ussians proved to have great capacity for drinking.
At Koenigsberg he left his semi-barbaric embassy to their revels, and
proceeded rapidly and privately to Holland, hired a small room--kitchen
and garret--for lodgings, and established himself as journeyman
carpenter, with a resolute determination to learn the trade of a
ship-carpenter. He dressed like a common carpenter, and lived like one,
with great simplicity. When he was not at work in the dock-yard with his
broad axe, he amused himself by sailing a yacht, dressed like a Dutch
skipper, with a red jacket and white trousers. He was a marked
personage, even had it not been known that he was the Czar,--a tall,
robust, active man of twenty-five, with a fierce look and curling brown
locks, free from all restraint, seeing but little of the ambassadors who
had followed him, and passing his time with ship-builders and merchants,
and adhering rigidly to all the regulations of the dock-yards. He spent
nine months in this way at hard labor, and at the end of that time
had mastered the art of ship-building in all its details, had
acquired the Dutch language, and had seen what was worth seeing of
Amsterdam,--showing an unbounded curiosity and indefatigable zeal,
frequenting the markets and the shops, attending lectures in anatomy and
surgery, learning even how to draw teeth; visiting museums and
manufactories, holding intercourse with learned men, and making
considerable proficiency in civil engineering and the science of
fortification. Nothing escaped his eager inquiries. "Wat is dat?" was
his perpetual exclamation. "He devoured every morsel of knowledge with
unexampled voracity." Never was seen a man on this earth with a more
devouring appetite for knowledge of every kind; storing up in his mind
everything he saw, with a view of introducing improvements into Russia.
To see this barbaric emperor thus going to school, and working with his
own hands, insensible to heat and cold and weariness, with the single
aim of benefiting his countrymen when he should return, is to me one of
the most wonderful sights of history.

His chosen companion in these labors and visits and pleasures was also
one of the most remarkable men of his age. His name was
Mentchikof,--originally a seller of pies in the streets of Moscow, who
attracted, by his beauty and brightness, the attention of General
Lefort, and was made a page in his household, and was as such made known
to the Czar, who took a fancy to