Comfortably ensconced and sipping one’s tea, one can leisurely, Russian fashion, think of the most amusing method of passing the time. It is getting on toward evening; for the day fades early here. To-morrow is soon enough to look at things and distribute letters of introduction. The beverage has also blighted the appetite. Perhaps a light supper and an early couch would be wise. The latter in the far room looks singularly unpromising, but, “_Nietchevo!_” It is rather early for dinner or supper, but what of that? As an elusive New York politician used to say to each of the office-seekers who came to ask his influence for nominations, “If you want it, there is no reason why you should not have it.” We will try another summons of the waiter. Up he comes with the bill of fare printed in Russian and alleged French. Perhaps some eggs would be good. You decide upon them to begin with, and you will have them poached. “_Gaspadine_,” he says, “the eggs to-day cannot be poached. Will you not have an omelette instead?” On second thoughts we will not have eggs at all this time; we will have a sterlet, a small steak, and a compote. He goes off to the nether regions again. A long time passes, but at length he returns with the sterlet, its chisel-shaped nose piercing its tail in true Siberian style. White creamy butter and Franzoski kleb, white bread, round out the course. The steak is excellent and the canned fruit is satisfying, eaten beside the singing samovar in the great room of the main hotel of Irkutsk. Half a dozen letters pass the next hours until it is time to sleep. They are written on the big desk beneath the drop-light, with a glass of tea at one’s elbow in warm cosy comfort. The place is rather warm, and without any apparent source of heat, for there are no registers or gratings of obvious instrumentality. A search of elimination, like the game in which one is warm, warmer, very hot, leads at length to a rounded corner of porcelain built into the wall, of which only a curved segment shows in an angle of the room. Further inspection reveals that it is a big cylindrical stove fed by somebody in the hallway, and so arranged as to warm two adjoining rooms. In mitigation of the fire-tender’s zeal, we decide to open a window. Perhaps with an hydraulic jack this might be possible; but to manual labor it is not. A single pane of the inner window, however, swings back, and then we can open a similar pane in the outer window, leaving a hole as big as the port of a ship. It is sufficient in this weather. Some further corridor-shouting, produces, in due time, sheets and blankets, and presently we lie down on the straw mattress in the little wooden-bottomed box called a bed. “_Spacoine notche_,” the attendant calls, and without trace of irony.