a man a knife
and fork with a piece of pie, and observing which he uses. That is the
American shibboleth. Lomonosoff, the famous founder of Russian literary
language in the last century, wrote a long rhymed strophe, containing a
mass of words in which the _g_ occurs legitimately and illegitimately,
and wound up by wailing out the query, "Who can emerge from the crucial
test of pronouncing all these correctly, unimpeached?" That is the
Russian shibboleth.

As a result of this peculiarity, our passports came back from each trip
to the police office indorsed with a brand-new version of our name. We
figured under Gepgud, Gapgod, Gabgot, and a number of other disguises,
all because they persisted in spelling by the eye, and would not accept
my perfect phonetic version. The same process applied to the English
name Wylie has resulted in the manufacture of Villie. And the pleasant
jest of it all was that we never troubled ourselves to sort our
passports, because, although there existed not the slightest family
resemblance even between my mother and myself, we looked exactly alike
in those veracious mirrors. This explained to our dull comprehension how
the stories of people using stolen passports could be true. However, the
Russians were not to blame for this particular absurdity. It was the
fault of the officials in America.

On the occasion to which I refer, we had gone out of St. Petersburg, and
had left a written order for the post-office authorities to forward our
mail to our new address. The bank officials, who should certainly have
known better, had said that this would be sufficient, and had even
prepared the form, on their stamped paper, for our signature. Ten days
elapsed; no letters came. Then the form was returned, with orders to get
our signatures certified to by the chief of police or the police captain
of our district! When we recovered from our momentary vexation, we
perceived that this was an excellent safeguard. I set out for the house
of the chief of police.

His orderly said he was not at home, but would be there at eleven
o'clock. I took a little look into the church,--my infallible receipt
for employing spare moments profitably, which has taught me many things.
At eleven o'clock the chief was still "not at home." I decided that this
was in an "official" sense only, when I caught sight of a woman
surveying me cautiously through the crack of the opposite door to the
antechamber. I immediately jumped to th