196 PETERSBURG IN WINTER 



paper to the address on its cover. Burns showed that he 

 was not a Russian by writing the lines : 



" O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us 

 To see oursels as ithers see us ! " 



An occasional course of that excellent mental tonic which 

 is called chaff, would often save Russians from doing idiotic 

 things. For instance, I once saw an officer of one of the 

 Guard reo-iments performing the not difficult feat of mounted 



O L O . 



tandem (riding one horse and driving another horse in front 

 of him) in the Bolshaya Morskaya, which I have already said 

 is a very fashionable street in Petersburg. This gentleman 

 evidently wished to Jpatcr les pentes, to use a favourite 

 expression of his brother officers ; for having got to the end 

 of the street, he gravely turned round and made another 

 exhibition of himself. How long he continued to parade up 

 and down the street in this manner, I cannot say ; because, 

 not finding the performance amusing, I went away. I cannot 

 imagine an English officer thus making a fool of himself in 

 Piccadilly, or even in Meymott Street, Blackfriars Road. 

 These antics may be appropriate enough for a circus man 

 like Franconi, whose motto was : " Taut il y aura des pentes, 

 nous vivrons" 



In Petersburg, the streets are so wide that no reasonable 

 objection can be made against the presence of tramways in 

 them. In Fig. 47 we see what ample room there is for lines 

 of carriages on each side of the tram-line. In Russia, as in 

 America, the rule of the road is the opposite to that in England. 

 Hence, the izvozchiks and koochers (coachmen) keep to the 

 right of the road. The traffic is divided into slow and fast ; 

 the former being supposed to keep close to the right kerb, and 

 to leave the ground to their left free for the drivers of speedy 

 trotters, whose shouts of " na prava ! na prava!^ ("to the 

 right ! to the right ! ") resound all along the street during 



