It was on November 18th that the snow came. In the morning we woke to window-ledges heaped white, and snowflakes falling so whirling thick that it was impossible to see ten feet ahead. The mud was gone; in a twinkling the gloomy city became white, dazzling. The _droshki_ with their padded coachmen turned into sleights, bounding along the uneven street at headlong speed, their drivers’ beards stiff and frozen…. In spite of Revolution, all Russia plunging dizzily into the unknown and terrible future, joy swept the city with the coming of the snow. Everybody was smiling; people ran into the streets, holding out their arms to the soft, falling flakes, laughing. Hidden was all the greyness; only the gold and coloured spires and cupolas, with heightened barbaric splendour, gleamed through the white snow. Even the sun came out, pale and watery, at noon. The colds and rheumatism of the rainy months vanished. The life of the city grew gay, and the very Revolution ran swifter…. I sat one evening in a _traktir_—a kind of lower-class inn—across the street from the gates of Smolny; a low-ceilinged, loud place called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” much frequented by Red Guards. They crowded it now, packed close around the little tables with their dirty table-cloths and enormous china tea-pots, filling the place with foul cigarette-smoke, while the harassed waiters ran about crying _“Seichass! Seichass!_ In a minute! Right away!” In one corner sat a man in the uniform of a captain, addressing the assembly, which interrupted him at every few words. “You are no better than murderers!” he cried. “Shooting down your Russian brothers on the streets!” “When did we do that?” asked a worker. “Last Sunday you did it, when the _yunkers_—” “Well, didn’t they shoot us?” One man exhibited his arm in a sling. “Haven’t I got something to remember them by, the devils?” The captain shouted at the top of his voice. “You should remain neutral! You should remain neutral! Who are you to destroy the legal Government? Who is Lenin? A German—” “Who are you? A counter-revolutionist! A provocator!” they bellowed at him. When he could make himself heard the captain stood up. “All right!” said he. “You call yourselves the people of Russia. But you’re _not_ the people of Russia. The _peasants_ are the people of Russia. Wait until the peasants—” “Yes,” they cried, “wait until the peasants speak. We know what the peasants will say…. Aren’t they workingmen like ourselves?”