Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-34.djvu/87

Imagine an awkward, slip-shod figure, clad in short, nondescript nether garments and loose jacket of some dark material, the unkempt but often luxuriant hair covered by a once gaudy kerchief, which one cannot help thinking is worn to conceal the disorder beneath; try to fancy the uncouth manners, the strange tongue, the whining tones of the plaintive voice: there you have the type of the Lettish domestic female servant. The men-servants are in no way superior to their companions of the gentler sex, while both men and women are equally untrustworthy,—perhaps because they are never trusted. Such, then, are the menials over whom the noble châtelaine exercises her sway. Wages are calculated on a scale proportionate to the servant's deserts. A first-rate housemaid in a noble house in Mitau, at the time of which I write, received thirty roubles yearly, then equivalent to about three pounds fifteen shillings English. Perhaps wages have risen within the last few years. To be sure, everything else was in proportion to this moderate tariff. The best meat could be had for thirty kopecks or so the pound, and other expenses of living matched these almost mediaeval prices.

"Why," said a young pastor to me one day, in evident indignation at our luxurious ideas, "in England a man considers himself poor with one hundred pounds a year!"

This exclamation gives some insight into the ideas of these frugal Courlanders. Such money as they possess, indeed, is chiefly in the form of paper, small silver coins, or copper. I remember Count K——— one day summoning me to the room in which was his strong box, that I might examine a great curiosity. I went, and was rewarded by the sight of a gold coin,—a gold imperial, I think it was.

"There," said the count, "that is a sight rarely to be seen in Russia."

Alas! how much more rare must such a sight be now!

"Great Cæsar! what a tree!"

"What an ee-NOR-mous trunk!"

"Jumbo's is nowhere."

"Only look at those branches! they shoot out as gracefully and symmetrically as a bouquet of rockets."

"Bouquet of young giants. You would think some Titan had gathered all the elms in the street and bound them in one great fagot."

"Now, George, that is really a poetical idea. Never say again that you have no imagination."

"And, what is more to the purpose, I have a tape-measure. If you will hold the horse, I'll see how much broadcloth it will take to fit this fellow to a jacket. But you will have to sign your name to the figures, or no one will believe the story."

He tossed her the reins, and, entering the garden-gate, began making his rather painful way around the gnarled roots. At the same moment the door of the house opened, and an elderly spinster of forbidding aspect appeared.

"Excuse me, madam, for trespassing on your property, but you have a tree of such extraordinary proportions that—"

"You wanted to measure it. They all do, but I thought I'd save you the trouble; I've got all the figures here. It's twenty-one feet eight inches at its very tightest girth, and thirty before it branches. Its shadow at noonday measures one hundred and twenty feet