The tavern, which was a long, low log structure, built on the same general plan as the houses in the village, was crowded with revellers and steaming with the fumes of beer. Men were standing about, swinging their arms and shouting at each other at the top of their lungs, and almost every one of them was drunk. Several of the men present, including the proprietor, had been, as I learned, in America. One of them, who could speak a few words of English, gave us an especially hearty welcome. Some of the money which pours into Poland from America had reached even this remote corner of the country, it seemed. I asked the proprietor, who had lived in Newark, N.J., for a time and spoke a little English, whether he liked this part of the world better than America. "It is easier to live here," he said. Then added, "when you have a little money." "But when you haven't any money?" I suggested. He shrugged his shoulders. "Then go to America," he said. He told me a good deal of land had been purchased in this part of the country with money earned in America. Land was worth from 500 to 1,000 guilder per "yoke," which is about $100 to $200 per acre, a very large sum in a country where wages are, perhaps, not more than 25 or 50 cents a day. At nightfall we returned to Tuchow, which appeared to be a typical market town. The town is arranged, like many of our country villages in the South, around a large open square. In the centre of this square is a great covered well, from which the town draws its water. Four pumps, with long twisted iron handles, arranged in a circle about the well, serve to draw the water to the surface. Around the four corners of this square are the tradesmen's shops, most of them with low, thatched roofs projecting over the sidewalk to form a cover for the walk in front of the shops, and frequently supported, on the side toward the street, by curiously carved wooden posts. The little shops were not more than six or eight feet wide. There was usually one little room in front which was for the store, and another little room back in which the shopkeeper lived. As the ceilings were usually very low and the windows under the wide projecting roofs were very small, it made everything appear very snug and tight, somewhat as if every building were holding on to all that it contained with both arms. It all looked very interesting but very quaint and old-fashioned. I noticed, however, that there were one or two new brick buildings in the town, and the evening we arrived every one was in great excitement over the installation in the public square of two new electric lights, the first, I suspect, that had been seen in that part of the country. It was evident that in spite of the apparent solidity and antiquity that things were changing here as elsewhere. CHAPTER XV A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE