“Oh, spoiled one!” (Whack.) This to a brute which looked as if he had never eaten a good feed of corn in his life. “Oh, woolly ones!” (Whack! whack! whack!)
“Oh, Lord God!” This, as we were all upset into a snowdrift, the sleigh being three parts overturned, and our Jehu precipitated in the opposite direction.
“How far are we from the next halting-place?” suddenly inquired my companion, with an ejaculation which showed that even his good temper had given way under the cold and our situation.
“Only four versts, one of noble birth,” replied the struggling Jehu, who was busily engaged endeavoring to right the half-overturned sleigh. A Russian verst about nightfall, and under such conditions as I have endeavored to point out to the reader, is an unknown quantity. A Scotch mile and a bit, an Irish league, a Spanish legua, or the German stunde, are at all times calculated to call forth the wrath of the traveller, but in no way equal to the first-named division of distance. For the verst is barely two-thirds of an English mile, and when, after driving yet for an hour, we were told there were still two versts more before we could arrive at our halting-place, it began fully to dawn upon my friend that either our driver’s knowledge of distance, or otherwise his veracity, was at fault.
At last we reached a long, straggling village, where our horses stopped before a detached cottage. The proprietor came out to meet us at the threshold. “Samovar, samovar!” (urn) said my companion. “Quick, quick! samovar!” and hurrying by him and hastily throwing off our furs, we endeavored to regain our lost circulation beside the walls of a well-heated stove.
In a few minutes, and when the blood had begun once more to flow in its proper channels, I began to look round and observe the other occupants of the room. These were for the most part Jews, as could easily be seen by that peculiarity of the nose which unfailingly denotes any member of the tribe of Israel. Some half-open boxes of wares in the corner also showed their trade. The men were hawkers of fancy jewelry and other finery calculated to please the wives of the farmers or better-to-do peasants in the neighborhood.
The smell was anything but agreeable, and the stench of sheep-skins, unwashed humanity, and some oily cooking going on in a very dirty frying-pan at last caused my companion to inquire if there was no other room vacant. We were shown into a small adjoining apartment, where the smell, though very pungent, was not quite so disagreeable as in the one inhabited by the family.
“This is a little better,” muttered my companion, unpacking his portmanteau and taking out a teapot, with two small metal cases containing tea and sugar. “Quick, Tëtka, Aunt!” he cried (this to the old woman of the house), “quick with the samovar!” when an aged female, who might have been any age from eighty to a hundred, for she was almost bent double by decrepitude, carried in a large copper urn, the steam hissing merrily under the influence of the red-hot charcoal embers.
By this time I had unstrapped the mess tins, and was extracting their contents. “Let me be the carver,” said my friend, at the same time trying to cut one of the cutlets with a knife; but he might as well have tried to pierce an ironclad with a pea-shooter, for the meat was turned into a solid lump of ice. It was as hard as a brick-bat, and when we tried the bread it was equally impenetrable; in fact, it was only after our provisions had been placed within the stove for about ten minutes that they became in any way eatable.
In the mean time my companion had concocted a most delicious brew, and with a large glass of pale or rather amber-colored tea, with a thin slice of lemon floating on the top, I was beginning to realize how pleasant it is to have been made thoroughly uncomfortable, for it is only after having arrived at this point of misery that you can thoroughly appreciate what real enjoyment is. “What is pleasure?” asked a pupil of his master. “Absence of pain,” was the philosopher’s answer; and let any one who doubts that a feeling of intense enjoyment can be obtained from drinking a mere glass of tea, try a sleighing journey through Russia with the thermometer at 20° Reaumur and a wind. [20° Reaumur below zero equals -13° Fahrenheit.]