PLANNING THE RIDE. 47 



bade us " Nitchevo ! " and seemed to remind us re- 

 proachfully that time was made for man, not man for 

 time. 



Mackenzie Wallace, in his excellent work on Russia, 

 tells us that the Russian merchant has reached the 

 same level of commercial morality, on the road toward 

 honest dealing, that is occupied in England by the 

 horse dealer. It may be that the English horse dealer 

 is grossly libeled by the comparison ; but, however 

 that may be, there can be no two opinions about the 

 character of the gentlemen who gain their livelihood 

 by buying, selling, and swapping horses in Russia. A 

 man may be a knave in any country without being a 

 horse dealer, but the country has yet to be discovered 

 where a man can make a success as a trader in horse- 

 flesh without an occasional breach of faith with his 

 conscience. Certainly, an inquirer after an honest 

 horse dealer for a museum of ethnographical curiosi- 

 ties would not turn to Russia. Least of all would he 

 go to Moscow. 



Moscow is the commercial Mecca of the empire, as 

 well as the Mecca of its imperial and, next to Kiev, 

 its religious traditions. The merchants of Moscow are 

 understood to be the shrewdest and the wealthiest in 

 Russia; and the " Moskovsky " horse dealer has at- 

 tained such a tremendous height in the scale of roguery, 

 that he is regarded by provincial members of the fra- 

 ternity with a degree of admiration amounting to awe. 



When, therefore, the author turned his footsteps, 

 one fine day in June, 1890, in the direction of a large 

 open space in the ancient capital of the Czars, where 

 these crafty gentlemen exhibit, for the benefit of pos- 



