INTO MALO RUSSIA. 145 



tlemen are guilty of imitating the people whom, of all 

 others in the world, they most cordially hate. It is 

 true that they also sometimes outshine princes with 

 enormous incomes, while drawing the salaries of jour- 

 neymen tailors, but they manage to do it in a different 

 way from that of the Germans. The difference is, 

 that whereas the German official manages to do it on 

 his salary, it cannot be reiterated too often that the 

 salary of a Russian police officer has very little bearing, 

 indeed, on the size of his income. 



But all this has nothing whatever to do with the 

 portly and theatrical gentleman whose personality 

 made the police station of Kursk a memorable spot on 

 our ride ; he being, no doubt, an exceptionally honest 

 and trustworthy official. Far be it from the writer to 

 express the smallest suspicion to the contrary, seeing 

 that the gentleman in question, instead of taking a 

 cynically suspicious interest in us, appeared chiefly de- 

 sirous of exhibiting, for our edification, the pompous 

 and portentous aspects of human vanity, thereby hop- 

 ing to make such an impression on our minds as would 

 cause us to remember him to the end of our lives. 

 That he succeeded in this, seems very probable, since, 

 whenever my mind happens to revert to the subject of 

 the Russian pDlice, the figure that invariably looms up 

 in the foreground is that of a remarkably pompous 

 gentleman, six feet or more in height, weighing 400 

 pounds, and clad, July 13, in a heavy gray ulster over- 

 coat, warm enough for January 13, that reached to the 

 floor, who issued from the inner sanctum sanctorum of 

 the Kursk police station, and startled the numerous 

 underlings about the room nearly out of their skins, by 



