it in
his native tongue, would have to pass five years of his life between the
Baltic and the Black Sea, the Carpathians and the Caucasus. Galician,
Ruthenian, Polish, Magyar would be required as a linguistic basis, while
variations of the same added to Russian and German for those who have
served in one army or another, would probably be useful.

There are many odd trades in the West India Dock Road, and none of them,
it would seem, so profitable as the fleecing of sailors. But by a queer
coincidence the callings mostly savor of the same painful process. They
run to leather for the most part, and the manufacture of those _articles
de luxe_ which are chiefly composed of colored morocco and gum. There is
also a trade in furs. Half-way down the West India Dock Road, where the
shops are most sordid, and the bird-fanciers congregate, there is quite
a large fur store, of which the window, clad in faded red, is adorned by
a white rabbit-skin, laid flat upon a fly-blown newspaper, and a stuffed
sea-gull with a singularly knowing squint.

There was once a name above the shop, but the owner of it, for reasons
of his own, or so soon, perhaps, as he realized that he was in a country
where no one wants to know your name, or cares about your business,
had carelessly painted it out with a pot of black paint and a defective
brush, which had last been used for red.

On each side of the shop-window is a door, one leading to the warehouse
and workshop at the back. Through this door there passes quite a
respectable commerce. The skin of the domestic cat, drawn hither on
coster carts from the remoter suburbs, passes in to this door to emerge
from it later in neat wooden cases addressed to enterprising merchants
in Trondhjem, Bergen, Berlin, and other northern cities from which
tourists are in the habit of carrying home mementoes in the shape of
the fur and feather of the country. There is also a small importation of
American fur to be dressed and treated and re-despatched to the Siberian
fur dealers from whom the American globe-trotter prefers to buy. A
number of unhealthy work-people--men, women, and ancient children--also
use this door, entering by it in the morning, and only coming into the
air again after dark. They have yellow faces and dusty clothes. A long
companionship with fur has made them hirsute; for the men are unshaven,
and the women's heads are burdened with heavy coils of black hair.

The other door, which is little use