Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/151

Rh three splendid rooms, with much the same sort of comforts as I had seen last in the Siberian towns along the railway. There was even a gramophone! A gramophone at the last Siberian outpost village on the Mongolian frontier was certainly a surprise to me, and while we drank tea and ate bread the instrument performed. My host, the priest, was far more interested in his gramophone than he seemed to be in his spiritual flock, and when I referred to them a blank look came over his face. It was as if he wished to say, "I have performed my duty in the church this morning by saying prayers and burning incense; what further interests are the peasants to me, when I have a samovar of tea and a gramophone?" I wanted to find out how much interest he took in the people's education, but I found that he was quite indifferent, nor did he take any part in the elementary teaching that existed in the village. I managed, however, to extract from him the confession that education was perhaps not a bad thing, only it was not his sphere, and consequently he did not bother about it. As a matter of fact, in many places in Siberia the Church has played no inconsiderable part in elementary education, although now its activities are being generally surpassed by those of the State. In this village the school belonged partly to the commune and partly to the State, and so the priest had nothing to do with the teaching, and was apparently only too glad to be rid of the trouble of it. The village priest as I saw him in Siberia, and again later in other parts of the empire, is always the jovial monk, contented with his lot. And he may well be, for he lives in a house built for him by the peasants; he receives, even in the