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On the Volga.
143
number, my eldest sister, wlio had charge of us, being only
nine years old. Of course, as happened with other children,
too, we lived like cattle and pigs. I was the youngest, and
went with my mother where she was working, generally lying
on rags or the bare earth, exposed to mosquitoes and frequently
an object of curiosity to a dog or a calf.
" My entrance into this world took place in an open field
during hay harvest, and almost the entire summer I was hung
in a Ijitlka (a kind of suspended cradle) in the heat of the sun
or exposed to the rain, out in the fields where my mother was
working.
I was not baptized on the eighth day after my birth,
according to Orthodox custom, but nearly six months
afterwards. This was partty because I was born in the busiest
season of the year, when my parents had to work every day
for the kulacks, and partly because they were so poor that they
had nothing to pay for the ceremony, though the priest cut
down the price to forty copecks. At last the police compelled
him to do it, but this made him so angry that he dipped me
three times in icy cold water; I fell very ill and was near death,
but at last recovered.
" When 1 was six years old the most severe calamity befell
us. My father in despair took to drink, leaving the entire
care of the large family to my mother. Soon the last traces
of our belongings disappeared; my mother had to go out
begging to keep us from starvation, and often we got no food
before noon, when she returned with a morsel or two.
" After a few years I was sent to my sister, who had been
married into a very Orthodox family. There I was taught to
repeat prayers and sing psalms, but of a living faith I heard
nothing. I learnt to stand before the picture of a saint
and repeat prayers Avhicli I did not understand. When I was
ten I had an irresistible desire to learn to read, but there was
110 school in our village, and had there been one I was too poor
to have attended it.
" A soldier in our village, however, who could read, had some
liking for me, and undertook to teach me. He used the old
method, giving the letters the old Slavonic names, which made
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