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Updated: May 2, 2025
We struggled through long lines of heavy-laden country carts, and swarms of clattering droskies, all striving to force their way along with that hurry-skurry that adds to confusion and lessens speed; and we came at last to a long pontoon bridge, over which we crossed the Oka, and beyond which rises the hill-range or ravine, on the top and at the foot of which is built the straggling town of Nijni-Novgorod.
In the afternoon of this day a friend and myself joined the throng, who were with one accord making their way eastward along the Radial Strasse, the great thoroughfare of Pest. It appeared as if the whole population of the town had turned out; private carriages, tramways, droskies alike were all crammed, driving in the same direction with the ceaseless stream of pedestrians.
In the holidays they drove about together in droskies, and told fortunes: Kseniya Ippolytovna was presented with a waxen cradle. They drove to town with some mummers, and attended an amateur performance in a club. Polunin dressed up as a wood-spirit, Kseniya as a wood- spirit's daughter out of a birch-grove. Then they visited the neighbouring landowners.
A few droskies were still plying on the principal thoroughfares, and now and then I met gay parties trudging homeward after their night's dissipation; but I soon struck into the less frequented streets, where a dreary silence reigned. There was something very sad and solitary in the reverberation of my footsteps.
Numberless and numbered droskies were darting through the streets, carrying gayly dressed officers making their ceremonious calls. Soldiers were parading with bands of music, and the lower classes were out in large numbers. The storm had ceased, the weather was warm, and everything was propitious for out-door exercise.
Some spent their earnings at the public-house; others took a whisky "ploy" at the seaside. For that purpose they hired all the gigs, droskies, cabs, or "machines," about a fortnight beforehand. The results were seen, as the successive Monday mornings come round.
We may have droskies out again to-morrow instead of the sledges." "The sledges are the pleasantest," Godfrey said. "Yes, your excellency, for those that travel, but not for us. At night when we are waiting we can get into the drosky and sleep, while it is terrible without shelter. There are many of us frozen to death every winter."
So we set to work to rouse the rest, and with the aid of an alarm clock's loud ringing, we soon had them at least half awake; and while the others sat rubbing their eyes and trying to look wide awake, Uncle Borris had gone out, and when he returned with several droskies to convey us to the station, we were all ready for the start.
"I shall perhaps see the heir to the baronetcy arrive," he said to himself, "and we can make our entry together." It happened that he did see Cartoner; for the square below the windows was well lighted. He saw Cartoner turn out of the Cracow Faubourg into the square, where innumerable droskies stand.
The people have a slow, slouching, shabby appearance; and the traveler is forcibly reminded, by the strange costumes he meets at every turn the thriftless and degenerate aspect of the laboring classes the great lumbering wagons that roll over the stone-paved streets the droskies rattling hither and thither with their grave, priest-like drivers and wild horses the squads of filthy soldiers lounging idly at every corner the markets and market-places, and all that gives interest to the scene, that he is in a foreign land a wild land of fierce battles between the elements, and fiercer still between men where civilization is ever struggling between Oriental barbarism and European profligacy.
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