ows is necessary to avoid contusions and dislocations. On the
railways the jolts and shaking are not deadly enough to require such
an antidote; but, even in unconservative Russia, customs outlive the
conditions that created them; and at every railway-station you may see
men and women carrying about their pillows with them as we carry wraps.
A genuine Russian merchant who loves comfort and respects tradition
may travel without a portmanteau, but he considers his pillow as an
indispensable article de voyage.

To return to the old-fashioned hotel. When you have completed the
negotiations with the landlord, you will notice that, unless you have a
servant with you, the waiter prepares to perform the duties of valet de
chambre. Do not be surprised at his officiousness, which seems founded
on the assumption that you are three-fourths paralysed. Formerly, every
well-born Russian had a valet always in attendance, and never dreamed
of doing for himself anything which could by any possibility be done
for him. You notice that there is no bell in the room, and no mechanical
means of communicating with the world below stairs. That is because the
attendant is supposed to be always within call, and it is so much easier
to shout than to get up and ring the bell.

In the good old times all this was quite natural. The well-born Russian
had commonly a superabundance of domestic serfs, and there was no reason
why one or two of them should not accompany their master when his Honour
undertook a journey. An additional person in the tarantass did not
increase the expense, and considerably diminished the little unavoidable
inconveniences of travel. But times have changed. In 1861 the domestic
serfs were emancipated by Imperial ukaz. Free servants demand wages; and
on railways or steamers a single ticket does not include an attendant.
The present generation must therefore get through life with a more
modest supply of valets, and must learn to do with its own hands much
that was formerly performed by serf labour. Still, a gentleman brought
up in the old conditions cannot be expected to dress himself without
assistance, and accordingly the waiter remains in your room to act as
valet. Perhaps, too, in the early morning you may learn in an unpleasant
way that other parts of the old system are not yet extinct. You may
hear, for instance, resounding along the corridors such an order
as--"Petrusha! Petrusha! Stakan vody!" ("Little Peter, little Peter, a