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I
THE RIVER
ON the roadway, outside Podolsk, a sentry, an old man, said to me with a smile.
—All Russia is on parade.
And he raised the barrier to allow a motor-car to pass.
—One province comes after another.
After some hours on the road you begin to distinguish one province from another.
There goes the province of Holm.
You recognize it by the way the peasant women do their hair.
They cut a "fringe" and let it show on their foreheads, pulling it out from under their kerchiefs,
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