54 IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE-X 



station. In spite of this, the number of cholera patients 

 at St. Petersburg in the middle of July rose to a very 

 high figure, and the number of deaths each day from 

 cholera was about one hundred. 



Of these victims the most eminent was Tschaikovsky, 

 the composer, a man of genius and a most charming 

 character, to whom Mr. Andrew Carnegie had intro 

 duced me at New York. One evening at a dinner-party 

 he poured out a goblet of water from a decanter on the 

 table, drank it down, and next day was dead from Asiatic 

 cholera. But, with this exception, the patients were, so far 

 as I learned, almost entirely from the peasant class. Al 

 though boiled water was supplied for drinking purposes, 

 and some public-spirited individuals went so far as to set 

 out samovars and the means of supplying hot tea to peas 

 ant workmen, the answer of one of the muzhiks, when told 

 that he ought to drink boiled water, indicated the peasant 

 view : &quot;If God had wished us to drink hot water, he would 

 have heated the Neva. 9 



