He intended to return to Minsk as soon as he was baptized.  How he expected to attend the Russian Church in Minsk when he had found it inexpedient to be baptized there was one of the points which he omitted to explain.

I was at last obliged to bid him a decisive “good-day,” and leave the church.  He followed, and passed me in the garden, his cap cocked jauntily over his tight bronze curls, and his hips swaying from side to side in harmony.  Under the long arch of the belfry-tower gate hung a picture, adapted to use as an ikona, which set forth how a mother had accidentally dropped her baby overboard from a boat on the Dnyepr, and coming, disconsolate, to pray before the image of St. Nicholas, the patron of travelers, she had found her child lying there safe and sound; whence this holy picture is known by the name of St. Nicholas the Wet.

Before this ikona my Jew pulled off his cap, and crossed himself rapidly and repeatedly, watching me out of the corner of his eye, meanwhile, to see how his piety impressed me.  It produced no particular effect upon me, except to make me engage a smart-looking cabby to take me to my hotel, close by, by a roundabout route.  Whether this Jew returned to Minsk as Vladimir or as Isaac I do not know; but I made a point of mentioning the incident to several Russian friends, including a priest, and learned, to my surprise, that, though I was not a member of a Russian Church, I could legally have stood godmother to a man, though I could not have done so to a woman; and that a godmother could have been dispensed with.  Men who are not members of the Russian Church can, in like manner, stand as godfathers to women, but not to men.  Moreover, every one seemed to doubt the probability of a Jew quitting his own religion in earnest, and they thought that his object had been to obtain from me a suit of clothes, practical gifts to the godchild being the custom in such cases.  I had been too dull to take the hint!

A few months later, a St. Petersburg newspaper related a notorious instance of a Jew who had been sufficiently clever to get himself baptized a number of times, securing on each occasion wealthy and generous sponsors.  Why the man from Minsk should have selected me, in my plain serge traveling gown, I cannot tell, unless it was because he saw that I did not wear the garb of the Russian merchant class, or look like them, and observation or report had taught him that the aristocratic classes above the merchants are most susceptible to the pleasure of patronizing converts; though to do them justice, Russians make no attempt at converting people to their church.  I have been assured by a Russian Jew that his co-religionists never do, really, change their faith.  Indeed, it is difficult to understand how they can even be supposed to do so, in the face of their strong traditions, in which they are so thoroughly drilled.  Therefore, if Russians stand sponsors to Jews, while expressing skepticism as to conversion in general, they cannot complain if unscrupulous persons take advantage of their inconsistency.  I should probably have refused to act as godmother, even had I known that I was legally entitled to do so.