136 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



he fell sprawling in the mud, and it was pouring with 

 rain. At length, after staggering about the yard and 

 falling a number of times, insensibility or helplessness 

 overcame him, and, already drenched to the skin and 

 plastered with mud, the poor little wretch fell like a 

 log into a puddle of mud and slush, the most pitiable 

 case of " drunk and incapable " that it had ever been 

 my misfortune to see. 



This was not later than ten o'clock in the morning. 

 And a particularly revolting sight was to see full-grown 

 men, still in the possession of their senses, taking no 

 other notice of this child, lying there drunk in the 

 pelting rain, than to make some trifling and quite in- 

 different attempt at jocularity at his expense. Sascha 

 and I carried him under the shed and laid him on 

 some hay, a proceeding that attracted ten times as 

 much notice as did the condition of the precocious 

 bibber, from the men whom he had beaten in the reck- 

 less race to get into the gutter and thereby glorify the 

 saint in whose honor they were spending the holiday. 



When we had been a couple of hours on the road, 

 next day, Sascha suddenly discovered that he had lost 

 his passport ; and when, at noon, we reached a village, 

 it seemed indeed a curious verification of the old 

 maxim that " misfortunes never come singly," that 

 we should for the first time on the ride make the un- 

 welcome acquaintance of an uriadnik. 



Of all the vast multitude of bureaucratic satellites 

 that revolve about the throne and the sacred autoc- 

 racy of the Great White Czar, to prevent it being 

 blown over by the breath of public opinion, my readers 

 are commended to the uriadnik, as a valuable study in 



