They smiled indulgently at our attempts to reap and make girdles for the sheaves,—­the sickles seemed to grow dull and back-handed at our touch,—­chatting with the dignified ease which characterizes the Russian peasant.  The small children had been left behind in the village, in charge of the grandams and the women unfit for field labor.  Baby had been brought to the scene of action, and installed in luxury.  The cradle, a cloth distended by poles, like that of Peter the Great, which is preserved in the museum of the Kremlin at Moscow, was suspended from the upturned shafts of a telyega by a stiff spiral spring of iron, similar to the springs used on bird-cages.  The curtain was made of the mother’s spare gown, her sarafan.  Baby’s milk-bottle consisted of a cow’s horn, over the tip of which a cow’s teat was fastened.  I had already seen these dried teats for sale in pairs, in the popular markets, but had declined to place implicit faith in the venders’ solemn statements as to their use.

It was the season which the peasants call by the expressive title strada (suffering).  Nearly all the summer work must be done together, and, with their primitive appliances, suffering is the inevitable result.  They set out for the fields before sunrise, and return at indefinite hours, but never early.  Sometimes they pass the night in the fields, under the shelter of a cart or of the grain sheaves.  Men and women work equally and unweariedly; and the women receive less pay than the men for the same work, in the bad old fashion which is, unhappily, not yet unknown in other lands and ranks of life.  Eating and sleeping join the number of the lost arts.  The poor, brave people have but little to eat in any case,—­not enough to induce thought or anxiety to return home.  Last year’s store has, in all probability, been nearly exhausted.  They must wait until the grain which they are reaping has been threshed and ground before they can have their fill.

One holiday they observe, partly perforce, partly from choice, though it is not one of the great festivals of the church calendar,—­St. Ilya’s Day.  St. Ilya is the Christian representative of the old Slavic god of Thunder, Perun, as well as of the prophet Elijah.  On or near his name day, July 20 (Old Style), he never fails to dash wildly athwart the sky in his chariot of fire; in other words, there is a terrific thunderstorm.  Such is the belief; such, in my experience, is the fact, also.

Sundays were kept so far as the field work permitted, and the church was thronged.  Even our choir of ill-trained village youths and boys could not spoil the ever-exquisite music.  There were usually two or three women who expected to become mothers before the week was out, and who came forward to take the communion for the last time, after the newborn babes and tiny children had been taken up by their mothers to receive it.