f a circus.

My beard was the greatest annoyance that showed itself to my face, and
I regretted keeping it uncut. It was in the way in a great many ways.
When it was outside my coat I wanted it in, and when it was inside it
would not stay there. It froze to my collar and seemed studying the
doctrine of affinity. A sudden motion in such case would pull my chin
painfully and tear away a few hairs. It was neither long nor heavy,
but could hold a surprising quantity of snow and ice. It would freeze
into a solid mass, and when thawing required much attention. The
Russian officers shave the chin habitually, and wear their hair pretty
short when traveling. I made a resolution to carry my beard inviolate
to St. Petersburg, but frequently wished I had been less rash. A
mustache makes a very good portable thermometer for low temperatures.
After a little practice one can estimate within a few degrees any
stage of cold below zero, Fahrenheit. A mustache will frost itself
from the breath and stiffen slowly at zero, but It does not become
solid. It needs no waxing to enable it to hold its own when the scale
descends to -10 deg. or thereabouts, and when one experiences -15 deg.
and so on downward, he will feel as if wearing an icicle on his upper
lip. The estimate of the cold is to be based on the time required for
a thorough hardening of this labial ornament, and of course the rule
is not available if the face is kept covered.

There is a traveler's story that a freezing nose in a Russian city is
seized upon and rubbed by the bystanders without explanation. In a
winter's residence and travel in Russia I never witnessed that
interesting incident, and am inclined to scepticism regarding it. The
thermometer showed -53 deg. while I was in St. Petersburg, and hovered
near that figure for several days. Though I constantly hoped to see
somebody's nose rubbed I was doomed to disappointment. I did observe
several noses that might have been subjected to friction, but it is
quite probable the operation would have enraged the rub_bee_.

[Illustration: EXCUSE MY FAMILIARITY.]

During our coldest nights on the steppe we had the unclouded heavens
in all their beauty. The stars shone in scintillating magnificence,
and seemed nearer the earth than I ever saw them before. In the north
was a brilliant aurora flashing in long beams of electric light, and
forming a fiery arch above the fields of ice and snow. Oh, the
splendor of those winter nights I