The first thing which struck me was a small incident which occurred at a railway station at Moscow, and has a certain significance. I was engaging a cab, and near me an officer was doing the same thing. The cabmen were expressing reluctance to accept the officer’s terms, and my cabman turned round to me and said: “That man comes every day; he is drunk, and he drives and drives, sometimes to the other end of the town, and never pays a single kopeck.” “Why do you drive him if he never pays you?” I asked. “There is nothing to be done—he is an officer,” answered the cabman. This is a small example of how the lawlessness of the existing system of government in Russia affects the poorer classes. I travelled from Moscow to St. Petersburg by a slow train in a third-class carriage. In the carriage was a mixed and representative assembly of people—a priest, a merchant from Kursk, a photographer from Tchelabinsk, a young volunteer: that is to say a young man doing his year’s military service previous to becoming an officer, two minor public servants, an ex-soldier who had been through the Turkish campaign, a soldier who had lately returned from Manchuria, three peasants, two Tartars, a small tradesman, a carpenter, and some others. Besides these a whole band of gipsies (with their children) encamped themselves on the platform outside the carriage, and penetrated every now and then into the carriage until they were driven out by threats and curses. The first thing everybody did was to make themselves thoroughly comfortable: to arrange mattresses and pillows for the night; then they began to make each other’s acquaintance. We had not travelled far before the gipsies began to sing on the platform, and this created some interest. They suggested fortune-telling, but the ex-soldier shouted at them in a gruff voice to begone. One of the officials had his fortune told. The gipsy said she could do it much better for five roubles (ten shillings) than for a few kopecks, which he had given. I had my fortune told, which consisted in a hurried rigmarole to the effect that I was often blamed, but never blamed others; that I could only work if I was my own master, and that I would shortly experience a great change of fortune. The gipsy added that if I could give her five roubles she would tie a piece of bark in my handkerchief which, with the addition of a little bread and salt, would render me immune from danger. The gipsies soon got out. The journey went on uneventfully— Le moine disait son bréviaire, La femme chantait, as in La Fontaine’s fable. We had supper and tea, and the ex-soldier related the experiences of his life, saying he had travelled much and seen the world (he was a Cossack by birth), and was not merely a _Moujik_. This offended one of the peasants, a bearded man, who walked up from his place and grunted in protest, and then walked back again.