He even delights in rapid transitions from one extreme to the other, as is amply proved by a curious custom which deserves to be recorded.
The reader must know that in the life of the Russian peasantry the weekly vapour-bath plays a most important part.

It has even a certain religious signification, for no good orthodox peasant would dare to enter a church after being soiled by certain kinds of pollution without cleansing himself physically and morally by means of the bath.

In the weekly arrangements it forms the occupation for Saturday afternoon, and care is taken to avoid thereafter all pollution until after the morning service on Sunday.

Many villages possess a public or communal bath of the most primitive construction, but in some parts of the country--I am not sure how far the practice extends--the peasants take their vapour-bath in the household oven in which the bread is baked! In all cases the operation is pushed to the extreme limit of human endurance--far beyond the utmost limit that can be endured by those who have not been accustomed to it from childhood.

For my own part, I only made the experiment once; and when I informed my attendant that my life was in danger from congestion of the brain, he laughed outright, and told me that the operation had only begun.