Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1885-12-10
ST. PETERSBURG.
How People Live and Lodge in the Grea
Rus sian Capital.

How People Live and Lodge in the Great
Russian Capital.
The really mysterious element of life
in st. Petersburg is one that transcends
Western experience. Below the out
ward forms of things you enter an at
mosphere in which thought seems limit
ed by new laws. Out of novel habits,
strange customs, hereditary legacies of
the intellect in which you have had no
share, the fancy makes stair for its as
cent into another planet. The differ
ences you, encounter everywhere are I'M
ikenesses not between Aryan and Ar
van, but between Europe and Asia on
the One hand, between a new and an old
civilization on the other. Readily would
the nativeihelp you in your bewilder-
ments, were it within his power, but the
abnormal to you is the normal to him.
You call upon him to look, and he sees
nothing. Your specters are his thin air,
the novelties you italicize his daily
commonplace. So that in time your
SURPRISE becomes less demonstrative,
If not less acute. In time your
diary is content to hold the mirror up
to nssure. 1.-THE Municipal Council"
for example, ''has just fixed the price of
bread for the next twelve months.
1.-THE Golos,. punished for improper ten
denotes, by an order depriving it for six
months of the right to publish advertise
ments.-' 1.-The authorities about to raise
money by imposing a tax on all foreign
ers resident in st. Petersburg.
newspapers contain appeals on behalf
of poor families in the Capital "a
weil-known police official purchases the
wife of a subordinate for ten thousand
roubles.'' Newspaper proprietor ex-
lied TO anorthern province for having
published "a cartoon representing, IN a
series Of nine,views, the torments of a
dog attacked by a wasp. and fiaally
forced to METRE into his kennel; the whole
without heatlline, but believed in official
circles to be AN allusion to the Tsar's
enforced ratirement to Gatschlna-
..Householders warned that the morrow
is the 4ranae-day' of the Empress,
and that they must celebrate on the
occasion-shat is to say, hang out
banners and burn lamps-or pay
heavy pens And thus 1t runs ON,
this record of events, mese story OF
familiar experience to the nSiive Rus
sian. but to the foreigner tale of doings
in syorld all other than his own.
1t may be web here to reRind the
reader that the hahit of living 10 lodg-
ings is general in st. Petersburg. So
far as Russian life is a biveuac, the term
<.lodgings', is APPLY used; etymologically
it corresponds with the English ..house,"
or ..home,n and ii therefore without the
sense usually associated with it in the
West. In che capital a man who lives
in his oYyA house occupies little more
than ~ her of it, or sleeps in palace.
the richest families are content
wa iodgings, and but few of them need
ltne apartments which constitute st.
Tsburg fiat. This is in itself sug-
Ia re of the scale upon which houses
hIlllPuiit in the great Russian cities. |
Is all too inadequate as prepare
pr the statement that a ST. Peters
A ND odging-house frequently contains
1tns my as a thousand rooms, with a
IR0Aatlon OF from two to three thou