Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1881 — Winter Time in Russia. [ARTICLE]

Winter Time in Russia.

The Russians have a great knack for making their winters pleasant. You feel nothing of the cold in those tightly built houses where all the doors and windows are double and whero the rooms are kept warm by big stoves hidden in the walls. There is no damp in a Russian house and the inmates may dress indoors in the lightest of garbs, which contrast oddly with the mass of furs and wraps which they don when going out. A Russian can afford to run no risks of exposure when he leaves his house for a walk or drive. He covers his head and ears with a for bonnet, his feet and legs with felt boots lined with wool or fur, which are drawn on over the ordinary boots and trousers and reach up to the knees; he next cloaks himself in an ample top coat with fur collar, lining ana cuffs; and he buries his hands in a pair of fingerless gloves of seal or bear-skin. Thus equipped and with the collar of his coat raised all around so that it muffles him up to the eyes, the Russian exposes only his nose to the cold air. and he taxes care frequently to give that organ a little rub to keep the circulation going. A stranger, who is apt to forget that precaution, would often get nls nose frozen if it were not for the courtesy of the Russians, who will always warn him if he sees his nose “whitening,” and will, unbidden, help him to chafe it vigorously with snow. In Russian cities walking is just possible for men daring winter, but hardly so for ladies. The women of the lower orders wear knee boots; those of the shop keeping classes seldom venture out at all; those of the aristocracy go out in sleighs. These sleighs are by no means pleasant vehicles for nervous people, 1 or the Kalmuc coachmen drive them at such a terrific pace that they frequently capsize ; but persons not destitute of pluck find their motion most enjoyable. It must be added that to be spilled out of a Russian sleigh is tantamount only to getting a rough tumble on a soft mattress, tor the very thick tors In which the victim is sure to be wrapped will be enough to break the fall. The houses and hovels of the Bus-

aian working classes an as well wanned as those of the aristocracy. A stove is always the principal item of fhrniture in them, and these contrivances an used to sleep on as well as to cook in. The muijick,having no bed, curls himself up on his stove at his time of going to rest Sometimes he may be found creeping right into the stove and enjoyingthe delights of a good vapor bath. The alDount of heat which a Russian will stand is amazing and his carelessness in facing the cold afterwards not less so, w On a Saturday, which is the washing day all over Russia, you may see in any village a muijick, who has been oooking himself in his stove till he is of a color like a boiled lobster, rush naked into the snow and roll himself in it like a dog till he glowed all over to his satisfaction.

It seems monstrous that one of the Russian’s . principal protections against the cold—his beard—was laid under penalty by Peter the Great and subsequently by Elisabeth and Catherine it., when they were trying to civi'ise their subjects according to the custom of the West. These three sovereigns all laid a tax on beard, and peasants entering cities on market days were required to exhibit, in proof that they had paid their tax, a Jrass coin stamped with a bearded face and the words “boroda llgnaU tiagota” (the beard tax has been settled). This absurd impost was abolished by Paul, but the effects of it still survive in a manner, for the beard is still considered “bad form” in aristocratic circles. Military officers wear msustache aud whiskers; diplomatists and other civil servants eschew the whiskers and generally reap their faces altogether. A Russian with a beard is pretty sure to be either a “pope” or a member of oue of the classes below the upper middle.— Pall Mall Gazette. <