4© THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



every nook of the car is stuffed with bundles, band- 

 boxes, baskets, and valises. Economical old peasants, 

 who have been to the capital, perhaps, for the only 

 visit of their lives, struggle into the car with a dozen 

 bundles and boxes to avoid paying anything for bag- 

 gage. The train is miles away ere the people get 

 comfortably settled down. 



Three fourths of the people travel third class. 

 Second class is as comfortable as first, and your fellow- 

 passengers here are military officers who live on their 

 salaries, well-to-do merchants, and the better class of 

 citizens generally. First-class passengers are foreign 

 travelers or natives of wealth, ostentation, or distinc- 

 tion. 



In a seat near me were a couple of students going to 

 spend their summer vacation in the Valdai Hills. 

 Both could speak English. They talked freely. One 

 of them gave me a new version of a late trouble with 

 the students — an outbreak in St. Petersburg and Mos- 

 cow. One of the students, he said, had received a 

 letter from a lady convict in Siberia, telling of the 

 miseries she and others endured. The students there- 

 upon drew up a memorial to the Emperor and pre- 

 sented it to one of the professors to be delivered. The 

 professor advised them to trouble their heads with 

 their own business, and tore it up. A row ensued, the 

 police and Cossacks were ordered out, and " two 

 thousand students were sent to Siberia." 



Fortunately my experience of the East had familiar- 

 ized me with the recklessness and unreliability of its 

 people's tongues in regard to figures, distances, and 

 time. The Russian seems as much an Oriental as the 



