Russ

“ They had considerable difficulty in reaching the road, and by that time the mysterious man was even further in advance. But they pluckily kept to the chase.
"There he is!" cried Russ, as they came to a turn in the road, and saw a straight stretch before them. "He hasn't gained so very much." ”

“ Studying many branches of science, he made himself a reputation in every branch. A Russian has a variety of gifts, and Michael was in every sense a Russ. While yet a lad it was said of {194} him that he could mend a net, sing a ditty, drive a cart, build a cabin, and guide a boat with equal skill. When he grew up to be a man, it was said of him with no less truth, that he could at the same time crack a joke and heat a crucible; pose a logician and criticise a poet; draw the human figure and make a map of the stars. ”

“ You never hear them laugh; you rarely see them smile; their movements are sedate; the only radiance on their life is the light of prayer and praise. Seeing these worshippers in many places and at many times—before the tomb of Sergie near Moscow, and before the manger at Bethlehem, I have everywhere found them the same, in reverence, in humility, in steadfastness of soul. One of these lowly Russ surprised me on the Jordan at Bethabara; and only yesterday I helped his brother to cross the Dvina on his march from Solovetsk. ”

“ These village republics are confined in practice to Great Russia, and the genuine Russ. In Finland, in the Baltic provinces, they are unknown; in Astrakhan, Siberia, and Kazan, they are unknown; in Kief, Podolia, and the Ukraine steppe, they are unknown; in the Georgian highlands, in the Circassian valleys, on the Ural slopes, they are equally unknown. In fact, the existence of these peasant republics in a province is the first and safest test of nationality. Wherever they are found, the soil is Russian, and the people Russ. ”

“ Outside of Great Hedge the wind howled and the snow whirled about in white flakes. Inside it was warm, light and cosy. But the queer noise which had sounded, and which had seemed so to startle the grown folk, came from inside, and not outside. At least that is what Rose and Russ thought.
"It's the ghost!" said Rose again.
"Nonsense!" laughed Daddy Bunker. "What do you children know about ghosts? There aren't such things. There never has been a ghost and never will be one. ”

“ In the very soul of Russia the mystery is stirring; here the restlessness, the eagerness, the disappointment, the vision of the pursuit is working; and some who are outside her gates she has drawn into that same search. ”

“ Various are the opinions entertained respecting the origin of the name of Russia. Some maintain that it is derived from one Russus, a prince of the Poles, and brother or nephew of Lech, as though he himself had been a prince of the Russians. Others again derive it from a certain very ancient town, named Russum, [1] not far from Great Novogorod. Some also derive it from the dark colour of the people; and some think that, by a change in the word, Russia has received its designation from Roxolania. ”

“ In the bustle of a custom-house, charged with fretfulness and impatience and meanness, Russia sets forth her belief in a life beyond the grave and her conviction that the ideals presented by the picture are the noblest known to mankind. ”

“ They like to huddle in a crowd, to club their means, to live under a common roof, and stand or fall by the family tree. The Little Russians are of a quick, adventurous, and hardy type; who like to stand apart, each for himself, with scope and range enough for the play of all his powers. ”

“ For the Russian loves the soil with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind. His folk-songs are full of affectionate descriptions of it. His plough and his harrow are to him more than mere wood and iron. He loves to think of them as living things, as personal friends. Barbaric instincts have been aroused by the Revolution, and this simple but exalted mentality will remain in abeyance as long as those continue to rule who despise the peasant’s primitive aspirations and whose world-revolutionary aims are incomprehensible to him. ”

“ One wrote: "The heart trembles with joy. Russia is like a stranded ship which the captain and the crew are powerless to move; now there is to be a rising tide of national life which will raise and float it."
Such was the prevailing public sentiment in 1861, when Emperor Alexander affixed his name to the measure which was going to make it forever glorious—the emancipation of over twenty-three million human beings from serfdom. ”

“ In Russia the sunflower is queen of the flowers, and as the sunflower is among the flowers so is the Great Russian among32 the Russian peoples. He is the true “tsarkiya Rus.” The Tsar is the sun, the heart of the realm, and the Muscovite people are the “podsolnushki.” Each individual is only one among many, a particle, a seed for the propagation and glorification of his own race. Probably, the Great Russian has no equal in the world as regards idyllic simplicity. ”

“ John. “I gave my heart to Russia. She is a woman. Behind her eyes are forests of pines and unexplored darkness; in her hand she carries blossoms. She is the mother of nations.” “How do you feel Russia?” ”

“ And how good the sayings are that come out of the depths of Russia, where there are neither Germans nor Finns nor any foreigners, but only the native, living, nimble Russian intelligence, which never fumbles for a word nor broods over a phrase like a sitting hen, but sticks it on like a passport to be carried all one's life, and there is no need to add a description of your nose or your lips: with one stroke you are drawn from head to foot! ”

“ They belong to one of the great races of pioneers and backwoodsmen. All the history of the Russian people, from the foundation of Moscow, is that of their advance into the forest, into the Black Land, into the prairie. ”

“ In every wrinkle of that sunburned face, with its high cheek-bones, in every muscle, in the breadth of those shoulders, in the stoutness of those legs shod in huge boots, in every calm, firm, deliberate gesture, these chief traits which constitute the power of Russia—simplicity and straightforwardness—are visible ”

“ Her mind seemed incapable of exhaustion, and notwithstanding the number of her successive favorites, with whom she entered into the most guilty connections, no monarch ever reigned with more dignity or with a more undisputed sway. Under her reign, notwithstanding the desolating wars, Russia made rapid advances in power and civilization. She protected commerce, excited industry, cultivated the arts, encouraged learning, promoted manufactures, founded cities, dug canals, and developed in a thousand ways the wealth and resources of the country. ”

“ I shall confine myself rather to the greater and nobler objects of your attention, horses and dogs, my favourites in the brute creation; also to foxes, wolves, and bears, with which, and game in general, Russia abounds more than any other part of the world; and to such sports, manly exercises, and feats of gallantry and activity, as show the gentleman better than musty Greek or Latin, or all the perfume, finery, and capers of French wits or petit-maîres. ”

“ Hurrah for freedom! One station after another would flash by, the air would keep growing colder and keener, then the birches and the fir-trees, then Kursk, Moscow. . . . In the restaurants cabbage soup, mutton with kasha, sturgeon, beer, no more Asiaticism, but Russia, real Russia. ”

“ Before us, as we turned on reaching the brow of the hill, stood the holy city of Russia, its ancient capital, the border city between the Eastern and the Western worlds! The sun unclouded and intensely glowing is behind us, and shedding its golden radiance in floods upon the domes and pinnacles of three hundred and seventy churches, countless towers and roofs and walls, the Kremlin standing above the rest in its majesty, with its crown of cathedrals and palace, a constellation of splendor rarely equalled in the cities of the world. ”

“ Please it but you, my liege, the angry stream That raved against your sovereignty may turn Its wrath on Moscow, leaving you unscathed. KING. The best of weapons Russia's self will give thee; Thy surest buckler is the people's heart. By Russia only Russia will be vanquished. Even as the Diet heard thee speak to-day, Speak thou at Moscow to thy subjects, prince. So chain their hearts, and thou wilt be their king. In Sweden I by right of birth ascended The throne of my inheritance in peace; Yet did I lose the kingdom of my sires Because my people's hearts were not with me. ”

“ Perhaps the reader may feel nothing as he reads, but all who know and love Russia, and are stirred by thoughts of its life and people will feel that it was abundantly worth while to write down such a simple incident. They will understand and feel that stirring within, which Russia never fails to achieve again and again for those who have once lived and moved amongst her peasantry, and come under her strange spell and felt her charm. ”

“ It makes the soul melancholy to reflect upon these long, long ages of rapine, destruction and woe. But for this, had man been true to himself, the whole of Russia might now have been almost a garden of Eden, with every marsh drained, every stream bridged, every field waving with luxuriance, every deformity changed into an object of beauty, with roads and canals intersecting every mile of its territory, with gorgeous cities embellishing the rivers' banks and the mountain sides, and cottages smiling upon every plain. Man has no foe to his happiness so virulent and deadly as his brother man. ”

“ The world is now too busy to read voluminous history. The interminable details of battles, and the petty intrigues of courtiers and mistresses, have lost their interest. In this volume it has been our object to trace perspicuously the path which Russia has trod from earliest infancy to the present hour. The career of this empire has been so wild and wonderful that the historian can have no occasion to call in the aid of fancy for the embellishment of his narrative. ”

“ Petersburg, all was logical, conservative, Christian and anarchic. Russia had nothing in common with any ancient or modern world that history knew; she had been the oldest source of all civilization in Europe, and had kept none for herself; neither Europe nor Asia had ever known such a phase, which seemed to fall into no line of evolution whatever, and was as wonderful to the student of Gothic architecture in the twelfth century, as to the student of the dynamo in the twentieth. Studied in the dry light of conservative Christian anarchy, Russia became luminous like the salt of radium ”

“ There lives no true-born and loyal Russian who is not bound by conscience, if not by oath, to report to Petersburg anything that may seem to him suspicious, or amiss, in any of his fellow-countrymen. It may be only a word, a look, a letter, a handshake, nothing is too trivial, because out of trivialities have grown the great revolutions of the world. ”

“ Such was the first introduction to Europe of the Tsar of Russia! They had long heard of this autocrat before whom millions trembled, ruling like a savage despot in the midst of splendors rivaling the Arabian Nights. Now they saw him! And the amazement can scarcely be described. He dined with the Great Electress Sophia, afterwards first Queen of Prussia, and she wrote of him: "Nature has given him an infinity of wit. With advantages he might have been an accomplished man. ”

“ Like the innumerable multitude of churches and monasteries with their cupolas, domes and crosses scattered over holy, pious Russia, swarms the innumerable multitude of races, generations and peoples, a many-coloured crowd shifting hither and thither over the face of the earth. ”

“ And Russia is as heterogeneous in condition as it is in elements. It has accepted ready-made the methods of Greek, of Tatar, and of European; but has assimilated none of them; and Russian civilization, with its amazing quality, its bewildering variety of achievement in art, literature, diplomacy, and in every field, is not a natural development, but a monstrosity. The genius intended for a whole people seems to have been crowded into a few narrow channels. Where have men written with such tragic intensity? ”

“ Russian heroes have black hair, but the head of the Servian hero is called Rusja glava, fair-haired, with a reddish shade. Russian youths, together with their steeds, are invariably dobroe, that is, good or brave; the heart is in the poetry of the same nation retivoe, cheerful, rash, light. ”

“ Perhaps I am mistaken, but my impression is that a great many Americans think of Russia as an enormous, limitless field covered with eternal snow and ice, deserted, almost uninhabited, where severe Winter reigns all the time and where people can live only when dressed in heavy overcoats made of bear fur. ”

“ The Russians took possession of the city, prosecuted the war vigorously through the summer, and the tzar, on the 20th of October, which was his birthday, received the gratifying intelligence that every foe was quelled, and that the Russian government was firmly established on the shores of the Caspian. Well might Russia now be proud of its territorial greatness. The opening of these new realms encouraged commerce, promoted wealth, and developed to an extraordinary degree the resources of the empire. ”

“ Better fitted is he for the routine of an office and a desk than for the perils and responsibilities of a crown. Then, when the day's work is done, what joy to reach his home and toss his children in his arms, and picnic on a holiday or a Sunday in the suburbs with his family. Such, they tell us, is the gentle, homely, wife loving nature of the present Tsar. Whatever the destiny of the autocrat and of the autocracy, the Russian people remain. ”

“ In Russia, ideals are exposed all the time, so that when the time for their application comes, they’re worn so thin they’re useless. Poor Russia,” he sighed. “It has idealized itself to extinction. All my boyhood’s companions—the students, the intelligentsia, as they called themselves, who used to sit and talk and talk for hours of their wonderful theories—you in England have no idea how Russian visionary can talk—and I learned to talk with them—where are they now? ”