obe at any provincial school; next, a dish
of rice and preserve, followed by some of the strongest conceivable
cheese; finally, strawberries, and bilberries, with cream and sugar _ad
libitum_. Involuntarily I recall the famous old American story of the
"boss" at a railway refreshment-room who demanded fifty cents extra from
a passenger who stuck to the table after all the rest had dined and gone
away. "Your board says, 'Dinner, three dollars and fifty cents!'"
remonstrated the victim.--"Ah! that's all very well for reasonable
human bein's with one stomach apiece," retorted the Inexorable; "but
when a feller eats _as if there were no hereafter_, we've got to pile it
on!"

As we pass Cronstadt the fog "lifts" slightly, giving us a momentary
glimpse of the huge forts that guard the passage--the locked door which
bars out Western Europe. There is nothing showy or pretentious about
these squat, round-shouldered, narrow-eyed sentinels of the channel; but
they have a grim air of reserved strength, as though they could be
terribly effective in time of need. Two huge forts now command the
"southern channel," in addition to the four which guarded it at the time
of the Baltic expedition during the Crimean war; and the land-batteries
(into which no outsider is now admitted without special permission) are
being strengthened by movable shields of iron and other appliances of
the kind, for which nearly one million roubles (one hundred and fifty
thousand pounds) have been set apart. The seaward approaches are
commanded by numerous guns of formidable calibre, and far away on the
long, level promontory of the North Spit we can just descry a dark
excrescence--the battery recently constructed for the defence of the
"northern passage." Thus, from the Finnish coast to Oranienbaum a
bristling line of unbroken fortification proclaims Russia's aversion to
war, and the gaping mouths of innumerable cannon announce to all who
approach, with silent eloquence, that "L'empire c'est la paix." It is a
fine political parable that the Western traveler's first glimpse of
Russian civilization should assume the form of a line of batteries,
reminding one of poor Mungo Park's splendid unconscious sarcasm, when,
while wandering helplessly in the desert, he came suddenly upon a gibbet
with a man hanging in chains upon it; "Whereupon," says he, "I kneeled
down and gave hearty thanks to Almighty God, who had been pleased to
conduct me once more into a Christian a