It is melancholy to have to record this fact in the pages of a respectable volume like the present; but facts--as the orator who deals in fiction is ever ready to announce--facts cannot be ignored.
And any man who has lived in Russia, has dabbled in Russian humanity, and noted the singular unattractiveness of Russian life--any such man can scarcely deny the fact that if one deprives the moujik of his privilege of getting gloriously and frequently intoxicated, one takes away from that same moujik the one happiness of his existence.
That the Russian peasant is by nature one of the cheeriest, the noisiest, and lightest-hearted of men is only another proof of the Creator's power; for this dimly lighted "soul" has nothing to cheer him on his forlorn way but the memory of the last indulgence in strong drink and the hope of more to come.

He is harassed by a ruthless tax-collector; he is shut off from the world by enormous distances over impracticable roads.

When the famine comes, and come it assuredly will, the moujik has no alternative but to stay where he is and starve.

Since Alexander II.

of philanthropic memory made the Russian serf a free man, the blessings of freedom have been found to resolve themselves chiefly into a perfect liberty to die of starvation, of cold, or of dire disease.