The station-houses are well built, and refreshment rooms well supplied; so that you get comfortable meals on the route.
At Tver we crossed the Volga, and here we had the first sight of that famous river. It is at this point downward navigable for steamers, and we might step on board of one and steam away two thousand miles to Astrachan! Tver is a place of remarkable historical interest, which lingers around the cathedral and the monastery in which a bishop was murdered by order of John the Terrible, though his death was reported as occasioned by the fumes of a stove.
As night drew on we learned that one car in the long train was fitted up for sleeping, and we were glad to pay a couple of roubles apiece for the chance of a horizontal nap. Toward midnight the process of reconstruction commenced. The long car is divided into four compartments, each eight feet square; across each side is swung a shelf, the seats below are converted into berths, and two more are made up on the floor; a pillow of homœopathic proportions is assigned to each passenger, and unless a man is afraid it will get into his ear he takes it. By a ladder of seven steps I ascended to the topmost perch, and there sought to rest. Alas! the search was vain. My refuge in sleeplessness is to old-time hymns, and Watts often composes me to slumber as his cradle lullaby did when the best of mothers sang it in my infancy. But now the only lines that haunted me were these, and perfectly descriptive of my present experience,—
“So when a raging fever burns,
We shift from side to side by turns;
And ’tis a poor relief we gain,
To change the place and keep the pain.”
For half a dozen Russians sat together in this little chamber; all smoking, all laughing, all talking, and in that jargon of a language worse to hear than any other that ever crashed upon my auricular nerves. There was no railroad law to be invoked to stop them. We were two, they were six. They wanted to smoke and talk all night; we were invalids, fighting for a wink of sleep. As the night wore on, they grew more earnest. At frequent stops by the way they rushed out and returned fortified with strong drink; the smoke, the breaths, the smells, the talk became intolerable. I put my woe-begone visage over the edge of the shelf, and arresting their attention by a groan, asked if any of them spoke the French language? A military officer in uniform rose and said he did. Then in tearful accents I said, “You behold two American travellers who have paid for these luxurious couches to get a little rest in their weary travels. If you gentlemen are to keep up this discourse, sleep is as impossible as if we were under the tortures of the Inquisition; is it too much to hope that you will soon suffer this discourse of yours to come to an end for the night, to be renewed at some future day.” Before my speech was finished he had begun to laugh, and assuring me of his regret that we had been disturbed, he represented to his friends the wishes of two Amerikaners, and they soon turned in.
In the morning, looking down from the shelf, I counted thirty-two stumps of cigars lying on the floor, in one quarter, and at least a hundred must have been consumed in that one compartment.
At half-past seven we stopped for coffee. A forlorn-looking set of men and women crept out for fresh air and refreshment. They had been badly stayed with, all of them. But the longest night has its morning, and so had this. The coffee was good; we paid five times as much for it as it was worth, even there, but we were comforted with the beverage. At one end of the car was a wash-bowl and water, and over it a notice: “Towel, 5 copakes; soap, 15 copakes,”—so for about 20 cents you could have the use of everybody’s towel and soap!