Sounds of revelry are heard more frequently from the houses, and a large proportion of the inhabitants and guests appear on the road in various degrees of intoxication.

Some of these vow eternal affection to their friends, or with flaccid gestures and in incoherent tones harangue invisible audiences; others stagger about aimlessly in besotted self-contentment, till they drop down in a state of complete unconsciousness.

There they will lie tranquilly till they are picked up by their less intoxicated friends, or more probably till they awake of their own accord next morning.
As a whole, a village fete in Russia is a saddening spectacle.

It affords a new proof--where, alas! no new proof was required--that we northern nations, who know so well how to work, have not yet learned the art of amusing ourselves.
If the Russian peasant's food were always as good and plentiful as at this season of the year, he would have little reason to complain; but this is by no means the case.

Gradually, as the harvest-time recedes, it deteriorates in quality, and sometimes diminishes in quantity.