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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.

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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.'

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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

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native town Soschmaken? Soschmaken gets from me- believe it or not every year a whole hatful of money. Every day they want something else. In Soschmaken this happens and that happens. I'm not talking now about the poor-money, for festival days. Every Passover, one hundred marks. This is a regular thing. I'm on my way to Soschmaken now. I know already it will cost me a thousand to get away. What did I say? A thousand? I'll be glad if it's twice that. That's a mere trifle. I haven't been there for a long time now, not since I was a boy. Ha! Ha! Soschmaken is my home. I know beforehand that the whole town will be on tiptoe. People will be standing in the streets to see me. There'll be a general shout: "Motek has come! Motek from Buenos Aires!" A celebration! Take it from me, they're waiting for me as if I were the Messiah. Oh, but they're frightfully poor! I let them know from every stop-over that I'm coming. I wire each day: "I am on my way. Motek." I personally believe me or not wish I were there already. I just want to get my eyes on Soschmaken again kiss the ground there, kiss the dust of the streets! What's Buenos Aires to me? What's New York? What's London? What's Paris? Ha! Ha! Soschmaken is my home after all.'

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The man was fairly transformed as he said this. The whole expression of his countenance changed; he looked younger

- younger and handsomer. The little oily eyes shone with a new glow of joy, pride, love. It was genuine unaffected love. It's a shame that I don't know yet what his business is. But he leaves me no time to think as he rattles on.

'You are wondering why I am going to Soschmaken? Partly I want to see the town, and partly I want to see the

graves. I've got a father and mother and brothers and sisters in a graveyard there. The whole family. And maybe I'll take the opportunity to get married. There's a limit to this bachelor business, and I want to marry in Soschmaken, my home town. I want to marry one of my own kind. I've already written about it to friends, asking them to look round for me. They've written back that I need n't worry about it, that there are plenty of girls who will be glad to have me. Yes, I'm a little cracked on that subject. They tried to get me married in Buenos Aires. Believe me or not, I might have some of the finest beauties in the world. Yes, the Sultan of Turkey could n't have done better. But I've always said, "No, I'm going to Soschmaken to get married." I want some respectable girl I know about; a Jewish girl. She may be as poor as poverty; that makes no difference. I'll provide the money. I'll make her parents comfortable. I'll be a rich uncle to the whole family. I'll take her to Buenos Aires myself, and provide for her like a princess. She'll not have to lift her finger. I'll make her as happy, believe me or not, as any woman in the world. All she'll have to think about will be running the household, her husband and her children. My boys are going to be professional men: one a doctor, one an engineer, and another a lawyer. I'll send my daughters, if I have any, to the most exclusive Jewish boardingschool. Do you know where? To Frankfurt.'

While he is talking the conductor comes for our tickets. In a moment the passengers are on the move. Each one who has to change cars grabs his luggage. The man from Buenos Aires helps me get my things together. As he does so he says:

'It's too bad you're not going on. It's awfully dull with no one to talk to.'

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How intoxicating, how opulent, is a summer's day in Little Russia. How languishingly the hours burn when noon glows in its heat and silence, and when the azure sky, a measureless ocean, a dome voluptuously covering the earth, seems asleep, altogether drowned in its own softness, crushing all beauty into its aerial embraces! Not a cloud in the sky. In the fields, not the least sound. One might say all is dead save that, far above, in the depths of the firmament, a lark shrills, and his silvery songs come racing down the steps of the air to the amorous earth; or, oftener, it is the cry of a gull or the ringing tone of a quail hidden on the steppes. As idle and as thoughtless as men who stroll without purpose, the oak trees rise toward the vault of heaven. A dazzling column of sunlight illumines certain picturesque masses of the foliage, while others are surrounded with deep shadow like night. Or else, only the strong breeze makes them glow as if

with plates of gold. Emeralds, topazes, ethereal forms of insects swarm over the herbs which the slender stalks of sunflowers overshadow. Great heaps of hay, golden

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WHEN he made his appearance in Petrograd in 1828, Gogol, a child of the South, as rich in hopes as in memories, ignored his true destiny.

It is a beautiful piece of marble, of which it is said, 'Shall it be a God, a table, or a basin?'

'It shall be a God,' cried the spirited South Russian. "The God of humor, of irony, of good cheer the God of living nature, the frank companion of the warm sunlight.'

You can see him, the son of a good family, greedy for success. You can see the features of this nineteen-year-old

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