It seems to be necessary, although it ought not to be so, to remind American readers that Russia is not the only land where the censorship exists, to a greater or less extent.  Even in the United States, which is popularly regarded as the land of unlicensed license in a literary sense,—­even in the Boston Public Library, which is admitted to be a model of good sense and wide liberality,—­all books are not bought or issued indiscriminately to all readers, irrespective of age and so forth.  The necessity for making special application may, in some cases, whet curiosity, but it also, undoubtedly, acts as a check upon unhealthy tastes, even when the book may be publicly purchased.  I have heard Russians who did not wholly agree with their own censorship assert, nevertheless, that a strict censure was better than the total absence of it, apparently, in America, the utterances of whose press are regarded by foreigners in general as decidedly startling.*

* From The Nation

IV.

BARGAINING IN RUSSIA.

In Russia one is expected to bargain and haggle over the price of everything, beginning with hotel accommodations, no matter how obtrusively large may be the type of the sign “Prix Fixe” or how strenuous may be the assertions that the bottom price is that first named.  If one’s nerves be too weak to play at this game of continental poker, he will probably share our fate, of which we were politely apprised by a word at our departure from a hotel where we had lived for three months—­after due bargaining—­at their price.  “If you come back, you may have the corresponding apartments on the floor below [the bel etage] for the same price.”  In view of the fact that there was no elevator, it will be perceived that we had been paying from one third to one half too much, which was reassuring as to the prospect for the future, when we should decide to return!

If there be a detestable relic of barbarism, it is this custom of bargaining over every breath one draws in life.  It creates a sort of incessant internal seething, which is very wearing to the temper and destructive of pleasure in traveling.  One feels that he must chaffer desperately in the dark, or pay the sum demanded and be regarded as a goose fit for further plucking.  So he forces himself to chaffer, tries to conceal his abhorrence of the practice and his inexperience, and ends, generally, by being cheated and considered a grass-green idiot into the bargain, which is not soothing to the spirit of the average man.  When I mention it in this connection I do not mean to be understood as confining my remarks exclusively to Russia; the opportunities for being shorn to the quick are unsurpassed all over the continent, and “one price” America’s house is too vitreous to permit of her throwing many stones at foreign lands.  Only, in America, the custom is now happily so obsolete in the ordinary transactions of daily life that one is astonished when he hears, occasionally, a woman from the country ask a clerk in a city shop, “Is that the least you’ll take?  I’ll give you so much for these goods.”  In Russia, the surprise would be on the other side.