ON THE CRIMEAN STEPPES. , 241 



goes to Russia and takes the trouble to make himself 

 conspicuous and agreeable in St. Petersburg drawing- 

 rooms in the winter, will, like the gentleman I have 

 just quoted, receive many invitations to country houses, 

 and in them meet with most hospitable receptions. 



This is hospitality, of a truth ; but there is a higher 

 form of hospitality than this ; and it is to this higher 

 interpretation of the word and its meaning that my 

 own experiences must be applied. 



Primal hospitality, as the writer understands it, is 

 not so much the readiness to receive into your house 

 a gentleman who has made a favorable impression on 

 you at a social gathering, as a willingness to entertain 

 the passing stranger, in need of assistance, whom you 

 never saw before, and never expect to see again. This 

 is the test that is applicable to a country where dis- 

 tances are great and the traveler liable to find himself 

 fatigued or benighted where public accommodation is 

 not to be found. 



Possibly this sort of hospitality prevails in Russia, 

 as well as the secondary stage ; which might be termed 

 its European, or civilized expression, as against its 

 Asiatic interpretation. I can only say that if so, it 

 was my misfortune to see absolutely nothing of it, un- 

 til, during the last two or three days' ride, I came in 

 contact with the Crimean Tartars. We were hospitably 

 entertained by Count Tolstoi ; and near Kharkoff, as 

 earlier pages explain, we stumbled upon the family of 

 a Rostoff shipping agent, who were summering there, 

 and who likewise showed us hospitality. 



But apart from these two cases of exceptional cir- 

 cumstances, we received not so much as a solitary glass 



