ny would
join, for when I reached there it was still in its inception and the
most interesting thing about it was to watch it spread like a prairie
fire.

[Sidenote: The Duma dissolved.]

Still not realizing, like most people in Petrograd, that we were within
a few hours of a sweeping revolt, I wasted some precious hours that
morning trying to learn what could be done with the censor. But toward
noon I heard the Duma had been dissolved, and, as there had not been
since Sunday any street cars, 'ishvoshiks, or other means of conveyance,
I started out afoot with Roger Lewis of the Associated Press to walk the
three miles to the Duma.

[Sidenote: A silence like that of Louvain.]

The hush of impending events hung over the entire city. I remember
nothing like that silence since the day the Germans entered Louvain. On
every street were the bread lines longer than ever. All along the
Catherine Canal, the snow was pounded by many feet and spotted with
blood. But there were no soldiers and few police. We hurried along the
Nevsky, gathering rumors of the fight that was actually going on down by
the arsenal on the Litenie. But many shops were open and there was a
semblance of business. All was so quiet we could not make out the
meaning of a company of infantry drawn up in a hollow square commanding
the four points at the junction of the Litenie and Nevsky, ordinarily
one of the busiest corners in the world.

[Sidenote: Cavalry commands arrive.]

[Sidenote: The barricade on the Litenie.]

[Sidenote: Haphazard rifle-fire.]

But as soon as we turned down the Litenie we could hear shots farther
down, and the pedestrians were mostly knotted in doorways. Scattered
cavalry commands were arriving from the side streets, and the Litenie
began looking a little too hot. So we chose a parallel street for
several blocks until we were within three blocks of the Neva, where we
had to cross the Litenie in front of a company drawn up across the
street ready to fire toward the arsenal, where there was sporadic rifle
fire. Here there were bigger knots of curious citizens projecting
themselves farther and farther toward the middle of the street, hoping
for a better view, until a nearer shot frightened them closer to the
walls. The barricade on the Litenie by the arsenal, the one barricade
the revolution produced, was just beginning to be built two hundred feet
away as Lewis and I reached the shelter of the Fourshtatzkaya, on the
same street