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Contrariwise, were these fictitious characters embarked in palankeens or droshkies or jinrikishas, more or less intellectual exercise would be necessitated on the reader's part to form a notion of the conveyance. And we average-novel-readers do not open a book with the intention of making a mental effort. The author has no right to expect of us an act so unhabitual, we very poignantly feel.
The droshkies disappear one by one with the black mud of autumn; and by the time the gilt cupolas of the churches, and the red and green roofs of the houses, have been made whiter than their own walls, the city swarms with sledges. It is not, however, until near Christmas, when the "frost of St. Nicholas" sets in, that they are seen in all their glory.
It was terribly cold, and no droshkies were to be had. We had to walk to the theatre in a blinding snowstorm. At 2 A.M. we started on our last lap. The sentiments of the people changed completely every few hundred miles.
Twenty minutes later, we dashed into the city at a gallop, as if we were imperial couriers with war news; rushed at break-neck speed past markets, bazaars, telegraph poles, street lamps, big shops with gilded sign-boards, polished droshkies drawn by high-stepping Orloff horses, officers in uniform, grey-coated policemen with sabres, and pretty women hooded in white Caucasian bashliks; and finally drew up with a flourish in front of a comfortable-looking stuccoed hotel the first one we had seen in more than twenty-nine months.
The cabs are something inconceivable, wretched, dirty, drenched, without springs, the horse's four legs straddling, huge hoofs, gaunt spines ... the droshkies here are a clumsy parody of our britchkas. A tattered top is put on to a britchka, that is all. And the more exactly I describe the cabman here and his vehicle, the more it will seem like a caricature.
This condition of the streets, with the droshkies, a small four-wheel carriage, holding two persons, sitting together behind the driver, or sometimes back to back, with the fore-wheels about twelve inches high, and drawn very rapidly over such a pavement, you may suppose, makes it no easy matter to keep your seat.
"It was Russian," he tells Miss Barrett, "and about a fair on the Neva, and booths and droshkies and fish-pies and so forth, with the Palaces in the background." Late in life, at Venice, Browning became acquainted with an old Russian, Prince Gagarin, with whom he competed successfully for an hour in recalling folk-songs and national airs of Russia caught up during the visit of 1833-34.
You are soon accustomed to the darkness, but have great difficulty in finding the way unless you have been born in Stambul and have often passed through this labyrinth. The passages are quite narrow, but yet wide enough to allow droshkies and carts to pass through. The bazaar, then, is an underground town in itself, a town of tradesmen and artisans.
A very curious example of his conservatism I noted in his remarks regarding the droshkies of St. Petersburg. The droshky-drivers are Russian peasants, simple and, as a rule, pious; rarely failing to make the sign of the cross on passing a church or shrine, or at any other moment which seems to them solemn.
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