with dried grasses, colored
paper, and brilliant odds and ends, in a sort of toy-garden arrangement.
The cracks of the windows are filled with putty or some other solid
composition, over which are pasted broad strips of coarse white linen.
The India rubber and other plants which seem so inappropriately placed,
in view of the brief and scant winter light, in reality serve two
purposes--that of decoration and that of keeping people at a
respectful distance from the windows, because the cold and wind pass
through the glass in dangerous volume.

Carpets are rare. Inlaid wooden floors, with or without rugs, are the
rule. Birch wood is, practically, the exclusive material for heating.
Coal from South Russia is too expensive in St. Petersburg; and imported
coal is of the lignite order, and far from satisfactory even for use in
the open grates, which are often used for beauty and to supplement the
stoves.

In the olden times, the beautifully colored and ornamented tile stoves
were built with a "stove bench," also of tiles, near the floor, on which
people could sleep. Nowadays, only peasants sleep on the stove, and they
literally sleep on top of the huge, mud-plastered stone oven, close to
the ceiling. In dwellings other than peasant huts, what is known as the
"German stove" is in use. Each stove is built through the wall to heat
two rooms, or a room and corridor. The yard porter brings up ten or
twelve birch logs, of moderate girth, peels off a little bark to use as
kindling, and in ten minutes there is a roaring fire. The door is left
open, and the two draught covers from the flues--which resemble the
covers of a range in shape and size--are taken out until the wood is
reduced to glowing coals, which no longer emit blue flames. Then the
door is closed, the flue plates are replaced, and the stove radiates
heat for twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours, or longer, according to
the weather and the taste of the persons concerned,--Russian rooms not
being kept nearly so hot as American rooms.

In this soft, delightful, and healthy heat, heavy underclothing is a
misery. Very few Russians wear anything but linen, and foreigners who
have been used to wear flannels generally are forced to abandon them in
Russia. Hence the necessity for wrapping up warmly when one goes out.

Whatever the caprices of the weather, during the winter, according to
the almanac, furs are required, especially by foreigners, from the
middle of October or ea