Americans, even though we are as hospitable as any nation on earth, might well take a lesson from the Russians in regard to the respect they pay to a letter of introduction.  The English send word when you can be received, and you pay each other frosty formal calls, and then are asked to five-o’clock tea or some other wildly exciting function of similar importance.  The French are great sticklers for etiquette, but they are more spontaneous, and you are asked to dine at once.  After that it is your own fault if you are not asked again.  But in Russia it is different.  I think that the men must have accompanied my messenger home, and the women to whom I presented letters early in the afternoon were actually waiting for me when I returned from presenting the last ones.  In Moscow they came and waited hours for my return.  I was mortified that there were not four of me to respond to all the beauties of their friendship, for hospitality in Russia includes even that.

They placed themselves, their carriages, their servants, at our disposal for whatever we had to do—­sight-seeing, shopping, or idling.  Mademoiselle Yermoloff, lady-in-waiting to the two empresses, simply took us upon her hands to show us Russian society life.  She came with her sledge in the morning, and kept us with her all day long, taking us to see the most interesting people and places in Moscow.  She showed us the coronation-robes, the embroideries upon which were from her own beautiful designs.  The Empress presented her with an emerald and diamond brooch in recognition of this important service, for undoubtedly the coronation-robe of the present Tzarina is much handsomer and in better taste than any of the others.  The designs are so artistically sketched that they all have a special significance.

Here we visited the charming Princess Golitzine, a most beautiful and accomplished woman.  Her house, we were told, De Lesseps, the father of the Suez De Lesseps, used as his headquarters during the French occupation of Moscow.

Mademoiselle Yermoloff’s sledge was a very beautiful one, but it was quite as low-set as all the others, and her footman stood behind.  As there was no back to the seat of her sledge, and her horses were rather fiery and unmanageable, every time they halted without warning this solemn flunky pitched forward into our backs, a performance which would have upset the dignity of an English footman, but which did not seem to disturb him in the least.

Mademoiselle Yermoloff took us to see Madame Chabelskoi, whose contributions to the World’s Fair were of so much value.  I never saw a private collection of anything so rich, so varied, and of such historical value as her collection of all the provincial costumes of the peasants of Finland and Big and Little Russia.  In addition to these she has the fete-day toilets as well.  The Kokoshniks are all embroidered in seed-pearls and gold ornaments, and if she were not a fabulously rich woman she could never have got all these, for each one is authentic and has actually been worn.  They are not copies.