You now pay an additional 15 per cent. of your entire hotel bill in Russia, which is distributed in tips to all the servants except the lift boys and the gorgeous individual who stands in front of the hotel door, who assists you to alight from your droshky when you arrive, and touches his peacock feather trimmed hat to you when you go in and out. He is called the Swiss, denoting the origin of his earliest predecessor, I imagine, and why he and the elevator men do not share in the general distribution I never found out. Walk down the Nevsky Prospect, or the Grand Morskaia, which begins in fine shops and ends in palaces, like Fifth avenue. Wander through the maze of little shops in the huge arcade called the Gostinny Dvor. Go far out on the Nevsky, cross the beautiful Anitchkoff bridge, with its four groups of rearing horses, and turn in at the Litainy, where the cheaper shops are to be found, and try to buy something. It doesn’t matter what, just try to buy something to eat, drink, wear or use. When the waiter brought in the coffee that morning he said cheerfully, “Niet malako,” no milk. Try to buy a few cans of condensed milk against a similar experience. I walked all over Petrograd trying to buy condensed milk, for the shortage of fresh milk was grave when I arrived, and grew steadily worse. I found one can, for which I paid two dollars. Shortly afterward a friend arrived from Japan and gave me two cans, which she spared out of her store. Russian illiteracy is so general that the shop signs are not written but illustrated. Brilliant signboards on the outside show pictures of what the shopkeeper has to sell. A dairy shop will have a picture of a cow, crocks of butter, chickens, ducks, geese, baskets of eggs, cheese of many varieties and so forth. A greengrocer’s signboard is decorated like a seed catalogue cover, while a clothing store is advertised by pictures of clothes and hats which were fashionable perhaps ten years ago. It once added to the gay appearance of the streets, but just now it increases their anxious and ominous air. Hundreds of the shops are empty, the doors are locked and the brilliant signboards alone remain to indicate that business was ever conducted there. One of the mournfulest sights in Petrograd to me was an abandoned shop where they once sold French bread and pastry. I used to turn my head away from the mocking poster, picturing crisp white bread in yard-long loaves, delicious breakfast crescents, patés and cakes. The standard bread served in Russia at the present time is black, soggy, sour and indigestible. It is sold by weight, hence loaded with water and baked as little as possible to be bread and not dough. Some one has suggested that that bread was meant for food and drink together, and it is certain that it is so wet that it quickly mildews. But bad as it is it is scarce and expensive. A bread ticket calls for three-quarters of a pound, the daily allotment per person when I left the last of August.