would unlock his trunk or make way
with his goods. The trunk, not unusual in style, consisted of a
red-and-white tea-cloth, whose knotted corners did not wholly repress
the exuberance of linen and other effects through the bulging edges.

A young Tatar, endowed with india-rubber capabilities in the way of
attitudes, and with a volubility surely unrivaled in all taciturn Kazan,
chatted interminably with a young Russian woman, evidently the wife of a
petty shopkeeper. They bore the intense heat with equal equanimity, but
their equanimity was clad in oddly contrasting attire. The woman looked
cool and indifferent buttoned up in a long wadded pelisse, with a hot
cotton kerchief tied close over ears, under chin, and tucked in at the
neck. The Tatar squatted on his haunches, folded in three nearly equal
parts. A spirally ribbed flat fez of dark blue velvet, topped with a
black silk tassel, adorned his cleanly shaven head. His shirt, of the
coarsest linen, was artistically embroidered in black, yellow, and red
silks and green linen thread in Turanian designs, and ornamented with
stripes and diamonds of scarlet cotton bestowed unevenly in unexpected
places. It lay open on his dusky breast, and fell unconfined over full
trousers of home-made dark blue linen striped with red, like the gussets
under the arms of his white shirt. The trousers were tucked into high
boots, slightly wrinkled at the instep, with an inset of pebbled
horsehide, frosted green in hue, at the heels. This green leather was a
part of their religion, the Tatars told me, but what part they would not
reveal. As the soles were soft, like socks, he wore over his boots a
pair of stiff leather slippers, which could be easily discarded on
entering the mosque, in compliance with the Moslem law requiring the
removal of foot-gear.

Several peasants stood about silently, patiently, wrapped in their
sheepskin coats. Apparently they found this easier than carrying them,
and they were ready to encounter the chill night air in the open wooden
bunks of the third-class, or on the floor of the fourth-class cabin. The
soiled yellow leather was hooked close across their breasts, as in
winter. An occasional movement displayed the woolly interior of the
_tulup's_ short, full ballet skirt attached to the tight-fitting body.
The peasants who thus tranquilly endured the heat of fur on a midsummer
noon would, did circumstances require it, bear the piercing cold of
winter with equal ca