At the station-house we were reminded at once that we were in a strange land, by the peculiar costume of the porters and drivers, who were as numerous and noisy as at home. They wore low-crown hats, with bevelled rims; long coats reaching to the feet, and a belt about their loins. They were as clamorous for hire as in more civilized countries, but they pulled and hauled less. It was easy to see that the hand of government was upon this most ungovernable class of men. We found the same kind of omnibuses that run in our own streets, and on the one inscribed with the name of the hotel to which we were bound we took our seats, and were soon riding over the roughest paved streets that ever disgraced a city. For a long series of years St. Petersburg was unpaved. At length an imperial decree was issued that every vehicle coming into the city should bring a certain number of stones to be left for paving. If each carriage had dumped its load, without regard to size or order, just where it happened, the result would have been about the same as we found and felt the state of the streets to be, as we were bounced and tumbled on our way to the Hôtel de France. [Illustration: SCENE AT RAILWAY STATION.] The manager of the hotel bade us welcome in good English. We were grimed with the dust of thirty hours’ steady railroad travel, and the luxury of a bath was more enjoyable than bed or board. The Russian is a very different bath from the Turkish, where to the preliminaries of warm air to set the system into a perspiration is added the thorough and plentiful scrubbing with hot water, poured on mercilessly. The Russian is the vapor bath only, and its effect is to open all the pores of the skin, to empty them completely as the streams of perspiration gush from every little mouth, and to incite a pleasurable languor, when all sense of weariness, soreness, or stiffness is gradually steamed away. The Russian dinner that followed was of the best: soup, fish, cutlet, roast beef, partridges, vegetables, and varied dessert. Wines or not, as you choose to order. To see a city whose language is not one of your accomplishments, you must have a guide, a _commissionaire_, a _valet de place_. Now we knew precious little of the Russ. We had picked up a little Polish—mark, I do not say polish—at Warsaw, and had startled the natives by sudden outbreaks in what we supposed to be perfectly proper language, but which only served to awaken their pity or make them laugh; but the Russian is another thing, and not expecting to spend a winter here, nor to study the literature of the country, we had given no time to the language. We must have some one to be our mouth to the people, somebody who could answer a thousand questions out of his own stores of information, or serve as our interpreter when we attempted to get it out of others.