CAVILOSKY GETS EXCITED. 
245 
lownin, the Kussian captaiu, who was their pi'isoner for a 
long time, remarks, however, that they were woefully 
wanting in modesty, and makes no exception in favour of 
the higher classes. It was revolting to see such a total 
absence of that beautiful exponent of a nation’s degree 
of civilization and purity. 
While watching the bathers of the “hot spring,” I 
heard something else denied which had always existed in 
my mind as a fixed fact. 
“This is the way you bathe in Russia, I believe?” I 
said to Cavilosky, the Russian officer who had accom- 
panied us. “I should think it productive of a most de- 
moralizing tendency.” 
“My dear sir, you were never more mistaken in your 
life,” he replied; “we are as proper in Russia as they are 
in any other part of Christendom. Where did you get 
such an idea from?” 
I referred him to the “Iconographic Encyclopaedia” as 
rny authority, and added a few words in its praise as a 
work of standard I'eference, 
“Pshaw! pshaw! The ‘Iconographic Encyclopiedia,’ 
indeed! — the work of a mustv-headed Dutchman, whose 
brains had long been deadened by lager-bier before the 
idea of getting up such a book presented itself. Give us 
some better authority.” 
I saw readily that he was prejudiced by a feeling of 
combined shame and annoyance at such a national cha- 
racteristic being attributed to his countrymen, and so 
changed the subject, with the unalterable conviction that 
the “musty-headed Dutchman” was right and our choleric 
little Russian wrong. 
