There is a traveler’s story that a freezing nose in a Russian city is seized upon and rubbed by the bystanders without explanation.  In a winter’s residence and travel in Russia I never witnessed that interesting incident, and am inclined to scepticism regarding it.  The thermometer showed -53 deg. while I was in St. Petersburg, and hovered near that figure for several days.  Though I constantly hoped to see somebody’s nose rubbed I was doomed to disappointment.  I did observe several noses that might have been subjected to friction, but it is quite probable the operation would have enraged the rub_bee_.

[Illustration:  EXCUSE MY FAMILIARITY.]

During our coldest nights on the steppe we had the unclouded heavens in all their beauty.  The stars shone in scintillating magnificence, and seemed nearer the earth than I ever saw them before.  In the north was a brilliant aurora flashing in long beams of electric light, and forming a fiery arch above the fields of ice and snow.  Oh, the splendor of those winter nights In the north!  It cannot be forgotten, and it cannot be described.

Twilight is long in a Siberian winter, both at the commencement and the close of day.  Morning is the best time to view it.  A faint glimmer appears in the quarter where the sun is to rise, but increases so slowly that one often doubts that he has really seen it.  The gleam of light grows broader; the heavens above it become purple, then scarlet, then golden, and gradually change to the whiteness of silver.  When the sun peers above the horizon the whole scene becomes dazzlingly brilliant from the reflection of his rays on the snow.  In the coldest mornings there is sometimes a cloud or fog-bank resting near the earth, from the congelation and falling of all watery particles in the atmosphere.  When the sun strikes this cloud and one looks through it the air seems filled with millions of microscopic gems, throwing off many combinations of prismatic colors, and agitated and mingled by some unseen force.  Gradually the cloud melts away as it receives the direct rays of light and heat.

[Illustration:  FROSTED HORSES.]

The intense cold upon the road affects horses by coating them, with white frost.  Their perspiration congeals and covers them as one may see the grass covered in a November morning.  Nature has dressed these horses warmly, and very often their hair may justly be called fur.  They do not appear to suffer from the cold; they are never blanketed, and their stables are little better than open sheds.  One of their annoyances is the congelation of their breath, and in the coldest weather the yemshicks are frequently obliged to break away the icicles that form around their horses’ mouths.  I have seen a horse reach the end of a course with his nose encircled in a row of icy spikes, resembling the decoration sometimes attached to a weaning calf.