r hunter, having deposited
their stores of wines, cordials, and provisions, and telegraphic
communications being transmitted to head-quarters from time to time,
it is at length privately announced that his imperial majesty has
condescended to honor the place with his presence, and, should the
saints not prove averse, will be there with his royal party at the
hour and on the day specified in the imperial dispatch. The grand
convoy is then put upon the track; dispatches are transmitted to all
the stations; officers, soldiers, and guards are required to be in
attendance to do honor to their sovereign master--privately, of
course, as this is simply an unofficial affair which nobody is
supposed to know any thing about. The emperor, having selected his
chosen few--that is to say, half a dozen princes, a dozen dukes, a
score or two of counts and barons--all fine fellows and genuine
bloods--proceeds unostentatiously to the depot in his hunting-carriage
(a simple little affair, manufactured at a cost of only forty thousand
rubles or so), where he is astonished to see a large concourse of
admiring subjects, gayly interspersed with soldiers, all accidentally
gathered there to see him off. Now hats are removed, bows are made,
suppressed murmurs of delight run through the crowd; the locomotive
whizzes and fizzes with impatience; bells are rung, arms are grounded;
the princes, dukes, and barons--jolly fellows as they are--laugh and
joke just like common people; bells ring again and whistles blow; a
signal is made, and the Autocrat of all the Russias is off on his
bear-hunt!

In an hour, or two or three hours, as the case may be, the royal
hunters arrive at the destined station. Should the public business be
pressing, it is not improbable the emperor, availing himself of the
conveniences provided for him by Winans and Co., in whose magnificent
present of a railway carriage he travels, has in the mean time
dispatched a fleet of vessels to Finland, ten or a dozen extra
regiments of Cossacks to Warsaw, closed upon terms for a loan of fifty
millions, banished various objectionable parties to the deserts of
Siberia, and partaken of a game or two of whist with his camarilla.

But now the important affair of the day is at hand--the bear--the
terrible black bear, which every body is fully armed and equipped to
kill, but which every body knows by instinct is going to be killed by
the emperor, because of his majesty's superior skill and coura