United States or Dominica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The waiters watch and divine the wishes of the guests, instead of the guests having to watch, seek, and sometimes scream for the waiters, as is too often the case in England. The reader perceives that there is a certain Oriental style about the Russian traktirs. The great article of consumption in them is tea.
I could not but marvel, as I sat in some of the common traktirs, at the extraordinary affection manifested by the Russians for cats. It appeared to me that the proprietors must keep a feline corps expressly for the amusement of their customers. At one of these places I saw at least forty cats, of various breeds, from the confines of Tartary to the city of Paris.
At midday or in the evening I visited the most noted traktirs, and made the acquaintance of the caviar, sturgeons, sterlets, and other native delicacies for which these institutions are famous deafened the while by the deep tones of the colossal barrel-organ, out of all proportion to the size of the room; and in order to see how the common people spent their evenings I looked in at some of the more modest traktirs, and gazed with wonder, not unmixed with fear, at the enormous quantity of weak tea which the inmates consumed.
The stridency of day was over in the shabby street; its high houses, standing like cliffs, showed tier upon tier of windows, dimly lighted or dark, while from under the feet of the buildings, from cellar-saloons to traktirs below the street-level, there spouted up the ruddiness of lamplight and the jangle of voices.
Indeed, I not only observed that in the Moscow traktirs nearly every one drank tea, but that it was a favourite beverage with all classes on all occasions. The middle and upper classes take tea twice or three times a day, always in the morning, and often twice in the evening.
At the traktirs, or restaurants, the usual dinner supplied for three-quarters of a rouble consists of soup, with a pie of mince-meat, or minced vegetables, an entrée, roast meat, and some kind of sweet. That, too, may be considered the kind of dinner which persons of moderate means have every day at home.
The province of Yaroslavl, for instance, supplies the large towns with waiters for the traktirs, or lower class of restaurants, whilst the best hotels in Petersburg are supplied by the Tartars of Kasimof, celebrated for their sobriety and honesty.
These traktirs are the general places of meeting, where matters of business or pleasure are discussed; accounts settled and bargains made. Here the merchant, the broker, the banker, and the votary of pleasure meet in common. Here all the pursuits of human life are represented, and the best qualities of men drawn out with the drawing of the tea.
But it is not only in the numberless churches scattered throughout the city that the devotional spirit of the inhabitants is manifested. Moscow is the Mecca of Russia, where all are devotees. The external forms of religion are every where apparent in the palaces, the barracks, the institutions of learning, the traktirs, the bath-houses even in the drinking cellars and gambling-hells.
Throughout the ensuing winter he taught all morning six days in the week, reserving his composing for the hours of early morning and evening. After his midday meal, he came into the habit of taking long tramps through the streets of the poorer quarters, resting himself in little traktirs, finding unhealthy companionship in the patent discontent, poverty, and misery of the laboring class.
Word Of The Day