ry
district, which was thickly policed by infantrymen. Occasional street
cars were still running, but otherwise the district was ominously
silent. The bread-lines were very long here, and on the corners were
groups of workmen. Their silent gravity struck me as being something to
reckon with. Still the lack of real trouble on the Nevsky as I came back
in a measure reassured me.

[Sidenote: Crowd friendly with Cossacks.]

Saturday morning the crowd on the Nevsky gathered at the early Petrograd
hour of ten, but they seemed to be there to encourage the Cossacks.
Wherever the Cossacks passed, individuals called out to them cheerfully
and, even though they crowded in so close to the trotting horsemen as to
be occasionally knocked about, they took it good-humoredly and went on
cheering. I went away for an hour or so and when I returned the
fraternizing of the crowd and the Cossacks was increasingly evident. By
this time all sorts of ordinary citizens, catching the sense of events,
were joining in the general acclamation. I was just beginning to get a
glimmering of the meaning of all this when I was bowled over by the
mounted police in front of the Singer Building.

[Sidenote: Crowd beginning to challenge police.]

[Sidenote: Soldiers fire but wound few.]

[Sidenote: Police inviting quarrel.]

The more timorous average citizens began to lose interest, but the
workmen and students who were in the Nevsky now in considerable numbers,
and arriving hourly, accepted the challenge of the police. They began
throwing bottles, the police charged afresh, and by the early part of
Saturday afternoon there was really a mob on the Nevsky. Liberally mixed
through the whole, though, were the ordinary onlookers, many of them
young girls. The Nevsky widens for a space before the Gastenidwor (the
Russian adaptation of the oriental bazaar), and infantrymen were now
detailed to hold the people back at the point of the bayonet. Meanwhile,
all the side streets were wide open and the appearance of a large, angry
mob was kept up by constant arrivals. The crowd becoming unwieldy, the
soldiers fired into it several times, but they did not wound many,
indicating that they were extracting many bullets before they fired. The
shooting only augmented the crowd, as Russians do not frighten very
easily, and though at a few points it was necessary to turn the corner,
I found no difficulty in going back and forth all afternoon between
Kasan Cathedral and th