This costs at the rate of ten kopecks a pound. It used to be three and a half kopecks a pound, and good bread, too. Butter, when it can be bought at all, was three rubles a pound, about a dollar. Excellent butter a year or two ago was less than fifty kopecks a pound, for Russia was rapidly becoming a dairy country. Veal, and veal is about the only meat to be had, was nearly a dollar a pound. Feed for cattle is so scarce and so expensive that cows are not allowed to grow into beef size, hence the prevalence of veal. Chickens may vary the menu, if you can afford to pay from three dollars upward. You could buy only a short-weight half pound of meat a day per person, except for the Sunday dinner, when a pound was allowed. Even at the Hotel Militaire, where I lived most of the time, and where the food supply came from government sources, we had veal or its derivatives, hash, croquettes, etc., five days in the week. Sometimes they offered what they called beef, but it wasn’t. It was horsemeat, coarse and strong. Once a week or so we had chicken, a welcome change. When August came we began to have game, grouse of various kinds mostly. Game is very plentiful in Russia and Finland this year, because since the war men have hunted only one another. But game, which is a treat when you have it occasionally, is a punishment when you have it more than once or so a week. You detest it when it appears on the table three times a week, and if it appears oftener you choose a meatless day as an alternative. Coffee was about a dollar and a half a pound, not so bad, and tea was even more moderate in price. What the Russian people would do if the tea gave out I cannot imagine. Everybody drinks tea, scalding hot, several times a day. Even the babies drink tea, and it is a fact that in the best babies’ hospital I saw in Russia the head nurse proudly showed me, in a hot water table, a whole row of nursing bottles full of tea for the sick babies’ evening repast. Tea they still have, but they are almost out of sugar to go with it. In a hotel or restaurant they serve you with three very tiny lumps of sugar with each glass of tea, and that is all you can have. If for any reason you do not use all your sugar you put it in your pocket. You do this whether you keep house or not, because you can’t buy much candy, and when meat is scarce everybody craves sweets.