two years, and much praised in America by the indiscriminating as a
truthful picture of life. The whole story hung upon the great musical
talent of the youthful hero. The hero skated to church through the
streets, gazed down the long aisle where the worshipers were assembled
(presumably in pews), ascended to the organ gallery, sang an impromptu
solo with trills and embellishments, was taken in hand by the enraptured
organist who had played there for thirty years, and developed into a
great composer. Omitting a mass of other absurdities scattered through
the book, I will criticise this crucial point. There are no organs or
organists in Russia; there are no pews, or aisles, or galleries for the
choir, and there are never any trills or embellishments in the church
music. A boy could skate to church in New York more readily than in
Moscow, where such a thing was never seen, and where they are not
educated up to roller skates. Lastly, as the church specified, St.
Vasily, consists of a nest of small churches connected by narrow,
labyrinthine corridors, and is approached from the street up two flights
of low-ceiled stairs, it is an impossibility that the boy should have
viewed the "aisle" and assembled congregation from his skates at the
door. That is a fair specimen of the distortions of facts which I am
constantly encountering.

It has seemed to me that there is room for a book which shall impart an
idea of a few of the ordinary conditions of life and of the characters
of the inhabitants, illustrated by apposite anecdotes from my personal
experience. For this purpose, a collection of detached pictures is
better than a continuous narrative of travel.

I am told that I must abuse Russia, if I wish to be popular in America.
Why, is more than I or my Russian friends can understand. Perhaps it
arises from the peculiar fact that people find it more interesting to