A few glasses of tea drawn from a samovar drive away the last traces of the morning frost, and, wrapped in fur coats, and with a feeling like that succeeding an adventure crowned with victory, we for the first time stroll along a Russian railway platform. We again enter the coupé, now in charge of Russian attendants. A long, monotonous ride through level, swampy country, over which there slowly floats the gray vapor of the locomotive, finally brings us at dusk to Warsaw. Nothing oppresses the spirit more deeply than such a ten-hour monotony of leaden-gray skies, dirty-gray snow, and a thick, gray, smoky mist. The gendarmes in gray coats at the infrequent stations; the greasy Jews with their long coats of uncertain color; the secret police with their questionable gentility, never absent--all these are not calculated to relieve the painful feeling of sadness and dreariness. We were out of humor when we reached Warsaw. We believed that we had the right to expect crisp winter weather in Russia and were disappointed to find only mud and humidity. But perhaps Warsaw is not really Russia? Or are we still in central Europe? The evening at the hotel and the following days conclusively proved to us that Warsaw, indeed all Poland, with its climate, its civilization, its religion, and--its ideas, does not belong, in the real sense of the term, to Russia; that the isotherm which connects Russia proper with other regions of the same mean temperature runs considerably north of Poland. A Buckle would be puzzled by this fact alone. The dwellers could not be of the same race here nor the same system be possible. When, nevertheless, only one power rules here, it does so by violence and in spite of natural laws; it must give rise to resentment and can give no promise of permanence. On my return journey from the heart of Russia I purposely suppressed the first impression gained by me in Warsaw, but when I was there again this impression reasserted itself even more strongly. Warsaw is no more Russia than Lemberg or Dresden, in spite of the overpowering Russian churches, in spite of the innumerable Russian officers and soldiers, in spite of the obligatory Russian signs on the stores, which, with some experience, may be deciphered as "Chajim Berlinerblau," or something similar. Aside from its jargon-speaking Jews, Warsaw is pre-eminently a Catholic city, and its entire civilization is Roman Catholic. Its very situation is striking. Approaching it from the Vistula, one may see where the city had built its defences--towards the east! Thence came the enemy, the Mongol, the Russian. From the east there came barbarism and oppression, therefore the fortifications and walls were built on the river-bank commanding the valley of the Vistula, through which alone an enemy could come. From the west came only the blessings of civilization and religion, with its messengers that once were harbingers of civilization, and which, perhaps, still remain such in this region.