Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/149

 men whom one sees working on the farms or smoking their pipes at the door of their little farmhouses wear Austrian uniform.

Our automobiles passed through picturesque villages, the whitewashed cottages and farmhouses, with their extraordinarily shaped thatched roofs, surrounded by gardens and orchards of apple-trees. Few trees are to be seen, however, outside of the little oases that form the villages; farther on lay the bare plain, with prairies and wheatfields stretching to the horizon.

The sun was setting, and in all the villages that we passed through an atmosphere of gaiety reigned. It was a Saturday night, and under the elm that shades the church square or in the fields on the roadside all the villagers in the picturesque costume of Ruthuanian peasants, among which the uniforms of the Austrian prisoners made patches of grey, had gathered to dance to the sound of a violin, played by a musician posted under a tree. Every one, even the dancers, were singing, and their voices in choruses of two and three parts blended with the music of the violin. At half-past ten we could still see the whole