Many
years after Prince Alexis was dead the serfs used to relate how
they had seen him, in the bright summer afternoons, asleep in his
armchair on the balcony, with the rosy babe asleep on his bosom,
and the slumber-flag waving over both.
Legends of the Prince's hunts, reisaks, and brutal revels are
still current along the Volga; but they are now linked to fairer
and more gracious stories; and the free Russian farmers (no longer
serfs) are never tired of relating incidents of the beauty, the
courage, the benevolence, and the saintly piety of the Good Lady of
Kinesma.
TALES OF HOME.
THE STRANGE FRIEND.
It would have required an intimate familiarity with the habitual
demeanor of the people of Londongrove to detect in them an access
of interest (we dare not say excitement), of whatever kind.
Expression with them was pitched to so low a key that its changes
might be compared to the slight variations in the drabs and grays
in which they were clothed. Yet that there was a moderate,
decorously subdued curiosity present in the minds of many of them
on one of the First-days of the Ninth-month, in the year 1815, was
as clearly apparent to a resident of the neighborhood as are the
indications of a fire or a riot to the member of a city mob.
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