ursting, with pads for fashion or with
good living,--is secured about his portly waist by a silken girdle
glowing with roses and butterflies. His legs are too fat to enter the
sledge,--that is to say, if his master truly respects his own dignity,
--and his feet are accommodated in iron stirrups outside. He leans well
back, with arms outstretched to accord with the racing speed at which he
drives. In the tiny sledge--the smaller it is, the more stylish, in
inverse ratio to the coachman, who is expected to be as broad as it is
--sits a lady hugging her crimson velvet _shuba_ lined with curled
white Thibetan goat, or feathery black fox fur, close about her ears. An
officer holds her firmly with one arm around the waist, a very necessary
precaution at all seasons, with the fast driving, where drozhkies and
sledges are utterly devoid of back or side rail. The spans of huge
Orloff stallions, black or dappled gray, display their full beauty of
form in the harnesses of slender straps and silver chains; their
beautiful eyes are unconcealed by blinders. They are covered with a
coarse-meshed woolen net fastened to the winged dashboard, black,
crimson, purple, or blue, which trails in the snow in company with their
tails and the heavy tassels of the fur-edged cloth robe. The horses, the
wide-spreading reddish beard of the coachman, parted in the middle like
a well-worn whisk broom, the hair, eyelashes, and furs of the occupants
of the sledge, all are frosted with rime until each filament seems to
have been turned into silver wire.

There is an alarm of fire somewhere. A section of the fire department
passes, that imposing but amusing procession of hand-engine, three
water-barrels, pennons, and fine horses trained in the _haute ecole_,
which does splendid work with apparently inadequate means. An officer in
gray lambskin cap flashes by, drawn by a pair of fine trotters. "_Vot on
sam!_" mutters our _izvostchik_,--There he is himself! It is General
Gresser*, the prefect of the capital, who maintains perfect order, and
demonstrates the possibilities of keeping streets always clean in an
impossible climate. The pounding of those huge trotters' hoofs is so
absolutely distinctive--as distinctive as the unique gray cap--that
we can recognize it as they pass, cry like the _izvostchik_, "_Vot on
sam!_" and fly to the window with the certainty that it will be "he
himself."

* Since the above was written, this able officer and very efficient