basket, you need not hesitate to take it out at once, for the waiter
will not feel at all aggrieved or astonished at your doing nothing "for
the good of the house." The twenty or twenty-five kopeks that you pay
for the samovar--teapot, tumbler, saucer, spoon, and slop-basin being
included under the generic term pribor--frees you from all corkage and
similar dues.

These and other remnants of old customs are now rapidly disappearing,
and will, doubtless, in a very few years be things of the past--things
to be picked up in out-of-the-way corners, and chronicled by social
archaeology; but they are still to be found in towns not unknown to
Western Europe.

Many of these old customs, and especially the old method of travelling,
may be studied in their pristine purity throughout a great part of the
country. Though railway construction has been pushed forward with great
energy during the last forty years, there are still vast regions where
the ancient solitudes have never been disturbed by the shrill whistle
of the locomotive, and roads have remained in their primitive condition.
Even in the central provinces one may still travel hundreds of miles
without ever encountering anything that recalls the name of Macadam.

If popular rumour is to be trusted, there is somewhere in the Highlands
of Scotland, by the side of a turnpike, a large stone bearing the
following doggerel inscription:


"If you had seen this road before it was made, You'd lift up your hands
and bless General Wade."