3i8 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



Russia. About three o'clock one morning, in the 

 hotel where I was staying at St. Petersburg, I heard 

 a loud report. It awakened me, but thinking it was 

 the slamming of a door I paid no further heed. In 

 the morning, however, it turned out to have been a 

 revolver shot, fired three doors from me by a Russian 

 countess, who attempted to commit suicide during a 

 quarrel with a young officer. 



A Swedish teacher of languages, whose acquaintance 

 I made in St. Petersburg, confirmed the above in- 

 formation from his own personal knowledge. This 

 was a gentleman on whose word I place full reliance. 

 He had been tutor in many noble families in and 

 about St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kharkoff in Little 

 Russia. His experience and observation were that, 

 for the want of something better to occupy their 

 minds, Russian ladies, with very few exceptions, 

 amused themselves with intrigue. 



With all this, I was asked not to judge the Russian 

 ladies too harshly, or by the same standard that one 

 would apply to the women of other countries. Their 

 conduct is not immoral. This would be too harsh a 

 term altogether. The Russian ladies simply have such 

 large hearts that it takes more than one man to fill one 

 of them. 



The maternal instinct is a conspicuous trait of the 

 Russian female character. Women of all classes like 

 large families ; the larger the better. In the villages 

 nearly every woman has a baby in arms. I came 

 upon a fine example of maternal instinct in the person 

 of Sascha's prospective mother-in-law, with whom we 

 took dinner at her country house near Tula. This 



