United States or Portugal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


And any man who has lived in Russia, has dabbled in Russian humanity, and noted the singular unattractiveness of Russian life any such man can scarcely deny the fact that if one deprives the moujik of his privilege of getting gloriously and frequently intoxicated, one takes away from that same moujik the one happiness of his existence.

"If such a course succeeds with an uncultured moujik, it is equally efficacious when it concerns an enlightened, intelligent, or even distinguished man. For the main thing, my dear friend, is to determine in what sense a man is developed. The man, I mean, is intelligent, but he has nerves which are over-strung.

Often a kind of religious ecstasy seems to sweep over the whole length and breadth of the Russian territories, and Tolstoi's celebrated doctrines reflected the dreamy soul of the moujik and the teachings of many Russian martyrs.

As I am going to pass the night on deck, I return up the cabin stairs. The American is there, just finishing the repacking of his case. "Would you believe it!" he exclaims, "that that drunken moujik actually asked me for something to drink?" "I hope you have lost nothing, Monsieur Ephrinell?" I reply. "No; fortunately." "May I ask how many teeth you are importing into China in those cases?"

The silence of the room was almost oppressive. A Russian village after nightfall is the quietest human habitation on earth. For the moujik the native of a country which will some day supply the universe with petroleum cannot afford to light up his humble abode, and therefore sits in darkness.

Soon he began to talk about the frontier. Your kindness is suspicious, for, as the moujik says: 'The devil has guests. But if we need the thief, we cut him down even from the gallows. Such a necessary rascal proved Elzas Kazelia. I asked him how much he wanted to smuggle me across.

An old gray-haired Moujik, or peasant, all covered with blood, had appeared to her, and had exclaimed: "I have come all the way from Siberia, czaritza, to see your day of honor, and now your Cossacks have killed me." The vision had been so real that the empress hastened to her husband to inquire if any misfortune had happened.

Well, they made the bath-house red hot, and called the Fool, and the Fool went along to the bath-house to wash himself, and with him went the moujik with the straw. They shut them both into the bath-house, and thought that that was the end of them.

On the other hand, his affection for the animals who share his daily work is one of the most attractive points in his character, and one which Tolstoy never wearied of emphasising describing, with the simple pathos of which he was master, the moujik inured to his own privations but pitiful to his horse, shielding him from the storm with his own coat, or saving him from starvation with his own meagre ration; and mindful of him even in his prayers, invoking, like Plato, the blessings of Florus and Laura, patron saints of horses, because "one mustn't forget the animals."

Our moujik Dimian covered the table with the very best he had and rejoiced over the good time he foresaw. The fellow guest speedily ate everything up. Dimian was rather amazed, but brought out his kaftan. "Take off thy sheepskin," said he to the guest; "put on my new kaftan."