I frequently stopped to listen to the people in the queues, and to get a better idea of their attitude toward the various governments I sent Marya, my interpreter, to stand in the lines. Marya was a Russian student who at eighteen had more knowledge stored away in her little black head than the Western woman of forty. She told me that the character of the queues changed with the goods the people were buying; but the people themselves were always in opposition to the government. Each time a new government came in, they would say, “Maybe they will abolish the queues”; but a few days later, when the lines remained the same, they declared the new Cabinet was no better than the old. “There is a Turkish saying,” said Marya, “that it is no good for the world to be wide if my shoes are too narrow; and the women say: ‘It is no good for the government to be Socialist if the queues grow longer every day.’” The bread queues were made up of working-women, servants, a few students, and school-children. The school-children brought their books and studied their lessons. When it was not too cold, the women brought needlework or crochet. A few read newspapers for the first time in their lives, having had no time at home. The high cost of living was the chief topic of discussion, and politics had little place here. As Marya wisely said: “Mothers who are worrying about their babies left at home alone, and who are afraid to get no bread for them, don’t care for politics.” The tobacco queues were made up largely of soldiers who were buying to sell again. They expected to make money, so their mood was better, and they laughed and joked as they stood waiting. The chocolate queues were composed of men and women of the bourgeoisie who could afford to buy sweets. Conversation here was about the disorganization of the army, the roughness of the soldiers, their want of good manners, the Socialism that would ruin Russia, the impossibility of living in Petrograd now, and frequently a regret for the days of the régime, “when, at least, we had some order.” The kerosene queues were like the bread queues. They were made up of poor people letting rooms without electricity. The conversation was of hard times--perhaps of a grandmother who “eats much, but is not even able to stand in a queue.” The theater-ticket queues, which became smaller as the bread lines grew larger, were composed of students and re-sellers. The students chatted gaily of the soprano of Z., or the feet of the ballerina X. The speculators did not talk at all, and the students treated them rather disdainfully.