I did not pursue my search for the missing papers.  I had allowed so much time to elapse that I perceived the uselessness of further action; they were evidently lost, and it mattered little as to the manner.  Shortly afterwards I received the first of my only two specimens of censorial “caviare.”  It was on a political cartoon in a New York comic paper.  I sent it back to America for identification of the picture, and it was lost between New York and Boston; which reconciled me to the possible carelessness of the Russian post-office in the case of the newspapers just cited.

My next experience was with Count Lyeff N. Tolstoy’s work entitled “Life.”  This was not allowed to be printed in book form, although nearly the whole of it subsequently appeared in installments, as “extracts,” in a weekly journal.  I received the manuscript as a registered mail packet.  The author was anxious that my translation should be submitted in the proof-sheets to a philosophical friend of his in Petersburg, who read English, in order that the latter might see if I had caught the sense of the somewhat abstract and complicated propositions.  It became a problem how those proof-sheets were to reach me safely and promptly.  The problem was solved by having them directed outright to the censor’s office, whence they were delivered to me; and, as there proved to be nothing to alter, they speedily returned to America as a registered parcel.  My own opinion now is that they would not have reached me a whit less safely or promptly had they been addressed straight to me.  The bound volumes of my translation were so addressed later on, and I do not think that they were even opened at the office, the law to the contrary notwithstanding.  All this time I had been receiving a New York weekly paper with very little delay and no mutilation.  But at this juncture an amiable friend subscribed in my name for the “Century,” and I determined to make a personal trial of the workings of the censorship in as strong a case as I could have found had I deliberately desired to invent a test case.  I may as well remark here that “the censor” is not the hard-worked, omnivorous reader of mountains of print and manuscript which the words represent to the mind of the ordinary foreigner.  The work of auditing literature, so to speak, is subdivided among such a host of men that office hours are brief, much of the foreign reading, at least, is done at home, and the lucky members of the committee keep themselves agreeably posted upon matters in general while enjoying the fruits of office.

The censor’s waiting-room was well patronized on my arrival.  An official who was holding a consultation with one of the visitors inquired my business.  I stated it briefly, and shortly afterwards he retired into an adjoining room, which formed the beginning of a vista of apartments and officials.  While I waited, a couple of men were attended to so near me that I heard their business.  It consisted