But even more attractive than these house diversions and the village were the other external features of that sweet country life.  The mushroom season was beginning.  Equipped with baskets of ambitious size, we roamed the forests, which are carpeted in spring with lilies of the valley, and all summer long, even under the densest shadow, with rich grass.  We learned the home and habits of the shrimp-pink mushroom, which is generally eaten salted; of the fat white and birch mushrooms, with their chocolate caps, to be eaten fresh; of the brown and green butter mushroom, most delicious of all to our taste, and beloved of the black beetle, whom we surprised at his feast.  However, the mushrooms were only an excuse for dreaming away the afternoons amid the sweet glints of the fragrant snowy birch-trees and the green-gold flickerings of the pines, in the “black forest,” which is a forest composed of evergreens and deciduous trees.  Now and then, in our rambles, we met and skirted great pits dug in the grassy roads to prevent the peasants from conveniently perpetrating thefts of wood.  Once we came upon a party of timber-thieves (it was Sunday afternoon), who espied us in time to rattle off in their rude telyega with their prize, a great tree, at a rate which would have reduced ordinary flesh and bones to a jelly; leaving us to stare helplessly at the freshly hewn stump.  Tawny hares tripped across our path, or gazed at us from the green twilight of the bushes, as we lay on the turf and discussed all things in the modern heaven and earth, from theosophy and Keely’s motor to—­the other extreme.

When the peasants had not forestalled us, we returned home with masses of mushrooms, flower-like in hue,—­bronze, pink, snow-white, green, and yellow; and Osip cooked them delicately, in sour cream, to accompany the juicy young blackcock and other game of our host’s shooting.  Osip was a cordon bleu, and taxed his ingenuity to initiate us into all the mysteries of Russian cooking, which, under his tuition, we found delicious.  The only national dish which we never really learned to like was one in which he had no hand,—­fresh cucumbers sliced lengthwise and spread thick with new honey, which is supposed to be eaten after the honey has been blessed, with the fruits, on the feast of the Transfiguration, but which in practice is devoured whenever found, as the village priest was probably aware.  The priest was himself an enthusiastic keeper of bees in odd, primitive hives.  It was really amazing to note the difference between the good, simple-mannered old man in his humble home, where he received us in socks and a faded cassock, and nearly suffocated us with vivaciously repetitious hospitality, tea, and preserves, and the priest, with his truly majestic and inspired mien, as he served the altar.