Snow piled up in mountains and valleys on the streets, and driving an _izvostchik_ down the Nevsky was like riding on a roller-coaster. Sometimes the street-cars ran, but more often the snow was heaped so high that the tracks were impassable. Sometimes, when they were cleared for action, there was not sufficient coal to operate the electric plants. About half of the cars in Moscow and Petrograd were out of commission for lack of repairs, and thousands of engines and freight-cars were piled upon the sidings in the railroad yards. But for the faithfulness of the railroad employees, Russia’s condition must have been even worse. Repeatedly they put off their demands for higher wages because they were persuaded by each group of changing powers that the Revolution would suffer. The switchmen’s families were without the barest necessities as the price of food went up and the value of the ruble went down. Many times the men threatened strikes, but always their loyalty to the Revolution won the day and the strike would be postponed. Petrograd, in the closing days of January, became more and more bleak. The clanging swords and the clicking spurs of officers filing back and forth across the marble lobby in the War Hotel were gone. The hotel had been taken over by the People’s Commissaries. In the dining-room I sat down to frugal meals with peasants, workmen, soldiers, agitators, and poets. Food was daily less plentiful. Cabbage soup, black bread, and _rabchik_, a wild bird for which we all acquired a deathless hatred, made up the daily menu. Only the glasses of steaming tea saved us from gastronomic despair. The supply of knives, forks, and spoons, dwindling ever since the beginning of the war, was now almost exhausted. Frequently a single knife served instead of a teaspoon for an entire table. Often we waited for tea until the people across the room finished with their glasses. Most of the time we were in total darkness. There were no lamps or candles in the halls, and we groped our way up the dark staircases, bumping blindly into one another’s arms. There was an unhappy affinity between the electric light, the elevator, and the water system. They all stopped together. Frequently my face remained unwashed until the late afternoon, when I went to the Hotel Europe for tea. The Europe proudly boasted its own electric plant, and it was still possible to live there in comparative comfort and even luxury. The waiters in the War Hotel complained that there was no money to buy food. A few of them, used to the generous tips of pre-revolutionary days, bemoaned the fall of the monarchy and prayed for the coming of the Germans. They were not the only ones who awaited Prussian deliverance. Most of the upper-class Russians no longer made any attempt to hide their willingness to have the Germans come to Petrograd.