Page:The tourist's Russia by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/22

cessions, every Slav remains Slavic to an intensely characteristic degree. He may build electric tramways to monastery gates, and install elevators in his new office buildings; he may even discard the stove of his forefathers for steam radiators, and substitute a tiled bath for the vaporous joys of the Saturday "bania," but he discountenances and forbids the variation of all that is sacredly Russian. A new cathedral is designed on the same lines as one which dates from the Byzantine invasion; the features of the saints remain unalterably as they were limned by the monks of Mount Athos; the pilgrims travel the roads to their accustomed shrines, replicas in spirit and appearance of those who trod the highways of Early Muscovy. The peasant employs implements with which his ancestors ploughed and planted, with the recent exception of Baltic, Siberian and Bessarabian farmers, and others in scattered districts. His garments and his wife's are cut from patterns originated in ages past. He eats the same sort of fare with the same sort of spoon known to long ago serfs of Boris Gudonov's time. Kustari workers and factory hands still support their co-operative bands with the subtle tenacity of the race. Their women embroider and spin primordial designs. The dis-