But Moscow seems to take a peculiar national pride in preserving the historical monuments of her country.  There is a museum there, with a complete set of all these costumes on wax figures, and they range all the way from the grotesque to the lovely.

Madame Chabelskoi is now doing a very pretty as well as a valuable and historical work.  She has two accomplished daughters, and these young girls spend all their time in selecting peasant women with typical features, dressing them in these costumes, photographing them, and then coloring these photographs in water-colors.  They are making ten copies of each, to make ten magnificent albums, which are to be presented to the ten greatest museums in the world.  The Hermitage in St. Petersburg is to have one, the British Museum another, and so on.  Only one was to go to America, and to my metropolitan dismay I found that it was not to go to Chicago.  I shall not say where it was intended to go; I shall only say that with characteristic modesty I asked, in my most timid voice, why she did not present it to a museum in the city which she had already benefited so royally with her generosity, and which already held her name in affectionate veneration.  It seemed to strike her for the first time that Chicago was the proper city in which to place that album, so she promised it to us!  I thanked her with sincere gratitude, and retired from the field with a modest flush of victory on my brow.  I cannot forbear a wicked chuckle, however, when I think of that other museum!

We dined many times at “The Hermitage,” which is one of the smartest restaurants in Europe.  The costumes of the waiters were too extraordinary not to deserve a passing mention.  They consisted of a white cotton garment belted at the waist, with no collar, and a pair of flapping white trousers.  They are always scrupulously clean—­which is a wonder for Russian peasants—­for they are made to change their clothes twice a day.  They have a magnificent orchestrion instead of an orchestra here, and I could scarcely eat those beautiful dinners for listening to the music.  We became so well acquainted with the repertoire that our friends, knowing our taste, ordered the music to match the courses.  So instead of sherry with the soup, they ordered the intermezzo from “Cavalleria Rusticana.”  With the fish we had the overture to “William Tell.”  With the entrecote we had a pot-pourri from “Faust.”  With the fowl we had “Demon and Tamar,” the Russian opera.  With the rest we began on Wagner and worked up to that thrilling “Tannhaeuser” overture, until I was ready to go home a nervous wreck from German music, as I always am.

A very interesting incident occurred while we were in Moscow.  The Tzar decorated a non-commissioned officer for an act of bravery which well deserved it.  He was in charge of the powder-magazines just outside of Moscow, and from the view I had of them I should say that the gunpowder is stored in pits in the ground.