Boots (muzhiki) in scarlet cotton blouses, and full trousers of black velveteen, tucked into tall wrinkled boots, dart about to bakery and dairy shop, preparing for their masters’ morning “tea.”  Venders of newspapers congregate at certain spots, and charge for their wares in inverse ratio to the experience of their customers; for regular subscribers receive their papers through the post-office, and, if we are in such unseemly haste as to care for the news before the ten o’clock delivery—­or the eleven o’clock, if the postman has not found it convenient otherwise—­we must buy on the street, though we live but half a block from the newspaper office, which opens at ten.  By noon, every one is awake.  The restaurants are full of breakfasters, and Dominique’s, which chances to stand on the most crowded stretch of the street, on the sunny north side beloved of promenaders, is dense with officers, cigarette smoke, and characteristic national viands judiciously mingled with those of foreign lands.

Mass is over, and a funeral passes down the Nevsky Prospekt, on its way to the fashionable Alexander Nevsky monastery or Novo-Dyevitche convent cemeteries.  The deceased may have been a minister of state, or a great officer of the Court, or a military man who is accompanied by warlike pageant.  The choir chants a dirge.  The priests, clad in vestments of black velvet and silver, seem to find their long thick hair sufficient protection to their bare heads.  The professional mutes, with their silver-trimmed black baldrics and cocked hats, appear to have plucked up the street lanterns by their roots to serve as candles, out of respect to the deceased’s greatness, and to illustrate how the city has been cast into darkness by the withdrawal of the light of his countenance.  The dead man’s orders and decorations are borne in imposing state, on velvet cushions, before the gorgeous funeral car, where the pall, of cloth of gold, which will be made into a priest’s vestment once the funeral is over, droops low among artistic wreaths and palms, of natural flowers, or beautifully executed in silver.  Behind come the mourners on foot, a few women, many men, a Grand Duke or two among them, it may be; the carriages follow; the devout of the lower classes, catching sight of the train, cross themselves broadly, mutter a prayer, and find time to turn from their own affairs and follow for a little way, out of respect to the stranger corpse.  More touching are the funerals which pass up the Prospekt on their way to the unfashionable cemetery across the Neva, on Vasily Ostroff; a tiny pink coffin resting on the knees of the bereaved parents in a sledge, or borne by a couple of bareheaded men, with one or two mourners walking slowly behind.

From noon onward, the scene on the Prospekt increases constantly in vivacity.  The sidewalks are crowded, especially on Sundays and holidays, with a dense and varied throng, of so many nationalities and types that it is a valuable lesson in ethnography to sort them, and that a secret uttered is absolutely safe in no tongue,—­unless, possibly, it be that of Patagonia.  But the universal language of the eye conquers all difficulties, even for the remarkably fair Tatar women, whose national garb includes only the baldest and gauziest apology for the obligatory veil.