Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/166

 120 Next day I happened to stroll past a little wooden house in the middle of the street, over the door of which was written the words "Selsky Upravlenye." As I happened to know one of the peasants who was sitting on the doorstep outside, I stopped and began to chat with him. I soon discovered that this little house was the meeting-place of the "Mir," or commune. When I heard that there was at that moment a meeting of the commune, I readily accepted an invitation to go inside and hear what was going on. On a row of wooden benches round the three sides of the room sat some two dozen hairy and venerable peasants. At a writing-desk in the middle of the room sat a youth, to whom I was introduced as the "pizar," or secretary. He was an academic person, with considerable ideas of his self-importance, and at his side sat a member with the weight of some threescore years upon his head. He was the "staresta," or chief elder of the village. A sort of select committee of the commune was sitting to consider the question of some taxes which had been claimed by the Krestyansky Nachalnick, or official in charge of peasant affairs, for certain lands recently reclaimed from the forest. I suggested to the staresta that I might be intruding on their private business, but was reassured and offered a seat behind him, where, like a foreign representative in the strangers' gallery, I listened to this little village parliament.

The conduct of the business seemed rather informal, and more like a friendly chat on a topic of common interest. But sometimes a speaker poured forth his views at length with gesture and no small volubility, reached his rhetorical climax, and