lap-dog too in the balcony, and in the saloon
inside an Italian music-master was capering
with his nimble lingers on a grand piano;
while down below, the man in grey was
felling the Ischvostchiks. What their offence
had been—whether standing an inch too
close to, or an inch too far from the
pavement, I do not know; but I know that
they were, and that I saw them, thus
beaten; and I know that they took their
hats off, and meekly wiped the blood from
their mouths and noses; and gave way to
not one word or gesture of resistance or
remonstrance; but I know that, in the wake of
that bad ship Greycoat, there were left such
a trail of white vengeful faces, of such gleaming
eyes, of such compressed lips, that were
I Greycoat I would as soon pass through the
nethermost pit, as down that line of outraged
men, alone, at night, and without my
police helmet and my police sword.

It is not pleasant, either, to know that
every time your unfortunate driver happens
to lock the wheel of a private carriage, he is
due at the police-station, there to consume
the inevitable ration of stick; it is horribly
unpleasant to sit, as I have often done,
behind a fine stalwart bearded man—a
Hercules of a fellow—and, when you see the tips
of a series of scarlet and purple wheals
appearing above the collar of his caftan and
ending at the nape of his neck, to be
convinced after much elaborate inductive reasoning,
that there are some more wheals under
his caftan—that his back and a police-
corporal's stick have come to blows lately, and
that the stick has had the best of it.

A droschky is a necessary of life in
Russia; it is not much a subject for
astonishment, therefore, that there should be
above three thousand public droschkies
alone in Saint Petersburg, and nearly two
thousand in Moscow. Besides these, there
are plenty of hack-calèches and broughams,
and swarms of small private one-horse
droschkies. Every employé of a decent grade
in the Tchinn, every major of police, has his
"one-horse chay." The great have their
carriages with two, four, and six horses; and
when you consider that it is contrary to
St. Petersburgian etiquette for a gentleman
to drive his own equipage; that the small
merchant or tradesman even, rich enough to
possess a droschky of his own, seldom
condescends to take the ribbons himself; and
lastly, that if not by positive law, at least by
commonly recognised and strictly observed
custom, no coachman whatsoever, save those
who act as whips to foreign ambassadors, are
allowed to depart from the old Russian
costume, you may imagine how numerous the
wearers of the low-crowned hat and caftans
are in St. Petersburg.

Here is the portrait of the Ischvostchik in
his habit as he lives. He is a brawny square-
built fellow, with a broad bully-beef face,
fair curly hair cropped round his head in the
workhouse-basin fashion, blue eyes, and a
bushy beard. I have seen some specimens of
carroty whiskers, too, among the Ischvostchiks,
that would do honour to the bar of
England. His face is freckled and puckered
into queer wrinkles, partly by constant
exposure to wind and weather, torrid heat
and iron frost; partly from the immoderate
use of his beloved vapour bath. The proverb
tells us that there are more ways of killing a
dog than hanging him—so there are more
ways of bathing in Russia than the way
that we occidental people usually bathe—
the way leaning towards cleanliness, which
is next to godliness. I cannot divest
myself (from what I have seen) of the
impression that the Russian homme du peuple
is considerably dirtier after taking a bath
than previous to that ablution. But I am
launching into so vast and interesting a topic
that I must be cautious, and must return to
the Ischvostchik.

His hands and feet are of tremendous
size: he is strong, active, agile; and
his capacity for endurance of hardships is
almost incredible. He wears invariably a
long caftan or coat, tight in the waist and
loose in the skirts, of dark blue or grass
green cloth or serge, not by any means of
coarse materials, and, if he be a well-to-do
Ischvostchik, edged with two narrow rows of
black velvet. This garment is neither single
breasted nor double breasted—it is rather
back breasted, the right lappel extending
obliquely across the left breast to beneath
the armpit. Under these arms too, and
again if his Ischvostchikship be prosperous,
he has a row of sugar-loaf buttons, sometimes
silvery, more frequently coppery, but never
buttoning anything, and serving no earthly
purpose that I am aware of. This caftan is
in winter replaced by the touloupe, or sheepskin
coat, to which I have previously alluded,
and to which I give warning I shall have
to call attention, many a time and oft, in the
progress of these papers. Under the caftan
or touloupe exists, perhaps, a shirt (but that
is not by any means to be assumed as an
invariable fact), and certainly, suspended by a
ribbon, a little cross in brass, or a medal of St.
Nicolaï, St. George, St. Serge, St. Alexander
Nevsky, or some other equally revered and
thoroughly Russian saint. "Few sorrows
had she of her own—my hope, my joy, my
Généviève," and few other garments of his
own (though he has sorrows enough) has my
Ischvostchik. A pair of baggy galligaskins,
blue or pink striped, heavy bucket boots
well greased, and he is nearly complete.
Nay, let me not omit one little ornament
wherewith he sacrifices to the Graces. This
is his sash or girdle, which is twisted tightly
round his waist. It always has been, in the
beginning, dyed in the brightest and most
staring hues; sometimes it has been of gold
and silver brocade, and silk of scarlet and of
blue; but it is most frequently, and when offered