Three blocks from the station I came upon a huge ornate gray building, rambling around three sides of a court. There was an air of elegance about the place, and on one of the doors was a small brass sign, which looked as though it might be designed for people who could read. I picked out the letters one by one, trying frantically to remember whether the English _r_ was the Russian _p_ or vice versa. The building had the look of a hotel. It might as easily have been a theater, or a palace, or the police-station, for all the intelligence those strange letters conveyed to me. I was just screwing up my courage to the point of entering when an _izvostchik_ drove up to the door, and Count Tolstoy and the lost wife stepped out. He came quickly to the rescue. “Yes, yes, this is the Select Hotel,” he said. “If you will step inside I will ask if there is a room for you, and perhaps you would like to take my _izvostchik_ back to the station for your baggage. But first the passportist must have your passport.” Five minutes later I was back at the depot, announcing the news to the astounded group, and gathering the weary women and the “many luggages” into the ramshackle old carriage. At six o’clock the wild pigeons in the courtyard sang me to sleep. I awoke with a start six hours later. “Where am I?” I asked. “In Petrograd,” I answered myself--“in Petrograd, in the heart of the Revolution.” The midday sun, creeping through the window of my tiny room, made all its imperfections pitifully plain. I was grateful to that room as to a stranger who had found me homeless and opened her door, but I wanted to be quickly away, out into the exciting promise of the blue-and-gold day. I dressed hurriedly and ran through a stack of letters of introduction, but discarded them all. On a slip of paper I found an address, “Moika 64.” It was the home of a newspaper man--a fellow correspondent, an old friend. On this day I needed an old friend. I would find Moika 64, and on the way I would stop for breakfast at the Hotel Europe. It was all quite simple, you see. Where were those threatening dangers poured like poison into my ears? Petrograd was like any other place. The clerk at the desk answered my simple English request for directions with a shake of his head and a volley of Russian, from which I fled in laughing despair. Once outside, I made my way to that wide street rejected earlier in the morning. There was an air of importance about it, something that made me feel it led to that nebulous locality which in every city we call “uptown.” A dozen street-cars passed me. They were crowded with soldiers who filled seats, aisles, and platforms, and overflowed on to the steps. I hailed one, and squirmed my way through the faded uniforms to the woman conductor in blue broadcloth and gold buttons. “Pazhal’sta, Hotel Europe?” I said, exhausting in one breath half of my entire Russian vocabulary.