Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1892 — A Russian Village. [ARTICLE]

A Russian Village.

Riding through the country on the railroad you see scattered over the landscape what in the distance look like two rows of low, oblong hay stocks sunning irregularly for a mile or more in one direction. Each of these collections of hay stacks is a Russian village, and when* you get closer to "it you see that what you supposed were hay stacks are thatened huts, and that the lower part of ends stock is made of logs, sundried bricks or wattled twigs. You now note that the wide road along which these huts stand is full of half naked babies, squalling children and all of the queer characters of Russian peasant life. The ordinary village has but one roadway, and this is more like a road cut through the fields than an American street. It is generally about 100 or more feet wide, and the houses stand along it at all angles and with no regularity or order. There are no gardens in front of them nor behind them. They have no front yards fenced off from the road and 1 have not yet soon any sign of a sidewalk of any kind in any village I have visited. The street is not paved and tho only j»rt free from grass is tho center, where the wagons have out ruts into the black soil. Tho remainder is a lawn of good solid turf, on which tho cattle graze, the dogs and the children play and ;pon which the people meet in the evening to gossip and chat. Now and then you find a tree or so on one of these village streets, and under these on the ground there may be a woman with her babies tied to the branches of tho trees in tho oblong shallow boxes which constitute tho cradles of Russia. Other women may be sitting about, spinning or sewing, and on the steps of the huts or in tho doorways you will see old men and shock haired children.