Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/75

Rh the Hermitage of Father Seraphim, to New Athos, to many a little wayside shrine and monastery that only has its ten pilgrims where the great ones have their hundreds and their housefuls.

It has been said that with an Englishman the conversation always, sooner or later, turns to sport, with a Frenchman to woman, and with a Russian to the subject of Russia.

This is true of the educated classes of society; but the peasants do not talk of these things so much—the peasants' talk nearly always turns to God and religion. The Russians are always en route for some place where they may find out something about God, and if there is a particularly animated conversation in the hostelry of a monastery, a third-class carriage, or a tea-shop or Russian public-house (traktir), it is almost always sure to be about religion.

The modern evangelical movement may almost be said to have had its birth in the famous but filthy public-house, "Yama," where originally over vodka and beer, and later more commonly over tea, the question of salvation was continually mooted. In the third-class carriage you will occasionally come across an old man who reads an antique Bible through iron-rimmed spectacles. He has heard that a new sect has been formed by some peasants in some remote village, and is off to discover "whether they have found anything."

Then what of those who march in chains from prison to prison on the road? Often I have stopped