cheek of innocence, or give a shock to
the virgin mind of feminine youth, and yet it was perfectly evident
that there was something wrong. As soon as I could make my escape,
I went to General Kukel and said: "Will you please tell me, Your
Excellency, what's the matter with my Russian?"

"What makes you think there's anything the matter with it?" he replied
evasively, but with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes.

"It doesn't seem to go very well," I said, "in conversation with
women. They appear to understand it all right, but it gives them a
shock. Is my pronunciation so horribly bad?"

"You speak Russian," he said, "with quite extraordinary fluency,
and with a-a-really interesting and engaging accent; but--excuse
me please--shall I be entirely frank? You see you have learned the
language, under many disadvantages, among the Koraks, Cossacks, and
Chukchis of Kamchatka and the Okhotsk Sea coast, and--quite innocently
and naturally of course--you have picked up a few words and
expressions that are not--well, not--"

"Not used in polite society," I suggested.

"Hardly so much as that," he replied deprecatingly. "They're a little
queer, that 's all--quaint--bizarre--but it's nothing! nothing at all!
All you need is a little study of good models--books, you know--and a
few months of city life."

"That settles it!" I said. "I talk no more Russian to ladies in
Irkutsk."

When, upon my arrival in St. Petersburg, I had an opportunity to study
the language in books, and to hear it spoken by educated people, I
found that the Russian I had picked up by Kamchatkan camp-fires and
in Cossack _izbas_ on the coast of the Okhotsk Sea resembled, in many
respects, the English that a Russian would acquire in a Colorado
mining camp, or among the cowboys in Montana. It was fluent, but, as
General Kukel said, "quaint--bizarre," and, at times, exceedingly
profane.

I was not the only person in Irkutsk, however, whose vocabulary was
peculiar and whose diction was "quaint" and "bizarre." A day or two
after the ball of the Blagorodnaya Sobrania we received a call from a
young Russian telegraph operator who had heard of our arrival and who
wished to pay his respects to us as brother telegraphers from America.
I greeted him cordially in Russian; but he began, at once, to speak
English, and said that he would prefer to speak that language, for
the sake of practice. His pronunciation, although queer, was fairly
intelligible, and I had littl