together with terrific tootings from the comb and the beating of half a hundred feet on the bare planks. My blood began to dance in my veins with the contagious excitement. Suddenly the man dropped down upon his stomach on the floor at the feet of his partner, and began jumping around like a huge broken-legged grasshopper upon his elbows and the ends of his toes! This extraordinary feat brought down the house in the wildest enthusiasm, and the uproar of shouting and singing drowned all the instruments except the comb, which still droned away like a Scottish bagpipe in its last agonies! Such singing, such dancing, and such excitement, I had never before witnessed. It swept away my self-possession like the blast of a trumpet sounding a charge. At last, the man, after dancing successively with all the ladies in the room, stopped apparently exhausted--and I have no doubt that he was--and with the perspiration rolling in streams down his face, went in search of some frozen cranberries to refresh himself after his violent exertion. To this dance, which is called the "Russki" (roo'-ski), succeeded another known as the "Cossack waltz," in which Dodd to my great astonishment promptly joined. I knew I could dance anything he could; so, inviting a lady in red and blue calico to participate, I took my place on the floor. The excitement was perfectly indescribable, when the two Americans began revolving swiftly around the room; the musicians became almost frantic in their endeavours to play faster, the man with the comb blew himself into a fit of coughing and had to sit down, and a regular tramp, tramp, tramp, from fifty or sixty feet, marked time to the music, together with encouraging shouts of "Vallai! Amerikansi! Heekh! Heekh! Heekh!" and the tumultuous singing of the whole crazy multitude. The pitch of excitement to which these natives work themselves up in the course of these dances is almost incredible, and it has a wonderfully inspiriting effect even upon a foreigner. Had I not been temporarily insane with unnatural enthusiasm, I should never have made myself ridiculous by attempting to dance that Cossack waltz. It is regarded as a great breach of etiquette in Siberia, after once getting upon the floor, to sit down until you have danced, or at least offered to dance, with all the ladies in the room; and if they are at all numerous, it is a very fatiguing sort of amusement. By the time Dodd and I finished we were ready to rush out-doors, sit down on a snow-bank, and eat frozen fish and cranberry hailstones by the quart. Our whole physical system seemed melting with fervent heat.