NYC and Kropotkin

I had leftover lentil patties for dinner tonight, so no recipe. Also, I'm going to NYC for the weekend to visit a high school friend, so I won't have anything new until probably Tuesday.

Instead of food, I'll leave you this incredible passage from Peter Kropotkin's Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York: Dover, 1971): 

"After a hurriedly eaten dinner we hastened to the great hall, to which the younger housemaids soon repaired. All sorts of games were started, — blind man, vulture and chickens, and so on; and then, all of a sudden, Tíkhon, the Jack-of-all-trades, would appear with a violin. Dancing began; not that measured and tiresome dancing, under the direction of a French dancing-master "on india-rubber legs," which made part of our education, but free dancing which was not a lesson, and in which a score of couples turned round any way; and this was only preparatory to the still more animated and rather wild Cossack dance. Tíkhon would then hand the violin to one of the older men, and would begin to perform with his legs such wonderful feats that the doors leading to the hall would soon be filled by the cooks and even the coachmen, who came to see the dance so dear to the Russian heart."