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 etage_] 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 surpr