are all merry and good-tempered, their blue eyes and pleasant faces
under their furry caps giving the impression of perfect health. They sit
on their boxes all day without any violent exercise, and probably have
good and abundant food, and above all they sleep. However long you keep
your coachman, even in the depth of winter, he does not mind, for he
invariably seems to go to sleep while waiting, and to have an absolutely
unlimited capacity for gentle and peaceful slumber. I am not at all sure
whether my driver on the steppes has not usually been asleep even when
we have been going at full speed, the centre horse trotting swiftly, the
other two, according to custom, at the gallop.

The _dvornik_ is another institution in town life. He is an indoor
servant in great houses, usually about the front hall, to open the door
for those who go out, ready for all sorts of odd things; or he may be a
head out-of-doors servant; or he may give general help for three or four
or more smaller establishments; but he has to be there, and cannot be
dismissed, for he is _ex officio_ a member of the police and has to make
his report from time to time. It must give a little sense of espionage,
but still, as with the passport, it is only the evil-minded or
evil-living who need to be afraid of the _dvornik's_ report, and it must
be remembered also that the Russian Government has long had cause to
dread the revolutionary spirit, and has had to fight for its very life
against it.

This is the darker side of life in Russia; and as far as my experience
goes it is the only dark side, for it must be evident that a designing
_dvornik_ may do untold harm, and specially--as I have known to be the
case--in official and diplomatic establishments. The custom opens out
possibilities of blackmail also, and one can only hope that it will pass
away in what so many of us feel are to be for Russia the better days to
come.

Russians are very hospitable, not only lavish in its exercise where
ample means allow, but naturally and by custom thoroughly and truly
ready, even in the homes of the very poor, to welcome the coming guest.

This is brought out in every book one reads of Russia, but by no one
more touchingly than by Mr. Stephen Graham in his _Tramp's Sketches_,
when he journeyed constantly amongst the very poor and found them always
ready to "share their crusts." Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace says the
same about the wealthier classes: "Of all the foreign co