What is the remedy for this state of things? How are foreigners, who pride themselves on never giving more than the value of an article, to protect themselves? There is no remedy, I should say. One must haggle, haggle, haggle, and submit. Guides are useless and worse, as they probably share in the shopkeeper's profit, and so raise prices. Recommendations of shops from guides or hotels are to be disregarded. Not that they are worthless,--quite the reverse; only their value does not accrue to the stranger, but to the other parties. It may well be, as veteran travelers affirm, that one is compelled to contribute to this mutual benefit association in any case; but there is a sort of satisfaction after all in imagining that one is a free and independent being, and going to destruction in his own way, unguided, while he gets a little amusement out of his own shearing. Any one who really likes bargaining will get his fill in Russia, every time he sets foot out of doors, if he wishes merely to take a ride. There are days, it is true, when all the cabmen in town seem to have entered into a league and agreed to demand a ruble for a drive of half a dozen blocks; and again, though rarely, they will offer to carry one miles for one fifth of that sum, which is equally unreasonable in the other direction. In either case one has his bargaining sport, at one end of the journey or the other. I find among my notes an illustration of this operation, which, however, falls far short of a conversation which I once overheard between a lower-class official and an _izvostchik_, who could not come to terms. It ended in the uniformed official exclaiming: "You ask too much. I'll use my own horses," raising a large foot, and waving it gently at the cabmen. "Home-made!" (literally, "self-grown") retorted one _izvostchik_. The rival bidders for custom shrieked with laughter at his wit, the official fled, and I tried in vain--wonderful to relate--to get the attention of the group and offer them a fresh opportunity for discussion by trying to hire one of them. My note-book furnishes the following: "If anybody wants a merry _izvostchik_, with a stylish flourishing red beard, I can supply him. I do not own the man at present, but he has announced his firm intention of accompanying me to America. I asked him how he would get along without knowing the language? "'I'd serve you forever!' said he. "'How could I send you on an errand?' said I. "'I'd serve you forever!' said he. "That was the answer to every objection on my part. He and a black-haired _izvostchik_ have a fight for my custom nearly every time I go out. Fighting for custom--in words--is the regular thing, but the way these men do it convulses with laughter everybody within hearing, which is at least half a block. It is the fashion here to take an interest in chafferings with cabmen and in other street scenes.