post-office, and, if we are
in such unseemly haste as to care for the news before the ten o'clock
delivery--or the eleven o'clock, if the postman has not found it
convenient otherwise--we must buy on the street, though we live but
half a block from the newspaper office, which opens at ten. By noon,
every one is awake. The restaurants are full of breakfasters, and
Dominique's, which chances to stand on the most crowded stretch of the
street, on the sunny north side beloved of promenaders, is dense with
officers, cigarette smoke, and characteristic national viands
judiciously mingled with those of foreign lands.

Mass is over, and a funeral passes down the Nevsky Prospekt, on its way
to the fashionable Alexander Nevsky monastery or Novo-Dyevitche convent
cemeteries. The deceased may have been a minister of state, or a great
officer of the Court, or a military man who is accompanied by warlike
pageant. The choir chants a dirge. The priests, clad in vestments of
black velvet and silver, seem to find their long thick hair sufficient
protection to their bare heads. The professional mutes, with their
silver-trimmed black baldrics and cocked hats, appear to have plucked up
the street lanterns by their roots to serve as candles, out of respect
to the deceased's greatness, and to illustrate how the city has been
cast into darkness by the withdrawal of the light of his countenance.
The dead man's orders and decorations are borne in imposing state, on
velvet cushions, before the gorgeous funeral car, where the pall, of
cloth of gold, which will be made into a priest's vestment once the
funeral is over, droops low among artistic wreaths and palms, of natural
flowers, or beautifully executed in silver. Behind come the mourners on
foot, a few women, many men, a Grand Duke or two among them, it may be;
the carriages follow; the devout of the lower classes, catching sight of
the train, cross themselves broadly, mutter a prayer, and find time to
turn from their own affairs and follow for a little way, out of respect
to the stranger corpse. More touching are the funerals which pass up the
Prospekt on their way to the unfashionable cemetery across the Neva, on
Vasily Ostroff; a tiny pink coffin resting on the knees of the bereaved
parents in a sledge, or borne by a couple of bareheaded men, with one or
two mourners walking slowly behind.

From noon onward, the scene on the Prospekt increases constantly in
vivacity. The sidewalks are crowd