That evening I went to a restaurant at which there was a musical performance. I fell into conversation with a young merchant sitting at the next table, and he said to me after we had had some conversation, “You are, I suppose, from the Caucasus.” I said “No.” We talked of other things, the Far East among other topics. He then exclaimed: “You are, I suppose, from the Far East.” I again said “No,” and we again talked of other things. He had some friends with him who joined in the conversation, and they were consumed with curiosity as to whence I had come, and I told them they could guess. They guessed various places, such as Archangel, Irkutsk, Warsaw, and Saghalien, and at last one of them cried out with joy: “I know what place you belong to; you are a native of Nijni.” They went away triumphant. Their place was taken by a very old merchant, a rugged, grey-headed, bearded, peasant merchant. He contemplated the singing and dancing which was taking place on the stage for some time, and then he said to me, “Don’t you wish you were twenty years younger?” I said I did, but I did not think that I should in that case be better equipped for this particular kind of entertainment, as I should be only twelve years old. “Impossible,” said the old man indignantly. “You are quite bald, and bear every sign of old age.” I left Nijni on the wrong steamer--that is to say, by a line I did not mean to patronise because I knew it was the worst. There was no help for it, because my passport was not ready in time. I took a first-class cabin on a big steamer full of children with their nurses and parents. The children ran about the cabin all day long without stopping. Children, I notice, are the same all over the world; they play the same games: they make the same noise. In this case there were five sisters and a small brother. What reminded me much of all children in general and of my own experience as a child in particular was that the boy suddenly began to howl because his sisters wouldn’t let him play with them; and he cried out, “I want to play too,” and the sisters, when the matter was finally brought before an arbitration court of parents, who were playing cards, said that the boy made all games impossible. Also there were three nurses in the cabin, who, whatever the children did, told them not to do it, and every now and then one heard familiar phrases such as “Don’t sit on the oilcloth with your bare legs,” “Don’t lean out of the window with that cold of yours.” The passengers on the boat were uninteresting.