In eating, you must reach for what you want. It is very seldom that anything is passed during this first stage of the meal. You would never suggest to your neighbor on the right to pass you the cheese; but you would rise in your place and, with a firm grasp on your knife, reach over his plate and impale the tempting morsel. If this is not possible, you leave your place and go around the table and secure your loot. There is only one thing that they will readily pass, and that is the vodka. The general aspect of things is that of a well-patronized free-lunch counter when the train is to start in five minutes. It must be confessed that Russian table manners are not fashioned on ordinary European models. They closely resemble the Korean method of eating at a public feast, when all the food is put on the table at once. It is a mistake to suppose this terminates a Russian dinner. It has only begun. By this time the uninitiated is full to repletion unless he has been forewarned, but to the Russian this is but the ante-prandial overture. Everything is now cleared off the table except the vodka, which is never out of sight, and the dinner proper begins with soup. I must say that this soup is the heaviest and richest it has ever been my fortune to taste. Alone, it would form a full meal for any one less robust than the ordinary Russian. Each guest adds to his soup two or three heaping spoonfuls of sour whipped cream. Their method of eating soup appeals as much to the ear as to the eye. Perhaps they go on the principle that soup must be eaten as audibly as possible, for this means that it is so good you cannot wait for it to cool. My Russian naturalist, Alek, was a fair sample of an educated Russian, and he turned to me and said: "I see that you eat with a fork." "Yes," said I; "and I see that you do not." "No; but I had a sister who studied at an English convent in Japan for a year or so. When she came back she ate with a fork, but we soon laughed her out of it." The end of the Russian knife is broader than the portion next the handle, and it is used both as a knife and as a spoon. They complain that the American knives do not "hold" enough. After the soup came fowls, roast meats, vegetables, and two or three more dishes made of whipped cream. These last one grows to like. Their favorite form of dessert is this same sour cream, sprinkled generously with sugar and ground cinnamon. When all is seemingly over the table is again cleared, and the samovar is placed steaming upon the table. Every one takes four or five glasses of hot tea, flavored with sliced lemon. Some of the Russian tea is very fine. It is well known that they drink the costliest as well as the cheapest grades. It is more than likely that not a pound of the very best tea grown in China ever gets farther west than Russia. Meanwhile every one is smoking cigarettes, men and women alike; not only after dinner but between the courses.