66 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



down with hay and quilts. The rooms of the traktirs 

 all contain from three to thirty ikons, and at the hotels a 

 small ikon sometimes hangs on the head of the bed, to 

 insure sound and peaceful repose to the occupant. 



The tipping nuisance is worse in Russian hotels 

 than in any other country, not excepting even Egypt, 

 the land of backsheesh. With few exceptions the 

 hotel employees receive no compensation for their 

 services beyond the offerings of the guests, and all tips 

 are pooled and divided pro rata. Wealthy and open- 

 handed Russians, dining at the big traktirs of St. 

 Petersburg and Moscow, usually reckon to give the 

 waiters one ruble for every five spent on a dinner. At 

 the Hermitage Traktir, the finest restaurant in Mos- 

 cow, wealthy and ostentatious merchants have been 

 known to spend two hundred rubles on a dinner for 

 two persons, and to tip the waiter with a couple of 

 twenty-ruble notes. At the country hotels the em- 

 ployees swarm about you like hungry rats as the time 

 arrives for your departure. People whom you have 

 never set eyes on before, now present themselves with 

 an awkward bow and with a look of eager expectancy 

 that is positively embarrassing. 



Few things on earth are more delusive than a 

 Russian country hotel. In the two capitals the influ- 

 ence of Western European contact has brought about 

 a better state of affairs; but the bill of a Russian pro- 

 vincial hostelry is a curiosity. We stayed over night 

 at the Hotel London in the provincial capital of Tula. 

 On calling for the bill in the morning, I learned for the 

 first time that in engaging a room at the leading hotel 

 in a Russian city you do not thereby always engage a 



