, shoes, caps, bonnets, and bears' grease,
and on one board a sad likeness of a rat in a trap made us quicken our
steps as we passed it.

We moved through a deserted market. Here whole lanes are devoted to the
sale of a single kind of article. There is the stocking row, the shoe
row, the hat row, at which it appeared that a whole nation might have
provided covering for head and for feet.

"I wish, dear brother," said Wisky, "that your visit had been in the
season of winter. I could then have led you to a market which strangers
must indeed have surveyed with surprise. You would then have seen
beasts, fishes, and fowls, all frozen so hard that the hatchet is
required to divide them. You would have passed through rows of dead
sheep standing upon their feet, motionless oxen that seemed ready to
low, whole flocks of white hares appearing actually in motion, reindeer
and elks on whose mighty horns the pigeons fearlessly perch!"

"The cold must then be fearful in winter," said I.

"Oh! the houses are kept so warm with stoves that there but little
suffering is known. But woe to the men who loiter in the streets when
they are paved with ice and glistening with snow! The passengers run for
their lives, with the sharp wind rushing after them, as a cat after a
mouse! Men cover even their faces with fur; but should an unlucky nose
peep out from the warm shelter, the bitter frost often bites it on a
sudden. "Father-- father! thy nose!" thus will one stranger salute
another as he passes; and if not speedily rubbed with snow, the nose of
the poor passenger is lost! Men's very eyes are sometimes frozen up, and
they have no resource but to beg admission at the first door to which
they can grope, to unthaw their glued lashes at a stove!"

"All this is very curious," observed I, "but still I have little desire
to witness it. The long winter must be dreary indeed!"

"The Russians are lively fellows," observed Wisky, "and instead of
grumbling at dark skies and piercing blasts, they make merry where
others would murmur. When winter must perforce be their companion, they
oblige the grim old giant to add to their amusements. You should see the
gay sledges as they dash at full speed over the frozen surface of the
River Neva! and the ice-mountains which the people raise, and down which
they glide swift as lightning, laughing, shouting, and singing! I have
seen snow piled up to the very roof of a house; and down its steep
slope, merely seate