ON A RUSSIAN RIVER. 
BARON 
The remarkable reflection of a_ bridge, 
appearing in the September issue of Rec- 
REATION, reminds me of a similar case of 
perfect reflection, a photograph of which 
I mail you herewith. This was taken on 
the river Kama, in August, 18908. It is 
nothing to boast of in technique, and not 
to be compared with Mr. Burritt’s produc- 
tion, but it was taken under peculiar con- 
ditions of light, etc. 
In the early part of August, 1898, I was 
on my return journey from the Altai dis- 
trict of Siberia, where I had spent nearly 
2 months. Branching off at Tcheliabinsk 
toward Yekaterinburg and Perm, we had 
to travel all the time through large tracts 
of forest, some parts of which were ablaze. 
The scene, at night, was weird and grand 
beyond description, but made one’s heart 
ache for the forests thus devastated. At 
Perm we left the rail and took the splen- 
did steamer Berezniky, of the Lubimov 
line of steamers, for Nijni-Novgorod. 
The weather’ was glorious, and I spent 
most of the 24 hours on the promenade 
deck, breathing the balmy air wafted from> 
the pine clad slopes of the high right bank. 
The scenes of destruction, the reek of the 
fires, were forgotten till we neared the 
mouth of the White river, Belava. There 
the air was laden to such an extent with 
the smoke of distant forest fires that the 
sun stood out like aé_ dull, orange 
disc; so dull, in fact, that one could look 
at it with little inconvenience, as at the 
moon. 

AMATEUR PHOTO BY WM, H FISHER. 
RIGHT ON THEM. 
Winner of 19th Prize in Recreation’s 8th An- 
nual Competition. Made with Eastman 
Kodak. 
PAUL TCHERKASSOV. 

AS IN A LOOKING GLASS. 
The surface of the river was perfectly 
calm; not a ripple, not a breath of air; 
not a sound beyond the throbbing of the 
steamer’s engines and the churning of her 
powerful wheels. Of a sudden, from be- 
hind a bend of the bluff on the left bank, 
another steamer appeared, going up stream 
and keeping close to the left bank. Her 
reflection in the water struck me as excep- 
tionally clear and fine, and I risked a snap 
shot at her, while our steamer was tearing 
along, full speed, toward her in her course 
down stream. 
A small boy in a Pennsylvania school 
produced the following as his contribution 
to the closing exercises in English com- 
position: “King Henry VIII. was the 
greatest widower that ever lived. He was 
born at a place called Annie Domino, and 
had 51 wives, besides children and 
things. The first was beheaded and after- 
ward executed, and the second was re- 
voked. Henry the eighth was succeeded to 
the throne by his great grandmother, the 
beautiful Mary Queen of Scot, sometimes 
called the Lady of the lake, or the Lay of 
the last Minstrel.”—The Pilot. 
An optimist falling from a toth story 
window, called out cheerfully as he passed 
each story, going down, “All right so far!” 
—Exchange. 
199 
