AT NIJNI NOVGOROD. 279 



showmen to attract the crowd. As mentioned in a 

 previous chapter, Russian soldiers are permitted to 

 work twenty-five days a month. 



There is a Chinese quarter without any Chinamen in 

 it, and nothing to justify the name beyond the fact 

 that tea is sold there, and that a rude attempt at 

 pagoda architecture has been made, with a few figures 

 of exceedingly doubtful mandarins on the roofs. 



A few minutes' walk from these reminders of Asian 

 and Russian interior life brings the visitor to the finest 

 building, apart from cathedrals — of which there are 

 two — in Nijni. On the way you have traversed a neat 

 boulevard, shaded by an avenue of trees and lined with 

 shops, whose windows are as attractive as any row in 

 Paris, London, or New York. The building you have 

 reached is a magnificent arcade, three stories high, the 

 upper floors being occupied as government offices and 

 banks, and the lower by dealers in fancy goods. Here 

 are electric lights, tubs filled with tropical plants, and 

 a military band in the evenings. Can it be possible, 

 you think, that all this is only an affair of a few weeks, 

 and that for ten months out of every twelve solitude 

 and the high waters of the Oka and the Volga are in 

 possession of this city? Still stranger does it seem 

 that cathedrals and churches should be abandoned to 

 the owls and the Evil One, and the Stock Exchange to 

 the twittering of the birds. 



The curious incongruity of the Bokhariot and the 

 electric light, and the feverish activity all about, re- 

 mind you, however, that the surroundings are alto- 

 gether too extraordinary to last long. You are also 

 reminded of this in your hotel. The dining-rooms of 



