Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/226

180 the mandate of the essential forces of Russia to carry on the Revolution in the Bolshevik way.

It is a grave error to minimize the following the Bolsheviks had in the masses. It is an equally grave error to say that these masses were all zealots of the Revolution, all filled with a high and holy enthusiasm. On the contrary great numbers were quite indifferent. The Revolution was only "skin-deep."

One winter morning I set out in a sleigh with Charles Kuntz, a New Jersey farmer and philosopher, who had come to Russia for a scientific study of the Revolution. On finding that we were Americans, our driver, a lad of fifteen, was all excitement.

"Oh, Americans!" he exclaimed. "Tell me did Buffalobill and Jessejams really live?"

We said, "Yes" and at once leaped to glory in the eyes of our driver. The exploits of these Western daredevils he knew by heart. Now this great joy—he was driving two countrymen of his heroes. He gazed long at us in big blue-eyed admiration while we tried hard to look like Buffalo Bill and Jesse James themselves.

"Oh! Ho!" he shouted. "I'll show you how to drive." He loosed the reins, cried "B-r-r" to his horse and with a jerk struck out into a break-neck gallop, the sleigh bounding over the ice-hummocks like a stage-coach on a Rocky Mountain road. Shouting with delight, he stood up in his box,