864 



REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



Nocovibcr 1, 1013. 



most of them spoke English with a 

 Scotch accent. One evening we attended a 

 reunion at the Anglo-American Church, 

 presided over by Alexander Francis — 

 now the moving spirit in the Eurasian 

 improvement scheme. There were many 

 governesses there, almost all Scotch. I 

 found that for generations Scotch 

 ladies had held such positions in the 

 best Russian families ; this, of course, 

 explained the accent. 



CONSPIRATORS AND DIPLOMATISTS. 



We stayed at the Hotel de I'Europe, 

 and what an extraordinary selection of 

 visitors we did have. Ministers of State 

 and Polish patriots, soldiers and finan- 

 ciers, pressmen and diplomatists. One 

 Pole used to insist upon coming in to 

 explain how the Polish frontier should 

 run when Poland once threw off the 

 oppressive yoke of Russia, Germany 

 and Austria. The brilliant leader 

 writer on one of the foremost papers in 

 Petersburg, who had Deen furiously 

 attacking England, spent three hours 

 with father. He was stone deaf, and it 

 was a most extraordinary conversation 

 to listen to. Father wrote all his con- 

 tribution thereto on paper, and the Rus- 

 sian replied in a voice over which he 

 had no control whatever. I found St. 

 Petersburg a charming place to spend 

 a few weeks in. Everyone was exceed- 

 ingly cordial. At dinner they always 

 began talking English for our bene&t, 

 although they after drifted into French 

 and German, but never into Russian. 

 Jn fact, an ordinary Russian dinner 

 party is trilingual, sometimes one lan- 

 guage and sometimes another being 

 used with happy indifference. 



THE ISVOSCHICKS OF PETERSBURG. 



In North Russian there is no hxed 

 cab tariff ; in the south there is. The 

 visitor to St. Petersburg must, tnerefore, 

 acquire enough Russian to enable him to 

 bargain with the isvoschicks, as the 

 cabbies are called. The method is 

 simple as practised by father. You 

 learn five or six principal landmarks of 

 the city, and if you wish to drive to any 

 house, you ask the isvoschick how much 

 to the landmark — the market it may be, 

 or the Cathedral — you know nearest the 

 spot. He names a figure, you promptly 



offer half, and the actual price is soon 

 fixed. When you reach the landmark 

 you indicate the spot you want with an 

 umbrella. The cabs are small affairs, 

 and the driver sits almost on your 

 knees. Whips are hardly ever seen, but 

 the reins are loaded with lead, and can 

 thus be used to hasten progress. The 

 Russians treat their horses well, far 

 better than the French cabbies, for in- 

 stance. The isvoschicks stuff themselves 

 with pillows, and the private coachmen 

 are padded until they look enormous 

 men. On the Nevsky Prospect, which 

 runs along the Neva the finest horses in 

 Europe can be seen flymg along at ter- 

 rific speed. They are superior even to 

 those the Austrians drive up and down 

 the Prata m Vienna. 



BRAIN PIGEON-HOLES. 



Father was a mine of information 

 upon Russian history, both ancient and 

 modern. Talking one day with one of 

 our Polish visitors he amazed him with 

 the intimate knowledge he showed of 

 events which led up to the partition 

 of Poland in 1795. I asked him after- 

 wards whether he had been reading up 

 about it recently. "No," he said, "if 

 you had asked me \-esterday I should 

 have said I knew little about it, but 

 when the question was being discussed 

 all I had read about it when 1 was a boy 

 came back again to me." He simply 

 went to one of his innumerable brain 

 pigeon-holes, and found there all he 

 w^ an ted ! 



TRAVELLING IN RUSSIA. 



On the railway from Wirballen to St. 

 Petersburg we had to be content with 

 a candle to light our compartment ; we 

 should have had two, but the conductor 

 annexed the extra one as his perquisite ! 

 The train from the capital to Moscow 

 was splendidly lit by electricity. It was 

 in Moscow we first saw the huge funnel- 

 headed smokestacks on the engines to 

 catch the sparks from the wood fuel 

 used. The St. Petersburg-Moscow rail- 

 way runs in a straight line, and thereby 

 hangs a tale. The engineers charged 

 with the survey for the new railway 

 asked the Tsar, Nicholas I. it would be, 

 what route the line was to follow, ure- 

 as many towns as possible 



mg that 



