RUSSIAN CHILDREN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 8, 20 February 1892, Page 173

RUSSIAN CHILDREN.

When the terrible Russian frost sets in, hill and valley alike become one great sheet of white. Very bare and dreary do these green, sunny slopes look in the winter months, with a few lea Hess trees standing gauntly up through the drifts, and the fierce, cold wind howling down the passes, driving great showers of snow along with it. No more light clothing, no more bare heads then. Every one, whether a child or grown up, is muflled in a great thick sheepskin frock reaching down to the feet, with a big collar turning up all round the face, till you can hardly see who it is.

But the little Russians are not afraid of the cold, and have amusements in winter as well as in summer. When the sun is bright and there is no snow falling, they can go out upon the hills with their sleds—for they have sleds there of course, and these little mountain people are quite fond of them and as clever in managing them as any children in the world. Famous sliding do they have down these great siopes, and fine, rosy faces do they win by it, and wonderful appetites do they carry home with them to their suppers of brown bread and kashafbuckwheat porridge mixed with butter), after the fun is over. And in the stormy evenings, when the grim northeast wind conies howling over the wild, lonely, mountains, bringing with it all the cold of the frozen wastes of Siberia, when the great Hakes are falling so thick and fast that no one can see an inch byond the window, and far up among the hills you can hear at times the crash of a tree breaking down under the weight of the snow—then is the time for the little folks to cuddle around the warm stove and to roast chestnuts in the embers, and for the older boys to make baskets or twist ropes, and for the bigger girls to plait straw mats. And then their old grandmother, sitting at her spinning, on a stool in the warmest corner, with a red handkerchief around her

dark, wrinkled old face which looks just like an oak carving, will tell them some quaint old fairy tale, or some story out of Russian history—perhaps about Ivan Veliki, who beat the Tartars, or Peter the Great, who built St. Petersburg, or the brave men who burned their great city of Moscow to drive away Napoleon. Sometimes the children take their turn, and sing a funny little song about the ‘ white geese,’ as they call the snowflakes : Daddy, daddy Winter, Let your white geese fly ; Send the wind to drivethem All across the'sky ! Bend the tossing pine trees. Make the hard earth split— Snug around the tireside We don't care a bit 1 And I don’t suppose they do ; for, in spits of their wild country and theii rough climate, these little Russians are a very merry race indeed.