The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-03-26 00:00:00

ST. PETERSBURG IN MOURNING.

Under the head "A City in Mourning," the Special Cor-
respondent of the Daily Telegraph at St. Petersburg gives
the following description of the appearance of that city :
It is not alone the*utward show of mourning, but
the general aspect of the place and people, which
strikes a chill to the heart and reminds you that you
lye pacing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Ihe sable imperial banner which floats above the
Fortress strikes a keen note of glaom, which reaches
through the whole city. Throughout the entire length
of the magnificent quays, the palaces, public build-
ings, and the most conspicuous among the private
houses display the livery of woe in Mack and white
draperies, heavily festooned, veiling the portals and
the balconies. The very lampposts are shrouded in
borders of black and white crape ; while from hun-
dreds of houses in the Newsky Prospect, the Bolshoi
Morskaia, the Gorochovaia, the Millionaia, the Litie-
naia, floats the black flag, and the whole of Petropo-
litan womankind, the women of the peasant class only
excepted, are clad in deep mourning.

All the newspapers are encircled by mourning
borders, and even the street tramway cars have black
and white banners floating from their corners. Pass
the Winter Palace and the palaces of the Imperial
family and you behold a plenitude of black droskies,
heaped high with black furs, with their coachmen and
attendants swathed in their huge black pelisses, and
with their shiny, low-crowned black headgear, looking
like stout sleek ravens. Cast your eyes over the vast
expanse of the Admiralty Place or the Isaacs Place
and you see the snow dotted with innumerable trains
of little black sledges, looking like frozen-out Vene-
tian gondolas, astonished to find themselves could
gondolas be astonished, harnessed to real live 'horses.
There cannot be the slightest doubt that the vast
mass of the Russian people are intensely and affec-
tionately sorry for Alexander 11. On that fatal
Sunday afternoon, in all parts of the city, women
were seen on their knees in the midst of the snow,
crossing themselves and uttering passionate ejacula-
tions of grief ; and on the day of the funeral procession
working men were beheld bestowing their last copecks
as alms on beggars, as a fee to those orthodox mendi-
cants to pray for the soul of the defunct Monarch.
In several instances the grief of the people was
aggravated to the proportions of savage wrath against
the perpetrators of the crime, and those who were even
deemed to be their accomplices, and in many cases in-
dividuals of suspicious bearing, or who had uttered
ambiguous words, were roughly handled by the popu-
lace.

THE ATTEMPT TO BLOW UP THE
LONDON MANSION HOUSE.
On Wednesday morning notices were circulated by
tho Commissioners of Police offering a reward of £lOO
for the apprehension of the person or persens who
placed the box containing gunpowder against the
'ails of the Mansion House on the night of the 16th
inst.

Painting menu cards for dinner parties and suppers
is a very profitable branch of work for women in New York,
and might well be taken up by necessitous English ladies.
Elaborate landscapes, figure scenes, and floral designs are
painted on the satin menus, some of whiell are so highly
ornamented as to cost over .£l5 apiete.