There has always been a strange lure for me in names. “Mother Volga,” as the Russians call the largest and most romantic river in Europe, was one of the places in which I believed as one believes in fairies one never expects to see. The Russians speak its name with a caress. No other river in the world, unless it be the Nile, has been surrounded by so much story. The Volga is the great highway of Russia from Petrograd to the Caspian Sea. To Nizhni Novgorod, where the Volga and Oka rivers meet, the commerce of the world comes flowing. Here they hold the most famous of Russia’s sixteen hundred annual fairs. The fair lasts for forty days; and for ninety-nine summers rug merchants from Persia, trappers from Siberia, silk dealers from China, wool kings from Manchuria, Turks and Arabs, Gypsies and Caucasians, Eastern and Continental tradesmen of all kinds, have come as regularly as the hot breezes that blow off the lazy, sleepy Old Volga. The exotic color, the weird customs, the strange play of the children of this patch-quilt earth all gathered under the same piece of sky, have made it a prolonged fête day and night from beginning to end. Here, on the hundredth anniversary, we found the fair pathetically trying to pretend itself open. We drove through streets, miles and miles of streets, whose sides were packed solidly with bazaars. They were yellow-painted and green-roofed, as always, but padlocked doors told the story. The 200,000,000-ruble fair on the banks of the ancient river was virtually closed. In one of the main buildings a band tried hopelessly to rouse the spirits of the crowd; but the result was more gruesome than laughter at a funeral. There was little for sale: a sordid mass of tawdry trinkets made in Germany and Japan, a few sugarless sweetmeats--that was all. Our boat sailed at eight o’clock at night, picking its way between the twinkling red and green lights gathered at the meeting of the rivers. Before we went, we took an elevator to the top of the bluff to dine in an out-of-doors café. Food seemed quite as scarce here as in Petrograd, and even more expensive. We ordered some beef cutlets (the Russian equivalent of hamburg steak). We waited and we waited; they did not come. We enlisted the efforts of the head waiter, who poured an avalanche of words upon his assistants. Still they did not come. The hour of sailing drew nearer and nearer. We watched the clock, and, when there was not another second to spare, prepared to leave. The cutlets arrived. We wrapped them in paper napkins and took them with us. It was well we did; for war and revolution, whatever else it had done, had certainly robbed the Volga chefs of all their far-famed talents. I tried from six o’clock to eleven one night to persuade the cabin-boy to get me something to eat.