Our party regretted that the custom of bride kissing as practiced in America does not prevail in Kamchatka.
When the affair was ended, the whole cortege returned to the house whence it came, the children carrying pictures of the Virgin and saints, and holding lighted candles before them.

The employment of lamps and tapers is universal in the Russian churches, the little flame being a representation of spiritual existence and a symbol of the continued life of the soul.

The Russians have adapted this idea so completely that there is no marriage, betrothal, consecration, or burial, in fact no religious ceremony whatever without the use of lamp or taper.
In the house of every adherent to the orthodox Russian faith there is a picture of the Virgin or a saint; sometimes holy pictures are in every room of the house.

I have seen them in the cabins of steamboats, and in tents and other temporary structures.

No Russian enters a dwelling, however humble, without removing his hat, out of respect to the holy pictures, and this custom extends to shops, hotels, in fact to every place where people dwell or transact business.