ers, baby blue, Bavarian blue flowers, in the Spring grass. Such
dear old castles like birds nests and such homelike old mills and
red-faced millers with feathers in their caps you never saw out of a
comic opera-- The man in here with me now is a Russian, of course, and
saw the last Coronation and knows that my suite is on the principal
Street and attends to my changing money and getting an omelette-- I can
survive another night now having had an omelette not so good as Madam
Masi's but still an omelette-- I have now left Munich and the Russian
and a conductor whom I mistook for a hereditary prince of Bavaria, with
tassels down his back, has assured me he is going to Berlin, and that I
am going to Berlin and much else to which I smile knowingly and say
mucho gracia, wee wee, ya ya, ich ich limmer and other long speeches
ending with "an er--"

DICK.

May 15th, 1896. Moscow.

DEAR CHAS:

We left Berlin Monday night at eleven and slept well in a wagon-lit.
That was the only night out of the five that I spent in the cars that I
had my clothes off, although I was able to stretch out on the seats, so
I am cramped and tired now. At seven Monday morning the guard woke us
and told us to get ready for the Custom House and I looked out and saw
a melancholy country of green hills and black pines and with no sign of
human life. It was raining and dreary looking and then I saw as we
passed them a line of posts painted in black and white stripes a half
mile apart on each side of the train and I knew we had crossed the
boundary and that the line of posts stretched from the Arctic Ocean to
the Black Sea and from the Pacific to the Caucasus Mountains and the
Pamirs. It gave me a great thrill but I have had so many to-day, that
I had almost forgotten that one. For two days we jogged along through
a level country with meanthatched huts and black crows flying
continually and peasants in sheepskin coats, full in the skirt and
tight at the waist, with boots or thongs of leather around their feet.
The women wore boots too and all the men who were not soldiers had
their hair cropped short like mops. We could not find any one who
understood any language, so as we never knew when we would stop for
food, we ate at every station and I am of the opinion that for months I
have been living on hot tea and caviar and hash sandwiches. The snow
fell an inch deep on Wednesday and dried up again in an hour and the
sun shone through it all. S