There is another trait of the Goriouns to record--their clannishness. In almost every government of the empire they are organized as compactly as a trade-union, and even in St. Petersburg, strict as the police are, they have their peculiar _artel_. It was impossible for me to become a member of these corporations. I should have had to knuckle down very submissively to some ataman, or bully, and this I was not willing to do. It would also have been necessary to learn the different dialects, and I had all I could do to make use of my small Russian vocabulary. Each artel has its own peculiar lingo, and it is almost as hard to learn as Russian itself. Even the native inhabitants know very little about such dialects, and the students who traveled with me had as much difficulty as I did in understanding them. Fortunately, however, the tramps can also speak Russian, and we generally conversed with them in this language. I give here what I learned about their various artels, but it is in no sense an exhaustive report. There are many of which I heard nothing, and it would take a book to describe them all. In Moscow one of the most notorious clans is the so-called "Gouslitzki," or "Old Believers," who came originally from the district of Bogorodsk. They are mixed up with the regular working population of the town and have no particular sign by which a stranger could distinguish them, but their business is entirely criminal. They counterfeit money, forge passports and baptismal certificates, beg and steal, and the police have to keep a continual watch over them. Ostensibly their business is manufacturing trinkets, colored images, and toys, but these are merely subterfuges to gain them the privilege of standing on the sidewalks as hawkers. In their lodging-houses--and there are several supported by them alone--they live under the direction of a head man whom they must obey, and a certain percentage of their day's earnings has to be contributed to a common fund. From time to time this fund is divided equally among all the members of the organization, but it is almost immediately given back as "renewed stock." The Gouslitzki are unlike most of their class in being very parsimonious, and they have the reputation of drinking very little--some not at all. They speak two languages, Russian and a dialect which is practically their mother-tongue. They have been settled in Moscow for generations, and the police find it impossible to drive them out.