to Moscow, from Moscow to Vilna, from Vilna to Berlin, from Berlin to
Munich; there are fragments of Russian lacquered wooden bowls, wrecked
cigar-boxes, piles of dingy handbills left over from the last half-yearly
advertisement, a crazy Turkish narghile, the broken stem of a chibouque,
an old hat and an odd boot, besides irregularly shaped parcels, wrapped in
crumpled brown paper and half buried in dust. Upon the other shelves are
arranged more neatly rows of tin boxes with locks, and reams of still
uncut cigarette paper, some white, some straw-coloured.

Round about the room are the seats of the workers. One man alone is
standing at his task, a man with a dark, Cossack face, high cheek-bones,
honest, gleaming black eyes, straggling hair and ragged beard. In his
shirt-sleeves, his arms bare to the elbow, he handles the heavy swivel
knife, pressing the package of carefully arranged leaves forward and under
the blade by almost imperceptible degrees. It is one of the most delicate
operations in the art, and the man has an especial gift for the work. So
sensitive is his strong right hand that as the knife cuts through the
thick pile he can detect the presence of a scrap of thin paper amongst the
tobacco, and not a bit of hardened stem or a twisted leaf escapes him. It
is very hard work, even for a strong man, and the moisture stands in great
drops on his dark forehead as he carefully presses the sharp instrument
through the resisting substance, quickly lifts it up again and pushes on
the package for the next cut.

At a small black table near by sits a Polish girl, poorly dressed, her
heavy red-brown hair braided in one long neat tress, her face deadly
white, her blue eyes lustreless and sunken, her thin fingers actively
rolling bits of paper round a glass tube, drawing them off as the edges
are gummed together, and laying them in a prettily arranged pile before
her. She is Vjera, the shell-maker, invariably spoken of as "poor Vjera."