loo RUSSIA THEN AND NOW 



must come off, particularly if there are ladies in 

 the building. 



Among many appreciative letters that I have 

 received are the following from Counts Paul 

 and Vladimir Bobrinskoy : 



BOGORODITSK, TULA GOVT., 



3 August, 1892. 



MR. FRANCIS B. REEVES. 

 DEAR SIR: 



It was with the greatest pleasure I read your letter 

 and would have answered long before but I had much 

 work attending the harvest in the farms. I was so 

 glad to know you had a happy journey and carried 

 away a good impression of our country. I am sorry to 

 tell you that since you left us a very strong dysentery 

 broke out even among the grown-up people; the 

 babies were carried off in great numbers, as the food 

 this year was far from being suitable to withstand 

 this disease. 



As regards the crops it is most lamentable; the rye 

 and the wheat in some localities and in ours also were 

 dried up from want of rain and next December we 

 expect the distress to be greater than that of last year. 

 And to complete the scourge we have already some 

 cases of cholera in our district. It was distressing 

 for me to read in today's paper that in one of the 

 districts south of the river Don, 900 took the cholera 

 and 500 of them died of it. We are very busy in pre- 

 paring hospitals and different preventative means to 



