a smashing pace down hill and over the ice to the
other side, narrowly missing several collisions. At the railway I fell
to the charge of two porters, who carried my baggage while I sought
the ticket office. A young woman speaking French officiated at the
desk, and furnished me with a _billet de voyage_ to Moscow.

In the waiting room a hundred or more persons were gathered. The men
were well wrapped in furs, and among the ladies hoods were more
numerous than bonnets. Three-fourths of the males and a third of the
females were smoking cigarettes, and there was no prohibition visible.
In accordance with the national taste the chief article sold at the
_buffet_ was hot tea in tumblers.

Some one uttered "Sibeerski" as, clad in my dehar, I walked past a
little group. To keep up appearances and kill time I drank tea, until
the door opened and a rush was made for the train. There is an adage
in Germany that three kinds of people--fools, princes, and
Americans--travel first class. To continue Russian pretences, and by
the advice of a friend, I took a second class ticket, and found the
accommodation better than the average of first class cars in America.

How strange was the sensation of railway travel! Since I last
experienced it, I had journeyed more than half around the globe. I had
been tossed on the Pacific and adjacent waters, had ascended the great
river of northern Asia, had found the rough way of life along the
frozen roads beyond the Baikal, and ended with that long, long ride
over Siberian snows. I looked back through a long vista of earth and
snow, storm and sunshine, starlight and darkness, rolling sea and
placid river, rugged mountains and extended plains.

The hardships of travel were ended as I reached the land of railways,
and our motion as we sped along the track seemed more luxurious than
ever before. Contrasted with the cramped and narrow sleigh, pitching
over ridges and occasionally overturning, the carriage where I sat
appeared the perfection of locomotive skill. How sweet is pleasure
after pain. Sunshine is brightest in the morning, and prosperity has a
keener zest when it follows adversity. To be truly enjoyed, our lives
must be chequered with light and shadow, and varied with different
scenes.

The railway between Nijne Novgorod and Moscow is about two hundred and
fifty miles in length, and was built by French and Russian capital
combined. There is only one passenger train each way daily, at a spee