is a leathern paracrotte on either side, to
prevent the mud from the wheels flying up into
your face, and the bases of these paracrottes
serve as steps to mount, anda slight protection
in the way of footing against your
tumbling out of the ramshackle concern into
the mud: but the imbecility, or malevolence
of the droschky-builder has added a tin, or
pewter covering for this meagre flooring, and
as your bones are being rattled over the
Russian stones, your feet keep up an incessant
and involuntary skating shuffle on this
accursed pewter pavement. There is nothing
to hold on by, save the driver, and a sort of
saddle-pummel turned the wrong way, at the
hinder end of the bench; the droschky rocks
from side to side, threatening to tip over altogether
at every moment. You mutter, you
pray, you perspire; your hooked fingers seek
little inequalities of the bench to grasp at,
as Claude Frollo's tried to claw at the stone
copings when he fell from the tower of Notre
Dame; you are jolted, you are bumped, you
are scarified; you are dislocated; and, all this
while, your feet are keeping up the diabolical
goose-step on the pewter beneath. Anathema,
Maranatha! if there be a strong north wind
blowing (Boreas has his own way, even in
the height of summer, in Petersburg), and
your hat be tempted to desert your head, and
go out on the loose! There is such a human,
or perhaps, fiendish perversity in hats, when
they blow off—such a mean, malignant, cruel,
and capricious persistence in rolling away,
and baffling you—that I can scarcely
refrain from shaking my fist at my vagrant
head-covering while I am running after
it; and swearing at it when I capture
it; and punching its head well before I
resettle it on my own. But what are you to do
if your hat flies off in a droschky? You
daren't jump out: sudden death lies that
way. The driver will see you at Nishi-
Novgorod before he will descend to recover
it; although he has not the slightest shame in
asking you to get down to pick up his
whip. All you can do ia to shut your eyes
tie a pocket-handkerchief over your head
and buy a new hat; which, by the way, wil
cost you, for a very ordinary one, ten silver
roubles—a guinea and a half. As to stopping
the droschky, getting down, and chasing the
fugitive—that might be done in England
but not here. It seems almost as difficult to
pull up a droschky as a railway train. The
wheels would seem to be greased to such a
terrific extent, that they run or jolt on of
their own accord: and two hundred yards
notice is the least you can, in any
conscience, give your Ischvostchik, if you wan
him to "stoi." Meantime, with that
execrable north wind, where would your
hat be? In the Neva, or half-way to the Lake
of Ladoga.

When the Scythians (was it the Scythians
by the way?) were first made acquainted witl
horses, we read that their young men desirous
of taking lessons in equitation were, to
prevent accidents, bound to their mettlesome
steeds with cords. I think it would be
expedient, when a foreigner takes his first airing
in a droschky, to tie him to the bench, or at
least to nail his coat-tails thereto. The born
Russians, curiously, seem to prefer these perious
vehicles to the more comfortable droschkies.
They seldom avail themselves of the
facility of bestriding the narrow bench, colussus
like, but sit jauntily sideways, tapping
that deadly pewter with their boot-tips as
confidently and securely as the Amazons who
scour through the tan at the Hippodrome
on bare-backed steeds. Ladies, even,
frequently patronise these breakers on wheels.
It is a sight to see their skirts spreading
their white bosoms to the gale, like ships'
canvas; a prettier sight to watch their
dainty feet pit-a-patting on that pewter
of peril I have before denounced. When a
lady and gentleman mount one of these
droschkies, and are, I presume ou tolerably
brotherly and sisterly terms, it seems to be
accepted as a piece of cosy etiquette for the
lady to sit in the gentleman's lap.

While waiting at a house-door for a fare
engaged therein, or at any other time that he
is not absolutely compelled to be driving, the
Ischvostchik has a habit of abandoning the
splash-board, and reclining at full length on
his back on the droschky bench, there to
snore peacefully, oblivious of slavery,
unmindful of the stick. To the full length of
his trunk would be perhaps a more correct
expression, for the bench is only long enough
for his body down to the knees; and his big-
booted legs dangle comfortably down among
the wheels. He will sleep here, in the sun,
in the rain, in weather hot and cold; and,
were it not for casual passengers and the
ever-pursuing police soldier, he would so sleep,
I believe, till Doomsday. There is one
inconvenience to the future occupant of the
droschky in this; that, inasmuch as it is
pleasant, in a hotel, to have your bed warmed,
there are differences of opinion as to the
comfort of having your seat warmed vicariously:
especially when .the animated warming-pan
is a Russian and an Ischvostchik, and, and
—well, the truth must out—ragged, dirty,
greasy, and swarming with vermin.

I know that I am sinning grievously against
good manners in barely hinting at the
existence of such things; but I might as
well attempt to write a book on Venice
without mentioning the canals, as to
chronicle Russian manners and customs without
touching ever so delicately on the topic
of the domestic anirnalculae of the empire.
There is a little animal friendly to man,
and signifying, I have been given to understand,
love, whose existence is very
properly ignored in the select circles of refined
England, but who is as familiar in good
society at Petersburg as the lively flea
is at Pera. It was my fortune, during a