AS MINISTER TO RUSSIA- 1892 -1894 5 



garding my new post, with the Vicomte de Vogue, the 

 eminent academician, who has written so much that is 

 interesting on Russia. Both he and Struve, the Russian 

 minister at Washington, who had given me a letter to him, 

 had married into the AnnenkofT family; and I found his 

 knowledge of Russia, owing to this fact as well as to 

 his former diplomatic residence there, very suggestive. 

 Another^interesting episode was the funeral of Renan at 

 the College de France, to which our minister, Mr. Coo- 

 lidge, took me. Eloquent tributes were paid, and the 

 whole ceremony was impressive after the French manner. 



Dining with Mr. Coolidge, I found myself seated near 

 the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld, a charming Ameri 

 can, the daughter of Mr. Mitchell, former senator from 

 Oregon. The duke seemed to he a quiet, manly young 

 officer, devoted to his duties in the army; hut it was hard 

 to realize in him the successor of the great duke, the friend 

 of Washington and of Louis XVI, who showed himself 

 so broad-minded during our War of Independence and the 

 French Revolution. 



At Berlin I met several of my old friends at the table 

 of our minister, my friend of Yale days, William Walter 

 Phelps among these Virchow, Professor von Leyden, 

 Paul Meyerheim, Carl Becker, and Theodor Barth ; and 

 at the Russian Embassy had an interesting talk with 

 Count Shuvaloff, more especially on the Behring Sea 

 question. We agreed that the interests of the United 

 States and Russia in the matter were identical. 



On the 4th of November I arrived in St. Petersburg 

 after an absence of thirty-seven years. Even in that coun 

 try, where everything moves so slowly, there had clearly 

 been changes ; the most evident of these being the railway 

 from the frontier. At my former visit the journey from 

 Berlin had required nine days and nine nights of steady 

 travel, mainly in a narrow post-coach; now it was easily 

 done in one day and two nights in very comfortable cars. 

 At that first visit the entire railway system of Russia, with 

 the exception of the road from the capital to Gatshina, 



