e taxes on our losses. The town collected taxes, and
the county, and the central government; and the chief of police we had
always with us. There were taxes for public works, but rotten
pavements went on rotting year after year; and when a bridge was to be
built, special taxes were levied. A bridge, by the way, was not always
a public highway. A railroad bridge across the Dvina, while open to
the military, could be used by the people only by individual
permission.

My uncle explained to me all about the excise duties on tobacco.
Tobacco being a source of government revenue, there was a heavy tax on
it. Cigarettes were taxed at every step of their process. The tobacco
was taxed separately, and the paper, and the mouthpiece, and on the
finished product an additional tax was put. There was no tax on the
smoke. The Czar must have overlooked it.

Business really did not pay when the price of goods was so swollen by
taxes that the people could not buy. The only way to make business pay
was to cheat--cheat the Government of part of the duties. But playing
tricks on the Czar was dangerous, with so many spies watching his
interests. People who sold cigarettes without the government seal got
more gray hairs than bank notes out of their business. The constant
risk, the worry, the dread of a police raid in the night, and the
ruinous fines, in case of detection, left very little margin of profit
or comfort to the dealer in contraband goods. "But what can one do?"
the people said, with the shrug of the shoulders that expresses the
helplessness of the Pale. "What can one do? One must live."

It was not easy to live, with such bitter competition as the
congestion of population made inevitable. There were ten times as many
stores as there should have been, ten times as many tailors, cobblers,
barbers, tinsmiths. A Gentile, if he failed in Polotzk, could go
elsewhere, where there was less competition. A Jew could make the
circle of the Pale, only to find the same conditions as at home.
Outside the Pale he could only go to certain designated localities, on
payment of prohibitive fees, augmented by a constant stream of bribes;
and even then he lived at the mercy of the local chief of police.

Artisans had the right to reside outside the Pale, on fulfilment of
certain conditions. This sounded easy to me, when I was a little girl,
till I realized how it worked. There was a capmaker who had duly
qualified, by passing an examination and pa