ectionable,
strike a foreigner as peculiar. Thus, when you alight at such an hotel,
you are expected to examine a considerable number of rooms, and to
inquire about the respective prices. When you have fixed upon a suitable
apartment, you will do well, if you wish to practise economy, to
propose to the landlord considerably less than he demands; and you will
generally find, if you have a talent for bargaining, that the rooms
may be hired for somewhat less than the sum first stated. You must be
careful, however, to leave no possibility of doubt as to the terms of
the contract. Perhaps you assume that, as in taking a cab, a horse is
always supplied without special stipulation, so in hiring a bedroom
the bargain includes a bed and the necessary appurtenances. Such an
assumption will not always be justified. The landlord may perhaps give
you a bedstead without extra charge, but if he be uncorrupted by foreign
notions, he will certainly not spontaneously supply you with bed-linen,
pillows, blankets, and towels. On the contrary, he will assume that you
carry all these articles with you, and if you do not, you must pay for
them.

This ancient custom has produced among Russians of the old school a kind
of fastidiousness to which we are strangers. They strongly dislike
using sheets, blankets, and towels which are in a certain sense public
property, just as we should strongly object to putting on clothes which
had been already worn by other people. And the feeling may be developed
in people not Russian by birth. For my own part, I confess to having
been conscious of a certain disagreeable feeling on returning in this
respect to the usages of so-called civilised Europe.

The inconvenience of carrying about the essential articles of bedroom
furniture is by no means so great as might be supposed. Bedrooms in
Russia are always heated during cold weather, so that one light blanket,
which may be also used as a railway rug, is quite sufficient, whilst
sheets, pillow-cases, and towels take up little space in a portmanteau.
The most cumbrous object is the pillow, for air-cushions, having a
disagreeable odour, are not well suited for the purpose. But Russians
are accustomed to this encumbrance. In former days--as at the present
time in those parts of the country where there are neither railways
nor macadamised roads--people travelled in carts or carriages without
springs and in these instruments of torture a huge pile of cushions
or pill