ls are sent
out from the religious establishments to which they belong to solicit
alms for a series of years, until a certain sum of money is realized
by each, which is paid over to the sisterhood,--and which, when the
fixed sum is obtained, insures them a provision for life. This to the
writer's mind forms the very meanest system of beggary with which he
has yet been brought in contact. These women, mostly quite youthful,
are apparently in perfect health and quite able to support themselves
by honest labor, like the rest of their sisterhood. As we have
intimated, there is no St. Giles, Five Points, or North Street in
St. Petersburg. The wages paid for labor are very low, amounting, as
we were told, to from forty to fifty cents per day in the city, and a
less sum in the country. The necessities of life are not dear in the
capital, but the price of luxuries is excessive. The common people
are content with very simple food and a share of steaming hot tea.
The drosky drivers are hired by companies who own the horses and
vehicles, and receive about eight dollars per month on which to
support themselves. They pick up a trifle now and then from generous
passengers in the way of _pourboire_, and as a class they are the
least intelligent to be found in the metropolis. There is a local
saying applied to one who is deemed to be a miserable, worthless
fellow. They say of him, "He is only fit to drive a drosky." The
Paris, New York, London, and Vienna cab-drivers are cunning and
audacious, but the Russian drosky-driver is very low in the scale of
humanity, so far as brains are concerned, and does not know enough to
be a rogue.

Discontent among the mass of the people does not exist to any
material extent; those who represent the case to be otherwise are
seriously mistaken. It is the few scheming, partially educated, idle,
disappointed, and useless members of society who ferment revolution
and turmoil in Russia,--people who have everything to gain by public
agitation and panic; men actuated by the same spirit as those who
were so lately condemned to death for wholesale murder in our own
country. Nine tenths and more of the people of Russia are loyal to
"father the Tzar,"--loyal to his family and dynasty. Nihilism is
almost entirely stimulated from without. England is more seriously
torn by internal dissensions to-day than is Russia, and the German
people have a great deal more cause for dissatisfaction with their
government than h