Roundabout to Moscow: An Epicurean Journey

Next morning (August 9th) we made an early start, with Hönefos as the objective point for the day, the hotel there having been highly recommended to us. The postboy (_kudsk_) wh...

“Don’t forget Firkin! I will write his name for you on the back of my card.” Such were the closing words of a long conversation about Russia held between myself and a young Amer...

The Russians are semi-Orientals in one respect. They are not as sternly utilitarian as we of the West. The man with the long, blue tunic corded at the waist, and the cap decked...

As I was shuffling some card-photographs at Daziaro’s (print-shop on the Nevskoi Prospekt), I noticed three or four costume-portraits of the same fine-looking man. They were all...

It must be extremely interesting to see the precious stones at the mines disclosing themselves to the anxious seekers. Any chance blow of the pick may bring to light a mate for...

Two men sit on their horses like statues in front of the Brandenburg Gate of Berlin. They wear spiked helmets. The numerous buttons on their tight-fitting coats gleam in the sun...

Travelers are told that, the farther they go into Russia, the more they are subjected to police espionage. Whenever at St. Petersburg I casually alluded to the informality of th...

After one has packed trunks, paid hotel bills, bought railway-tickets, procured a supply of rubles and kopecks from his banker, and made every preparation to leave Germany for R...

The hero of Longfellow’s poem, “Excelsior,” has long been a favorite subject with artists. Among the many full-length fancy portraits of that rash young man, is one which repres...

The foundling asylum (Vospitàtelny Dom) is as well known in Moscow as the Tsar Kolokol. Any droschky-driver can take you there by the shortest cut, if you engage him by the “cou...

Crossing from Italy to Switzerland by the Simplon Pass early in June, we found the remains of a great snow-drift near the summit. The crest of the heap rose above the top of our...

Sunday, May 23d, being at Florence, we went to the Duomo. Advancing from the door to the center of that magnificent cathedral, we noticed a crowd of persons standing there, and...

Before leaving America, in the spring of 1886, I read in the London “Times” a slashing attack on the celebrated _train de luxe_ which runs twice a week from Paris to Nice. The w...

Oldpaint was a fellow-traveler of ours from Mentone to Monte Carlo. Not knowing her real name, I call her Oldpaint for sufficient reasons. She was wrinkled with age, and excessi...

The “sea of fire” which Napoleon saw at Moscow was replaced for us by a sea of green roofs as we neared that city at 10.30 A. M., July 23d. The sight of a real sea could not hav...

It seems odd to speak of a dead city as a growing one. But that is exactly the case with Pompeii. There are many cities in Italy that do not grow half as fast as the one buried...

A man not in a hurry to reach Southern Italy before hot weather, might find happiness and contentment in three or four days of Genoa. The old city has churches and palaces worth...

The Russians play their alphabet of thirty-six letters for all it is worth. Having plenty of letters, they string these out into long words. How our German friends, with their a...

Let me tell my readers something about the pursuit of a whale under difficulties. At Gothenburg, Sweden, I learned that a stuffed whale, sixty feet long, could be seen in a muse...

My sanitary inspection of Naples was hasty, and did not prepare me to give the city a clean bill of health. The streets through which I passed were less dirty than those of New...

If, by a stroke of this pen, I could banish every beggar from Italy, I should hesitate to do so. They may deserve the punishment. But they are amusing rascals. Life here would b...

If people would take only half the pains to keep their health that they do to recover it when lost they would be spared a great deal of trouble. At Carlsbad--the fashionable spa...

“Twenty minutes for dinner!” supper, or breakfast, as the case may be. The conductor on the Swedish or Norwegian railways announces this important fact to English-speaking trave...

I can imagine no drearier ride than that by rail from Pisa to Rome. The road skirts the sea most of the way. For many miles it traverses the Roman Campagna. The dreaded miasma w...

At the Sanitarium we scraped acquaintance with one of the ever-friendly English race. When he learned that we were bound to Odnæs that afternoon through the rain, which was stil...

It takes some time to get the confused impressions of brilliant Moscow out of one’s head; and, until this is done, one is in no fit condition to judge of other cities. The gold,...

What do you say to meadows so thickly set with forget-me-nots that they are unbroken stretches of blue? If pieces of the sky had dropped on the grass, the effect would have been...

At the Hôtel de l’Ours (the Bear Hotel of Englishmen and Americans who do not care to expose their French) I added another to the list of my pleasant English acquaintances. One...

The avalanche about to be described started just below the peak of the Silberhorn, a few minutes before midday. At that hour the sun was beginning to make his rays felt in the f...

A lucky accident enabled us to get an inside view of some little Swiss and Italian villages rarely seen by tourists. We missed a boat through the fault of a servant, and were ob...

twist to detach it from my grasp, and then laid it down on the counter. It was as if he had said, “No more of that, please.” I stalked away as majestically as possible, without...

If one cares to inquire about that mysterious prehistoric race known as the lake-dwellers of Switzerland, he can do so to his heart’s content at and about Zürich. If he wants to...

One does not often have the chance of being uncivil to a king. But it was my misfortune on one occasion to be, or to seem, downright rude to Humbert the First.

Being at Moscow, I improved the occasion to look up the yellow-flower tea--the Joltai Tchai--of which I had read and heard much. Travelers, claiming to be veracious, have told u...

An American’s pride in his importance as a customer is apt to get a bad fall when he enters at random a shop in Moscow. At St. Petersburg he has noticed that his patronage was n...