We were in Russia. We had run the gauntlet of the border,—our passports had been sufficient, and we were at last safely within the dominions of the Czar. Would it be as difficult to get out?
XVII.
St. Petersburg—The Great Wealth of the Few—The Bitter Poverty of the Many—Conditions Similar to Those Preceding the French Revolution.[2]
[2] These letters were written in the early autumn of the year, 1902, and present a glimpse of Russia as it then appeared.
Grand Hotel de l’Europe,
St. Petersburg, Russia,
September 18 (N. S.), 1902.
So much has been jammed into the last two days that my pen is like to burst. Splendor and squalor, the glitter of twentieth century civilization, the sombre shadow of barbarism, are here entwined in inextricable comminglement. The city is filled with stately buildings of gigantic and imposing dimensions; with wide, straight boulevards and streets. The sidewalks and droschkies are gay with the dashing and gaudy uniforms of innumerable soldiery, and the fine dresses of elegant women. Yet many of these great buildings are in ill repair, and what you at first imagine to be magnificent stone, reveals itself to be a stucco of rotting wood and crumbling plaster; the broad thoroughfares are abominably paved, and pitifully cared for by abject wretches wielding dilapidated birch-stick brooms.
