n say "shilling" with
unmistakable distinctness. My Russian driver did not know even this
little English word, but he knew enough of the universal language.
When we had made a good start on the snow-covered prairie, he stopped
his horse for a moment, looked round at me inquiringly, raised his
hand, and stretched out two fingers so that I could see them against
the starlit sky.

I nodded assent.

Then he drew his overcoat tightly around him with a gesture of
shivering from the cold, beat his hands upon his breast as if to
warm it, and again looked inquiringly at me.

I nodded again.

The bargain was complete. He was to have two rubles for the drive,
and a little something to warm up his shivering breast. So he could
not be Struve's man.

There is no welcome warmer than a Russian one, and none in any
country warmer than that which the visiting astronomer receives at an
observatory. Great is the contrast between the winter sky of a clear
moonless night and the interior of a dining-room, forty feet square,
with a big blazing fire at one end and a table loaded with eatables
in the middle. The fact that the visitor had never before met one
of his hosts detracted nothing from the warmth of his reception.

The organizer of the observatory, and its first director, was Wilhelm
Struve, father of the one who received me, and equally great as man
and astronomer. Like many other good Russians, he was the father of a
large family. One of his sons was for ten years the Russian minister
at Washington, and as popular a diplomatist as ever lived among us.
The instruments which Struve designed sixty years ago still do as
fine work as any in the world; but one may suspect this to be due more
to the astronomers who handle them than to the instruments themselves.

The air is remarkably clear; the entrance to St. Petersburg, ten or
twelve miles north, is distinctly visible, and Struve told me that
during the Crimean war he could see, through the great telescope,
the men on the decks of the British ships besieging Kronstadt,
thirty miles away.

One drawback from which the astronomers suffer is the isolation of
the place. The village at the foot of the little hill is inhabited
only by peasants, and the astronomers and employees have nearly all
to be housed in the observatory buildings. There is no society but
their own nearer than the capital. At the time of my visit the
scientific staff was almost entirely German or Swedish