LITMIR.BIZ

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just to oblige them, till I verily believe, had any body stuck a pin in me, or had I undertaken to make a speech, I would have spouted Russian tea.

      Why is it that the moment any body wants to render you a service, or manifest some token of friendship, he commences by striking at the very root of your digestive functions? Is it not exacting a little too much of human nature to require a man to consider himself a large sponge, in order that hospitality may be poured into him by the gallon? When a person of pliant and amiable disposition visits a set of good fellows, and they take some trouble to entertain him; when they think they are delighting him internally and externally – not to say infernally – with such tea as he never drank before, it is hard to refuse. The moral courage necessary for the peremptory rejection of such advances would make a hero. Thus it has ever been with me – I am the victim of misplaced hospitality. It has been the besetting trouble of my life. I remember once eating a Nantucket pudding to oblige a lady. It was made of corn-meal and molasses, with some diabolical compound in the way of sauce – possibly whale-oil and tar. I had just eaten a hearty dinner; but the lady insisted upon it that the pudding was a great dish in Nantucket, and I must try it. Well, I stuffed and gagged at it, out of pure politeness, till every morsel on the plate was gone, declaring all the time that it was perfectly delicious. The lady was charmed, and, in the face of every denial, instantly filled the plate again. What could I do but eat it? And after eating till I verily believe one half of me was composed of Nantucket pudding, and the other half of whale-oil and tar, what could I do but praise it again? The third attempt upon my life was made by this most excellent and hospitable lady; but I gave way, and had to beg off. Human nature could stand it no longer. The consequence was, I wounded her feelings. She regretted very much that I disliked Nantucket pudding, and I don’t think ever quite forgave me for my prejudice against that article of diet, though her kindness laid me up sick for two weeks. Nor is this an isolated case. I might relate a thousand others in illustration of the melancholy fact that hospitality has been the bane of my life. When I think of all the sufferings I have endured out of mere politeness – though by no means accounted a polite person – tears of grief and indignation spring to my eyes. Old John Rogers at the stake never suffered such martyrdom. But there is an end of it! The tchai of Moscow finished all this sort of thing – so far, at least, as the male sex is concerned. I would still eat a coyote or a weasel to oblige a lady, but as to drinking two gallons of strong tea per day, dashed with Cognac to reduce its temperature, to oblige any man that ever wore a beard, I solemnly declare I’ll die first. The thing is an imposition – an outrage. Every man has a right to my time, my purse, my real estate in Oakland, my coat, my boots, or my razor – nay, in a case of emergency, my tooth-brush – but no man has a right to deluge my diaphragm with slops, or make a ditch of Mundus of my stomach.

      At the Peterskoi Gardens we had a little more tea, dashed with vodka, to keep out the night air. As soon as the fire-works were over we adjourned to the pavilion, and refreshed ourselves with a little more tea slightly impregnated with some more vodka. Now I don’t know exactly what this vodka is made of, but I believe it is an extract of corn. In the Russian language voda is water, and vodka means “little water.” There certainly was very little in what we got, or the tea must have been stronger than usual, for, notwithstanding these agreeable young gentlemen protested a gallon of such stuff would not produce the slightest effect, it seemed to me – though there might have been some delusion in the idea, arising from ignorance of Russian customs – that my head went round like a whirligig; and by the time I took my leave of these experienced young friends and retired to my room at the Hotel de Venise, it did likewise occur to me – though that too may have been a mere notion – that there was a hive of bees in each ear. Upon due consideration of all the facts, I thought it best to turn in, and resume any inquiries that might be necessary for the elucidation of these phenomena in the morning.

      [Here, you perceive, I am gradually verging toward the adventure. The heroine of the romance has not yet made her appearance, but depend upon it she is getting ready. You should never hurry the female characters; besides, it is not proper, even if this were all fiction instead of sober truth, that the heroine should be brought upon the stage just as the hero is tumbling into bed.]

      But to proceed. Sleep was effectually banished from my eyes, and no wonder. Who in the name of sense could sleep with forty tumblers of Russian tea – to say nothing of the dashes that were put in it – simmering through every nook and cranny of his body, and boiling over in his head? There I lay, twisting and tumbling, the pillow continually descending into the depths of infinity, but never getting any where – the bed rolling like a dismantled hulk upon a stormy sea – the room filled with steaming and hissing urns – a fearful thirst parching my throat, while myriads of horrid bearded Russians were torturing me with tumblers of boiling-hot tea dashed with vodka– thus I lay a perfect victim of tea. I could even see Chinamen with long queues picking tea-leaves off endless varieties of shrubs that grew upon the papered walls; and Kalmuck Tartars, with their long caravans, traversing the dreary steppes of Tartary laden with inexhaustible burdens of the precious leaf; and the great fair of Nijni Novgorod, with its booths, and tents, and countless boxes of tea, and busy throngs of traders and tea-merchants, all passing like a panorama before me, and all growing naturally out of an indefinite background of tea.

      I can not distinctly remember how long I tossed about in this way, beset by all sorts of vagaries. Sometimes I fancied sleep had come, and that the whole matter was a ridiculous freak of fancy, including my visit to Moscow – that Russian tea was all a fiction, and vodka a mere nightmare; but with a nervous start I would find myself awake, the palpable reality of my extraordinary condition staring me in the face. Unable to endure such an anomalous frame of mind and body any longer, I at length resolved to go down and take an airing in the streets, believing, if any thing would have a beneficial effect, it would be the fresh air. Acting upon this idea, I hastily dressed myself and descended to the front door. The Hotel de Venise is situated in a central part of the city, at no great distance from the Kremlin. It stands back in a large open yard, with a very pretty garden to the right as you enter from the main street. The proprietor is a Russian, but the hotel is conducted in the French style, and, although not more conspicuous for cleanliness than other establishments of the same class in Moscow, it is nevertheless tolerably free from vermin. The fleas in it were certainly neither so lively nor so entertaining as I have found them at many of the Spanish ranches in California, and the bugs, I am sure, are nothing like so corpulent as some I have seen in Washington City. I throw this in gratis, as a sort of puff, in consideration of an understanding with the landlord, that if he would refrain from cheating me I would recommend his hotel to American travelers. It is very good of its kind, and no person fond of veal, as a standard dish, can suffer from hunger at this establishment so long as calves continue to be born any where in the neighborhood of Moscow.

      The porter, a drowsy old fellow in livery, whose only business, so far as I could discover, was to bow to the guests as they passed in and out during the day, at the expense of a kopek to each one of them for every bow, napping on a lounge close by the front door. Hearing my footsteps, he awoke, rubbed his eyes, bowed habitually, and then stared at me with a vacant and somewhat startled expression. It was not a common thing evidently for lodgers to go out of the hotel at that time of night, or rather morning – it must have been nearly two o’clock – for, after gazing a while at what he doubtless took to be an apparition or an absconding boarder whose bill had not been settled, he grumbled out something like a dissent, and stood between me and the door. A small fee of ten kopeks, which I placed in his hand, aided him in grasping at the mysteries of the case, and he unlocked the door and let me out, merely shaking his head gravely, as if he divined my purpose, but did not altogether approve of it in one of my age and sedate appearance. In that, however, he was mistaken: I had no disposition to form any tender alliances in Moscow.

      The streets were almost deserted. An occasional drosky, carrying home some belated pleasure-seeker, was all that disturbed the silence. I walked some distance in the direction of the Kremlin. The air was deliciously cool and refreshing, and the sky wore a still richer glow than I had noticed a few hours before at the gardens of the Peterskoi. The moon had not yet gone down, but the first glowing blushes of the early morning were stealing over the heavens, mingled with its silvery light. I took off my hat to enjoy the fresh air, and wandered along quite enchanted with the richness and variety of

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