amiability was wasted so far as I was concerned.

It would seem to the ordinary reader that the police would be able to
lay hands on a man, when he was wanted, with tolerable promptness and
accuracy, after all the details which the law requires in these "address
tickets," as the local passports are called, had been duly furnished.
But I remember one case among several which impressed me as instructive
and amusing. The newspapers told the tale, which ran somewhat as
follows: A wealthy woman of position, residing in one of the best
quarters of St. Petersburg, hired a prepossessing young lackey as one of
her large staff of domestics. Shortly after his advent, many articles of
value began to disappear. Finally, suspicion having turned on this
lackey, he also disappeared, and the police undertook to find him. It
then became apparent that the fellow had used a false passport and
address, and was not to be found where he was inscribed. He caused an
exciting chase. This ended in the discovery of a regular robbers' nest,
where a large number of false passports were captured, the prepossessing
lackey and his friends having abandoned them in their attempt to escape.
The papers were also constantly remarking on the use made by peasant men
of their passports. The wife is inscribed on the husband's "document,"
separate passports for wives being, as a rule, difficult of attainment
in the lower classes. The peasants are thus able, and often willing, to
control their wives' places of residence and movements, and preserve
entire liberty of action for themselves, since their consent is required
for the separate passport, or for the wives' movements on the common
passport. In such cases the passport does become an instrument of
oppression, from either the Occidental or the Oriental point of view.

As for the stories told by travelers of officious meddling by the police
on their arrival in Russia, and of their footsteps being dogged, I have