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Updated: June 15, 2025
A Positivist poet or if that be a contradiction in terms, let us say a Positivist who wrote verses once composed an appeal to the fair sex, beginning with the words: "Pourquoi, O femmes, restez-vous en arriere?" The question might have been addressed to the women in these Finnish villages.
In truth, he fell in love with the spot, though what he saw in it to admire is not so clear. In summer mud ruled there supreme: the very name Neva is Finnish for "mud." During four months of the year ice took the place of mud, and the islands and stream were fettered fast. The country surrounding was largely a desert, its barren plains alternating with forests whose only inhabitants were wolves.
In the street the heat was insufferable again; not a drop of rain had fallen all those days. Again dust, bricks and mortar, again the stench from the shops and pot-houses, again the drunken men, the Finnish pedlars and half-broken-down cabs.
The bear, the honey-footed bear, was born in lands between sun and moon, and he died not by men's hands, but of his own will. The Finnish savants are probably right, who find here a trace of the beast- worship which in many lands has placed the bear among the number of the stars.
Our castle, the Bread-Barge was of the common sort; an oblong oaken box, much battered and bruised, and like the Elgin Marbles, all over inscriptions and carving: foul anchors, skewered hearts, almanacs, Burton-blocks, love verses, links of cable, Kings of Clubs; and divers mystic diagrams in chalk, drawn by old Finnish mariners; in casting horoscopes and prophecies.
Russian-speaking inhabitants number about 5,000, while the Lapps amount to 1,000 only, other nationalities to under 3,000. Although Swedish is largely spoken in the towns, Finnish only is heard, as a rule, in the rural districts. There is scarcely any nobility in the country, if we except titled Swedish settlers.
Unless one goes as far as Gatschina, or into the part of Finland adjacent to the city, Tzarskoe Selo presents the only dry locality. In the Finnish summer colonies, one must, perforce, keep house, for lack of hotels. In Tzarskoe, as in Peterhoff, villa life is the only variety recognized by polite society; but there we had or seemed to have the choice between that and hotels.
Norwegian women come with full suffrage rights; Finnish delegates come as representatives of the only nation which has elected women to seats in its Parliament; Sweden and Iceland have gained a step in eligibility and our Icelandic delegate of two years ago is now a member of the city council of Reykjavik, the capital.
Wherefore I narrowly watched the procession as it wound out of the forest. And next after the artillery came the Finnish and Lapland bowmen, who went clothed all in furs, although it was now the height of summer, whereat I greatly wondered. After these there came much people, but I know not what they were.
By way of proving Finland's striving to cut herself apart from Russia, people point to the doctrine disseminated about the Finnish State, to its unwillingness to establish military conscription on the same lines as the empire, and to the speeches of the Deputies of the Diets of 1877-1878 and 1879. But none of these arguments carries conviction.
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