tness to enrich the
world, but the reason which lies deep down at the root of the matter
for the _soul_ which thrills through all this melody of song and story
is in the sorrowful and tragic history of this nation.

The Poles are a race of burning patriots. To-day they are as keen over
national sufferings and national wrongs as on that unfortunate clay
when they went into a fiercely unwilling and resentful captivity.
Their pride, their courage, their bitterness of spirit, their longing
for revenge now no longer find an outlet on the battlefield. Yet it
smoulders continually in their innermost being. You must crush the
heart, you must subdue a people, you must be no stranger to anguish
and loss if you would discover the singer and the song. And so
Poland's fierce and unrelenting patriotism has placed the divine spark
of a genius which thrills a world in souls whose sweetest song is a
cry wrung from a patriot's heart.

VI

ST. PETERSBURG

It behooves one to be good in Russia, for no matter how excellent your
reputation at home, no matter how long you have been a member in good
and regular standing of the most orthodox church, no matter how
innocent your heart may be of anarchy, nihilism, or murder, you
travel, you rest, you eat, sleep, wake, or dream, tracked by the
Russian police.

They snatch your passport the moment you arrive at a hotel, and
register you, and if you change your hotel every day, every day your
passport is taken, and you are requested to fill out a blank with your
name, age, religion, nationality, and the name and hotel of the town
where you were last.

When we entered our Russian hotel--when we had entirely entered, I
mean, for we passed through six or eight swinging doors with moujiks
to open and shut each one, and bow and scrape at our feet--we found
ourselves in a stiflingly hot corridor, where the odor was a
combination of smoke and people whose furs needed airing.

It would be an excellent idea if Americans who live in cold climates
dressed as sensibly as Russians do. They keep their houses about as
warm as we keep ours, but they wear thin clothing indoors and put on
their enormous furs for the street. On entering any house, church,
shop, or theatre, the chuba and overshoes are removed, and although
they spend half their lives putting them on and taking them off, yet
the other half is comfortable.

The women seem to have no pride about the appearance of their feet,
for now the do