The house I lived in was in the middle of Moscow; and with the exception of the stoves, the internal arrangement seemed like that of most other dwellings in Europe. The Russian stoves, however, are, in fact, thick hollow party-walls, built of brick, and sometimes separating, or connecting, as many as three or four rooms, and heating them all from one common centre. The outer sides of these lofty intramural furnaces are usually faced with a kind of white porcelain, though in some houses they are papered like the rest of the wall, so that the presence of the stove is only known in summer by two or three apertures like port-holes, which have been made for the purpose of admitting the hot air, and which, when there is no heat within, are closed with round metal covers like the tops of canisters. Sometimes, especially in country houses, the stove, or _peitchka_ as it is called, is not only a wall, but a wall which, towards the bottom, projects so as to form a kind of dresser or sofa, and which the lazier of the inmates use not infrequently in the latter capacity. In the huts the _peitchka_ is almost invariably of this form; and the peasants not only lie and sleep upon it as a matter of course, but even get inside and use it as a bath. Not that they fill their stoves with water--that would be rather difficult. But the Russian bath is merely a room paved with stone slabs and heated like an oven, in which the bather stands to be rubbed and lathered, and to have buckets of water poured over him, or thrown at him, by naked attendants; and accordingly a stove makes an excellent bath on a small scale. As a general rule, every row of huts has one or more baths attached to it, which the inhabitants support by subscription; but when this is not the case, the peasant, after carefully raking out the ashes, creeps into the hot _peitchka_, and is soon bathed in his own perspiration. He would infallibly be baked alive but for the pailfuls of water with which he soon begins to cool his heated skin. Thanks, however, to this precaution, he issues from the fiery furnace uninjured, and, it is to be hoped, benefited. [Illustration: THE RED SQUARE, MOSCOW.] When a stove is being heated, the port-holes are kept carefully shut, to prevent the egress of carbonic-acid gas. But after the wood has become thoroughly charred, and every vestige of flame has disappeared, the chimney is closed on a level with the garret floor, the covers are removed from the apertures in the side of the stove, and the hot air is allowed to penetrate freely into the room; which, if enough wood has been put into the _peitchka_, and the lid of the chimney closes hermetically, will, by this one fire, be kept warm for twelve or fourteen hours.