They are not copies.
But Moscow seems to take a peculiar national pride in preserving the
historical monuments of her country. There is a museum there, with a
complete set of all these costumes on wax figures, and they range all
the way from the grotesque to the lovely.
Madame Chabelskoi is now doing a very pretty as well as a valuable and
historical work. She has two accomplished daughters, and these young
girls spend all their time in selecting peasant women with typical
features, dressing them in these costumes, photographing them, and
then coloring these photographs in water-colors. They are making ten
copies of each, to make ten magnificent albums, which are to be
presented to the ten greatest museums in the world. The Hermitage in
St. Petersburg is to have one, the British Museum another, and so on.
Only one was to go to America, and to my metropolitan dismay I found
that it was _not_ to go to Chicago. I shall not say where it was
intended to go; I shall only say that with characteristic modesty I
asked, in my most timid voice, why she did not present it to a museum
in the city which she had already benefited so royally with her
generosity, and which already held her name in affectionate
veneration.
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