e by the red cloth spread over
the tray borne upon his head, and the herring vender, and rival
ice-cream dealers deafen one with their cries, in true city fashion;
where the fire department alarms one by setting fire to the baker's
chimneys opposite, and then playing upon them, by way of cleaning them;
where Tatars, soldiers, goats, cows, pet herons, rude peasant carts,
policemen, and inhabitants share the middle of the road with the
liveried equipages of royalty and courtiers; where the crows and pigeons
assert rights equal to those of man, except that they go to roost at
eight o'clock on the nightless "white nights;" and where one never knows
whether one will encounter the Emperor of all the Russias or a
barefooted Finn when one turns a corner.

VII.

A STROLL IN MOSCOW WITH COUNT TOLSTOY.

"Have you ever visited a church of the Old Believers?" Count Tolstoy
asked me one evening. We were sitting round the supper-table at Count
Tolstoy's house in Moscow. I was just experimenting on some pickled
mushrooms from Yasnaya Polyana,--the daintiest little mushrooms which
I encountered in that mushroom-eating land. The mushrooms and question
furnished a diversion which was needed. The baby and younger children
were in bed. The elders of the family, some relatives, and ourselves had
been engaged in a lively discussion; or, rather, I had been discussing
matters with the count, while the others joined in from time to time. It
began with the Moscow beggars.

"I understand them now, and what you wrote of them," I said. "I have
neither the purse of Fortunatus nor a heart of flint. If I refuse their
prayers, I feel wicked; if I give them five kopeks, I feel mean. It
seems too little to help them to anything but _vodka_; and if I give ten
kopeks, they hold it out at arm's length, look at it and me
suspiciously; and then I feel so provoked that I give not a copper to
any one for days. It seems to do no good."

"No," said Count Tolstoy with a troubled look; "it does no good. Giving
money to any one who asks is not doing good; it is a mere civility. If a
beggar asks me for five kopeks, or five rubles, or five hundred rubles,
I must give it to him as a politeness, nothing more, provided I have it
about me. It probably always goes for _vodka_."

"But what is one to do? I have sometimes thought that I would buy my man
some bread and see that he ate it when he specifies what the money is
for. But, by a singular coincidence, the