med about America that their specific
misinformation never irritated me. The small use they have for their
English sometimes accounts for the queer things they say.

The official costume for men who have no particular uniform is
regulation evening dress, which they are obliged to wear all day. They
become so tired of it that this is the reason, they tell me, why so
many men, even in smart society, go to the opera or even dinners in
frock-coats. One one occasion a most intelligent man said to me, "I am
told that in America the ladies always wear decollete costumes at
dinners, and the men are always in night-dress."

For one hysterical moment my mind's eye pictured a dinner-table on
Prairie Avenue with alternately a low-necked gown and a pair of
pajamas, and I choked. Then I happened to think that he meant "evening
dress," and I recovered sufficiently to explain.

The Tzarina has made English the Court language, and since her
coronation no state balls take place on Sunday.

Russian hospitality is delightful. We could remain a year in Russia
and not exhaust our invitations to visit at their country-houses.
Russia must be beautiful in summer, but if you wish to go into
society, to know the best of the people, to see their sweet home life,
and to understand how they live and enjoy themselves, you must go in
the winter. I cannot think what any one would find of national life in
summer in Russia, for everybody has a country-house and everybody goes
to it and leaves the city to tourists.

Russia, in spite of her vast riches, has not arrived at
supercivilization, where there is corruption in the very atmosphere.
She is an undeveloped and a young country, and while the Tzar is wise
and kind and beneficent, and an excellent Tzar as Tzars go, still
Russians, even the best and most enlightened of them, are slaves. I
have met a number of the gentlest and cleverest men who had been
exiled to Siberia, and pardoned. Their picture-galleries bear witness
to this underlying sadness of knowing that in spite of everything they
are not _free_. All their actions are watched, their every word
listened to, spies are everywhere, the police are omnipresent, and
over all their gayety and vivacity and mirth and spontaneity there is
the constant fear of the awful hand in whose complete power they are.
His clemency, his fatherhood to his people, his tremendous
responsibility for their welfare are all appreciated, but the thought
is in every mind