e to their splendour, or in Mars,
We should see this world we live in, fairest of their evening stars.
Who could dream of wars and tumults, hate and envy, sin and spite,
Roaring London, raving Paris, in that spot of peaceful light?
Might we not, in looking heavenward on a star so silver fair,
Yearn and clasp our hands and murmur, 'Would to God that
we were there!'"

Always when I see war, and boys with their poor dead faces turned up to
the sky, and their hands so small in death, and when I see wounded men,
and hear of soldiers going out of the trenches with a laugh and a joke
to cut wire entanglements, knowing they will not come back, then I am
ashamed of meanness and petty spite. So my poor young woman got a "fair
dose of it" this morning, and when she had gulped once or twice I think
she felt better.

Yesterday one saw enough to stir one profoundly, and enough to make
small things seem small indeed! It was a fine day at last, after weeks
of black weather and skies heavy with snow, and although the cold was
intense the sun was shining. I got into one of the horrid little
droshkys, in which one sits on very damp cushions, and an "izvoztchik"
in a heavy coat takes one to the wrong address always!

The weather has been so thick, the rain and snow so constant, that I had
not yet seen Petrograd. Yesterday, out of the mists appeared golden
spires, and beyond the Neva, all sullen and heavy with ice, I saw towers
and domes which I hadn't seen before. I stamped my feet on the shaky
little carriage and begged the izvoztchik to drive a little quicker. We
had to be at the Finnish station at 10 a.m., and my horse, with a long
tail that embraced the reins every time that the driver urged speed,
seemed incapable of doing more than potter over the frozen roads. I
picked up Mme. Takmakoff, who was taking me to the station, and we went
on together.

[Page Heading: BLIND]

At the station there was a long wooden building and, outside, a
platform, all frozen and white, where we waited for the train to come
in. Mme. Sazonoff, a fine well-bred woman, the wife of the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, was there, and "many others," as the press notices say.
The train was late. We went inside the long wooden building to shelter
from the bitter cold beside the hot-water pipes, and as we waited we
heard that the train was coming in. It came slowly and carefully
alongside the platform with its crunching snow, almost w