In the waiting room a hundred or more persons were gathered.  The men were well wrapped in furs, and among the ladies hoods were more numerous than bonnets.  Three-fourths of the males and a third of the females were smoking cigarettes, and there was no prohibition visible.  In accordance with the national taste the chief article sold at the buffet was hot tea in tumblers.

Some one uttered “Sibeerski” as, clad in my dehar, I walked past a little group.  To keep up appearances and kill time I drank tea, until the door opened and a rush was made for the train.  There is an adage in Germany that three kinds of people—­fools, princes, and Americans—­travel first class.  To continue Russian pretences, and by the advice of a friend, I took a second class ticket, and found the accommodation better than the average of first class cars in America.

How strange was the sensation of railway travel!  Since I last experienced it, I had journeyed more than half around the globe.  I had been tossed on the Pacific and adjacent waters, had ascended the great river of northern Asia, had found the rough way of life along the frozen roads beyond the Baikal, and ended with that long, long ride over Siberian snows.  I looked back through a long vista of earth and snow, storm and sunshine, starlight and darkness, rolling sea and placid river, rugged mountains and extended plains.

The hardships of travel were ended as I reached the land of railways, and our motion as we sped along the track seemed more luxurious than ever before.  Contrasted with the cramped and narrow sleigh, pitching over ridges and occasionally overturning, the carriage where I sat appeared the perfection of locomotive skill.  How sweet is pleasure after pain.  Sunshine is brightest in the morning, and prosperity has a keener zest when it follows adversity.  To be truly enjoyed, our lives must be chequered with light and shadow, and varied with different scenes.

The railway between Nijne Novgorod and Moscow is about two hundred and fifty miles in length, and was built by French and Russian capital combined.  There is only one passenger train each way daily, at a speed not exceeding twenty miles an hour.

In the compartment where I sat there was a young French woman, governess in a family at Simbirsk, with a Russian female servant accompanying her.  The governess was chatty, and invited me to join her in a feast of bon-bons, which she devoured at a prodigious rate.  The servant was becomingly silent, and solaced herself with cigarettes.  The restaurants along the road are quite well supplied, especially those where full meals are provided.  Two hours after starting we halted ten minutes for tea and cigarettes.  Two hours later we had thirty minutes for supper, which was all ready at our arrival.  About midnight we stopped at the ancient city of Vladimir, where there is a cathedral founded in the twelfth century.  Stepping from the train to get a night glimpse of the place, I found a substantial supper (or breakfast) spread for consumption.  In justice to the Russians, I am happy to say very few patronized this midnight table.