied my remarkable fellow traveler, and could form absolutely no opinion as to his age. He might be forty, and then again not more than in the late twenties. His face was round, smooth-shaven and deeply tanned. There was n't the sign of a beard or mustache. He had little oily, laughing eyes. Taken as a whole he was a small, plump, active, vivacious man, faultlessly neat, in elegant attire. I like to see men dressed as he was; a snowy white shirt with gold studs, a rich tie with a beautiful pin in it, a new stylish blue suit of genuine English cheviot; a pair of solid, substantial, well-polished shoes; a heavy but artistic gold ring on his finger, set with a single diamond which sparkled with a thousand colors

in the sunlight. The ring alone could not have cost less than four or five hundred.

'Yes, yes, my dear friend. You see I can easily ride second-class. Do you think I want to economize? Money's nothing to me. Believe it or not, but I really like third-class. I like it because I'm a man of simple tastes and I like ordinary common people. I'm what you might call a democrat. I started out at the foot of the ladder, way down at the very bottom.'

As he said this my acquaintance bent over and waved his hand close to the floor to indicate how small his beginning was.

'I kept getting up farther and farther.'

He waved his hand toward the roof to indicate his present height.

'I did n't do it all at once. Don't try to get everything in a hurry. I merely plodded on steadily, just a teaspoonful at a time. First I was a young fellow among the rest. I say a young fellow. It took a long time, I tell you, even to be rated among the young fellows. When I think back, of my childhood - believe me or not as you wish my hair fairly stands on end. I never allow my mind to dwell on it. I don't permit it. You may perhaps think it was because I was unhappy. You may think I am ashamed of my origin. But that's not it. I tell everybody who I am. If a person asks where I came from, and the like, I'm not ashamed to tell him I was born in Soschmaken. Do you know where that is, Soschmaken? It's a little town in Courland, not far from Mitau. It's a little town that I could buy entire to-day, if I cared to do it. Maybe, though, the place has changed and become larger. I don't know. But in my time all Soschmaken believe me or not was something you could pass from hand to hand like a basket of