d
not exceeding twenty miles an hour.

In the compartment where I sat there was a young French woman,
governess in a family at Simbirsk, with a Russian female servant
accompanying her. The governess was chatty, and invited me to join her
in a feast of bon-bons, which she devoured at a prodigious rate. The
servant was becomingly silent, and solaced herself with cigarettes.
The restaurants along the road are quite well supplied, especially
those where full meals are provided. Two hours after starting we
halted ten minutes for tea and cigarettes. Two hours later we had
thirty minutes for supper, which was all ready at our arrival. About
midnight we stopped at the ancient city of Vladimir, where there is a
cathedral founded in the twelfth century. Stepping from the train to
get a night glimpse of the place, I found a substantial supper (or
breakfast) spread for consumption. In justice to the Russians, I am
happy to say very few patronized this midnight table.

At daybreak I rubbed the frost from a window and looked upon a stretch
of snow and frost, with peasant cottages few and far between. An hour
later, our speed slackened. Again cleaning the glass and peering
through it, a large city came in sight.

It was Moscow,--"Holy Moscow,"--the city of the Czars, and beloved of
every Russian. Suffering through Tartar, Polish, and French
occupations, it has survived pillage, massacre, fire, and famine, and
remains at this day the most thoroughly national of the great cities
of the empire. The towers and domes of its many churches glittered in
the morning sunlight as they glittered half a century ago, when
Napoleon and his soldiers first climbed the hills that overlook the
city.

It was a long drive from the station to the hotel. The morning was
clear and cold, and the snow in the streets had been ground into a
sand-like mass several inches deep. The solid foundation beneath was
worn with hollows and ridges, that vividly recalled the oukhabas of
the post road. Streets were full of sleds and sleighs, the latter
dashing at a rapid rate. In the region near the station there were so
many signs of '_Trakteer_' as to suggest the possibility of one half
the inhabitants selling tea, beer, and quass to the other half. Near
the center of the city the best shops displayed signs in French or
English, generally the former.

Of course I went early to the Kremlin. Who has ever read or talked of
Moscow without its historic fortress? Entering