Russian Rambles

having made such bad terms for us, and meant it! I suspect that that was a very fair sample of the comparative terms obtained by natives and outsiders in all bargains.

It is one of those things at which one smiles or fumes, according to the force of the instinct for justice with which he has been blessed-or cursed-by nature. Nothing, unless it be a healthy, athletic conscience, is so wofully destructive of all happiness and comfort in this life as a keen sense of justice!

There are, it is true, persons in Russia who scorn to bargain as much as did the girl of the merchant class in one of Ostrovsky's famous comedies, who was so generous as to blush with shame for the people whom she heard trying to beat down exorbitant prices in the shops, or whom she saw taking their change. The merchant's motto is, 'A thing is worth all that can be got for it.' Consequently, it never occurs to him that even competition is a reason for being rational. One striking case of this in my own experience was provided by a hardware merchant, in whose shop I sought a spirit lamp. The lamps he showed me were not of the sort I wished, and the price struck me as exorbitant, although I was not informed as to that particular subject. I offered these suggestions to the fat merchant in a mild manner, and added that I would look elsewhere before deciding upon his wares.

'You will find none elsewhere,' roared the merchant-previously soft spoken as the proverbial sucking dove- through his bushy beard, in a voice which would have done credit to the proto-deacon of a cathedral. 'And not one kopek will I abate of my just price, yay Bogu! [God is my witness!] They cost me that sum; I am actually making you a present of them out of my profound respect for you, sudarynya! [He had called me Madame before that, but now he lowered my social rank to that of a merchant's wife, out of revenge.] And you will be pleased not to come back if you don't find a lamp to suit your peculiar taste, for I will not sell to you. I won't have people coming here and looking at things and then not buying!'

It was obviously my turn to retort, but I let the merchant have the last word-temporarily. In ten minutes another shopkeeper offered me lamps of identical quality and pattern at one half his price, and I purchased one, such as I wished, of a different design for a small sum extra. I may have been cheated, but, under the circumstances, I was satisfied.

Will it be believed? Bushybeard was lying in wait for me at the door, ready to receive me, wreathed in smiles which I can describe only by the detestable adjective 'affable,' as I took pains to pass his establishment on my way back. Then the spirit of mischief entered into me. I reciprocated his smiles and said: 'Ivan Baburin, at shop No. 8, round the corner, has dozens of lamps such as you deal in, for half the price of yours. You might be able to get them even cheaper, if you know how to haggle well. But I'm afraid you don't, for you seem to have been horribly cheated in your last trade, when you bought your present stock at the price you mentioned. How could any one have the conscience to rob an honest, innocent man like you so dreadfully?'

He looked dazed, and the last time I cast a furtive glance behind me he had not recovered sufficiently to dash after me and overwhelm me with protestations of his uprightness, yay Bogu! and other lingual cascades.

From the zest with which I have beheld a shopman and a customer waste half an hour chaffering an article up and down five kopeks (two and a half cents or less), I am convinced that they enjoy the excitement of it, and that time is cheap enough with them to allow them to indulge in this exhilarating practice.

What is the remedy for this state of things? How are foreigners, who pride themselves on never giving more than the value of an article, to protect themselves? There is no remedy, I should say. One must haggle, haggle, haggle, and submit. Guides are useless and worse, as they probably share in the shopkeeper's profit, and so raise prices. Recommendations of shops from guides or hotels are to be disregarded. Not that they are worthless,-quite the reverse; only their value does not accrue to the stranger, but to the other parties. It may well be, as veteran travelers affirm, that one is compelled to contribute to this mutual benefit association in any case; but there is a sort of satisfaction after all in imagining that one is a free and independent being, and going to destruction in his own way, unguided, while he gets a little amusement out of his own shearing.

Any one who really likes bargaining will get his fill in Russia, every time he sets foot out of doors, if he wishes merely to take a ride. There are days, it is true, when all the cabmen in town seem to have entered into a league and agreed to demand a ruble for a drive of half a dozen blocks; and again, though rarely, they will offer to carry one miles for one fifth of that sum, which is equally unreasonable in the other direction. In either case one has his bargaining sport, at one end of the journey or the other. I find among my notes an illustration of this operation, which, however, falls far short of a conversation which I once overheard between a lower-class official and an izvostchik, who could not come to terms. It ended in the uniformed official exclaiming: 'You ask too much. I'll use my own horses,' raising a large foot, and waving it gently at the cabmen.

'Home-made!' (literally, 'self-grown') retorted one izvostchik. The rival bidders for custom shrieked with laughter at his wit, the official fled, and I tried in vain-wonderful to relate-to get the attention of the group and offer them a fresh opportunity for discussion by trying to hire one of them.

My note-book furnishes the following: 'If anybody wants a merry izvostchik, with a stylish flourishing red beard, I can supply him. I do not own the man at present, but he has announced his firm intention of accompanying me to America. I asked him how he would get along without knowing the language?

''I'd serve you forever!' said he.

''How could I send you on an errand?' said I.

''I'd serve you forever!' said he.

'That was the answer to every objection on my part. He and a black-haired izvostchik have a fight for my custom nearly every time I go out. Fighting for custom-in words-is the regular thing, but the way these men do it convulses with laughter everybody within hearing, which is at least half a block. It is the fashion here to take an interest in chafferings with cabmen and in other street scenes.

''She's to ride with me!' shouts one. 'Barynya, I drove you to Vasily Island one day, you remember!' 'She's going with me; you get out!' yells the other. 'She drove on the Nevsky with me long before she ever saw you; didn't you, barynya? and the Liteinaya,' and so on till he has enumerated more streets than I have ever heard of. 'And we're old, old friends, aren't we, barynya? And look at my be-e-autiful horse!'

''Your horse looks like a soiled and faded glove,' I retort, 'and I won't have you fight over me. Settle it between yourselves,' and I walk off or take another man, neither proceeding being favorably regarded. If any one will rid me of Redbeard I will sell him for his passage-money to America. I am also open to offers for Blackbeard, as he has announced his intention of lying in wait for me at the door every day, as a cat sits before a mouse's hole.' Vanka (the generic name for all izvostchiki) gets about four dollars or four dollars and a half a month from his employer, when he does not own his equipage. In return he is obliged to hand in about a dollar and a quarter a day on ordinary occasions, a dollar and a half on the days preceding great festivals, and two dollars and a half on festival days. If he does not contrive to extract the necessary amount from his fares, his employer extracts it from his wages, in the shape of a fine. The men told me this. As there are no fixed rates in the great cities, a bargain must be struck every time, which begins by the man demanding twice or thrice the proper price, and ends in your paying it if you are not familiar with accepted standards and distances, and in selling yourself at open-air auction to the lowest bidder, acting as your own auctioneer, in case you are conversant with matters in general.

Foreigners can also study the bargaining process at its best-or worst-in the purchase of furs. The Neva freezes over, as a rule, about the middle of November, and snow comes to stay, after occasional light flurries in September and October, a little later. Sometimes, however, the river closes as early as the end of September, or as late as within a few days of Christmas. Or the rain, which begins in October, continues at intervals into the month of January. The price of food goes up, frozen provisions for the poorer classes spoil, and more suffering and illness ensue than when the normal Arctic winter prevails. In spite of the cold, one is far more comfortable than in warmer climes. The 'stone' houses are built with double walls, three or four feet apart, of brick or rubble covered with mastic. The space between the walls is filled in, and, in the newer buildings, apertures with ventilators near the ceilings take the place of movable panes in the double windows. The space between the windows is filled with a deep layer of sand, in which are set small tubes of salt to keep the glass clear, and a layer of snowy cotton wadding on top makes a warm and appropriate finish. The lower classes like to decorate their wadding with dried grasses, colored paper, and brilliant odds and ends, in a sort of toy-garden arrangement. The cracks of the windows are filled with putty or some other solid composition, over which are pasted broad strips of coarse white linen. The India rubber and other plants which seem so inappropriately placed, in view of the brief and scant winter light, in reality serve two purposes-that of decoration and that of keeping people at a respectful distance from the windows,