2 80 7HR UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. 



the restaurants are converted into cafe's chant ants. 

 Young women from all the towns of Russia, in cos- 

 tumes as abbreviated as the law allows, sing, or attempt 

 to sing, to the diners at the restaurants and hotels, 

 standing on raised platforms at one end of the room. 



Everywhere is a feverish pressure that, in the nature 

 of things, cannot endure. It is commerce on a spree. 

 The debauch lasts a couple of months, and when it is 

 over, this extraordinary collection of goods and people 

 disappears. 



Some of the merchants ship the remnant of their 

 stock to Irbit, on the borders of Siberia, in the province 

 of Perm, where there is a winter fair of which we hear 

 nothing, but which is the second largest fair in the 

 world. The Irbit fair lasts a month, from January 20 

 to February 20, and though small compared withNijni, 

 nevertheless shows a business of 40,000,000 rubles a 

 year. Like the real city of Nijni Novgorod, which is 

 perched on a bluff, overlooking the fair-city, which oc- 

 cupies a peninsular at the junction of the Oka and 

 Volga, Irbit amounts to nothing except during the 

 brief life of the fair. 



