For one hysterical moment my mind’s eye pictured a dinner-table on Prairie Avenue with alternately a low-necked gown and a pair of pajamas, and I choked.  Then I happened to think that he meant “evening dress,” and I recovered sufficiently to explain.

The Tzarina has made English the Court language, and since her coronation no state balls take place on Sunday.

Russian hospitality is delightful.  We could remain a year in Russia and not exhaust our invitations to visit at their country-houses.  Russia must be beautiful in summer, but if you wish to go into society, to know the best of the people, to see their sweet home life, and to understand how they live and enjoy themselves, you must go in the winter.  I cannot think what any one would find of national life in summer in Russia, for everybody has a country-house and everybody goes to it and leaves the city to tourists.

Russia, in spite of her vast riches, has not arrived at supercivilization, where there is corruption in the very atmosphere.  She is an undeveloped and a young country, and while the Tzar is wise and kind and beneficent, and an excellent Tzar as Tzars go, still Russians, even the best and most enlightened of them, are slaves.  I have met a number of the gentlest and cleverest men who had been exiled to Siberia, and pardoned.  Their picture-galleries bear witness to this underlying sadness of knowing that in spite of everything they are not free.  All their actions are watched, their every word listened to, spies are everywhere, the police are omnipresent, and over all their gayety and vivacity and mirth and spontaneity there is the constant fear of the awful hand in whose complete power they are.  His clemency, his fatherhood to his people, his tremendous responsibility for their welfare are all appreciated, but the thought is in every mind, “When will this kindness fail?  Upon whose head will the lightning descend next?”

Title and gentle birth and the long and faithful service of one’s ancestors to the Tzars are of small avail if the evidence should go against one in Russia.  I have heard princes say less than I have said here, but say it in whispers and with furtive looks at the nearest man or woman.  I have seen their starts of surprise at the frank impudence of our daring to criticise our administration in their midst, and I felt as if I were in danger of being bombarded from the back.

In Russia you may spell as you please, but you must have a care how you criticise the government.  In America you may criticise the government as you will, but you must have a care how you spell.

VIII

MOSCOW

I thought St. Petersburg interesting, but it is modern compared to Moscow.  Everything is so strange and curious here.  The churches, the chimes, the palace, the coronation chapel, and the street scenes are enough to drive one mad with interest.