The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-02-29
From the New York Sun,

ALN HEN the stage of the world s
 NV theatre Is given up to a drama
 w like the present war in the far east any news that throws light upon the actors is welcome. These extracts, from a letter sent from St. Petersburg. present an interesting account of the character of the Russian people and the life of foreigners in their capital:
 q have been rather toying with Rus sian up to the present time. Russian is such baffiing language. It seems as though all ones language principles were being felled at one blow when you learn that there is tongue in which a combi- nation of consonants, unaided by vowels, may form a word.
 Then the alphabet On being told that it was taken from the Greek alphabet one expects to find about twenty familiar characters at least in the thirty-six which make up this atrocity. Not sol The men who achieved the adaptation weren' t quite so good Greek scholars as one might desire, and made many mistakes for example. the Greek eta serves as n, theta as f. Then the written charac- ters bear almost no relation to the print ed ones. As to verbs, there are moods lenses and aspects I know very little about verbs as yet.
 There is an Englishwoman here who has been married to Russian for ten or twelve years. He speaks no English, and she uses no form of the Russian verb but the infnitive. Such are the trials of an international marriage.
 An almost ceaseless round of pleas ures has been ours since our arrival here First thing, aside from many courtesies extended by members of the English speaking colony, we were invited to dine in Russian home to meet Count Rus press and descendant of a notable figure in the Napoleonic war. That evening was somewhat of an ordeal for me, as some of the Russians spoke only their native tongue. could see that I was an object of pity for being able to converse in two languages only.
 Immediately upon that followed the grand annual parade, when 10000 troops are mobilized in the Field of Mars. It I witnessed.
 The cavalry regiments all have their horses to match--the Royal Guards on browns, the Yellow Cuirassiers on bays. | Hussars on grays, all the Cossacks on Arabs. while the other troops are mount ed on the largest steeds obtainable. | Members of the Royal Horse Guards are selected for their size and good looks linen in the Paviovsky regiment must trious founder, Paul of i'll fame. The cos tunes are most picturesque, and, incl dentally. expensive. that of a lieutenant of Hussars costing 5000.
 1 Through a friend we were invited to witness this spectacle from the house of Prince Saltikov, that being one of two houses that command the field. We had a far better view than those in the stands and the advantage of seeing the imperial cortege pass three times.
 "rhe cavalry charge, with which the maneuvers ended. was terribly impres. sve. The sight of 10000 men and horses plunging across that field straight at the emperor was one never to be forgotten. Ii is no play. for there are always men in jured In the charge. and often some arc killed.
 "Then we had delightful trip down the volga. Of course, Moscow came in for g chief share of our attention.
 '"The river trip on the volga was beau tiful, with picturesque-and filthy-types on every hand I had thought that St r1-x kt<N ol1v nf and evil odors, but ever since our return