opportunities of eating and drinking. In Russia time is not money; if
it were, nearly all the subjects of the Tsar would always have a large
stock of ready money on hand, and would often have great difficulty in
spending it. In reality, be it parenthetically remarked, a Russian with
a superabundance of ready money is a phenomenon rarely met with in real
life.

In conveying passengers at the rate of from fifteen to thirty miles an
hour, the railway companies do at least all that they promise; but in
one very important respect they do not always strictly fulfil their
engagements. The traveller takes a ticket for a certain town, and on
arriving at what he imagines to be his destination, he may find merely a
railway-station surrounded by fields. On making inquiries, he discovers,
to his disappointment, that the station is by no means identical with
the town bearing the same name, and that the railway has fallen several
miles short of fulfilling the bargain, as he understood the terms of
the contract. Indeed, it might almost be said that as a general rule
railways in Russia, like camel-drivers in certain Eastern countries,
studiously avoid the towns. This seems at first a strange fact. It is
possible to conceive that the Bedouin is so enamoured of tent life and
nomadic habits that he shuns a town as he would a man-trap; but surely
civil engineers and railway contractors have no such dread of brick and
mortar. The true reason, I suspect, is that land within or immediately
beyond the municipal barrier is relatively dear, and that the
railways, being completely beyond the invigorating influence of healthy
competition, can afford to look upon the comfort and convenience of
passengers as a secondary consideration. Gradually, it is true, this
state of things is being improved by private initiative. As the railways
refuse to come to the towns, the towns are extending towards the
railways, and already some prophets are found bold enough to predict