Читать книгу The Red Reign. The True Story of an Adventurous Year in Russia онлайн

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The yard was a small enclosure. A paling ten feet high on the side where we entered. On the right a house of stone and mud, whitewashed, with a thatched roof, an ornamented ridge pole and elaborate gables. A singular place to look upon. On the left a similar house. Immediately ahead, opposite the entrance, a crude shed with simple plank and railing stalls for horses and cattle. Two strong housewifely women stood on the porch of the house in the light, watching our entrance. Their sleeves were rolled up above the elbows, and their arms were folded—heavy, muscular arms, developed by constant toil. They greeted us kindly, even warmly, and bade us enter. Within I started in veritable surprise. The little kitchen with its Russian oven and sleeping box above for the young and the aged in one corner, a home-fashioned bed in another, was as clean as a drawing-room. Scrubbed, dusted, polished. The big brass samovar on the table shone like a door plate. Three icons were secured to the wall in one corner, next to the ceiling. Before them the perpetual light was burning, the oil cup suspended from a nail driven into the ceiling. After the filth and mud of everything in the yard, and the village, the cleanliness of the three simple rooms which made up the house was marvelous. They were models of household industry.