You may read and read that the
summer day at St. Petersburg is twenty hours long, but until you see
that the sun scarcely sets, you cannot take it in.
"I wondered whether the laboring man worked eight or ten hours under my
window; it seemed to me that he was sawing wood the whole twenty-four!
"W. came in one night after a stroll, and described a beautiful square
which he had come upon accidentally. I listened with great interest, and
said, 'I must go there in the morning; what is the name of it?'--'I
don't know,' he replied.--'Why didn't you read the sign?' I asked.--'I
can't read,' was the reply.--'Oh, no; but why didn't you ask some
one?'--'I can't speak,' he answered. Neither reading nor speaking, we
had to learn St. Petersburg by our observation, and it is the best way.
Most travellers read too much.
"There are learned institutions in St. Petersburg: universities,
libraries, picture-galleries, and museums; but the first institution
with which I became acquainted was the drosky. The drosky is a very,
very small phaeton. It has the driver's seat in front, and a very narrow
seat behind him. One person can have room enough on this second seat,
but it usually carries two. Invariably the drosky is lined with
dark-blue cloth, and the drosky-driver wears a dark-blue wrapper, coming
to the feet, girded around the waist by a crimson sash. He also wears a
bell-shaped hat, turned up at the side.
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