Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/91

Rh may be seen in the windows of many a poor Siberian peasant's dwelling. Owing to some peculiarity in the composition of the glass, these windows are almost always vividly iridescent, some of them rivaling in color the Cesnola glass from Cyprus. The contrast between the black, weather-beaten logs of the houses and the brilliant squares of iridescence that they inclose—between the sea of liquid mud in the verdureless streets and the splendid clusters of conservatory flowers in the windows—is sometimes very striking.

On the walls of many of the log houses in the villages through which we passed were unmistakable evidences of the existence, in Western Siberia, of an organized volunteer fire department. These evidences took the form, generally, of rough pictorial representations, in red paint, of the fire-extinguishing apparatus that the houses contained. On the gable end of one cabin, for example, there would be a rudely drawn outline of a fire-bucket; on another a picture of a ladder; while on a third would appear a graphic sketch of a huge broad-ax that looked red and blood-thirsty enough to have belonged to Ivan the Terrible. In the event of a fire, every householder was expected to make his appearance promptly, armed and equipped with the implement pictorially represented on the wall of his house. I made a careful inventory of the fire-extinguishing apparatus promised by the mural sketches along one village street through which we passed, and found it to consist of seven axes, eleven buckets, three ladders, one sledge-hammer, one barrel mounted on wheels, two pulling-down hooks, and a pair of scissors. Exactly in what way they use scissors in Siberia to put out fires I am unable to explain. I gave the subject a great deal of thought, but arrived only at conjectural conclusions. Mr. Frost was of opinion that the house decorated with the picture of the scissors was the home of the "exchange editor"; but I insisted, as a newspaper man, that the "exchange editor" could not be expected to run to fires, even in as benighted a