3-052-585 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Russian Sketches: a Moujik's courtship, 1880. 'The labouring and plebeian or peasant class...bear the generic name of "moujiks." They are mostly good and honest fellows, not more given to drinking than the same class in any other nation of Northern Europe...the Moujik...is frequently apt to fall in love, and there are, in Russia as elsewhere, maidens of an eligible complexion and demeanour to be found, who do not refuse to listen to an honourable suit of this kind. The Moujik will call, dressed in his new tunic and with his huge boots well cleaned and greased, to make himself agreeable in the house of his betrothed. She receives him with gracious dignity; and her mother or aunt...sits in the room "to play propriety," while the lovers enjoy their confidential talk. The samovar, or tea-urn, with the teapot and all kept hot by a spirit-lamp beneath, supplies an innocent beverage, unsoftened with milk but made fragrant and piquant to the taste by a slice of lemon...the accomplished youth, who has brought with him a musical instrument...may raise his manly voice, to the accompaniment of the twanging strings, in the acceptable singing of a ditty which has for its theme, we may be quite sure, the charms of female beauty and the fatal power of love'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.