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Updated: June 6, 2025
"We owe the change in our fortunes to a famous Ikon," said Varvara Ilinitchna. "It happened in this way. Alexander Fed'otch had an old friend who, after serving thirty years as a clerk in an office, suddenly gave up and took to the mountains. He was a wise man and knew much of life, and it was through his wisdom that we sent for the Ikon.
I was introduced to all the neighbours, to the visitors and the natives, and of course invested with much importance as one who wrote books, had no fear, who even intended pilgrimaging to Jerusalem. "You sleep under the open sky that means you have outlived fear," said Varvara Ilinitchna with some innocence.
Good simple man, he will never get through a page of that abstruse work; and my hostess will understand nothing. Is it not strange these people were peasants a generation ago; they are peasants now by their goodness, hospitality, religion, superstition, and yet they aspire to be eclectic philosophers? Varvara Ilinitchna has life itself to read, and she turns away to look at books.
Varvara Ilinitchna went on to tell me of her early days, and how she and her husband had been poor. Alexander Fed'otch had taught in schools and received little money. Their two sons were never well. They had often wept over burdens too hard to bear. One season, however, there came a change in their life and they became prosperous. They prayed to be rich, and God heard their prayer.
Varvara Ilinitchna is a Russian of the old type you don't find many of them nowadays, most of her friends would add simple, quickwitted, full of peasant lore, kind as one's own mother, hospitable as those are hospitable who believe from their hearts that all men are brothers.
It reminded us of the scene in "War and Peace" after the hunt, when charming young Countess Natalya Ilinitchna astonishes her old relative by her artistic performance of the Russian dance, which she must have inherited with the traditions of her native land, since she had never learned it. Balalaika duets were one of the joys of our evenings under the trees, after dinner.
Doctors have all failed. Even a magic healer in the country failed." "Tell me of him," I urged. Varvara Ilinitchna went on only too gladly. She had found a listener. "It was a peasant woman. She healed so many people that, though she was quite illiterate, the medical faculty gave her a certificate to the effect that she could cure.
The railway company opened new establishments, and the directors have loved my husband, and one of them even said at a public meeting, 'Would to God there were more men in the world like Alexander Fed'otch! We took larger charges and higher posts. We were even thanked publicly in the press for our services." Varvara Ilinitchna sighed. Then she resumed her talking in a different tone.
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