, for our admiration.

"We are inhabitants of America. Is the likeness very strong?" we asked.

The crowd tittered softly; the man looked frightened; but finding that
no dire fate threatened, he was soon vociferating again, with a roguish
grin:--

"_Kupiti, kupi-i-iti! Prevoskhodniya Amerikanskiya zhiteli! Sa-a-miya
nastoyashtschiya!_"--Buy, buy, splendid natives of America! the most
genuine sort!

Far behind this Gostinny Dvor extends a complex mass of other curious
"courts" and markets, all worthy of a visit for the popular types which
they afford of the lower classes. Among them all none is more steadily
and diversely interesting, at all seasons of the year, than the
_Syennaya Ploshtschad_,--the Haymarket,--so called from its use in
days long gone by. Here, in the Fish Market, is the great repository for
the frozen food which is so necessary in a land where the church exacts
a sum total of over four months' fasting out of the twelve. Here the
fish lie piled like cordwood, or overflow from casks, for economical
buyers. Merchants' wives, with heads enveloped in colored kerchiefs, in
the olden style, well tucked in at the neck of their _salopi_, or
sleeved fur coats, prowl in search of bargains. Here sit the fishermen
from the distant Murman coast, from Arkhangel, with weather-beaten but
intelligent faces, in their quaint skull-caps of reindeer hide, and
baggy, shapeless garments of mysterious skins, presiding over the wares
which they have risked their lives to catch in the stormy Arctic seas,
during the long days of the brief summer-time; codfish dried and curled
into gray unrecognizableness; yellow caviar which resists the teeth like
tiny balls of gutta-percha,--not the delicious gray "pearl" caviar of
the sturgeon,--and other marine food which is never seen on the rich
man's table.

But we must return to the Nevsky Prospekt. Nestling at the foot of the
City Hall, at the entrance of the broad street between it and the
Gostinny Dvor, on the Nevsky, stands a tiny chapel, which is as thriving
as the bazaar, in its own way, and as striking a compendium of some
features in Russian architecture and life. Outside hangs a large image
of the "Saviour-not-made-with-hands,"--the Russian name for the sacred
imprint on St. Veronica's handkerchief,--which is the most popular of
all the representations of Christ in _ikoni_. Before it burns the usual
"unquenchable lamp," filled with the obligatory pure olive-oil. Beneath
it st