The towel was very small, and was intended to serve for two persons!  Eventually it did not; and we earned the name of being altogether too fastidious.  The washstand had a tank of water attached to the top, which we pumped into the basin with a foot-treadle, after we became skillful, holding our hands under the stream the while.  The basin had no stopper.  “Running water is cleaner to wash in,” was the serious explanation.  Some other barbarian who had used that washstand before us must also have differed from that commonly accepted Russian opinion:  when we plugged up the hole with a cork, and it disappeared, and we fished it out of the still clogged pipe, we found that six others had preceded it.  It took a champagne cork and a cord to conquer the orifice.

Among our vulgar experiences at this place were—­fleas.  I remonstrated with Mikhei, our typical waiter from the government of Yaroslavl, which furnishes restaurant garcons in hordes as a regular industry.  Mikhei replied airily:—­

“Nitchevo! It is nothing!  You will soon learn to like them so much that you cannot do without them.”

I take the liberty of doubting whether even Russians ever reach that last state of mind, in a lifetime of endurance.  Two rooms beyond us, in the same corridor, lodged a tall, thin, gray-haired Russian merchant, who was nearly a typical Yankee in appearance.  Every morning, at four o’clock, when the fleas were at their worst and roused us regularly (the “close season” for mortals, in Russia, is between five and six A. M.), we heard this man emerge from his room, and shake, separately and violently, the four pieces of his bedclothing into the corridor; not out of the window, as he should have done.  So much for the modern native taste.  It is recorded that the beauties of the last century, in St. Petersburg, always wore on their bosoms silver “flea-catchers” attached to a ribbon.  These traps consisted of small tubes pierced with a great number of tiny holes, closed at the bottom, open at the top, and each containing a slender shaft smeared with honey or some other sticky substance.  So much for the ancient native taste.

Again, we had a disagreement with Mikhei on the subject of the roast beef.  More than once it was brought in having a peculiar blackish-crimson hue and stringy grain, with a sweetish flavor, and an odor which was singular but not tainted, and which required imperatively that either we or it should vacate the room instantly.  Mikhei stuck firmly to his assertion that it was a prime cut from a first-class ox.  We discovered the truth later on, in Moscow, when we entered a Tatar horse-butcher’s shop—­ornamented with the picture of a horse, as the law requires—­out of curiosity, to inquire prices.  We recognized the smell and other characteristics of our Tzarskoe Selo “roast ox” at a glance and a sniff, and remained only long enough to learn that the best cuts cost two and a half cents a pound.  Afterward