1 6 6 THR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 



grasping as to kopecks. As between the two, though 

 both were decidedly picayunish in their dealings from 

 a Western point of view, if the writer ever got satis- 

 factory accommodation in return for the charges made, 

 it would be from the Jew proprietors rather than the 

 Russian. The Jews were, certainly, shrewder, but 

 not a whit more grasping and inclined to petty exac- 

 tions; and the superior spirit of enterprise was at least 

 productive of a decent place to sleep and something 

 beyond weak tea and ancient hard boiled eggs to eat. 



They were suspicious, however; even more so than 

 the moujiks. At this time the Russian government 

 was giving one of its periodical twists to the Jewish 

 screw, and these people were comically suspicious that 

 we might be secret agents of the government. Some- 

 times this continual suspicion of both Russians and 

 Jews would grow irksome, and the annoyance of it 

 would be aggravated by the boorish reluctance of a 

 Russian traktir-keeper to move in the matter of satisfy- 

 ing the cravings of a traveler's hunger ; and the hunger 

 and the annoyance would give rise to vengeful imagin- 

 ings, in which the Jews were permitted to ruin all the 

 moujiks, and the moujiks then permitted to rise up 

 and massacre all the Jews! The condition of a man's 

 stomach has more to do with his frame of mind than 

 many people who have never known semi-starvation 

 are aware of. 



Near Pereschepinsk men were ducking, in a marshy 

 tract of country, with old Catherine II match-locks, 

 and huge flint-locks tied to stakes driven in the mud. 

 Others were ambushed among the reeds and flags with 

 flails, with which they smote the unwary quackers with 



