From the wall of the apse behind the chief of the ten altars gazes down the striking image of the Virgin, executed in ancient mosaic, with her hands raised in prayer, whom the people reverently call “The Indestructible Wall.”  This, with other mosaics and the frescoes on the staircase, dates from the eleventh century.

I stood among the pillars, a little removed from the principal aisle, one afternoon near sunset, listening to the melodious intoning of the priest, and the soft chanting of the small week-day choir at vespers, and wondering, for the thousandth time, why Protestants who wish to intone do not take lessons from those incomparable masters in the art, the Russian deacons, and wherein lies the secret of the Russian ecclesiastical music.  That simple music, so perfectly fitted for church use, will bring the most callous into a devotional mood long before the end of the service.  Rendered as it invariably is by male voices, with superb basses in place of the non-existent organ, it spoils one’s taste forever for the elaborate, operatic church music of the West performed by choirs which are usually engaged in vocal steeplechases with the organ for the enhancement of the evil effects.  My meditations were interrupted by the approach of a young man, who asked me to be his godmother!  He explained that he was a Jew from Minsk, who had never studied “his own religion,” and was now come to Kieff for the express purpose of getting himself baptized by the name of Vladimir, the tenth century prince and patron saint of the town.  As he had no acquaintances in the place, he was in a strait for god-parents, who were indispensable.

“I cannot be your godmother,” I answered.  “I am neither pravoslavnaya nor Russian.  Cannot the priest find sponsors for you?”

“That is not the priest’s place.  His business is merely to baptize.  But perhaps he might be persuaded to manage that also, if I had better clothes.”

He wore a light print shirt, tolerably clean, belted outside his dark trousers, and his shoes and cap were respectable enough.

I recalled instances which I had heard from the best authority—­a priest—­of priests finding sponsors for Jews, and receiving medals or orders in reward for their conversion.  I recalled an instance related to me by a Russian friend who had acted, at the priest’s request, as godmother to a Jewess so fat that she stuck fast in the receptacle used for the baptism by immersion; and I questioned the man a little.  He said that he had a sister living in New York, and gave me her name and address in a manner which convinced me that he knew what he was saying.  He had no complaint to make of his treatment by either Russians or Jews; and when I asked him why he did not join his sister in America, he replied,

“Why should I?  I am well enough off here.”

Perhaps I ought to state that he was a plumber by trade.  On the other hand, justice demands the explanation that Russian plumbing in general is not of a very complicated character, and in Minsk it must be of a very simple kind, I think.