Russian Rambles

RUSSIAN RAMBLES

BY

ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

AUTHOR OF "THE EPIC SONGS OF RUSSIA"

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
1895

TO
RUSSIA AND MY RUSSIAN FRIENDS

I DEDICATE THESE NOTES OF MY SOJOURN WITH THEM.
THEY MAY REST ASSURED THAT, THOUGH MANY OF
MY MOST CHERISHED EXPERIENCES ARE NOT RECORDED
IN THESE PAGES, THEY REMAIN UNFORGOTTEN, DEEPLY
IMPRINTED ON MY HEART.

PREFACE.

The innumerable questions which have been put to me since my return to America have called to my attention the fact that, in spite of all that has been written about Russia, the common incidents of everyday life are not known, or are known so imperfectly that any statement of them is a travesty. I may cite, as an example, a book published within the past two years, and much praised in America by the indiscriminating as a truthful picture of life. The whole story hung upon the great musical talent of the youthful hero. The hero skated to church through the streets, gazed down the long aisle where the worshipers were assembled (presumably in pews), ascended to the organ gallery, sang an impromptu solo with trills and embellishments, was taken in hand by the enraptured organist who had played there for thirty years, and developed into a great composer. Omitting a mass of other absurdities scattered through the book, I will criticise this crucial point. There are no organs or organists in Russia; there are no pews, or aisles, or galleries for the choir, and there are never any trills or embellishments in the church music. A boy could skate to church in New York more readily than in Moscow, where such a thing was never seen, and where they are not educated up to roller skates. Lastly, as the church specified, St. Vasily, consists of a nest of small churches connected by narrow, labyrinthine corridors, and is approached from the street up two flights of low-ceiled stairs, it is an impossibility that the boy should have viewed the "aisle" and assembled congregation from his skates at the door. That is a fair specimen of the distortions of facts which I am constantly encountering.

It has seemed to me that there is room for a book which shall impart an idea of a few of the ordinary conditions of life and of the characters of the inhabitants, illustrated by apposite anecdotes from my personal experience. For this purpose, a collection of detached pictures is better than a continuous narrative of travel.

I am told that I must abuse Russia, if I wish to be popular in America. Why, is more than I or my Russian friends can understand. Perhaps it arises from the peculiar fact that people find it more interesting to hear bad things of their neighbors than good, and the person who furnishes startling tales is considered better company than the humdrum truth-teller or the charitably disposed.

The truth is, that people too frequently go to Russia with the deliberate expectation and intention of seeing queer things. That they do frequently contrive to see queer things, I admit. Countess X. Z., who in appearance and command of the language could not have been distinguished from an Englishwoman, related to me a pertinent anecdote when we were discussing this subject. She chanced to travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow in a compartment of the railway carriage with two Americans. The latter told her that they had been much shocked to meet a peasant on the Nevsky Prospekt, holding in his hand a live chicken, from which he was taking occasional bites, feathers and all. That they saw nothing of the sort is positive; but what they did see which could have been so ingeniously distorted was more than the combined powers of the countess and myself were equal to guessing.

The general idea of foreign visitors seems to be that they shall find the Russia of the seventeenth century. I am sure that the Russia of Ivan the Terrible's time, a century earlier, would precisely meet their views. They find the reality decidedly tame in comparison, and feel bound to supply the missing spice. A trip to the heart of Africa would, I am convinced, approach much nearer to the ideal of "adventure" generally cherished. The traveler to Africa and to Russia is equally bound to narrate marvels of his "experiences" and of the customs of the natives.

But, in order to do justice to any foreign country, the traveler must see people and customs not with the eyes of his body only, but with the eyes of his heart, if he would really understand them. Above all things, he must not deliberately buckle on blinders. Of no country is this axiom more true than of Russia. A man who would see Russia clearly must strip himself of all preconceived prejudices of religion, race, and language, and study the people from their own point of view. If he goes about repeating Napoleon I.'s famous saying, "Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar," he will simply betray his own ignorance of history and facts.

In order to understand matters, a knowledge of the language is indispensable in any country. Naturally, very few possess this knowledge in Russia, where it is most indispensable of all. There are guides, but they are a lottery at best: Russians who know very little English, English who know very little Russian, or Germans who are impartially ignorant of both, and earn their fees by relating fables about the imperial family and things in general, when they are not candidly saying, "I don't know." I saw more or less of that in the case of other people's guides; I had none of my own, though they came to me and begged the privilege of taking me about gratuitously if I would recommend them. I heard of it from Russians. An ideal cicerone, one of the attendants in the Moscow Historical Museum, complained to me on this subject, and rewarded me for sparing him the infliction by getting permission to take us to rooms which were not open to the public, where the director himself did the honors for us. Sometimes travelers dispense with the guides, as well as with a knowledge of the language, but if they have a talent for pronouncing what are called, I believe, "snap judgments," that does not prevent their fulfilling, on their return home, their tacitly implied duty of uttering in print a final verdict on everything from soup to government.

If the traveler be unusually lucky, he may make acquaintance on a steamer with a Russian who can talk English, and who can and will give him authentic information. These three conditions are not always united in one person. Moreover, a stranger cannot judge whether his Russian is a representative man or not, what is his position in the social hierarchy, and what are his opportunities for knowing whereof he speaks. "Do you suppose that God, who knows all things, does not know our table of ranks?" asks an arrogant General in one of the old Russian comedies. I have no doubt that the Lord does know that remarkable Jacob's ladder which conducts to the heaven of high public place and the good things of life, and whose every rung is labeled with some appetizing title and privilege. But a newly arrived foreigner cannot know it, or the traditions of the three greater, distinct classes into which the people are divided.

Russians have become so used to hearing and reading remarkable statements about themselves that they only smile indulgently at each fresh specimen of ill-will or ignorance. They keep themselves posted on what is said of them, and frequently quote choice passages for the amusement of foreigners who know better, but never when they would be forced to condescend to explanation. Alexander Dumas, Senior, once wrote a book on Russia, which is a fruitful source of hilarity in that country yet, and a fair sample of such performances. To quote but one illustration,--he described halting to rest under the shade of a great kliukva tree. The kliukva is the tiny Russian cranberry, and grows accordingly. Another French author quite recently contributed an item of information which Russians have adopted as a characteristic bit of ignorance and erected into a standard jest. He asserted that every village in Russia has its own gallows, on which it hangs its own criminals off-hand. As the death penalty is practically abolished in Russia, except for high treason, which is not tried in villages, the Russians are at a loss to explain what the writer can have mistaken for a gallows. There are two "guesses" current as to his meaning: the two uprights and cross-beam of the village swing; or the upright, surmounted by a cross-board, on which is inscribed the number of inhabitants in the village. Most people favor the former theory, but consider it a pity that he has not distinctly pointed to the latter by stating that the figures there inscribed represent the number of persons hanged. That would have rendered the tale bloodthirsty, interesting, absolutely perfect,--from a foreign point of view.

I have not attempted to analyze the "complicated" national character. Indeed, I am not sure that it is complicated. Russians of all classes, from the peasant up, possess a naturally simple, sympathetic disposition and manner, as a rule, tinged with a friendly warmth whose influence is felt as soon as one crosses the frontier. Shall I be believed if I say that I found it in custom-house officers and gendarmes? For the rest, characters vary quite as much as they do elsewhere. It is a question of individuals, in character and morals, and it is dangerous to indulge in generalizations. My one generalization is that they are, as a nation, too long-suffering and lenient in certain directions, that they allow too much personal independence in certain things.

If I succeed in dispelling some of the absurd ideas which are now current about Russia, I shall be content. If I win a little comprehension and kindly sympathy for them, I shall be more than content.

ISABEL F. HAPGOOD.
New York, January 1, 1895.

CONTENTS

I. PASSPORTS, POLICE, AND POST-OFFICE IN RUSSIA.
II. THE NEVSKY PROSPEKT
III. MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE RUSSIAN CENSOR
IV. BARGAINING IN RUSSIA
V. EXPERIENCES
VI. A RUSSIAN SUMMER RESORT
VII. A STROLL IN MOSCOW WITH COUNT TOLSTOY
VIII. COUNT TOLSTOY AT HOME
IX. A RUSSIAN HOLY CITY
X. A JOURNEY ON THE VOLGA
XI. THE RUSSIAN KUMYS CURE
XII. MOSCOW MEMORIES
XIII. THE NIZHNI-NOVGOROD FAIR AND THE VOLGA

RUSSIAN RAMBLES.

I.

PASSPORTS, POLICE, AND POST-OFFICE IN RUSSIA.

We imported into Russia, untaxed, undiscovered by the custom-house officials, a goodly stock of misadvice, misinformation, apprehensions, and prejudices, like most foreigners, albeit we were unusually well informed, and confident that we were correctly posted on the grand outlines of Russian life, at least. We were forced to begin very promptly the involuntary process of getting rid of them. Our anxiety began in Berlin. We visited the Russian consul-general there to get our passports vised. He said, "You should have got the signature of the American consul. Do that, and return here."

At that moment, the door leading from his office to his drawing-room opened, and his wife made her appearance on the threshold, with the emphatic query, "When are you coming?"

"Immediately, my dear," he replied. "Just wait a moment, until I get rid of these Americans."

Then he decided to rid himself of us for good. "I will assume the responsibility for you," he said, affixed his signature on the spot, to spare himself a second visit, and, collecting his fees, bowed us out. I suppose he argued that we should have known the ropes and attended to all details accurately, in order to ward off suspicion, had we been suspicious characters. How could he know that the Americans understood Russian, and that this plain act of "getting rid" of us would weigh on our minds all the way to the Russian frontier?

At Wirballen the police evoked a throb of gratitude from our relieved hearts. No one seemed to suspect that the American government owned a consul in Berlin who could write his name on our huge parchments, which contrasted so strongly with the compact little documents from other lands.

"Which are your passports?" asked the tall gendarme who guarded the door of the restaurant, as we passed out to take our seats in the Russian train.

"The biggest," I replied, without mentioning names, and he handed them over with a grin. No fuss over passports or custom-house, though we had carefully provided cause! This was beginning badly, and we were disappointed at our tame experience.

On our arrival in St. Petersburg, we were not even asked for our passports. Curiosity became restless within us. Was there some sinister motive in this neglect, after the harrowing tales we had heard from a woman lecturer, and read in books which had actually got themselves printed, about gendarmes forcing themselves into people's rooms while they were dressing, demanding their passports, and setting a guard at their doors; after which, gendarmes in disguises (which they were clever enough to penetrate) followed them all over the country? Why was it thus with them, and not with us? The why ripened gradually. We inquired if the passports were not wanted.

"No; if you intend to remain only a few days, it is not worth while to register them," was the startling reply; and those wretched, unwieldy parchments remained in our possession, even after we had announced that we did not meditate departing for some time. I hesitate to set down the whole truth about the anxiety they cost us for a while. How many innocent officers, in crack regiments (as we discovered when we learned the uniforms), in search of a breakfast or a dinner, did we not take for the police upon our tracks, in search of those concealed documents! Our excitement was ministered to by the Tatar waiters, who, not having knowledge of our nationality, mistook us for English people, and wrecked our nerves by making our tea as strong and black as beer, with a view to large "tea-money" for this delicate attention to our insular tastes.

If no one wanted those documents, what were we to do with them? Wear them as breastplates (folded), or as garments (full size)? No pocket of any sex would tolerate them, and we had been given to understand by veracious (?) travelers that it was as much as our lives were worth to be separated from them for a single moment. At the end of a week we forced the hotel to take charge of them. They were registered, and immediately thrown back on our hands. Then we built lean-tos on our petticoats to hold them, and carried them about until they looked aged and crumpled and almost frayed, like ancestral parchments. We even slept with them under our pillows. At last we also were nearly worn out, and we tossed those Sindbad passports into a drawer, then into a trunk. There they remained for three months; and when they were demanded, we had to undertake a serious search, so completely had their existence and whereabouts been lost to our lightened spirits. In the mean time we had grasped the elementary fact that they would be required only on a change of domicile. By dint of experience we learned various other facts, which I may as well summarize at once.

The legal price of registration is twenty kopeks (about ten cents), the value of the stamp. But hotel and lodging-house keepers never set it down in one's bill at less than double that amount. It often rises to four or five times the legal charge, according to the elegance of the rooms which one occupies, and also according to the daring of the landlord. In one house in Moscow, they even tried to make us pay again on leaving. We refused, and as we already had possession of the passports, which, they pretended, required a second registry, they could do nothing. This abuse of overcharging for passport registration on the part of landlords seems to have been general. It became so serious that the Argus-eyed prefect of St. Petersburg, General Gresser (now deceased), issued an order that no more than the law allowed should be exacted from lodgers. I presume, however, that all persons who could not read Russian, or who did not chance to notice this regulation, continued to contribute to the pockets of landlords, since human nature is very much alike everywhere, in certain professions. I had no occasion to test the point personally, as the law was issued just previous to my departure from the country.

The passport law seems to be interpreted by each man for himself in other respects, also. In some places, we found that we could stay overnight quite informally; at others, our passports were required. Once we spent an entire month incognito. At Kazan, our balcony commanded a full view of the police department of registry, directly opposite. The landlord sniffed disdainfully at the mention of our passports, and I am sure that we should not have been asked for them at all, had not one of the officials, who chanced to be less wilted by the intense heat than his fellows,--they had been gazing lazily at us, singly and in battalions, in the intervals of their rigorous idleness, for the last four and twenty hours,--suddenly taken a languid interest in us about one hour before our departure. The landlord said he was "simply ridiculous." On another occasion, a waiter in a hotel recognized the Russians who were with us as neighbors of his former master in the days of serfdom. He suggested that he would arrange not to have our passports called for at all, since they might be kept overtime, and our departure would thus be delayed, and we be incommoded. Only one of our friends had even taken the trouble to bring a "document;" but the whole party spent three days under the protection of this ex-serf. Of course, we bespoke his attendance for ourselves, and remembered that little circumstance in his "tea-money." This practice of detaining passports arbitrarily, from which the ex-serf was protecting us, prevails in some localities, judging from the uproar about it in the Russian newspapers. It is contrary to the law, and can be resisted by travelers who have time, courage, and determination. It appears to be a device of the landlords at watering places and summer resorts generally, who desire to detain guests. I doubt whether the police have anything to do with it. What we paid the ex-serf for was, practically, protection against his employer.

Our one experience of this device was coupled with a good deal of amusement, and initiated us into some of the laws of the Russian post-office as well. To begin my story intelligibly, I must premise that no Russian could ever pronounce or spell our name correctly unaided. A worse name to put on a Russian official document, with its H and its double o, never was invented! There is no letter h in the Russian alphabet, and it is customary to supply the deficiency with the letter g, leaving the utterer to his fate as to which of the two legitimate sounds--the foreign or the native--he is to produce. It affords a test of cultivation parallel to that involved in giving a man a knife and fork with a piece of pie, and observing which he uses. That is the American shibboleth. Lomonosoff, the famous founder of Russian literary language in the last century, wrote a long rhymed strophe, containing a mass of words in which the g occurs legitimately and illegitimately, and wound up by wailing out the query, "Who can emerge from the crucial test of pronouncing all these correctly, unimpeached?" That is the Russian shibboleth.

As a result of this peculiarity, our passports came back from each trip to the police office indorsed with a brand-new version of our name. We figured under Gepgud, Gapgod, Gabgot, and a number of other disguises, all because they persisted in spelling by the eye, and would not accept my perfect phonetic version. The same process applied to the English name Wylie has resulted in the manufacture of Villie. And the pleasant jest of it all was that we never troubled ourselves to sort our passports, because, although there existed not the slightest family resemblance even between my mother and myself, we looked exactly alike in those veracious mirrors. This explained to our dull comprehension how the stories of people using stolen passports could be true. However, the Russians were not to blame for this particular absurdity. It was the fault of the officials in America.

On the occasion to which I refer, we had gone out of St. Petersburg, and had left a written order for the post-office authorities to forward our mail to our new address. The bank officials, who should certainly have known better, had said that this would be sufficient, and had even prepared the form, on their stamped paper, for our signature. Ten days elapsed; no letters came. Then the form was returned, with orders to get our signatures certified to by the chief of police or the police captain of our district! When we recovered from our momentary vexation, we perceived that this was an excellent safeguard. I set out for the house of the chief of police.

His orderly said he was not at home, but would be there at eleven o'clock. I took a little look into the church,--my infallible receipt for employing spare moments profitably, which has taught me many things. At eleven o'clock the chief was still "not at home." I decided that this was in an "official" sense only, when I caught sight of a woman surveying me cautiously through the crack of the opposite door to the antechamber. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that a woman calling upon a chief of police was regarded as a suspicious character; and rightly, after various shooting incidents in St. Petersburg. My suspicions were confirmed by my memory of the fact that I had been told that the prefect of St. Petersburg was "not at home" in business hours, though his gray lambskin cap--the only one in town--was lying before me at the time. But I also recollected that when I had made use of that cap as a desk, on which to write my request, to the horror of the orderly, and had gone home, the prefect had sent a gendarme to do what I wanted. Accordingly, I told this orderly my business in a loud, clear voice. The crack of the door widened as I proceeded, and at my last word I was invited into the chief's study by the orderly, who had been signaled to.

The chief turned out to be a polished and amiable baron, with a German name, who was eager to render any service, but who had never come into collision with that post-office regulation before. I remarked that I regretted not being able to certify to ourselves with our passports, as they had not been returned to us. He declared that the passports were quite unnecessary as a means of identification; my word was sufficient. But he flew into a rage over the detention of the passports. That something decidedly vigorous took place over those papers, and that the landlord of our hotel was to blame, it was easy enough to gather from the meek air and the apologies with which they were handed to us, a couple of hours later. The chief dispatched his orderly on the spot with my post-office petition. During the man's absence, the chief brought in and introduced to me his wife, his children, and his dogs, and showed me over his house and garden. We were on very good terms by the time the orderly returned with the signature of the prefect (who had never seen us) certifying to our signatures, on faith. The baron sealed the petition for me with his biggest coat of arms, and posted it, and the letters came promptly and regularly. Thereafter, for the space of our four months' stay in the place, the baron and I saluted when we met. We even exchanged "shakehands," as foreigners call the operation, and the compliments of the day, in church, when the baron escorted royalty. I think he was a Lutheran, and went to that church when etiquette did not require his presence at the Russian services, where I was always to be found.

As, during those four months, I obtained several very special privileges which required the prefect's signature,--as foreigners were by no means common residents there,--and as I had become so well known by sight to most of the police force of the town that they saluted me when I passed, and their dogs wagged their tails at me and begged for a caress, I imagined that I was properly introduced to the authorities, and that they could lay hands upon me at any moment when the necessity for so doing should become apparent. Nevertheless, one friend, having applied to the police for my address, spent two whole days in finding me, at haphazard. After a residence of three months, other friends appealed in vain to the police; then obtained from the prefect, who had certified to us, the information that no such persons lived in the town, the only foreigners there being two sisters named Genrut! With this lucid clue our friends cleverly found us. Those who understand Russian script will be able to unravel the process by which we were thus disguised and lost. We had been lost before that in St. Petersburg, and we recognized the situation, with variations, at a glance. There is no such thing as a real practical directory in Russian cities. When one's passport is vised by the police, the name and information therein set forth are copied on a large sheet of paper, and this document takes its place among many thousand others, on the thick wire files of the Address Office. I went there once. That was enough in every way. It lingers in my mind as the darkest, dirtiest, worst-ventilated, most depressing place I saw in Russia.

If one wishes to obtain the address of any person, he goes or sends to this Address Office, fills out a blank, for which he pays a couple of kopeks, and, after patient waiting for the over-busy officials to search the big files, he receives a written reply, with which he must content himself. The difficulty, in general, about this system lies here: one must know the exact Christian name, patronymic, and surname of the person wanted, and how to spell them correctly (according to police lights). One must also know the exact occupation of the person, if he be not a noble living on his income, without business or official position. Otherwise, the attempt to find any one is a harder task than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. A person who had been asked to call upon us, and who afterward became a valued friend, tried three times in vain to find us by this means, and was informed that we did not exist. This was owing to some eccentricity in the official spelling of our name. An application to the American Legation, as a desperate final resort, served the purpose at last. The same thing happened when the telegraph messenger tried to find us, to deliver an important cablegram. Still, in spite of this experience, I always regarded my passport as an important means of protection. In case of accident, one could be traced by it. A traveler's passport once registered at the police office, the landlord or lodging-house keeper is responsible for the life of his guest. If the landlord have any bandit propensities, this serves as a check upon them, since he is bound to produce the person, or to say what has become of him. In the same way, when one is traveling by imperial post carriage, the postilion must deliver his passenger safe and sound at the next post station, or be promptly arrested. The passport serves here as a sort of waybill for the human freight. When a foreigner's passport is registered for the first time, he receives permission to remain six months in the country. At the expiration of that period, on formal application, a fresh permit is issued, which must be paid for, and which covers one year. This takes the form of a special document, attached to the foreign passport with cord and sealing-wax; and attached to it, in turn, is a penalty for cutting the cord or tampering with the official seal. These acts must be done by the proper officials. I thought it might be interesting to attend to securing this special permit myself instead of sending the dvornik (the yard porter), whose duties comprise as many odds and ends as those of the prime minister of an empire.

At the office I was questioned concerning my religion and my occupation, which had not been inquired into previously. The question about religion was a mere formality, as they care nothing for one's creed. I stated, in reply to the last question, that I was merely "a traveler."

"Don't say that; it's too expensive," returned the official, in a friendly way.

"To whom? How?" I asked.

"To you, of course. A traveler, as a person of leisure, pays a huge tax."

"Call me a literary person, then, if you like."

"That's not an occupation!" (Observe the delicate, unconscious sarcasm of this rejoinder! As a matter of fact, the Russian idea of literary men is that they all hold some government or other appointment, on the committee of censorship, for example,--some ratable position. Upon this they can depend for a livelihood, aside from the product of their brains; which is practical, and affords a firm foundation upon which to execute caprices.)

He suggested various things which I was not, and I declined to accept his suggestions. We got it settled at last, though he shook his head over my extravagant obstinacy in paying two dollars, when I might have got off with half the sum and a lie. He imparted a good deal of amusing information as to the manner in which people deliberately evade the passport tax with false statements; for example, governesses, who would scorn to be treated as nurses, get themselves described as bonnes to save money. I have no doubt that the authorities amiably assist them by friendly suggestions, as in my own case; only I decline to sail under false colors, by the authority of my own government or any other; so his amiability was wasted so far as I was concerned.

It would seem to the ordinary reader that the police would be able to lay hands on a man, when he was wanted, with tolerable promptness and accuracy, after all the details which the law requires in these "address tickets," as the local passports are called, had been duly furnished. But I remember one case among several which impressed me as instructive and amusing. The newspapers told the tale, which ran somewhat as follows: A wealthy woman of position, residing in one of the best quarters of St. Petersburg, hired a prepossessing young lackey as one of her large staff of domestics. Shortly after his advent, many articles of value began to disappear. Finally, suspicion having turned on this lackey, he also disappeared, and the police undertook to find him. It then became apparent that the fellow had used a false passport and address, and was not to be found where he was inscribed. He caused an exciting chase. This ended in the discovery of a regular robbers' nest, where a large number of false passports were captured, the prepossessing lackey and his friends having abandoned them in their attempt to escape. The papers were also constantly remarking on the use made by peasant men of their passports. The wife is inscribed on the husband's "document," separate passports for wives being, as a rule, difficult of attainment in the lower classes. The peasants are thus able, and often willing, to control their wives' places of residence and movements, and preserve entire liberty of action for themselves, since their consent is required for the separate passport, or for the wives' movements on the common passport. In such cases the passport does become an instrument of oppression, from either the Occidental or the Oriental point of view.

As for the stories told by travelers of officious meddling by the police on their arrival in Russia, and of their footsteps being dogged, I have recently been favored with some light on that subject. I believe the tales, with reservations, since some perfectly innocent and truthful friends of mine related to me their own similar experience. A man, who seemed to their inexperienced eyes to be a police officer, told them that the authorities thought three weeks, one in Petersburg and two elsewhere, would be amply sufficient for their travels in Russia. They had a high-priced French courier, who pretended to know a little Russian. Perhaps he did know enough for his own purposes. He told them that they were watched constantly, and translated for the officer. But he did not tell them that they already had permission to remain in the country for the customary six months. I made them get out their passports, and showed them the official stamp and signature to that effect. This clever courier afterward stole from them, in Warsaw, a quantity of diamonds which he had helped them to purchase in Moscow, and of whose existence and whereabouts in their trunks no one but himself was aware. This helped me to an explanation. It is invariably the couriers or guides, I find, who tell travelers these alarming tales, and neglect to inform them of their rights. It certainly looks very much as if some confederate of theirs impersonates a police official, and as if they misinterpret. The stories of spies forever in attendance seem to be manufactured for the purpose of extorting handsome gratuities from their victims for their "protection," and for the purpose of frightening the latter out of the country before their own ignorance is discovered. As I never employed the guides, I never had any trouble with the police, either genuine or manufactured. I visited the police stations whenever I could make an excuse; and when I wished to know when and where the Emperor was to be seen, I asked a policeman or a gendarme. He always told me the exact truth unhesitatingly, and pointed out the best position. It was refreshing after the German police, who put one through the Inquisition as to one's self and one's ancestors as soon as one arrives, and who prove themselves lineal descendants of Ananias or Baron Munchausen when a traveler asks for information.

When we wished to leave the country, I again usurped the dvornik's duties, and paid another visit to the passport office, to inspect its workings. Our Russian passports were clipped out, and little books were given us, which constituted our permission to leave Russia at any time within the next three months, by any route we pleased, without further ceremony. These booklets contained information relating to the tax imposed on Russians for absenting themselves from their country for various periods, the custom-house regulations which forbid the entry, duty free, of more than one fur cloak, cap, and muff to each person, etc., since these books form return passports for Russians, though we surrendered ours at the frontier. As the hotel clerk or porter attends to all passport details, few foreigners see the inside of the office, or hear the catechisms which are conducted there, as I did. It is vulgar, it smacks of commercial life, to go one's self. Apathy and lack of interest can always be relied upon to brand one as aristocratic. In this case, however, as in many others, I considered myself repaid for following Poor Richard's advice: "If you want a thing done, do it yourself; if not, send!"

To sum up the passport question: If his passport is in order, the traveler need never entertain the slightest apprehension for a single moment, despite sensational tales to the contrary, and it will serve as a safeguard. If, for any good reason, his passport cannot be put in order, the traveler will do well to keep out of Russia, or any other country which requires such documents. In truth, although we do not require them in this country, America would be better off if all people who cannot undergo a passport scrutiny, and a German, not a Russian, passport examination, were excluded from it.

I have mentioned the post-office in connection with our passports. Subsequently, I had several entertaining interviews with the police and others on that point. One Sunday afternoon, in Moscow, we went to the police station of our quarter to get our change-of-address petition to the post-office authorities signed. There was nothing of interest about the shabby building or the rooms, on this occasion. The single officer on duty informed us that he was empowered to attend only to cases of drunkenness, breaches of the peace, and the like. We must return on Monday, he declared.

"No," said I. "Why make us waste all that time in beautiful Moscow? Here are our passports to identify us. Will you please to tell the captain, as soon as he arrives to-morrow morning, that we are genuine, and request him to sign this petition and post it?"

The officer courteously declined to look at the passports, said that my word was sufficient, and accepted my commission. Then, rising, drawing himself up, with the heels of his high wrinkled boots in regulation contact, and the scarlet pipings of his baggy green trousers and tight coat bristling with martial etiquette, he made me a profound bow, hand on heart, and said: "Madam, accept the thanks of Russia for the high honor you have done her in learning her difficult language!"

I accepted Russia's thanks with due pomp, and hastened into the street. That small, low-roofed station house seemed to be getting too contracted to contain all of us and etiquette.

Again, upon another occasion, also in Moscow, it struck us that it would be a happy idea and a clever economy of time to get ourselves certified to before our departure, instead of after our arrival in St. Petersburg. Accordingly, we betook ourselves, in a violent snowstorm, to the police station inside the walls of the old city, as we had changed our hotel, and that was now our quarter.

A vision of cells; of unconfined prisoners tranquilly executing hasty repairs on their clothing, with twine or something similar, in the anteroom; of a complete police hierarchy, running through all the gradations of pattern in gold and silver embroidery to the plain uniform of the roundsman, gladdened our sight while we waited. A gorgeous silver-laced official finally certified our identity, as usual without other proof than our statement, and, clapping a five-kopek stamp on our paper, bowed us out. I had never seen a stamp on such a document before, and had never been asked to pay anything; but I restrained my natural eagerness to reimburse the government and ask questions, with the idea that it might have been a purely mechanical action on the part of the officer, and in the hope of developments. They came. A couple of hours later, a messenger entered our room at the hotel, without knocking, in Russian lower-class style, and demanded thirty kopeks for the signature. I offered to pay for the stamp on the spot, and supply the remaining twenty-five kopeks when furnished with an adequate reason therefor.

"Is the captain's signature worth so much?" I asked.

"That is very little," was the answer.

"So it is. Is the captain's signature worth so little? Tell me why."

He could not, or would not.

I made him wait while I wrote a petition to the police. The burden of it was: "Why? I was born an American and curious; not too curious, but just curious enough to be interested in the ethnographical and psychological problems of foreign lands. Why the twenty-five kopeks? It is plainly too little or too much. Why?"

The messenger accepted the five kopeks for the stamp, and set out to deliver the document. But he returned after a moment, and said that he would intrust the five kopeks to my safe-keeping until he brought the answer to my document,--which he had had just sufficient time to read, by the way. That was the last I ever heard of him or of it, and I was forced to conclude that some thirsty soul had been in quest of "tea-money" for vodka. I am still in debt to the Russian government for five kopeks.

The last time I arrived in Petersburg, I tried a new plan. Instead of making a trip of a couple of miles to get the signature of our police captain, or sending the petition at the languid convenience of the overworked dvornik, I went to the general post-office, which was close by, and made a personal request that my mail matter be delivered at my new address. The proper official, whom I found after a search through most of the building, during which I observed their methods, declared that my request was illegal, and ordered me to go for the customary signature. But by this time I had learned that the mere threat to make Russian officials inspect my passport was productive of much the same effect as drawing a pistol on them would have had. It was not in the least necessary to have the document with me; going through the motions was easier, and quite as good. Every man of them flushed up, and repelled the suggestion as a sort of personal insult; but they invariably came to terms on the spot. Accordingly, I tried it here.

This particular man, when I pretended to draw my "open sesame" spell from my pocket, instantly dropped his official air, asked me to write my name, with quite a human, friendly manner, and then remarked, with a very every-day laugh, "That is sufficient. I have seen so much of it on your previous petitions that I can swear to it myself much better than the police captain could."

As an offset to my anecdotes about our being lost through inability to riddle out our name on the part of the police, I must relate an instance where the post-office displayed remarkable powers of divination. One day I received an official notification from the post-office that there was a misdirected parcel for me from Moscow, lying in the proper office,--would I please to call for it? I called. The address on the parcel was "Madame Argot," I was informed, but I must get myself certified to before I could receive it.

"But how am I to do that? I am not Madame Argot. Are you sure the parcel is for me?"

"Perfectly. It's your affair to get the certificate."

I went to the police station, one which I had not visited before, and stated the case.

"Go home and send the dvornik, as is proper," replied the captain loftily.

I argued the matter, after my usual fashion, and at last he affixed his signature to my document, with the encouraging remark: "Well, even with this you won't get that parcel, because the name is not yours."

"Trust me for that," I retorted. "As they are clever enough to know that it is for me, they will be clever enough to give it to me, or I will persuade them that they are."

Back I went to the post-office. I had never been in that department previously, I may mention. Then I was shown a box, and asked if I expected it, and from whom it came. I asserted utter ignorance; but, as I took it in my hand, I heard a rattling, and it suddenly flashed across my mind that it might be the proofs of some photographs which the Moscow artist had "hurried" through in one month. The amiable post-office "blindman," who had riddled out the address, was quite willing to give me the parcel without further ado, but I said:--

"Open it, and you will soon see whether it really belongs to me."

After much protestation he did so, and then we exchanged lavish compliments,--he on the capital likenesses and the skill of the artist; I on the stupidity of the man who could evolve Argot out of my legibly engraved visiting-card, and on the cleverness of the man who could translate that name back into its original form.

The most prominent instance of minute thoughtfulness and care on the part of the post-office officials which came under my notice occurred in the depths of the country. I sent a letter with a ten-kopek stamp on it to the post town, twelve versts distant. Foreign postage had been raised from seven to ten kopeks, and stamps, in a new design, of the latter denomination (hitherto non-existent) had been in use for about four months. The country postmaster, who had seen nothing but the old issues, carefully removed my stamp and sent it back to me, replacing it with a seven-kopek stamp and a three-kopek stamp. I felt, for a moment, as though I had been both highly complimented and gently rebuked for my remarkable skill in counterfeiting!

As a parallel case, I may add that there were plenty of intelligent people in New York city and elsewhere who were not aware that the United States still issued three-cent stamps, or who could tell the color of them, until the Columbian set appeared to attract their attention.

II.

THE NEVSKY PROSPEKT.

The Nevsky Prospekt!

From the time when, as children, we first encounter the words, in geographical compilations disguised as books of travel, what visions do they not summon up! Visions of the realm of the Frost King and of his Regent, the White Tzar, as fantastic as any of those narrated of tropic climes by Scheherezade, and with which we are far more familiar than we are with the history of our native land.

When we attain to the reality of our visions, in point of locality at least, we find a definite starting-point ready to our hand, where veracious legend and more veracious history are satisfactorily blended. It is at the eastern extremity of the famous broad avenue,--which is the meaning of Prospekt. Here, on the bank of the Neva, tradition alleges that Alexander, Prince of Novgorod, won his great battle--and, incidentally, his surname of Nevsky and his post of patron saint of Russia--over the united forces of the Swedes and oppressive Knights of the Teutonic Order, in the year 1240.

Nearly five hundred years later, the spot was occupied by Rhitiowa, one of the forty Finnish villages scattered over the present site of St. Petersburg, as designated by the maps of the Swedes, whom Peter the Great--practically Russia's second patron saint--expelled anew when he captured their thriving commercial town, on the shore of the Neva, directly opposite, now known as Malaya Okhta, possessed of extensive foreign trade, and of a church older than the capital, which recently celebrated its two-hundredth anniversary.

It was in 1710 that Peter I. named the place "Victory," in honor of Prince-Saint Alexander Nevsky's conquest, and commanded the erection of a Lavra, or first-class monastery, the seat of a Metropolitan and of a theological seminary. By 1716 the monastery was completed, in wood, as engravings of that day show us, but in a very different form from the complex of stone buildings of the present day. Its principal façade, with extensive, stiffly arranged gardens, faced upon the river,--the only means of communication in that town, planted on a bog, threaded with marshy streams, being by boat. In fact, for a long time horses were so scarce in the infant capital, where reindeer were used in sledges even as late as the end of the last century, that no one was permitted to come to Court, during Peter the Great's reign, otherwise than by water. Necessity and the enforced cultivation of aquatic habits in his inland subjects, which the enterprising Emperor had so much at heart, combined to counsel this regulation.

The bones of Prince Alexander were brought to St. Petersburg, from their resting-place in the Vladimir Government, in 1724, Peter the Great occupying his favorite post as pilot and steersman in the saint's state barge, and they now repose in the monastery cathedral, under a canopy, and in a tomb of silver, 3600 pounds in weight, given by Peter's daughter, the devout Empress Elizabeth. In the cemetery surrounding the cathedral, under the fragrant firs and birches, with the blue Neva rippling far below, lie many of the men who have contributed to the advancement of their country in literature, art, and science, during the last two centuries.

Of all the historical memories connected with this monastery none is more curious than that relating to the second funeral of Peter III. He had been buried by his wife, in 1762, with much simplicity, in one of the many churches of the Lavra, which contains the family tombs and monuments not only of members of the imperial family, but of the noble families most illustrious in the eighteenth century. When Paul I. came to the throne, in 1796, his first care was to give his long-deceased father a more fitting burial. The body was exhumed. Surrounded by his court, Pavel Petrovitch took the imperial crown from the altar, placed it on his own head, then laid it reverently on his father's coffin. When Peter III. was transferred immediately afterward, with magnificent ceremonial, to the Winter Palace, there to lie in state by the side of his wife, Katherine II., and to accompany her to his proper resting-place among the sovereigns of Russia, in the cathedral of the Peter-Paul fortress, Count Alexei Grigorevitch Orloff was appointed, with fine irony, to carry the crown before his former master, whom he had betrayed, and in the necessity for whose first funeral he had played the part of Fate. It was with considerable difficulty that he was hunted up, while Emperor and pageant waited, in the obscure corner where he was sobbing and weeping; and with still greater difficulty was he finally persuaded to perform the task assigned to him in the procession.

Outside the vast monastery, which, like most Russian monasteries, resembles a fortress, though, unlike most of them, it has never served as such, the scene is almost rural. Pigeons, those symbols of the Holy Ghost, inviolable in Russia, attack with impunity the grain bags in the acres of storehouses opposite, pick holes, and eat their fill undisturbed.

From this spot to the slight curve in the Prospekt, at the Znamenskaya Square, a distance of about a mile, where the Moscow railway station is situated, and where the train of steam tram-cars is superseded by less terrifying horse-cars, the whole aspect of the avenue is that of a provincial town, in the character of the people and the buildings, even to the favorite crushed strawberry and azure washes, and green iron roofs on the countrified shops. Here and there, not very far away, a log-house may even be espied.

During the next three quarters of a mile the houses and shops are more city-like, and, being newer than those beyond, are more ornamented as to the stucco of their windows and doors. Here, as elsewhere in this stoneless land, with rare exceptions, the buildings are of brick or rubble, stuccoed and washed, generally in light yellow, with walls three feet or more apart, warmly filled in, and ventilated through the hermetically sealed windows by ample panes in the centre of the sashes, or by apertures in the string-courses between stories, which open into each room. Shops below, apartments above, this is the nearly invariable rule.

It is only when we reach the Anitchkoff Bridge, with its graceful railing of sea-horses, adorned with four colossal bronze groups of horse-tamers, from the hand of the Russian sculptor, Baron Klodt, that the really characteristic part of the Nevsky begins.

It is difficult to believe that fifty years ago this spot was the end of the Petersburg world. But at that epoch the Nevsky was decorated with rows of fine large trees, which have now disappeared to the last twig. The Fontanka River, or canal, over which we stand, offers the best of the many illustrations of the manner in which Peter the Great, with his ardent love of water and Dutch ways, and his worthy successors have turned natural disadvantages into advantages and objects of beauty. The Fontanka was the largest of the numerous marshy rivers in that Arctic bog selected by Peter I. for his new capital, which have been deepened, widened, faced with cut granite walls, and utilized as means of cheap communication between distant parts of the city, and as relief channels for the inundating waves of the Gulf of Finland, which rise, more or less, every year, from August to November, at the behest of the southwest gale. That this last precaution is not superfluous is shown by the iron flood-mark set into the wall of the Anitchkoff Palace, on the southern shore of the Fontanka, as on so many other public buildings in the city, with "1824" appended,--the date of one celebrated and disastrous inundation which attained in some places the height of thirteen feet and seven inches. This particular river derived its name from the fact that it was trained to carry water and feed the fountains in Peter the Great's favorite Summer Garden, of which only one now remains.

At the close of the last century, and even later, persons out of favor at Court, or nobles who had committed misdemeanors, were banished to the southern shores of the Fontanka, as to a foreign land. Among the amusements at the datchas,--the wooden country houses,--in the wilder recesses of the vast parks which studded both shores, the chase after wild animals, and from bandits, played a prominent part.

The stretch which we have traversed on our way from the monastery, and which is punctuated at the corner of the canal and the Prospekt by the pleasing brick and granite palace of the Emperor's brother, Grand Duke Sergiei Alexandrovitch, which formerly belonged to Prince Byeloselsky-Byelozersky, was the suburb belonging to Lieutenant-Colonel Anitchkoff, who built the first bridge, of wood, in 1715. As late as the reign of Alexander I., all persons entering the town were required to inscribe their names in the register kept at the barrier placed at this bridge. Some roguish fellows having conspired to cast ridicule on this custom, by writing absurd names, the guards were instructed to make an example of the next jester whose name should strike them as suspicious. Fate willed that the imperial comptroller, Baltazar Baltazarovitch Kampenhausen, with his Russianized German name, should fall a victim to this order, and he was detained until his fantastic cognomen, so harsh to Slavic ears, could be investigated.

By day or by night, in winter or summer, it is a pure delight to stand on the Anitchkoff Bridge and survey the scene on either hand. If we gaze to the north toward what is one of the oldest parts settled on the rivulet-riddled so-called "mainland," in this Northern Venice, we see the long, plain façade of the Katherine Institute for the education of the daughters of officers, originally built by Peter the Great for his daughter Anna, as the "Italian Palace," but used only for the palace servants, until it was built over and converted to its present purpose. Beyond, we catch a glimpse of the yellow wings of Count Scheremetieff's ancient house and its great iron railing, behind which, in a spacious courtyard, after the Moscow fashion so rare in thrifty Petersburg, the main building lies invisible to us. If we look to the south, we find the long ochre mass of the Anitchkoff Palace, facing on the Nevsky, upon the right shore; on the left, beyond the palace of Sergiei Alexandrovitch, the branch of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, in old Russian style, with highly colored saints and heads of seraphim on the outer walls; and a perspective of light, stuccoed building,--dwellings, markets, churches,--until the eye halts with pleasure on the distant blue dome of the Troitzky cathedral, studded with golden stars. Indeed, it is difficult to discover a vista in St. Petersburg which does not charm us with a glimpse of one or more of these cross-crowned domes, floating, bubble-like, in the pale azure of the sky. Though they are far from being as beautiful in form or coloring as those of Moscow, they satisfy us at the moment.

If it is on a winter night that we take up our stand here, we may catch a distant glimpse of the numerous "skating-gardens," laid out upon the ice cleared on the snowy surface of the canal. The ice-hills will be black with forms flitting swiftly down the shining roads on sledges or skates, illuminated by the electric light; a band will be braying blithely, regardless of the piercing cold, and the skaters will dance on, in their fancy-dress ball or prize races, or otherwise, clad so thinly as to amaze the shivering foreigner as he hugs his furs.

By day the teamsters stand upon the quay, with rough aprons over their ballet-skirted sheepskin coats, waiting for a job. If we hire one of them, we shall find that they all belong to the ancient Russian Artel, or Labor Union, which prevents competition beyond a certain point. When the price has been fixed, after due and inevitable chaffering, one lomovoi grasps his shapeless cap by its worn edge of fur, bites a kopek, and drops it in. Each of the other men contributes a marked copper likewise, and we are invited to draw lots, in full view, to determine which of them shall have the job. The master of the Artel sees to it that there is fair play on both sides. If an unruly member presumes to intervene with a lower bid, with the object of monopolizing the job out of turn, he is promptly squelched, and, though his bid may be allowed to stand, the man whose kopek we have drawn must do the work. The winner chee-ee-eeps to his little horse, whose shaggy mane has been tangled by the loving hand of the domovoi (house-sprite) and hangs to his knees. The patient beast, which, like all Russian horses, is never covered, no matter how severe the weather may be, or how hot he may be from exercise, rouses himself from his real or simulated slumber, and takes up the burden of life again, handicapped by the huge wooden arch, gayly painted in flowers and initials, which joins his shafts, and does stout service despite his sorry aspect.

But the early summer is the season when the Fontanka is to be seen in its most characteristic state. The brilliant blue water sparkles under the hot sun, or adds one more tint to the exquisite hues which make of the sky one vast, gleaming fire-opal on those marvelous "white nights" when darkness never descends to a depth beyond the point where it leaves all objects with natural forms and colors, and only spiritualizes them with the gentle vagueness of a translucent veil. Small steamers, manned by wooden-faced, blond Finns, connect the unfashionable suburban quarters, lying near the canal's entrance into the Neva on the west, with the fashionable Court quarter on the northern quays at its other entrance into the Neva, seven versts away. They dart about like sea-gulls, picking their path, not unfraught with serious danger, among the obstructions. The obstructions are many: washing-house boats (it is a good old unexploded theory in Petersburg that clothes are clean only when rinsed in running water, even though our eyes and noses inform us, unaided by chart, where the drainage goes); little flotillas of dingy flat-boats, anchored around the "Fish-Gardens," and containing the latter's stock in trade, where persons of taste pick their second dinner-course out of the flopping inmates of a temporary scoop-net; huge, unwieldy, wood barks, put together with wooden pegs, and steered with long, clumsy rudders, which the poor peasants have painfully poled--tramp, tramp, tramp, along the sides--through four hundred miles of tortuous waterways from that province of the former haughty republic, "Lord Novgorod the Great," where Prince Rurik ruled and laid the foundations of the present imperial empire, and whence came Prince-Saint Alexander, to win his surname of Nevsky, as we have seen, at the spot where his monastery stands, a couple of miles, at most, away.

The boatmen, who have trundled all day long their quaint little barrows over the narrow iron rails into the spacious inner courtyards of the houses on the quay, and have piled up their wood for winter fuel, or loaded it into the carts for less accessible buildings, now sit on the stern of their barks, over their coarse food,--sour black bread, boiled buckwheat groats, and salted cucumbers,--doffing their hats and crossing themselves reverently before and after their simple meal, and chatting until the red glow of sunset in the north flickers up to the zenith in waves of sea-green, lilac, and amber, and descends again in the north, at the pearl pink of dawn. Sleep is a lost art with these men, as with all classes of people, during those nerve-destroying "white nights." When all the silvery satin of the birch logs has been removed from their capacious holds, these primitive barks will be unpegged, and the cheap "bark-wood," riddled with holes as by a mitrailleuse, will be used for poor structures on the outskirts of the town.

On the upper shore of this river, second only to the Neva in its perennial fascination, and facing on the Prospekt, stands the Anitchkoff Palace, on the site of a former lumber-yard, which was purchased by the Empress Elizabeth, when she commissioned her favorite architect, Rastrelli, to erect for Count Razumovsky a palace in that rococo style which he used in so many palaces and churches during her reign and that of Katherine II.,--the rococo style being, by the way, quite the most unsuited discoverable for Russian churches.

Count Alexei Grigorevitch Razumovsky was the Empress Elizabeth's husband, the uneducated but handsome son of a plain Kazak from Little Russia, who attracted the attention of Elizaveta Petrovna as his sweet voice rang out in the imperial choir, at mass, in her palace church. When the palace was completed, in 1757, it did not differ materially from its present appearance, as a painting in the Winter Palace shows, except that its colonnade, now inclosed for the Imperial Chancellery and offices, then abutted directly on the Fontanka. It has had a very varied ownership, with some curious features in that connection which remind one of a gigantic game of ball between Katherine II. and Prince Potemkin. Count Razumovsky did not live in it until after the Empress Elizabeth's death, in 1762. After his own death, his brother sold it to the state, and Katherine II. presented it to Prince Potemkin, who promptly resold it to a wealthy merchant-contractor in the commissariat department of the army, who in turn sold it to Katherine II., who gave it once more to Potemkin. The prince never lived here, but gave sumptuous garden parties in the vast park, which is now in great part built over, and sold it back to the state again in 1794. It was first occupied by royalty in 1809, when the Emperor Alexander I. settled his sister here, with her first husband,--that Prince of Oldenburg whose territory in Germany Napoleon I. so summarily annexed a few years later, thereby converting the Oldenburgs permanently into Russian princes.

The Grand Duke Heir Nicholas used it from 1819 until he ascended the throne, in 1825, and since that time it has been considered the palace of the heir to the throne. But the present Emperor has continued to occupy it since his accession, preferring its simplicity to the magnificence of the Winter Palace.

The high walls, of that reddish-yellow hue, like the palace itself, which is usually devoted to government buildings in Russia, continue the line of offices along the Prospekt, and surround wooded gardens, where the Emperor and his family coast, skate, and enjoy their winter pleasures, invisible to the eyes of passers-by.

These woods and walls also form the eastern boundary of the Alexandra Square, in whose centre rises Mikeshin and Opekushin's fine colossal bronze statue of Katherine II., crowned, sceptred, in imperial robes, and with the men who made her reign illustrious grouped about her feet. Among these representatives of the army, navy, literature, science, art, there is one woman,--that dashing Princess Elizaveta Romanovna Dashkoff, who helped Katherine to her throne. As Empress, Katherine appointed her to be first president of the newly founded Academy of Sciences, but afterward withdrew her favor, and condemned her to both polite and impolite exile,--because of her services, the princess hints, in her celebrated and very lively "Memoirs."

In the Alexandra Theatre, for Russian and German drama, which rears its new (1828) Corinthian peristyle and its bronze quadriga behind the great Empress, forming the background of the Square, two of the Empress's dramas still hold the stage, on occasion. For this busy and energetic woman not only edited and published a newspaper, the greater part of which she wrote with her own hand, but composed numerous comedies and comic operas, where the moral, though sufficiently obvious all the way through, one would have thought, in the good old style is neatly labeled at the end. These were acted first in the private theatres of the various palaces, by the dames and cavaliers of the Court, after which professional actors presented them to the public in the ordinary theatres.

It is in vain that we scrutinize the chubby-cheeked countenance of the bronze Prince Potemkin, at Katherine II.'s feet, to discover the secret of the charm which made the imperial lady who towers above him force upon him so often the ground upon which they both now stand. He stares stolidly at the Prospekt, ignoring not only the Theatre, but the vast structures containing the Direction of Theatres and Prisons, the Censor's Office, Theatrical School, and other government offices in the background; the new building for shops and apartments, where ancient Russian forms have been adapted to modern street purposes; and even the wonderfully rich Imperial Public Library, begun in 1794, to contain the books brought from Warsaw, with its Corinthian peristyle interspersed with bronze statues of ancient sages, on the garden side,--all of which stand upon the scene of his former garden parties, as the name of the avenue beyond the plain end of the Library on the Prospekt--Great Garden Street--reminds us. Not far away is the site of the tunnel dug under the Prospekt by the revolutionists, which, however, was fortunately discovered in time to prevent the destruction of one of the fairest parts of the city, and its most valuable buildings. With the next block we enter upon the liveliest, the most characteristic portion of the Nevsky Prospekt, in that scant fraction over a mile which is left to us above the Anitchkoff Bridge.

Here stands the vast bazaar known as the Gostinny Dvor,--"Guests' Court,"--a name which dates from the epoch when a wealthy merchant engaged in foreign trade, and owning his own ships, was distinguished from the lesser sort by the title of "Guest," which we find in the ancient epic songs of Russia. Its frontage of seven hundred feet on the Prospekt, and one thousand and fifty on Great Garden and the next parallel street, prepare us to believe that it may really contain more than five hundred shops in the two stories, the lower surrounded by a vaulted arcade supporting an open gallery, which is invaluable for decorative purposes at Easter and on imperial festival days. Erected in 1735, very much in its present shape, the one common throughout the country, on what had been an impassable morass a short time before, and where the ground still quakes at dawn, it may not contain the largest and best shops in town, and its merchants certainly are not "guests" in the ancient acceptation of the word; but we may claim, nevertheless, that it presents a compendium of most purchasable articles extant, from samovari, furs, and military goods, to books, sacred images, and Moscow imitations of Parisian novelties at remarkably low prices, as well as the originals.

The nooks and spaces of the arcade, especially at the corners and centre, are occupied by booths of cheap wares. The sacred image, indispensable to a Russian shop, is painted on the vaulted ceiling; the shrine lamp flickers in the open air, thus serving many aproned, homespun and sheepskin clad dealers. The throng of promenaders here is always varied and interesting. The practiced eye distinguishes infinite shades of difference in wealth, social standing, and other conditions. The lady in the velvet shuba, lined with sable or black fox, her soft velvet cap edged with costly otter, her head wrapped in a fleecy knitted shawl of goat's-down from the steppes of Orenburg, or pointed hood--the bashlyk--of woven goat's-down from the Caucasus, has driven hither in her sledge or carriage, and has alighted to gratify the curiosity of her sons. We know at a glance whether the lads belong in the aristocratic Pages' Corps, on Great Garden Street, hard by, in the University, the Law School, the Lyceum, or the Gymnasium, and we can make a shrewd guess at their future professions by their faces as well as by their uniforms. The lady who comes to meet us in sleeved pelisse, wadded with eider-down, and the one in a short jacket have arrived, and must return, on foot; they could not drive far in the open air, so thinly clad.

At Christmas-tide there is a great augmentation in the queer "Vyazemsky" and other cakes, the peasant laces, sweet Vyborg cracknels, fruit pastils, and other popular goods, on which these petty open-air dealers appear to thrive, both in health and purse. The spacious area between the bazaar and the sidewalk of the Nevsky is filled with Christmas-trees, beautifully unadorned, or ruined with misplaced gaudiness, brought in, in the majority of cases, by Finns from the surrounding country. Again, in the week preceding Palm Sunday, the Verbnaya Yarmaraka, or Pussy Willow Fair, takes place here. Nominally, it is held for the purpose of providing the public with twigs of that aesthetic plant (the only one which shows a vestige of life at that season), which are used as palms, from the Emperor's palace to the poorest church in the land. In reality, it is a most amusing fair for toys and cheap goods suitable for Easter eggs; gay paper roses, wherewith to adorn the Easter cake; and that combination of sour and sweet cream and other forbidden delicacies, the paskha, with which the long, severe fast is to be broken, after midnight matins on Easter. Here are plump little red Finland parrots, green and red finches, and other song-birds, which kindly people buy and set free, after a pretty custom. The board and canvas booths, the sites for which are drawn by lot by soldiers' widows, and sold or used as suits their convenience, are locked at night by dropping the canvas flap, and are never guarded; while the hint that thefts may be committed, or that watching is necessary, is repelled with indignation by the stall-keepers.

There is always a popular toy of the hour. One year it consisted of highly colored, beautifully made bottle-imps, which were loudly cried as Amerikanskiya zhiteli,--inhabitants of America. We inquired the reason for their name.

"They are made in the exact image of the Americans," explained the peasant vendor, offering a pale blue imp, with a long, red tongue and a phenomenal tail, for our admiration.

"We are inhabitants of America. Is the likeness very strong?" we asked.

The crowd tittered softly; the man looked frightened; but finding that no dire fate threatened, he was soon vociferating again, with a roguish grin:--

"Kupiti, kupi-i-iti! Prevoskhodniya Amerikanskiya zhiteli! Sa-a-miya nastoyashtschiya!"--Buy, buy, splendid natives of America! the most genuine sort!

Far behind this Gostinny Dvor extends a complex mass of other curious "courts" and markets, all worthy of a visit for the popular types which they afford of the lower classes. Among them all none is more steadily and diversely interesting, at all seasons of the year, than the Syennaya Ploshtschad,--the Haymarket,--so called from its use in days long gone by. Here, in the Fish Market, is the great repository for the frozen food which is so necessary in a land where the church exacts a sum total of over four months' fasting out of the twelve. Here the fish lie piled like cordwood, or overflow from casks, for economical buyers. Merchants' wives, with heads enveloped in colored kerchiefs, in the olden style, well tucked in at the neck of their salopi, or sleeved fur coats, prowl in search of bargains. Here sit the fishermen from the distant Murman coast, from Arkhangel, with weather-beaten but intelligent faces, in their quaint skull-caps of reindeer hide, and baggy, shapeless garments of mysterious skins, presiding over the wares which they have risked their lives to catch in the stormy Arctic seas, during the long days of the brief summer-time; codfish dried and curled into gray unrecognizableness; yellow caviar which resists the teeth like tiny balls of gutta-percha,--not the delicious gray "pearl" caviar of the sturgeon,--and other marine food which is never seen on the rich man's table.

But we must return to the Nevsky Prospekt. Nestling at the foot of the City Hall, at the entrance of the broad street between it and the Gostinny Dvor, on the Nevsky, stands a tiny chapel, which is as thriving as the bazaar, in its own way, and as striking a compendium of some features in Russian architecture and life. Outside hangs a large image of the "Saviour-not-made-with-hands,"--the Russian name for the sacred imprint on St. Veronica's handkerchief,--which is the most popular of all the representations of Christ in ikoni. Before it burns the usual "unquenchable lamp," filled with the obligatory pure olive-oil. Beneath it stands a table bearing a large bowl of consecrated water. On hot summer days the thirsty wayfarer takes a sip, using the ancient Russian kovsh, or short-handled ladle, which lies beside it, crosses himself, and drops a small offering on the dish piled with copper coins near by, making change for himself if he has not the exact sum which he wishes to give.

Inside, many ikoni decorate the walls. The pale flames of their shrine-lamps are supplemented by masses of candles in the huge standing candlesticks of silver. A black-robed monk from the monastery is engaged, almost without cessation, in intoning prayers of various sorts, before one or another of the images. The little chapel is thronged; there is barely room for respectfully flourished crosses, such as the peasant loves, often only for the more circumscribed sign current among the upper classes, and none at all for the favorite "ground reverences." The approach to the door is lined with two files of monks and nuns: monks in high klobuki, like rimless chimney-pot hats, draped with black woolen veils, which are always becoming; tchernitzi, or lay sisters, from distant convents, in similar headgear, in caps flat or pointed like the small end of a watermelon, and with ears protected by black woolen shawls ungracefully pinned. Serviceable man's boots do more than peep out from beneath the short, rusty-black skirts. Each monk and nun holds a small pad of threadbare black velvet, whereon a cross of tarnished gold braid, and a stray copper or two, by way of bait, explain the eleemosynary significance of the bearers' "broad" crosses, dizzy "reverences to the girdle," and muttered entreaty, of which we catch only: "Khristi Radi"--For Christ's sake.

People of all classes turn in here for a moment of prayer, to "place a candle" to some saint, for the health, in body or soul, of friend or relative: the workman, his tools on his back in a coarse linen kit; the bearded muzhik from the country, clad in his sheepskin tulup, wool inward, the soiled yellow leather outside set off by a gay sash; ladies, officers, civilians,--the stream never ceases.

The only striking feature about the next building of importance, the Gradskaya Duma, or City Hall, is the lofty tower, upon whose balcony, high in air, guards pace incessantly, on the watch for fires. By day they telegraph the locality of disaster to the fire department by means of black balls and white boards, in fixed combinations; by night, with colored lanterns. Each section of the city has a signal-tower of this sort, and the engine-house is close at hand. Gradskaya Duma means, literally, city thought, and the profundity of the meditations sometimes indulged in in this building, otherwise not remarkable, may be inferred from the fact discovered a few years ago, that many honored members of the Duma (which also signifies the Council of City Fathers), whose names still stood on the roll, were dead, though they continued to vote and exercise their other civic functions with exemplary regularity!

Naturally, in a city which lies on a level with the southern point of Greenland, the most characteristic season to select for our observations of the life is winter.

The Prospekt wakes late. It has been up nearly all night, and there is but little inducement to early rising when the sun itself sets such a fashion as nine o'clock for its appearance on the horizon, like a pewter disk, with a well-defined hard rim, when he makes his appearance at all. If we take the Prospekt at different hours, we may gain a fairly comprehensive view of many Russian ways and people, cosmopolitan as the city is.

At half-past seven in the morning, the horse-cars, which have been resting since ten o'clock in the evening, make a start, running always in groups of three, stopping only at turnouts. The dvorniki retire from the entrance to the courtyards, where they have been sleeping all night with one eye open, wrapped in their sheepskin coats. A few shabby izvostchiks make their appearance somewhat later, in company with small schoolboys, in their soldierly uniforms, knapsacks of books on back, and convoyed by servants. Earliest of all are the closed carriages of officials, evidently the most lofty in grade, since it was decided, two or three years ago, by one of this class, that his subordinates could not reasonably be expected to arrive at business before ten or eleven o'clock after they had sat up until daylight over their indispensable club vint--which is Russian whist.

Boots (muzhiki) in scarlet cotton blouses, and full trousers of black velveteen, tucked into tall wrinkled boots, dart about to bakery and dairy shop, preparing for their masters' morning "tea." Venders of newspapers congregate at certain spots, and charge for their wares in inverse ratio to the experience of their customers; for regular subscribers receive their papers through the post-office, and, if we are in such unseemly haste as to care for the news before the ten o'clock delivery--or the eleven o'clock, if the postman has not found it convenient otherwise--we must buy on the street, though we live but half a block from the newspaper office, which opens at ten. By noon, every one is awake. The restaurants are full of breakfasters, and Dominique's, which chances to stand on the most crowded stretch of the street, on the sunny north side beloved of promenaders, is dense with officers, cigarette smoke, and characteristic national viands judiciously mingled with those of foreign lands.

Mass is over, and a funeral passes down the Nevsky Prospekt, on its way to the fashionable Alexander Nevsky monastery or Novo-Dyevitche convent cemeteries. The deceased may have been a minister of state, or a great officer of the Court, or a military man who is accompanied by warlike pageant. The choir chants a dirge. The priests, clad in vestments of black velvet and silver, seem to find their long thick hair sufficient protection to their bare heads. The professional mutes, with their silver-trimmed black baldrics and cocked hats, appear to have plucked up the street lanterns by their roots to serve as candles, out of respect to the deceased's greatness, and to illustrate how the city has been cast into darkness by the withdrawal of the light of his countenance. The dead man's orders and decorations are borne in imposing state, on velvet cushions, before the gorgeous funeral car, where the pall, of cloth of gold, which will be made into a priest's vestment once the funeral is over, droops low among artistic wreaths and palms, of natural flowers, or beautifully executed in silver. Behind come the mourners on foot, a few women, many men, a Grand Duke or two among them, it may be; the carriages follow; the devout of the lower classes, catching sight of the train, cross themselves broadly, mutter a prayer, and find time to turn from their own affairs and follow for a little way, out of respect to the stranger corpse. More touching are the funerals which pass up the Prospekt on their way to the unfashionable cemetery across the Neva, on Vasily Ostroff; a tiny pink coffin resting on the knees of the bereaved parents in a sledge, or borne by a couple of bareheaded men, with one or two mourners walking slowly behind.

From noon onward, the scene on the Prospekt increases constantly in vivacity. The sidewalks are crowded, especially on Sundays and holidays, with a dense and varied throng, of so many nationalities and types that it is a valuable lesson in ethnography to sort them, and that a secret uttered is absolutely safe in no tongue,--unless, possibly, it be that of Patagonia. But the universal language of the eye conquers all difficulties, even for the remarkably fair Tatar women, whose national garb includes only the baldest and gauziest apology for the obligatory veil.

The plain façades of the older buildings on this part of the Prospekt, which are but three or four stories in height,--elevators are rare luxuries in Petersburg, and few buildings exceed five stories,--are adorned, here and there, with gayly-colored pictorial representations of the wares for sale within. But little variety in architecture is furnished by the inconspicuous Armenian, and the uncharacteristic Dutch Reformed and Lutheran churches which break the severe line of this "Tolerance Street," as it has been called. Most fascinating of all the shops are those of the furriers and goldsmiths, with their surprises and fresh lessons for foreigners; the treasures of Caucasian and Asian art in the Eastern bazaars; the "Colonial wares" establishments, with their delicious game cheeses, and odd studena (fishes in jelly), their pineapples at five and ten dollars, their tiny oysters from the Black Sea at twelve and a half cents apiece.

Enthralling as are the shop windows, the crowd on the sidewalk is more enthralling still. There are Kazaks, dragoons, cadets of the military schools, students, so varied, though their gay uniforms are hidden by their coats, that their heads resemble a bed of verbenas in the sun. There are officers of every sort: officers with rough gray overcoats and round lambskin caps; officers in large, flat, peaked caps, and smooth-surfaced voluminous cape-coats, wadded with eider-down and lined with gray silk, which trail on their spurs, and with collars of costly beaver or striped American raccoon, and long sleeves forever dangling unused. A snippet of orange and black ribbon worn in the buttonhole shows us that the wearer belongs to the much-coveted military Order of St. George. There are civilians in black cape-coats of the military pattern, topped off with cold, uncomfortable, but fashionable chimneypot hats, or, more sensibly, with high caps of beaver.

It is curious to observe how many opinions exist as to the weather. The officers leave their ears unprotected; a passing troop of soldiers--fine, large, hardy fellows--wear the strip of black woolen over their ears, but leave their bashlyks hanging unused on their backs, with tabs tacked neatly under shoulder-straps and belts, for use on the Balkans or some other really cold spot. Most of the ladies, on foot or in sledges, wear bashlyks or Orenburg shawls, over wadded fur caps, well pulled down to the brows. We may be sure that the pretty woman who trusts to her bonnet only has also neglected to put on the necessary warm galoshes, and that when she reaches home, sympathizing friends will rub her vain little ears, feet, and brow with spirits of wine, to rescue her from the results of her folly. Only officers and soldiers possess the secret of going about in simple leather boots, or protected merely by a pair of stiff, slapping leather galoshes, accommodated to the spurs.

For some mysterious reason, the picturesque nurses, with their pearl-embroidered, diadem-shaped caps, like the kokoshniki of the Empress and Court ladies, their silver-trimmed petticoats and jackets patterned after the ancient Russian "soul-warmers," and made of pink or blue cashmere, never have any children in their charge in winter. Indeed, if we were to go by the evidence offered by the Nevsky Prospekt, especially in cold weather, we should assert that there are no children in the city, and that the nurses are used as "sheep-dogs" by ladies long past the dangerous bloom of youth and beauty.

The more fashionable people are driving, however, and that portion of the one hundred and fourteen feet of the Prospekt's width which is devoted to the roadway is, if possible, even more varied and entertaining in its kaleidoscopic features than the sidewalks. It is admirably kept at all seasons. With the exception of the cobblestone roadbed for the tramway in the centre, it is laid with hexagonal wooden blocks, well spiked together and tarred, resting upon tarred beams and planks, and forming a pavement which is both elastic and fairly resistant to the volcanic action of the frost. The snow is maintained at such a level that, while sledging is perfect, the closed carriages which are used for evening entertainments, calls, and shopping are never incommoded. Street sweepers, in red cotton blouses and clean white linen aprons, sweep on calmly in the icy chill. The police, with their bashlyks wrapped round their heads in a manner peculiar to themselves, stand always in the middle of the street and regulate the traffic.

We will hire an izvostchik and join the throng. The process is simple; it consists in setting ourselves up at auction on the curbstone, among the numerous cabbies waiting for a job, and knocking ourselves down to the lowest bidder. If our Vanka (Johnny, the generic name for cabby) drives too slowly, obviously with the object of loitering away our money, a policeman will give him a hint to whip up, or we may effect the desired result by threatening to speak to the next guardian of the peace. If Vanka attempts to intrude upon the privileges of the private carriages, for whom is reserved the space next the tramway track and the row of high, silvered posts which bear aloft the electric lights, a sharp "Beregis!" (Look out for yourself!) will be heard from the first fashionable coachman who is impeded in his swift career, and he will be called to order promptly by the police. Ladies may not, unfortunately, drive in the smartest of the public carriages, but must content themselves with something more modest and more shabby. But Vanka is usually good-natured, patient, and quite unconscious of his shabbiness, at least in the light of a grievance or as affecting his dignity. It was one of these shabby, but democratic and self-possessed fellows who furnished us with a fine illustration of the peasant qualities. We encountered one of the Emperor's cousins on his way to his regimental barracks; the Grand Duke mistook us for acquaintances, and saluted. Our izvostchik returned the greeting.

"Was that Vasily Dmitrich?" we asked in Russian form.

"Yes, madam."

"Whom was he saluting?"

"Us," replied the man, with imperturbable gravity. Very different from our poor fellow, who remembers his duties to the saints and churches, and salutes Kazan Cathedral, as we pass, with cross and bared head, is the fashionable coachman, who sees nothing but his horses. Our man's cylindrical cap of imitation fur is old, his summer armyak of blue cloth fits, as best it may, over his lean form and his sheepskin tulup, and is girt with a cheap cotton sash.

The head of the fashionable coachman is crowned with a becoming gold-laced cap, in the shape of the ace of diamonds, well stuffed with down, and made of scarlet, sky-blue, sea-green, or other hue of velvet. His fur-lined armyak, reaching to his feet,--through whose silver buttons under the left arm he is bursting, with pads for fashion or with good living,--is secured about his portly waist by a silken girdle glowing with roses and butterflies. His legs are too fat to enter the sledge,--that is to say, if his master truly respects his own dignity,--and his feet are accommodated in iron stirrups outside. He leans well back, with arms outstretched to accord with the racing speed at which he drives. In the tiny sledge--the smaller it is, the more stylish, in inverse ratio to the coachman, who is expected to be as broad as it is--sits a lady hugging her crimson velvet shuba lined with curled white Thibetan goat, or feathery black fox fur, close about her ears. An officer holds her firmly with one arm around the waist, a very necessary precaution at all seasons, with the fast driving, where drozhkies and sledges are utterly devoid of back or side rail. The spans of huge Orloff stallions, black or dappled gray, display their full beauty of form in the harnesses of slender straps and silver chains; their beautiful eyes are unconcealed by blinders. They are covered with a coarse-meshed woolen net fastened to the winged dashboard, black, crimson, purple, or blue, which trails in the snow in company with their tails and the heavy tassels of the fur-edged cloth robe. The horses, the wide-spreading reddish beard of the coachman, parted in the middle like a well-worn whisk broom, the hair, eyelashes, and furs of the occupants of the sledge, all are frosted with rime until each filament seems to have been turned into silver wire.

There is an alarm of fire somewhere. A section of the fire department passes, that imposing but amusing procession of hand-engine, three water-barrels, pennons, and fine horses trained in the haute école, which does splendid work with apparently inadequate means. An officer in gray lambskin cap flashes by, drawn by a pair of fine trotters. "Vot on sam!" mutters our izvostchik,--There he is himself! It is General Gresser*, the prefect of the capital, who maintains perfect order, and demonstrates the possibilities of keeping streets always clean in an impossible climate. The pounding of those huge trotters' hoofs is so absolutely distinctive--as distinctive as the unique gray cap--that we can recognize it as they pass, cry like the izvostchik, "Vot on sam!" and fly to the window with the certainty that it will be "he himself."

* Since the above was written, this able officer and very efficient prefect has died.

Court carriages with lackeys in crimson and gold, ambassadors' sledges with cock-plumed chasseurs and cockaded coachmen, the latter wearing their chevrons on their backs; rude wooden sledges, whose sides are made of knotted ropes, filled with superfluous snow; grand ducal troikas with clinking harnesses studded with metal plaques and flying tassels, the outer horses coquetting, as usual, beside the staid trot of the shaft-horse,--all mingle in the endless procession which flows on up the Nevsky Prospekt through the Bolshaya Morskaya,--Great Sea Street,--and out upon the Neva quays, and back again, to see and be seen, until long after the sun has set on the short days, at six minutes to three. A plain sledge approaches. The officer who occupies it is dressed like an ordinary general, and there are thousands of generals! As he drives quietly along, police and sentries give him the salute of the ordinary general; so do those who recognize him by his face or his Kazak orderly. It is the Emperor out for his afternoon exercise. If we meet him near the gate of the Anitchkoff Palace, we may find him sitting placidly beside us, while our sledge and other sledges in the line are stopped for a moment to allow him to enter.

Here is another sledge, also differing in no respect from the equipages of other people, save that the lackey on the low knife-board behind wears a peculiar livery of dark green, pale blue, and gold (or with white in place of the green at Easter-tide). The lady whose large dark eyes are visible between her sable cap and the superb black fox shawl of her crimson velvet cloak is the Empress. The lady beside her is one of her ladies-in-waiting. Attendants, guards, are absolutely lacking, as in the case of the Emperor.

Here, indeed, is the place to enjoy winter. The dry, feathery snow descends, but no one heeds it. We turn up our coat collars and drive on. Umbrellas are unknown abominations. The permanent marquises, of light iron-work, which are attached to most of the entrances, are serviceable only to those who use closed carriages, and in the rainy autumn.

Just opposite the centre of this thronged promenade, well set back from the street, stands the Cathedral of the Kazan Virgin. Outside, on the quay of the tortuous Katherine Canal, made a navigable water-way under the second Katherine, but lacking, through its narrowness, the picturesque features of the Fontanka, flocks of pigeons are fed daily from the adjoining grain shops. In the curve of the great colonnade, copied, like the exterior of the church itself, from that of St. Peter at Rome, bronze statues, heroic in size, of generals Kutuzoff and Barclay de Tolly, by the Russian sculptor Orlovsky, stand on guard.

Hither the Emperor and Empress come "to salute the Virgin," on their safe return from a journey. Hither are brought imperial brides in gorgeous state procession--when they are of the Greek faith--on their way to the altar in the Winter Palace. We can never step into this temple without finding some deeply interesting and characteristically Russian event in progress. After we have run the inevitable gauntlet of monks, nuns, and other beggars at the entrance, we may happen upon a baptism, just beyond, the naked, new-born infant sputtering gently after his thrice-repeated dip in the candle-decked font, with the priest's hand covering his eyes, ears, mouth, and nostrils, and now undergoing the ceremony of anointment or confirmation. Or we may come upon a bridal couple, in front of the solid silver balustrade; or the exquisite liturgy, exquisitely chanted by the fine choir in their vestments of scarlet, blue, and silver, with the seraphic wings upon their shoulders, and intoned, with a finish of art unknown in other lands, by priests robed in rich brocade. Or it may be that a popular sermon by a well-known orator has attracted a throng of listeners among the lofty pillars of gray Finland granite, hung with battle-flags and the keys of conquered towns. What we shall assuredly find is votaries ascending the steps to salute with devotion the benignant brown-faced Byzantine Virgin and Christ-Child, incrusted with superb jewels, or kneeling in "ground reverences," with brow laid to the marble pavement, before the ikonostas, or rood-screen, of solid silver. Our Lady of Kazan has been the most popular of wonder-working Virgins ever since she was brought from Kazan to Moscow, in 1579, and transported to Petersburg, in 1721 (although her present cathedral dates only from 1811), and the scene here on Easter-night is second only to that at St. Isaac's when the porticoes are thronged by the lower classes waiting to have their flower and candle decked cakes and cream blessed at the close of the Easter matins.

One of the few individual dwelling-houses which linger on the Nevsky Prospekt, and which presents us with a fine specimen of the rococo style which Rastrelli so persistently served up at the close of the eighteenth century, is that of the Counts Stroganoff, at the lower quay of the Moika. The Moika (literally, Washing) River is the last of the semicircular, concentric canals which intersect the Nevsky and its two radiating companion Prospekts, and impart to that portion of the city which is situated on the (comparative) mainland a resemblance to an outspread fan, whose palm-piece is formed by the Admiralty on the Neva quay.

The stately pile, and the pompous air of the big, gold-laced Swiss lounging at the entrance on the Nevsky, remind us that the Stroganoff family has been a power in Russian history since the middle of the sixteenth century.

It was a mere handful of their Kazaks, led by Yermak Timofeevitch, who conquered Siberia, in 1581, under Ivan the Terrible, while engaged in repelling the incursions of the Tatars and wild Siberian tribes on the fortified towns which the Stroganoffs had been authorized to erect on the vast territory at the western foot of the Ural Mountains, conveyed to them by the ancient Tzars. Later on, when Alexei Mikhailovitch, the father of Peter the Great, established a new code, grading punishments and fines by classes, the highest money tax assessed for insult and injury was fifty rubles; but the Stroganoffs were empowered to exact one hundred rubles.

Opposite the Stroganoff house, on the upper Moika quay, rises the large, reddish-yellow Club of the Nobility, representing still another fashion in architecture, which was very popular during the last century for palaces and grand mansions,--the Corinthian peristyle upon a solid, lofty basement. It is not an old building, but was probably copied from the palace of the Empress Elizabeth, which stood on this spot. Elizaveta Petrovna, though she used this palace a great deal, had a habit of sleeping in a different place each night, the precise spot being never known beforehand. This practice is attributed, by some Russian historians, to her custom of turning night into day. She went to the theatre, for example, at eleven o'clock, and any courtier who failed to attend her was fined fifty rubles. It was here that the populace assembled to hurrah for Elizaveta Petrovna, on December 6, 1741, when she returned with little Ivan VI. in her arms from the Winter Palace, where she had made captive his father and his mother, the regent Anna Leopoldina. It may have been the recollection of the ease with which she had surprised indolent Anna Leopoldina in her bed-chamber which caused her to be so uncertain in her own movements, in view of the fact that there were persons so ill-advised as to wish the restoration of the slothful German regent and her infant son, disastrous as that would have been to the country.

We must do the Russians who occupy the building at the present day the justice to state that they uphold religiously the nocturnal tradition thus established by Elizaveta Petrovna, and even improve upon it. From six o'clock in the evening onward, the long windows of the club, on the bel étage, blaze with light. The occasional temporary obscurations produced by the steam from relays of samovari do not interfere materially with the neighbors' view of the card-parties and the final exchange of big bundles of bank-bills, which takes place at five o'clock or later the next morning. Even if players and bills were duly shielded from observation, the mauvais quart d'heure would be accurately revealed by the sudden rush for the sledges, which have been hanging in a swarm about the door, according to the usual convenient custom of Vanka, wherever lighted windows suggest possible patrons. Poor, hard-worked Vanka slumbers all night on his box, with one eye open, or falls prone in death-like exhaustion over the dashboard upon his sleeping horse, while his cap lies on the snow, and his shaggy head is bared to the bitter blasts.

Later on, the chief of police lived here, and the adjoining bridge, which had hitherto been known as the Green Bridge, had its name changed to the Police Bridge, which rather puzzling appellation it still bears.

A couple of blocks beyond this corner of the Nevsky, the Moika and the Grand Morskaya, the Nevsky Prospekt ends at the Alexander Garden, backed by the Admiralty and the Neva, after having passed in its course through all grades of society, from the monks at the extreme limit, peasant huts,--or something very like them, on the outskirts,--artistic and literary circles in the Peski quarter (the Sands), well-to-do merchants and nobles, officials and wealthy courtiers, until now we have reached the culminating point, where the Admiralty, Imperial Palace, and War Office complete the national group begun at the church.

When, in 1704, Peter the Great founded his beloved Admiralty, as the first building on the mainland then designed for such purposes as this, and not for residence, it was simply a shipyard, open to the Neva, and inclosed on three sides by low wooden structures, surrounded by stone-faced earthworks, moats, and palisades. Hither Peter was wont to come of a morning, after having routed his ministers out of bed to hold privy council at three and four o'clock, to superintend the work and to lend a hand himself. The first stone buildings were erected in 1726, after his death. In the early years of the present century, Alexander I. rebuilt this stately and graceful edifice, after the plans of the Russian architect Zakharoff, who created the beautiful tower adorned with Russian sculptures, crowned by a golden spire, in the centre of the immense façade, fourteen hundred feet long, which forms a feature inseparable from the vista of the Prospekt for the greater part of its length, to the turn at the Znamenskaya Square. On this spire, at the present day, flags and lanterns warn the inhabitants of low-lying districts in the capital of the rate at which the water is rising during inundations. In case of serious danger, the flags are reinforced by signal guns from the fortress. But in Peter I.'s day, these flags and guns bore exactly the opposite meaning to the unhappy nobles whom the energetic Emperor was trying to train into rough-weather sailors. To their trembling imaginations these signal orders to assemble for a practice sail signified, "Come out and be drowned!" since they were obliged to embark in the crafts too generously given to them by Peter, and cruise about until their leader (who delighted in a storm) saw fit to return. There is a story of one unhappy wight, who was honored by the presence aboard his craft of a very distinguished and very seasick Persian, making his first acquaintance with the pleasures of yachting, and who spent three days without food, tacking between Petersburg and Kronstadt, in the vain endeavor to effect a landing during rough weather.

When the present Admiralty was built, a broad and shady boulevard was organized on the site of the old glacis and covered way, and later still, when the break in the quay was filled in, and the shipbuilding transferred to the New Admiralty a little farther down the river, the boulevard was enlarged into the New Alexander Garden, one of the finest squares in Europe. It soon became the fashionable promenade, and the centre of popular life as well, by virtue of the merry-makings which took place. Here, during the Carnival of 1836, the temporary cheap theatre of boards was burned, at the cost of one hundred and twenty-six lives and many injured persons, which resulted in these dangerous balagani and other holiday amusements being removed to the spacious parade-ground known as the Empress's Meadow.

If we pass round the Admiralty to the Neva, we shall find its frozen surface teeming with life. Sledge roads have been laid out on it, marked with evergreen bushes, over which a yamtschik will drive us with his troika fleet as the wind, to Kronstadt, twenty miles away. Plank walks, fringed with street lanterns, have been prepared for pedestrians. Broad ice paths have been cleared, whereon the winter ferry-boats ply,--green garden-chairs, holding one or more persons, furnished with warm lap-robes, and propelled by stout muzhiks on skates, who will transport us from shore to shore for the absurdly small sum of less than a cent apiece, though a ride with the reindeer (now a strange sight in the capital), at the Laplanders' encampment, costs much more.

It is hard to tear ourselves from the charms of the river, with its fishing, ice-cutting, and many other interesting sights always in progress. But of all the scenes, that which we may witness on Epiphany Day--the "Jordan," or Blessing of the Waters, in commemoration of Christ's baptism in the Jordan--is the most curious and typically Russian.

After mass, celebrated by the Metropolitan, in the cathedral of the Winter Palace, whose enormous reddish-ochre mass we perceive rising above the frost- jeweled trees of the Alexander Garden, to our right as we stand at the head of the Nevsky Prospekt, the Emperor, his heir, his brothers, uncles, and other great personages emerge in procession upon the quay. Opposite the Jordan door of the palace a scarlet, gold, and blue pavilion, also called the "Jordan," has been erected over the ice. Thither the procession moves, headed by the Metropolitan and the richly vestured clergy, their mitres gleaming with gems, bearing crosses and church banners, and the imperial choir, clad in crimson and gold, chanting as they go. The Empress and her ladies, clad in full Court costume at midday, look on from the palace windows. After brief prayers in the pavilion, all standing with bared heads, the Metropolitan dips the great gold cross in the rushing waters of the Neva, through a hole prepared in the thick, opalescent, green ice, and the guns on the opposite shore thunder out a salute. The pontoon Palace Bridge, the quays on both sides of the river, all the streets and squares for a long distance round about, are densely thronged; and, as the guns announce the consecration, every head is bared, every right hand in the mass, thousands strong, is raised to execute repeated signs of the cross on brow and breast.

From our post at the head of the Prospekt we behold not the ceremony itself but the framework of a great national picture, the great Palace Square, whereon twenty thousand troops can manoeuvre, and in whose centre rises the greatest monolith of modern times, the shaft of red Finland granite, eighty-four feet in height, crowned with a cross-bearing angel, the monument to Alexander I. There stand the Guards' Corps, and the huge building of the General Staff, containing the Ministries of Finance and of Foreign Affairs, and many things besides, originally erected by Katherine II. to mask the rears of the houses at the end of the Nevsky, and rebuilt under Nicholas I., sweeping in a magnificent semicircle opposite the Winter Palace. Regiments restrain the zeal of the crowd to obtain the few posts of vantage from which the consecration of the waters is visible, and keep open a lane for the carriages of royalty, diplomats, and invited guests. They form part of the pageant, like the Empress's cream-colored carriage and the white horses and scarlet liveries of the Metropolitan. The crowd is devout and silent, as Russian crowds always are, except when they see the Emperor after he has escaped a danger, when they become vociferous with an animation which is far more significant than it is in more noisy lands. The ceremony over, the throngs melt away rapidly and silently; pedestrians, Finnish ice-sledges, traffic in general, resume their rights on the palace sidewalks and the square, and after a state breakfast the Emperor drives quietly home, unguarded, to his Anitchkoff Palace.

If we glance to our left, and slightly to our rear, as we stand thus facing the Neva and the Admiralty, we see the Prefecture and the Ministry of War, the latter once the mansion of a grandee in the last century; and, rising above the latter, we catch a glimpse of the upper gallery, and great gold-plated, un-Russian dome, of St. Isaac's Cathedral, which is visible for twenty miles down the Gulf of Finland. The granite pillars glow in the frosty air with the bloom of a Delaware grape. We forgive St. Isaac for the non-Russian character of the modern ecclesiastical glories of which it is the exponent, as we listen eagerly to the soft, rich, boom-boom-bo-o-om of the great bourdon, embroidered with silver melody by the multitude of smaller bells chiming nearly all day long with a truly orthodox sweetness unknown to the Western world, and which, to-day, are more elaborately beautiful than usual, in honor of the great festival. We appreciate to the full the wailing cry of the prisoner, in the ancient epic songs of the land: "He was cut off from the light of the fair, red sun, from the sound of sweet church-bells."

On the great Palace Square another characteristic sight is to be seen on the nights of Court balls, which follow the Jordan, when the blaze of electric light from the rock-crystal chandeliers, big as haystacks, within the state apartments, is supplemented by the fires in the heater and on the snow outside, round which the waiting coachmen warm themselves, with Rembrandtesque effects of chiaro-oscuro second only to the picturesqueness of dvorniki in their nondescript caps and shaggy coats, who cluster round blazing fagots in less aristocratic quarters when the thermometer descends below zero.

When spring comes with the magical suddenness which characterizes Northern lands, the gardens, quays, and the Nevsky Prospekt still preserve their charms for a space, and are thronged far into the night with promenaders, who gaze at the imperial crowns, stars, monograms, and other devices temporarily applied to the street lanterns, and the fairy flames on the low curb-posts (whereat no horse, though unblinded, ever shies), with which man attempts, on the numerous royal festival days of early summer, to rival the illumination of the indescribably beautiful tints of river and sky. But the peasant-izvostchik goes off to the country to till his little patch of land, aided by the shaggy little farm-horse, which has been consorting on the Prospekt with thoroughbred trotters all winter, and helping him to eke out his cash income, scanty at the best of times; or he emigrates to a summer resort, scorning our insinuation that he is so unfashionable as to remain in town. The deserted Prospekt is torn up for repairs. The merchants, especially the goldsmiths, complain that it would be true economy for them to close their shops. The annual troops of foreign travelers arrive, view the lovely islands of the Neva delta, catch a glimpse of the summer cities in the vicinity, and dream, ah, vain dream! that they have also really beheld the Nevsky Prospekt, the great avenue of the realm of the Frost King and the White Tzar!*

* From Scribner's Magazine, by permission.

III.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE RUSSIAN CENSOR.

In spite of the advantage which I enjoyed in a preliminary knowledge of the Russian language and literature, I was imbued with various false ideas, the origin of which it is not necessary to trace on this occasion. I freed myself from some of them; among others, from my theory as to the working of the censorship in the case of foreign literature. My theory was the one commonly held by Americans, and, as I found to my surprise, by not a few Russians, viz., that books and periodicals which have been wholly or in part condemned by the censor are to be procured only in a mutilated condition, or by surreptitious means, or not at all. That this is not the case I acquired ample proof through my personal experience.

The first thing that an American does on his arrival in St. Petersburg is to scan the foreign newspapers in the hotels eagerly for traces of the censor's blot,--le masque noir, "caviare,"--his idea being that at least one half of the page will be thus veiled from sight. But specimens are not always, or even very often, to be procured with ease. In fact, the demand exceeds the supply sometimes, if I may judge from my own observations and from the pressing applications for these curiosities which I received from disappointed seekers. The finest of these black diamonds may generally be found in the inventive news columns of the London dailies and in the flippant paragraphs of "Punch."

Like the rest of the world, I was on the lookout for the censor's work from the day of my arrival, but it was a long time before my search was rewarded by anything except a caricature of the censor himself in "Kladderadatsch." That it was left unmasked was my first proof that that gentleman, individually and collectively, was not deficient in a sense of humor. The sketch represented a disheveled scribe seated three quarters submerged in a bottle of ink, from the half-open cover of which his quill pen projected like a signal of distress. This was accompanied by an inscription to the effect that as the Russian censor had blacked so many other people, he might now sit in the black for a while himself. Perhaps the censor thought that remarks of that sort came with peculiar grace from martinet-ruled Berlin. About this time I received a copy of the "Century," containing--or rather, not containing--the first article in the prohibited series by Mr. Kennan. I made no remonstrance, but mentioned the fact, as an item of interest, to the sender, who forthwith dispatched the article in an envelope. The envelope being small, the plump package had the appearance of containing a couple of pairs of gloves, or other dutiable merchandise. Probably that was the reason why the authorities cut open one end. Finding that it was merely innocent printed matter, they gave it to me on the very day of its arrival in St. Petersburg, and thirteen days from the date of posting in New York. I know that it was my duty to get excited over this incident, as did a foreign (that is, a non-Russian) acquaintance of mine, when he received an envelope of similar plump aspect containing a bulky Christmas card, which was delivered decorated with five very frank and huge official seals, after having been opened for contraband goods. I did not feel aggrieved, however, and, being deficient in that Mother Eve quality which attributes vast importance to whatever is forbidden, I suggested that nothing more which was obnoxious to the Russian government should be sent to me.

But when a foreigner offered the magazine to me regularly, unmutilated, I did not refuse it. When a Russian volunteered to furnish me with it, later on, I read it. When I saw summaries of the prohibited articles in the Russian press, I looked them over to see whether they were well done. When I saw another copy of the "Century," with other American magazines, at the house of a second Russian, I did not shut my eyes to the fact, neither did I close my ears when I was told that divers instructors of youth in Petersburg, Moscow, and elsewhere were in regular receipt of it, on the principle which is said to govern good men away from home, viz., that in order to preach effectively against evil one must make personal acquaintance with it. I was also told at the English Bookstore that they had seven or eight copies of the magazine, which had been subscribed for through them, lying at the censor's office awaiting proper action on the part of the subscribers. What that action was I did not ask at the time, in my embarrassment of riches. It will be perceived that when we add the copies received by officials, and those given to the members of the Diplomatic Corps who desired it, there was no real dearth of the "Century" at any time.

About this time, also, I had occasion to hunt up a package of miscellaneous newspapers, which had lingered as such parcels are apt to linger in all post-offices. In pursuance of my preconceived notions, I jumped to the conclusion that the censor had them, regardless of the contingency that they might have been lost out of Russia. I called to ask for the papers. The official whom I found explained, with native Russian courtesy, that I had come to the wrong place, that office being devoted to foreign matter in book form; but that, in all probability, the papers had become separated from their wrapper in the newspaper department (which was heedless) when they had been opened for examination, and hence it had been impossible to deliver them. Still, they might have been detained for some good reason, and he would endeavor to find some record of them.

While he was gone, my eyes fell upon his account-book, which lay open before me. It constituted a sort of literary book-keeping. The entries showed what books had been received, what had been forbidden, what was to be erased, whose property had been manipulated, and, most interesting of all, which forbidden books had been issued by permission, and to whom. Among these I read the titles of works by Stepniak, and of various works on Nihilism, all of which must certainly have come within the category of utterly proscribed literature, and not of that which is promptly forwarded to its address after a more or less liberal sprinkling of "caviare." As I am not in the habit of reading private records on the sly, even when thus tempted, I informed the official on his return of my action, and asked a question or two.

"Do you really let people have these forbidden books?" "Certainly," was his half-surprised, half-indignant reply. "And what can one have?" "Anything," said he, "only we must, of course, have some knowledge of the person. What would you like?"

I could only express my regret that I felt no craving for any prohibited literature at that moment, but I told him that I would endeavor to cultivate a taste in that direction to oblige him; and I suggested that, as his knowledge of me was confined to the last ten minutes, I did not quite understand how he could pass judgment as to what mental and moral food was suited to my constitution, and as to the use I might make of it. He laughed amiably, and said: "Nitchevo,--that's all right; you may have whatever you please." I never had occasion to avail myself of the offer, but I know that Russians who are well posted do so, although I also know that many Russians are not aware of their privileges in this direction. It is customary to require from Russians who receive literature of this sort a promise that they will let no other person see it,--an engagement which is as religiously observed as might be expected, as the authorities are doubtless aware.

I did not pursue my search for the missing papers. I had allowed so much time to elapse that I perceived the uselessness of further action; they were evidently lost, and it mattered little as to the manner. Shortly afterwards I received the first of my only two specimens of censorial "caviare." It was on a political cartoon in a New York comic paper. I sent it back to America for identification of the picture, and it was lost between New York and Boston; which reconciled me to the possible carelessness of the Russian post-office in the case of the newspapers just cited.

My next experience was with Count Lyeff N. Tolstoy's work entitled "Life." This was not allowed to be printed in book form, although nearly the whole of it subsequently appeared in installments, as "extracts," in a weekly journal. I received the manuscript as a registered mail packet. The author was anxious that my translation should be submitted in the proof-sheets to a philosophical friend of his in Petersburg, who read English, in order that the latter might see if I had caught the sense of the somewhat abstract and complicated propositions. It became a problem how those proof-sheets were to reach me safely and promptly. The problem was solved by having them directed outright to the censor's office, whence they were delivered to me; and, as there proved to be nothing to alter, they speedily returned to America as a registered parcel. My own opinion now is that they would not have reached me a whit less safely or promptly had they been addressed straight to me. The bound volumes of my translation were so addressed later on, and I do not think that they were even opened at the office, the law to the contrary notwithstanding. All this time I had been receiving a New York weekly paper with very little delay and no mutilation. But at this juncture an amiable friend subscribed in my name for the "Century," and I determined to make a personal trial of the workings of the censorship in as strong a case as I could have found had I deliberately desired to invent a test case. I may as well remark here that "the censor" is not the hard-worked, omnivorous reader of mountains of print and manuscript which the words represent to the mind of the ordinary foreigner. The work of auditing literature, so to speak, is subdivided among such a host of men that office hours are brief, much of the foreign reading, at least, is done at home, and the lucky members of the committee keep themselves agreeably posted upon matters in general while enjoying the fruits of office.

The censor's waiting-room was well patronized on my arrival. An official who was holding a consultation with one of the visitors inquired my business. I stated it briefly, and shortly afterwards he retired into an adjoining room, which formed the beginning of a vista of apartments and officials. While I waited, a couple of men were attended to so near me that I heard their business. It consisted in obtaining official permission to print the bills and programmes of a musical and variety entertainment. To this end they had brought not only the list of performers and proposed selections, but also the pictures for advertisement, and the music which was to be given. As the rare traveler who can read Russian is already aware, the programme of every public performance bears the printed authorization of the censor, as a matter of course, quite as much as does a book. It is an easy way of controlling the character of assemblages, the value of which can hardly be disputed even by those prejudiced persons who insist upon seeing in this Russian proceeding something more arbitrary than the ordinary city license which is required for performances elsewhere, or the Lord Chancellor's license which is required in England. In Russia, as elsewhere, an ounce of prevention is worth fully a pound of cure. This, by the way, is the only form in which a foreigner is likely to come in contact with the domestic censure in Russia, unless he should wish to insert an advertisement in a newspaper, or issue printed invitations to a gathering at his house, or send news telegrams. In these cases he may be obliged to submit to delay in the appearance of his advertisement, or requested to go to the elegance and expense of engraved invitations, or to detain his telegram for a day or two. Such things are not unknown in Germany.

Just as these gentlemen had paid their fee, and resigned their documents to the official who had charge of their case, another official issued from the inner room, approached me, requested me to sign my name in a huge ledger, and, that being done, thrust into my hands a bulky manuscript and departed. The manuscript had a taking title, but I did not pause to examine it. Penetrating the inner sanctum, I brought out the official and endeavored to return the packet. He refused to take it,--it was legally mine. This contest lasted for several minutes, until I saw a literary-looking man enter from the anteroom and look rather wildly at us. Evidently this was the owner, and, elevating the manuscript, I inquired if it were his. He hastened to my assistance and proved his rights. But as erasures do not look well in account-books, and as my name already occupied the space allotted to that particular parcel, he was not requested to sign for it, and I believe that I am still legally qualified to read, perform, or publish--whatever it was--that talented production.

A dapper little gentleman, with a dry, authoritative air, then emerged and assumed charge of me. I explained my desire to receive, uncensured, a journal which was prohibited.

"Certainly," said he, without inquiring how I knew the facts. "Just write down your application and sign it."

"I don't know the form," I answered.

He seemed surprised at my ignorance of such an every-day detail, but fetched paper and dictated a petition, which I wrote down and signed. When we reached the point where the name of the publication was to be inserted, he paused to ask: "How many would you like?"

"How many copies of the 'Century'? Only one," said I.

"No, no; how many periodical publications would you like?"

"How many can I have on this petition?" I retorted in Yankee fashion.

"As many as you please. Do you want four--six--eight? Write in the names legibly."

I gasped, but told him that I was not grasping; I preferred to devote my time to Russian publications while in Russia, and that I would only add the name of the weekly which I was already receiving, merely with the object of expediting its delivery a little. The document was then furnished with the regulation eighty-kopek stamp (worth at that time about thirty-seven cents), and the business was concluded. As I was in summer quarters out of town, and it was not convenient for me to call in person and inquire whether permission had been granted, another stamp was added to insure the answer being sent to me. The license arrived in a few days, and the magazine began to come promptly, unopened. I was not even asked not to show it to other people. I may state here that, while I never circulated any of the numerous prohibited books and manuscripts which came into my possession during my stay in Russia, I never concealed them. I showed the "Century" occasionally to personal friends of the class who could have had it themselves had they taken any permanent interest in the matter; but it is certain that they kept their own counsel and mine in all respects.

Everything proceeded satisfactorily until I went to Moscow to stay for a time. It did not occur to me to inform the censor of my move, and the result was that the first number of the magazine which I received there was as fine a "specimen" as heart could desire. The line on the title-page which referred to the obnoxious article had been scratched out; the body of the article had been cut out; the small concluding portion at the top of a page had been artistically "caviared." Of course, the article ending upon the back of the first page extracted had been spoiled. On this occasion I was angry, not at the mutilation as such, but at the breach of faith. I sat down, while my wrath was still hot, and indited a letter to the head censor in Petersburg. I do not recollect the exact terms of that letter, but I know I told him that he had no right to cut the book after granting me leave to receive it intact, without first sending me word that he had changed his mind, and giving valid reasons therefor; that the course he had adopted was injudicious in the extreme, since it was calculated to arouse curiosity instead of allaying it, and that it would be much better policy to ignore the matter. I concluded by requesting him to restore the missing article, if he had preserved it, and if he had not, to send at once to London (that being nearer than New York) and order me a fresh copy of the magazine at his expense.

A month elapsed, no answer came; but at the end of the month another mutilated "Century" arrived. This time I waited two or three days in the hope of inventing an epistle which should be more forcible--if such a thing were possible--than my last, and yet calm. The letter was half written when an official envelope made its appearance from Petersburg, containing cut pages and an apologetic explanation to the effect that the Moscow censor, through an oversight, had not been duly instructed in his duty toward me. A single glance showed me that the inclosed sheets belonged to the number just received, not to the preceding number. I drove immediately to the Moscow office and demanded the censor. "You can tell me what you want with him," said the ante-room Cerberus. "Send me the censor," said I. After further repetition, he retired and sent in a man who requested me to state my business. "You are not the censor," I said, after a glance at him. "Send him out, or I will go to him." Then they decided that I was a connoisseur in censors, and the proper official made his appearance, accompanied by an interpreter, on the strength of the foreign name upon my card. Convinced that the latter would not understand English well, like many Russians who can talk the language fluently enough, I declined his services, produced my documents from the Petersburg censor, and demanded restitution of the other confiscated article. I obtained it, being allowed my pick from a neatly labeled package of contraband goods. That scratched, cut, caviared magazine is now in my possession, with the restored sheets and the censor's apology appended. It is my proof to unbelievers that the Russian censor is not so black as he is painted.

As we shook hands with this Moscow official, after a friendly chat, I asked him if he would be a little obtuse arithmetically as to the old and new style of reckoning, and let me have my January "Century" if it arrived before my departure for Petersburg, as my license expired January 1. He smilingly agreed to do so. I also called on the Moscow book censor, to find some books. The courtesy and readiness to oblige me on the part of the officials had been so great, that I felt aggrieved upon this occasion when this censor requested me to return on the regular business day, and declined to overhaul his whole department for me on the spot. I did return on the proper day, and watched operations while due search was being made for my missing property. It reached me a few days later, unopened, the delay having occurred at my banker's, not in the post-office or censor's department.

On my return to Petersburg, my first visit was to the censor's office, where I copied my original petition, signed it, and dismissed the matter from my mind until my February "Century" reached me with one article missing and two articles spoiled. I paid another visit to the office, and was informed that my petition for a renewal of permission had not been granted.

"Why didn't you send me word earlier?" I asked.

"We were not bound to do so without the extra stamp," replied my dapper official.

"But why has my application been refused?"

"Too many people are seeing that journal; some one must be refused."

"Nonsense," said I. "And if it is really so, I am not the proper person to be rejected. It will hurt some of these Russian subscribers more than it will me, because it is only a question of when I shall read it, not of whether I shall read it at all. I wonder that so many demoralizing things do not affect the officials. However, that is not the point; pray keep for your own use anything which you regard as deleterious to me. I am obliged to you for your consideration. But you have no right to spoil three or four articles; and by a proper use of scissors and caviare that can easily be avoided. In any case, it will be much better to give me the book unmutilated."

The official and the occupants of the reception-room seemed to find my view very humorous; but he declared that he had no power in the matter.

"Very well," said I, taking a seat. "I will see the censor.

"I am the censor," he replied.

"Oh, no. I happen to be aware that the head censor is expected in a few minutes, and I will wait."

My (apparently) intimate knowledge of the ways of censors again won the day. The chief actually was expected, and I was granted the first audience. I explained matters and repeated my arguments. He sent for the assistant.

"Why was not this application granted?" he asked impressively.

"We don't know, your Excellency," was the meek and not very consistent reply.

"You may go," said his Excellency. Then he turned graciously to me. "You will receive it."

"Uncut?"

"Yes."

"But will they let me have it?"

"Will--they--let--you--have--it--when--I--say--so?" he retorted with tremendous dignity.

Then I knew that I should have no further trouble, and I was right. I received no written permission, but the magazine was never interfered with again. Thus it will be seen that one practically registers periodicals wholesale, at a wonderfully favorable discount.

During the whole of my stay in Russia I received many books unread, apparently even unopened to see whether they belonged on the free list. In one case, at least, volumes which were posted before the official date of publication reached me by the next city delivery after the letter announcing their dispatch. Books which were addressed to me at the Legation, to assure delivery when my exact address was unknown or when my movements were uncertain, were, in every case but one, sent to me direct from the post-office. I have no reason to suppose that I was unusually favored in any way. I used no "influence," I mentioned no influential names, though I had the right to do so.

An incident which procured for me the pleasure of an interview with the chief censor for newspapers and so forth will illustrate some of the erroneous ideas entertained by strangers. I desired to send to some friends in Russia a year's subscription each of a certain American magazine, which sometimes justly receives a sprinkling of caviare for its folly, but which is not on the black list, and is fairly well known in Petersburg. After some delay I heard from home that the publishers had consulted the United States postal officials, and had been informed that "no periodical literature could be sent to Russia, this being strictly prohibited." I took the letter to the newspaper censor, who found it amusingly and amazingly stupid. He explained that the only thing which is absolutely prohibited is Russian text printed outside of Russia, which would never be delivered. He did not explain the reason, but I knew that he referred to the socialistic, nihilistic, and other proscribed works which are published in Geneva or Leipzig. Daily foreign newspapers can be received regularly only by persons who are duly authorized. Permission cannot be granted to receive occasional packages of miscellaneous contents, the reason for this regulation being very clear. And all books must be examined if new, or treated according to the place assigned them on the lists if they have already had a verdict pronounced upon them. I may add, in this connection, that I had the magazines I wished subscribed for under another name, to avoid the indelicacy of contradicting my fellow-countrymen. They were then forwarded direct to the Russian addresses, where they were duly and regularly received. Whether they were mutilated, I do not know. They certainly need not have been, had the recipients taken the trouble to obtain permission as I did, if they were aware of the possibility. It is probable that I could have obtained permission for them, had I not been pressed for time.

I once asked a member of the censorship committee on foreign books on what principle of selection he proceeded. He said that disrespect to the Emperor and the Greek Church was officially prohibited; that he admitted everything which did not err too grossly in that direction, and, in fact, everything except French novels of the modern realistic school. He drew the line at these, as pernicious to both men and women. He asked me if I had read a certain new book which was on the proscribed list. I said that I had, and in the course of the discussion which ensued, I rose to fetch the volume in question from the table behind him to verify a passage. (This occurred during a friendly call.) I recollected, however, that that copy had not entered the country by post, and that, consequently, the name of the owner therein inscribed would not be found on the list of authorized readers any more than my own. I am sure, however, that nothing would have happened if he had seen it, and he must have understood my movement. My business dealings were wholly with strangers.

It seems to be necessary, although it ought not to be so, to remind American readers that Russia is not the only land where the censorship exists, to a greater or less extent. Even in the United States, which is popularly regarded as the land of unlicensed license in a literary sense,--even in the Boston Public Library, which is admitted to be a model of good sense and wide liberality,--all books are not bought or issued indiscriminately to all readers, irrespective of age and so forth. The necessity for making special application may, in some cases, whet curiosity, but it also, undoubtedly, acts as a check upon unhealthy tastes, even when the book may be publicly purchased. I have heard Russians who did not wholly agree with their own censorship assert, nevertheless, that a strict censure was better than the total absence of it, apparently, in America, the utterances of whose press are regarded by foreigners in general as decidedly startling.*

* From The Nation

IV.

BARGAINING IN RUSSIA.

In Russia one is expected to bargain and haggle over the price of everything, beginning with hotel accommodations, no matter how obtrusively large may be the type of the sign "Prix Fixe" or how strenuous may be the assertions that the bottom price is that first named. If one's nerves be too weak to play at this game of continental poker, he will probably share our fate, of which we were politely apprised by a word at our departure from a hotel where we had lived for three months--after due bargaining--at their price. "If you come back, you may have the corresponding apartments on the floor below [the bel étage] for the same price." In view of the fact that there was no elevator, it will be perceived that we had been paying from one third to one half too much, which was reassuring as to the prospect for the future, when we should decide to return!

If there be a detestable relic of barbarism, it is this custom of bargaining over every breath one draws in life. It creates a sort of incessant internal seething, which is very wearing to the temper and destructive of pleasure in traveling. One feels that he must chaffer desperately in the dark, or pay the sum demanded and be regarded as a goose fit for further plucking. So he forces himself to chaffer, tries to conceal his abhorrence of the practice and his inexperience, and ends, generally, by being cheated and considered a grass-green idiot into the bargain, which is not soothing to the spirit of the average man. When I mention it in this connection I do not mean to be understood as confining my remarks exclusively to Russia; the opportunities for being shorn to the quick are unsurpassed all over the continent, and "one price" America's house is too vitreous to permit of her throwing many stones at foreign lands. Only, in America, the custom is now happily so obsolete in the ordinary transactions of daily life that one is astonished when he hears, occasionally, a woman from the country ask a clerk in a city shop, "Is that the least you'll take? I'll give you so much for these goods." In Russia, the surprise would be on the other side.

The next time I had occasion to hire quarters in a hotel for a sojourn of any length I resorted to stratagem, by way of giving myself an object lesson. I looked at the rooms, haggled them down, on principle, to what seemed to me really the very lowest notch of price; I was utterly worn out before this was accomplished. I even flattered myself that I had done nearly as well as a native could have done, and was satisfied. But I sternly carried out my experiment. I did not close the bargain. I asked Princess----to try her experienced hand. Result, she secured the best accommodations in the house for less than half the rate at which I had been so proud of obtaining inferior quarters! When we moved in, the landlord was surprised, but he grasped the point of the transaction, and seemed to regard it as a pleasant jest against him, and to respect us the more for having outwitted him. The Princess apologized for having made such bad terms for us, and meant it! I suspect that that was a very fair sample of the comparative terms obtained by natives and outsiders in all bargains.

It is one of those things at which one smiles or fumes, according to the force of the instinct for justice with which he has been blessed--or cursed--by nature. Nothing, unless it be a healthy, athletic conscience, is so wofully destructive of all happiness and comfort in this life as a keen sense of justice!

There are, it is true, persons in Russia who scorn to bargain as much as did the girl of the merchant class in one of Ostrovsky's famous comedies, who was so generous as to blush with shame for the people whom she heard trying to beat down exorbitant prices in the shops, or whom she saw taking their change. The merchant's motto is, "A thing is worth all that can be got for it." Consequently, it never occurs to him that even competition is a reason for being rational. One striking case of this in my own experience was provided by a hardware merchant, in whose shop I sought a spirit lamp. The lamps he showed me were not of the sort I wished, and the price struck me as exorbitant, although I was not informed as to that particular subject. I offered these suggestions to the fat merchant in a mild manner, and added that I would look elsewhere before deciding upon his wares.

"You will find none elsewhere," roared the merchant--previously soft spoken as the proverbial sucking dove--through his bushy beard, in a voice which would have done credit to the proto-deacon of a cathedral. "And not one kopek will I abate of my just price, yay Bogu! [God is my witness!] They cost me that sum; I am actually making you a present of them out of my profound respect for you, sudarynya! [He had called me Madame before that, but now he lowered my social rank to that of a merchant's wife, out of revenge.] And you will be pleased not to come back if you don't find a lamp to suit your peculiar taste, for I will not sell to you. I won't have people coming here and looking at things and then not buying!"

It was obviously my turn to retort, but I let the merchant have the last word--temporarily. In ten minutes another shopkeeper offered me lamps of identical quality and pattern at one half his price, and I purchased one, such as I wished, of a different design for a small sum extra. I may have been cheated, but, under the circumstances, I was satisfied.

Will it be believed? Bushybeard was lying in wait for me at the door, ready to receive me, wreathed in smiles which I can describe only by the detestable adjective "affable," as I took pains to pass his establishment on my way back. Then the spirit of mischief entered into me. I reciprocated his smiles and said: "Ivan Baburin, at shop No. 8, round the corner, has dozens of lamps such as you deal in, for half the price of yours. You might be able to get them even cheaper, if you know how to haggle well. But I'm afraid you don't, for you seem to have been horribly cheated in your last trade, when you bought your present stock at the price you mentioned. How could any one have the conscience to rob an honest, innocent man like you so dreadfully?"

He looked dazed, and the last time I cast a furtive glance behind me he had not recovered sufficiently to dash after me and overwhelm me with protestations of his uprightness, yay Bogu! and other lingual cascades.

From the zest with which I have beheld a shopman and a customer waste half an hour chaffering an article up and down five kopeks (two and a half cents or less), I am convinced that they enjoy the excitement of it, and that time is cheap enough with them to allow them to indulge in this exhilarating practice.

What is the remedy for this state of things? How are foreigners, who pride themselves on never giving more than the value of an article, to protect themselves? There is no remedy, I should say. One must haggle, haggle, haggle, and submit. Guides are useless and worse, as they probably share in the shopkeeper's profit, and so raise prices. Recommendations of shops from guides or hotels are to be disregarded. Not that they are worthless,--quite the reverse; only their value does not accrue to the stranger, but to the other parties. It may well be, as veteran travelers affirm, that one is compelled to contribute to this mutual benefit association in any case; but there is a sort of satisfaction after all in imagining that one is a free and independent being, and going to destruction in his own way, unguided, while he gets a little amusement out of his own shearing.

Any one who really likes bargaining will get his fill in Russia, every time he sets foot out of doors, if he wishes merely to take a ride. There are days, it is true, when all the cabmen in town seem to have entered into a league and agreed to demand a ruble for a drive of half a dozen blocks; and again, though rarely, they will offer to carry one miles for one fifth of that sum, which is equally unreasonable in the other direction. In either case one has his bargaining sport, at one end of the journey or the other. I find among my notes an illustration of this operation, which, however, falls far short of a conversation which I once overheard between a lower-class official and an izvostchik, who could not come to terms. It ended in the uniformed official exclaiming: "You ask too much. I'll use my own horses," raising a large foot, and waving it gently at the cabmen.

"Home-made!" (literally, "self-grown") retorted one izvostchik. The rival bidders for custom shrieked with laughter at his wit, the official fled, and I tried in vain--wonderful to relate--to get the attention of the group and offer them a fresh opportunity for discussion by trying to hire one of them.

My note-book furnishes the following: "If anybody wants a merry izvostchik, with a stylish flourishing red beard, I can supply him. I do not own the man at present, but he has announced his firm intention of accompanying me to America. I asked him how he would get along without knowing the language?

"'I'd serve you forever!' said he.

"'How could I send you on an errand?' said I.

"'I'd serve you forever!' said he.

"That was the answer to every objection on my part. He and a black-haired izvostchik have a fight for my custom nearly every time I go out. Fighting for custom--in words--is the regular thing, but the way these men do it convulses with laughter everybody within hearing, which is at least half a block. It is the fashion here to take an interest in chafferings with cabmen and in other street scenes.

"'She's to ride with me!' shouts one. 'Barynya, I drove you to Vasily Island one day, you remember!' 'She's going with me; you get out!' yells the other. 'She drove on the Nevsky with me long before she ever saw you; didn't you, barynya? and the Liteinaya,' and so on till he has enumerated more streets than I have ever heard of. 'And we're old, old friends, aren't we, barynya? And look at my be-e-autiful horse!'

"'Your horse looks like a soiled and faded glove,' I retort, 'and I won't have you fight over me. Settle it between yourselves,' and I walk off or take another man, neither proceeding being favorably regarded. If any one will rid me of Redbeard I will sell him for his passage-money to America. I am also open to offers for Blackbeard, as he has announced his intention of lying in wait for me at the door every day, as a cat sits before a mouse's hole." Vanka (the generic name for all izvostchiki) gets about four dollars or four dollars and a half a month from his employer, when he does not own his equipage. In return he is obliged to hand in about a dollar and a quarter a day on ordinary occasions, a dollar and a half on the days preceding great festivals, and two dollars and a half on festival days. If he does not contrive to extract the necessary amount from his fares, his employer extracts it from his wages, in the shape of a fine. The men told me this. As there are no fixed rates in the great cities, a bargain must be struck every time, which begins by the man demanding twice or thrice the proper price, and ends in your paying it if you are not familiar with accepted standards and distances, and in selling yourself at open-air auction to the lowest bidder, acting as your own auctioneer, in case you are conversant with matters in general.

Foreigners can also study the bargaining process at its best--or worst--in the purchase of furs. The Neva freezes over, as a rule, about the middle of November, and snow comes to stay, after occasional light flurries in September and October, a little later. Sometimes, however, the river closes as early as the end of September, or as late as within a few days of Christmas. Or the rain, which begins in October, continues at intervals into the month of January. The price of food goes up, frozen provisions for the poorer classes spoil, and more suffering and illness ensue than when the normal Arctic winter prevails. In spite of the cold, one is far more comfortable than in warmer climes. The "stone" houses are built with double walls, three or four feet apart, of brick or rubble covered with mastic. The space between the walls is filled in, and, in the newer buildings, apertures with ventilators near the ceilings take the place of movable panes in the double windows. The space between the windows is filled with a deep layer of sand, in which are set small tubes of salt to keep the glass clear, and a layer of snowy cotton wadding on top makes a warm and appropriate finish. The lower classes like to decorate their wadding with dried grasses, colored paper, and brilliant odds and ends, in a sort of toy-garden arrangement. The cracks of the windows are filled with putty or some other solid composition, over which are pasted broad strips of coarse white linen. The India rubber and other plants which seem so inappropriately placed, in view of the brief and scant winter light, in reality serve two purposes--that of decoration and that of keeping people at a respectful distance from the windows, because the cold and wind pass through the glass in dangerous volume.

Carpets are rare. Inlaid wooden floors, with or without rugs, are the rule. Birch wood is, practically, the exclusive material for heating. Coal from South Russia is too expensive in St. Petersburg; and imported coal is of the lignite order, and far from satisfactory even for use in the open grates, which are often used for beauty and to supplement the stoves.

In the olden times, the beautifully colored and ornamented tile stoves were built with a "stove bench," also of tiles, near the floor, on which people could sleep. Nowadays, only peasants sleep on the stove, and they literally sleep on top of the huge, mud-plastered stone oven, close to the ceiling. In dwellings other than peasant huts, what is known as the "German stove" is in use. Each stove is built through the wall to heat two rooms, or a room and corridor. The yard porter brings up ten or twelve birch logs, of moderate girth, peels off a little bark to use as kindling, and in ten minutes there is a roaring fire. The door is left open, and the two draught covers from the flues--which resemble the covers of a range in shape and size--are taken out until the wood is reduced to glowing coals, which no longer emit blue flames. Then the door is closed, the flue plates are replaced, and the stove radiates heat for twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours, or longer, according to the weather and the taste of the persons concerned,--Russian rooms not being kept nearly so hot as American rooms.

In this soft, delightful, and healthy heat, heavy underclothing is a misery. Very few Russians wear anything but linen, and foreigners who have been used to wear flannels generally are forced to abandon them in Russia. Hence the necessity for wrapping up warmly when one goes out.

Whatever the caprices of the weather, during the winter, according to the almanac, furs are required, especially by foreigners, from the middle of October or earlier until May. People who come from Southern climes, with the memory of the warm sun still lingering in their veins, endure their first Russian winter better than the winters which follow, provided their rashness, especially during the treacherous spring or autumn, does not kill them off promptly. Therefore, the wise foreigner who arrives in autumn sallies forth at once in quest of furs. He will get plenty of bargaining and experience thrown in.

First of all, he finds that he must reconstruct his ideas about furs. If he be an American, his first discovery is that his favorite sealskin is out of the race entirely. No Russian would pay the price which is given for sealskin in return for such a "cold fur," nor would he wear it on the outside for display, while it would be too tender to use as a lining. Sealskin is good only for a short jacket between seasons for walking, and if one sets out on foot in that garb she must return on foot; she would be running a serious risk if she took a carriage or sledge. All furs are used for linings; in short, by thus reversing nature's arrangement, one obtains the natural effect, and wears the fur next his skin, as the original owner of the pelt did. Squirrel is a "cold," cheap fur, used by laundresses and the like, while mink, also reckoned as a "cold" fur, though more expensive, is used by men only, as is the pretty mottled skin obtained by piecing together sable paws. The cheapest of the "downy" furs, which are the proper sort for the climate, is the brown goat, that constantly reminds its owner of the economy practiced, by its weight and characteristic strong smell, though it has the merit of being very warm. Next come the various grades of red fox fur,--those abundantly furnished with hair,--where the red is pale and small in area, and the gray patches are large and dark, being the best. The kuni, which was the unit of currency in olden days, and was used by royalty, is the next in value, and is costly if dark, and with a tough, light-weight skin, which is an essential item of consideration for the necessary large cloaks. Sables, rich and dark, are worn, like the kuni, by any one who can afford them,--court dames, cavaliers, archbishops, and merchants, or their wives and daughters,--while the climax of beauty and luxury is attained in the black fox fur, soft and delicate as feathers, warm as a July day. The silky, curly white Tibetan goat, and the thick, straight white fur of the psetz, make beautiful evening wraps for women, under velvets of delicate hues, and are used by day also, though they are attended by the inconvenience of requiring frequent cleaning. Cloth or velvet is the proper covering for all furs, and the colors worn for driving are often gay or light. A layer of wadding between the fur and the covering adds warmth, and makes the circular mantle called a rotonda set properly. These sleeveless circular cloaks are not fit for anything but driving, however, although they are lapped across the breast and held firmly in place by the crossed arms,--a weary task, since they fall open at every breeze when the wearer is on foot,--but they possess the advantage over a cloak with sleeves that they can be held high around the ears and head at will. The most inveterate "shopper" would be satisfied with the amount of running about and bargaining which can be got out of buying a fur cloak and a cap!

The national cap has a soft velvet crown, surrounded by a broad band of sable or otter, is always in fashion, and lasts forever. People who like variety buy each year a new cap, made of black Persian lambskin, which resembles in shape that worn by the Kazaks, though the shape is modified every year by the thrifty shopkeepers.

The possibilities for self delusion, and delusion from the other quarter, as to price and quality of these fur articles, is simply enormous. I remember the amusing tags fastened to every cloak in the shop of a certain fashionable furrier in Moscow, where "asking price" and "selling price" were plainly indicated. By dint of inquiry I found that "paying price" was considerably below "selling price." Moscow is the place, by the way, to see the coats intended for "really cold weather" journeys, made of bear skin and of reindeer skin, impervious to cold, lined with downy Siberian rat or other skins, which one does not see in Petersburg shops.

The furs and the Russians' sensible manner of dressing in general, which I have described, have much to do with their comfort and freedom from colds. No Russian enters a room, theatre, or public hall at any season of the year with his cloak and overshoes, and no well-trained servant would allow an ignorant foreigner to trifle with his health by so doing. Even the foreign churches are provided with cloak-rooms and attendants. And the Russian churches? On grand occasions, when space is railed off for officials or favored guests, cloak-racks and attendants are provided near the door for the privileged ones, who must display their uniforms and gowns as a matter of state etiquette. The women find the light shawl--which they wear under their fur to preserve the gown from hairs, to shield the chest, and for precisely such emergencies--sufficient protection. On ordinary occasions, people who do not keep a lackey to hold their cloaks just inside the entrance have an opportunity to practice Russian endurance, and unless the crowd is very dense, the large and lofty space renders it quite possible, though the churches are heated, to retain the fur cloak; but it is not healthy, and not always comfortable. It would not be possible to provide cloak-rooms and attendants for the thousands upon thousands who attend church service on Sundays and holidays. With the foreign churches, whose attendance is limited comparatively, it is a different matter.

One difficulty about foreigners visiting Russia in winter is, that those who come for a short visit are rarely willing to go to the expense of the requisite furs. In general, they are so reckless of their health as to inspire horror in any one who is acquainted with the treacherous climate. I remember a couple of Americans, who resisted all remonstrances because they were on their way to a warmer clime, and went about when the thermometer was twenty-five to thirty degrees below zero Réaumur, in light, unwadded mantles, reaching only to the waist line, and with loose sleeves. A Russian remarked of them: "They might have shown some respect for the climate, and have put on flannel compresses, or a mustard plaster at least!" Naturally, an illness was the result. If such people would try to bargain for the very handsome and stylish coffins which they would consider in keeping with their dignity, they would come to the conclusion that furs would prove cheaper and less troublesome. But furs or coffins, necessaries or luxuries, everything must be bargained for in Holy Russia, and with the American affection for the national game of poker, that should not constitute an objection to the country. Only non-card-players will mind such a trifle as bluff.*

* Reprinted, in part, from Lippincott's Magazine.

V.

EXPERIENCES.

So much has been said about the habits of the late Emperor Alexander III. in his capital, that a brief statement of them will not be out of place, especially as I had one or two experiences, in addition to the ordinary opportunities afforded by a long visit and knowledge of the language and manners of the people.

When the Emperor was in St. Petersburg, he drove about freely every day like a private person. He was never escorted or attended by guards. In place of a lackey a Kazak orderly sat beside the coachman. The orderlies of no other military men wore the Kazak uniform. Any one acquainted with this fact, or with the Emperor's face, could recognize him as he passed. There was no other sign; even the soldiers, policemen, and gendarmes gave him the same salute which they gave to every general. At Peterhoff, in summer, he often drove, equally unescorted, to listen to the music in the palace park, which was open to all the public.

On occasions of state or ceremony, such as a royal wedding or the arrival of the Shah of Persia, troops lined the route of the procession, as part of the show, and to keep the quiet but vigorously surging masses of spectators in order; just as the police keep order on St. Patrick's Day in New York, or as the militia kept order and made part of the show during the land naval parade at the Columbian festivities in New York. On such occasions the practice as to allowing spectators on balconies, windows, and roofs varied. For example, during the Emperor's recent funeral procession in Moscow, roofs, balconies, open windows, and every point of vantage were occupied by spectators. In St. Petersburg, the public was forbidden to occupy roofs, balconies, lamp-posts, or railings, and it was ordered that all windows should be shut, though, as usual, no restriction was placed on benches, stools, and other aids to a view. A few days later, when the Emperor Nicholas II. drove from his wedding in the Winter Palace to the Anitchkoff Palace, roofs, balconies, and open windows were crowded with spectators. I saw the Emperor Alexander III. from an open balcony, and behind closed windows.

On the regular festivals and festivities, such as St. George's Day, New Year's Day, the Epiphany (the "Jordan," or Blessing of the Neva), the state balls, Easter, and so forth, every one knew where to look for the Emperor, and at what hour. The official notifications in the morning papers, informing members of the Court at what hour and place to present themselves, furnished a good guide to the Emperor's movements for any one who did not already know. On such days the approaches to the Winter Palace were kept open for the guests as they arrived; the crowd was always enormous, especially at the "Jordan." But as soon as royalties and guests had arrived, and, on the "Jordan" day, as soon as the Neva had been blessed, ordinary traffic was resumed on sidewalks of the Winter Palace (those of the Anitchkoff Palace, where the Emperor lived, were never cut off from public use), on streets, and Palace Square. Royalties and guests departed quietly at their pleasure.

I was driving down the Nevsky Prospekt on the afternoon of New Year's Day, 1889, when, just at the gate of the Anitchkoff Palace, a policeman raised his hand, and my sledge and the whole line behind me halted. I looked round to see the reason, and beheld the Emperor and Empress sitting beside me in the semi-state cream-colored carriage, painted with a big coat of arms, its black hood studded with golden doubleheaded eagles, which the present Emperor used on his wedding day. A coachman, postilion, and footman constituted the sole "guard," while the late prefect, General Gresser, in an open calash a quarter of a mile behind, constituted the "armed escort." They were on the roadway next to the horse-car track, which is reserved for private equipages, and had to cross the lines of public sledges next to the sidewalk. On other occasions, such as launches of ironclad war vessels, the expected presence of the Emperor and Empress was announced in the newspapers. It was easy enough to calculate the route and the hour, if one wished to see them. I frequently made such calculations, in town and country, and, stranger though I was, I never made a mistake. When cabinet ministers or high functionaries of the Court died, the Emperor and Empress attended one of the services before the funeral, and the funeral. Thousands of people calculated the hour, and the best spot to see them with absolute accuracy. At one such funeral, just after rumors of a fresh "plot" had been rife, I saw the great crowd surge up with a cheer towards the Emperor's carriage, though the Russians are very quiet in public. The police who were guarding the route of the procession stood still and smiled approvingly.

But sometimes the streets through which the Emperor Alexander III. was to pass were temporarily forbidden to the public; such as the annual mass and parade of the regiments of the Guards in their great riding-schools, and a few more. I know just how that device worked, because I put it to the proof twice, with amusing results.

The first time it was in this wise: There exists in St. Petersburg a Ladies' Artistic Circle, which meets once a week all winter, to draw from models. Social standing as well as artistic talent is requisite in members of this society, to which two or three Grand Duchesses have belonged, or do belong. The product of their weekly work, added to gifts from each member, is exhibited, sold, and raffled for each spring, the proceeds being devoted to helping needy artists by purchasing for them canvas, paints, and so forth, to clothing and educating their children, or aiding them in a dozen different ways, such as paying house-rent, doctor's bills, pensions, and so forth, to the amount of a great many thousand dollars every year. When I was in Petersburg, the exhibitions took place in the ballroom and drawing-room of one grand ducal palace, while the home and weekly meetings were in the palace of the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhailovna, now dead. An amiable poet, Yakoff Petrovitch, invited me to attend one of these meetings,--a number of men being honorary members, though the women manage everything themselves,--but illness prevented my accompanying him on the evening appointed for our visit. He told me, therefore, to keep my invitation card. Three months elapsed before circumstances permitted me to use it.

One evening, on my way from an informal call of farewell on a friend who was about to set out for the Crimea, I ordered my izvostchik to drive me to the Michael Palace. We were still at some distance from the palace when a policeman spoke to the izvostchik, who drove on instead of turning that corner, as he had been on the point of doing.

"Why don't you go on up that street?" I asked.

"Impossible! Probably the Hosudar [Emperor] is coming," answered cabby.

"Whither is he going?"

"We don't know," replied cabby, in true Russian style.

"But I mean to go to that palace, all the same," said I.

"Of course," said cabby tranquilly, turning up the next parallel street, which brought us out on the square close to the palace.

As we drove into the courtyard I was surprised to see that it was filled with carriages, that the plumed chasseurs of ambassadors and footmen in court liveries were flitting to and fro, and that the great flight of steps leading to the grand entrance was dotted thickly with officers and gendarmes, exactly as though an imperial birthday Te Deum at St. Isaac's Cathedral were in progress, and twenty or twenty-five thousand people must be kept in order.

"Well!" I said to myself, "this appears to be a very elegant sort of sketch-club, with evening dress and all the society appurtenances. What did Yakoff Petrovitch mean by telling me that a plain street gown was the proper thing to wear? This enforced 'simplification' is rather trying to the feminine nerves; but I will not beat a retreat!"

I paid and dismissed my izvostchik,--a poor, shabby fellow, such as Fate invariably allotted to me,--walked in, gave my furs and galoshes to the handsome, big head Swiss in imperial scarlet and gold livery, and started past the throng of servants, to the grand staircase, which ascended invitingly at the other side of the vast hall. Unfortunately, that instinct with whose possession women are sometimes reproached prompted me to turn back, just as I had reached the first step, and question the Swiss.

"In what room shall I find the Ladies' Artistic Circle?"

"It does not meet to-night, madame," he answered. "Her Imperial Highness has guests."

"But I thought the Circle met every Wednesday night from November to May."

"It does, usually, madame; to-night is an exception. You will find the ladies here next week."

"Then please to give me my shuba and galoshes, and call a sledge."

The Swiss gave the order for a sledge to one of the palace servants standing by, and put on my galoshes and cloak. But the big square was deserted, the ubiquitous izvostchik was absent, for once, it appeared, and after waiting a few minutes at the grand entrance, I repeated my request to an officer of gendarmes. He touched his cap, said: "Slushaiu's" (I obey, madame), and set in action a series of shouts of "Izvostchik! izvo-o-o-o-stchik!" It ended in the dispatch of a messenger to a neighboring street, and--at last--the appearance of a sledge, visibly shabby of course, even in the dark,--my luck had not deserted me.

I could have walked home, as it was very close at hand, in much less time than it took to get the sledge, be placed therein, and buttoned fast under the robe by the gendarme officer: but my heart had quailed a little, I confess, when it looked for a while as if I should be compelled to do it and pass that array of carriages and lackeys afoot. I was glad enough to be able to spend double fare on the man (because I had not bargained in advance), in the support of my little dignity and false pride.

As I drove out of one gate, a kind of quiet tumult arose at the other. On comparing notes, two days later, as to the hour, with a friend who had been at the palace that night (by invitation, not in my way), I found that the Emperor and Empress had driven up to attend these Lenten Tableaux Vivants, in which several members of the imperial family figured, just as I had got out of the way.

This was one of the very few occasions when I found any street reserved temporarily for the Emperor, who usually drives like a private citizen. I have never been able to understand, however, what good such reservation does, if undertaken as a protective measure (as hasty travelers are fond of asserting), when a person can head off the Emperor, reach the goal by a parallel street, and then walk into a small, select imperial party unknown, uninvited, unhindered, as I evidently could have done and almost did, woolen gown, bonnet, and all, barred solely by my own question to the Swiss at the last moment.

That the full significance of my semi-adventure may be comprehended, with all its irregularity, let me explain that my manner of arrival was as unsuitable--as suspicious, if you like--as it well could be. I had no business to drive up to a palace, in a common sledge hired on the street, on such an occasion. I had no business to be riding alone in an open sledge at night. Officers from the regiments of the Guards may, from economy, use such public open sledges (there are no covered sledges in town) to attend a reception at the Winter Palace, or a funeral mass at a church where the Emperor and Empress are present. I have seen that done. But they are careful to alight at a distance and approach the august edifice on their own noble, uniformed legs. But a woman--without a uniform to consecrate her daring--!

However, closed carriages do not stand at random on the street in St. Petersburg, any more than they do elsewhere, and cannot often be had either quickly or easily, besides being expensive.

Nevertheless, neither then nor at any other time did I ever encounter the slightest disrespect from police, gendarmes, servants (those severe and often impertinent judges of one's attire and equipage), nor from their masters,--not even on this critical occasion when I so patently, flagrantly transgressed all the proprieties, yet was not interfered with by word or glance, but was permitted to discover my error for myself, or plunge headlong, unwarned, into the Duchess's party, regardless of my unsuitable costume.

On the following Wednesday, I drove to the palace again in the same style of equipage, and the same gown, which proved to be perfectly proper, as Mr. Y. P. had told me, and was greeted with a courteous and amiable smile by the head Swiss, who had the air of taking me under his special protection, as he conducted me in person, not by deputy, to the quarters of the Circle.

I had another illustrative experience with closed streets. In February come the two grand reviews of the Guards, stationed in Petersburg, Peterhoff, and Tzarskoe Selo, on the Palace Place. They are fine spectacles, but only for those who have access to a window overlooking the scene, as all the streets leading to the Place are blockaded by the gendarmerie, to obviate the disturbance of traffic. On one of these occasions, I inadvertently selected the route which the Emperor was to use. I was stopped by mounted gendarmes. I told them that it was too far to walk, with my heavy furs and shoes, and they allowed me to proceed. A block further on, officers of higher grade in the gendarmerie rode up to me and again declared that it was impossible for me to go on; but they yielded, as did still higher officers, at two or three advanced posts. I believe that it was not intended that I should walk along that street either; I certainly had it all to myself. I know now how royalty feels when carefully coddled, and prefer to have my fellow-creatures about me. I alighted, at last, with the polite assistance of a gendarme officer, at the very spot where the Emperor afterward alighted from his sledge and mounted his horse. At that time I was living in an extremely fashionable quarter of the city, where every one was supposed to keep his own carriage. The result was that the izvostchiki never expected custom from any one except the servants of the wealthy, and none but the shabbiest sledges in town ever waited there for engagements. Accordingly, my turnout was very shabby, and the gendarmes could not have been impressed with respect by it. On the other hand, had I used the best style of public equipage, the likatchi, the kind which consists of an elegant little sledge, a fine horse, and a spruce, well-fed, well-dressed driver, it is probable that they would not have let me pass at all. Ladies are not permitted, by etiquette, to patronize these likatchi, alone, and no man will take his wife or a woman whom he respects to drive in one. Had I foreseen that there would be any occasion for inspiring respect by my equipage, I would have gone to the trouble and expense of hiring a closed carriage, a thing which I did as rarely as possible, because nothing could be seen through the frozen window, because they seemed much colder than the open sledges, and had no advantage except style, and that of protecting one from the wind, which I did not mind.

VI.

A RUSSIAN SUMMER RESORT.

The spring was late and cold. I wore my fur-lined cloak (shuba) and wrapped up my ears, by Russian advice as well as by inclination, until late in May. But we were told that the summer heat would catch us suddenly, and that St. Petersburg would become malodorous and unhealthy. It was necessary, owing to circumstances, to find a healthy residence for the summer, which should not be too far removed from the capital. With a few exceptions, all the environs of St. Petersburg are damp. Unless one goes as far as Gatschina, or into the part of Finland adjacent to the city, Tzarskoe Selo presents the only dry locality. In the Finnish summer colonies, one must, perforce, keep house, for lack of hotels. In Tzarskoe, as in Peterhoff, villa life is the only variety recognized by polite society; but there we had--or seemed to have--the choice between that and hotels. We decided in favor of Tzarskoe, as it is called in familiar conversation. As one approaches the imperial village, it rises like a green oasis from the plain. It is hedged in, like a true Russian village, but with trees and bushes well trained instead of with a wattled fence.

During the reign of Alexander II., this inland village was the favorite Court resort; not Peterhoff, on the Gulf of Finland, as at present. It is situated sixteen miles from St. Petersburg, on the line of the first railway built in Russia, which to this day extends only a couple of miles beyond,--for lack of the necessity of farther extension, it is just to add. It stands on land which is not perceptibly higher than St. Petersburg, and it took a great deal of demonstration before an Empress of the last century could be made to believe that it was, in reality, on a level with the top of the lofty Admiralty spire, and that she must continue her tiresome trips to and fro in her coach, in the impossibility of constructing a canal which would enable her to sail in comfort. Tzarskoe Selo, "Imperial Village:" well as the name fits the place, it is thought to have been corrupted from saari, the Finnish word for "farm," as a farm occupied the site when Peter the Great pitched upon it for one of his numerous summer resorts. He first enlarged the farmhouse, then built one of his simple wooden palaces, and a greenhouse for Katherine I. Eventually he erected a small part of the present Old Palace. It was at the dedication of the church here, celebrated in floods of liquor (after a fashion not unfamiliar in the annals of New England in earlier days), that Peter I. contracted the illness which, aggravated by a similar drinking-bout elsewhere immediately afterward, and a cold caused by a wetting while he was engaged in rescuing some people from drowning, carried him to his grave very promptly. His successors enlarged and beautified the place, which first became famous during the reign of Katherine II. At the present day, its broad macadamized streets are lighted by electricity; its Gostinny Dvor (bazaar) is like that of a provincial city; many of its sidewalks, after the same provincial pattern, have made people prefer the middle of the street for their promenades. Naturally, only the lower classes were expected to walk when the Court resided there.

Before making acquaintance with the famous palaces and parks, we undertook to settle ourselves for the time being, at least. It appeared that "furnished" villas are so called in Tzarskoe, as elsewhere, because they require to be almost completely furnished by the occupant on a foundation of bare bones of furniture, consisting of a few bedsteads and tables. This was not convenient for travelers; neither did we wish to commit ourselves for the whole season to the cares of housekeeping, lest a change of air should be ordered suddenly; so we determined to try to live in another way.

Boarding-houses are as scarce here as in St. Petersburg, the whole town boasting but one,--advertised as a wonderful rarity,--which was very badly situated. There were plenty of traktiri, or low-class eating-houses, some of which had "numbers for arrivers"--that is to say, rooms for guests--added to their gaudy signs. These were not to be thought of. But we had been told of an establishment which rejoiced in the proud title of gostinnitza, "hotel," in city fashion. It looked fairly good, and there we took up our abode, after due and inevitable chaffering. This hotel was kept, over shops, on the first and part of the second floor of a building which had originally been destined for apartments. Its only recommendation was that it was situated near a very desirable gate into the Imperial Park.

Our experience there was sufficient to slake all curiosity as to Russian summer resort hotels, or country hotels in provincial towns, since that was its character; though it had, besides, some hindrances which were peculiar, I hope, to itself. The usual clean, large dining-room, with the polished floor, table decorated with plants, and lace curtains, was irresistibly attractive, especially to wedding parties of shopkeepers, who danced twelve hours at a stretch, and to breakfast parties after funerals, whose guests made rather more uproar on afternoons than did those of the wedding balls in the evening, as they sang the customary doleful chants, and then warmed up to the occasion with bottled consolation. The establishment being shorthanded for waiters, these entertainments interfered seriously with our meals, which we took in private; and we were often forced to go hungry until long after the hour, because there was so much to eat in the house!

Our first experience of the place was characteristic. The waiter, who was also "boots," chambermaid, and clerk, on occasion, distributed two sheets, two pillows, one blanket, and one "cold" (cotton) coverlet between the two beds, and considered that ample, as no doubt it was according to some lights and according to the almanac, though the weather resembled November just then, and I saw snow a few days later. Having succeeded in getting this rectified, after some discussion, I asked for towels.

"There is one," answered Mikhei (Micah), with his most fascinating smile.

The towel was very small, and was intended to serve for two persons! Eventually it did not; and we earned the name of being altogether too fastidious. The washstand had a tank of water attached to the top, which we pumped into the basin with a foot-treadle, after we became skillful, holding our hands under the stream the while. The basin had no stopper. "Running water is cleaner to wash in," was the serious explanation. Some other barbarian who had used that washstand before us must also have differed from that commonly accepted Russian opinion: when we plugged up the hole with a cork, and it disappeared, and we fished it out of the still clogged pipe, we found that six others had preceded it. It took a champagne cork and a cord to conquer the orifice.

Among our vulgar experiences at this place were--fleas. I remonstrated with Mikhei, our typical waiter from the government of Yaroslavl, which furnishes restaurant garçons in hordes as a regular industry. Mikhei replied airily:--

"Nitchevo! It is nothing! You will soon learn to like them so much that you cannot do without them."