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 fore