A vision of cells; of unconfined prisoners tranquilly executing hasty repairs on their clothing, with twine or something similar, in the anteroom; of a complete police hierarchy, running through all the gradations of pattern in gold and silver embroidery to the plain uniform of the roundsman, gladdened our sight while we waited.  A gorgeous silver-laced official finally certified our identity, as usual without other proof than our statement, and, clapping a five-kopek stamp on our paper, bowed us out.  I had never seen a stamp on such a document before, and had never been asked to pay anything; but I restrained my natural eagerness to reimburse the government and ask questions, with the idea that it might have been a purely mechanical action on the part of the officer, and in the hope of developments.  They came.  A couple of hours later, a messenger entered our room at the hotel, without knocking, in Russian lower-class style, and demanded thirty kopeks for the signature.  I offered to pay for the stamp on the spot, and supply the remaining twenty-five kopeks when furnished with an adequate reason therefor.

“Is the captain’s signature worth so much?” I asked.

“That is very little,” was the answer.

“So it is.  Is the captain’s signature worth so little?  Tell me why.”

He could not, or would not.

I made him wait while I wrote a petition to the police.  The burden of it was:  “Why?  I was born an American and curious; not too curious, but just curious enough to be interested in the ethnographical and psychological problems of foreign lands.  Why the twenty-five kopeks?  It is plainly too little or too much.  Why?”

The messenger accepted the five kopeks for the stamp, and set out to deliver the document.  But he returned after a moment, and said that he would intrust the five kopeks to my safe-keeping until he brought the answer to my document,—­which he had had just sufficient time to read, by the way.  That was the last I ever heard of him or of it, and I was forced to conclude that some thirsty soul had been in quest of “tea-money” for vodka.  I am still in debt to the Russian government for five kopeks.

The last time I arrived in Petersburg, I tried a new plan.  Instead of making a trip of a couple of miles to get the signature of our police captain, or sending the petition at the languid convenience of the overworked dvornik, I went to the general post-office, which was close by, and made a personal request that my mail matter be delivered at my new address.  The proper official, whom I found after a search through most of the building, during which I observed their methods, declared that my request was illegal, and ordered me to go for the customary signature.  But by this time I had learned that the mere threat to make Russian officials inspect my passport was productive of much the same effect as drawing a pistol on them would have had.  It was not in the least necessary to have the document with me; going through the motions was easier, and quite as good.  Every man of them flushed up, and repelled the suggestion as a sort of personal insult; but they invariably came to terms on the spot.  Accordingly, I tried it here.