the _troika_, and the sweetest,
saddest melody and most plaintive song of Russia belong to it.

THE TROIKA.

_Vot y'dit troika udalaiya_.

Hear ye the troika-bell a-ringing,
And see the peasant driver there?
Hear ye the mournful song he's singing,
Like distant tolling through the air?

"O eyes, blue eyes, to me so lonely,
O eyes--alas!--ye give me pain;
O eyes, that once looked at me only,
I ne'er shall see your like again.

"Farewell, my darling, now in heaven,
And still the heaven of my soul;
Farewell, thou father town, O Moscow,
Where I have left my life, my all!"

And ever at the rein still straining,
One backward glance the driver gave;
Sees but once more a green low hillock,
Sees but once more his loved one's grave.

"_Stoi_!"--Halt! We stopped at a stylish-looking building, entered a
hall, left our _skubas_, and I heard the general ask, "Are the gypsies
here?" An affirmative being given, we entered a large room, and there,
sure enough, stood six or eight girls and two men, all very well dressed,
and all unmistakably Romany, though smaller and of much slighter or more
delicate frame than the powerful gypsy "travelers" of England. In an
instant every pair of great, wild eyes was fixed on me. The general was
in every way a more striking figure, but I was manifestly a fresh
stranger, who knew nothing of the country, and certainly nothing of
gypsies or gypsydom. Such a verdant visitor is always most interesting.
It was not by any means my first reception of the kind, and, as I
reviewed at a glance the whole party, I said within myself:--

"Wait an instant, you black snakes, and I will give you something to make
you stare."

This promise I kept, when a young man, who looked like a handsome light
Hindoo, stepped up and addressed me in Russian. I looked long and
steadily at him before I spoke, and then said:--

"_Latcho divvus prala_!" (Good day, brother.)

"What is _that_?" he exclaimed, startled.

"_Tu jines latcho adosta_." (You know very well.) And then, with the
expression in his face of a man who has been familiarly addressed by a
brazen statue, or asked by a new-born babe, "What o'clock is it?" but
with great joy, he cried:--

"_Romanichal_!"

In an instant they were all around me, marveling greatly, and earnestly
expressing their marvel, at what new species of gypsy I might be; being
in th