United States or Mauritania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If we take the Prospekt at different hours, we may gain a fairly comprehensive view of many Russian ways and people, cosmopolitan as the city is. At half-past seven in the morning, the horse-cars, which have been resting since ten o'clock in the evening, make a start, running always in groups of three, stopping only at turnouts.
More touching are the funerals which pass up the Prospekt on their way to the unfashionable cemetery across the Neva, on Vasily Ostroff; a tiny pink coffin resting on the knees of the bereaved parents in a sledge, or borne by a couple of bareheaded men, with one or two mourners walking slowly behind. From noon onward, the scene on the Prospekt increases constantly in vivacity.
But it is a pity that a dreadful dampness spoils this pleasant scene of an evening; even before sunset such a fog rises over the road that one seems to be enveloped in thick, dark smoke. Magnificent as I had conceived the city to be, I was enchanted by the aspect of its monuments, its handsome mansions, and its broad streets, one of which, called the Prospekt, is a mile long.
The deserted Prospekt is torn up for repairs. The merchants, especially the goldsmiths, complain that it would be true economy for them to close their shops.
Each section of the city has a signal-tower of this sort, and the engine-house is close at hand. Naturally, in a city which lies on a level with the southern point of Greenland, the most characteristic season to select for our observations of the life is winter. The Prospekt wakes late.
But we must return to the Nevsky Prospekt. Nestling at the foot of the City Hall, at the entrance of the broad street between it and the Gostinny Dvor, on the Nevsky, stands a tiny chapel, which is as thriving as the bazaar, in its own way, and as striking a compendium of some features in Russian architecture and life.
Things were very quiet, stagnant in fact, in Petersburg during those hot days of early summer; even the fashionable cafés in the Nevski Prospekt were practically deserted, doubtless because the heat, that had set in earlier than usual, had driven away such of their gay frequenters as were not detained in the city on duty. I slept ill during those hot nights, and was usually abroad early.
Having safely arrived at Petersburg, we have nothing to tell of that romantic city no hints at deep-laid plots, no prison, nor tales of jail-birds tales with salt on them, bien entendu the usual grain. We have hardly mentioned the Nevski Prospekt, which street by ancient right must needs figure in all Russian romance.
He saw, recognized, lost it, and knew himself to be skimming down the Nevskiy Prospekt and across the Winter Palace Square, where the great angel towers upon its rose-granite monument. Forward, forward he was carried, along the bank of the frozen Neva and over the Troitskiy bridge, the powdered snow stinging his face like pinpoints as it flew up from the nails in his little horse's shoes.
Later on the same day, in a little narrow chamber of one of the huge, dirty tenements on Vosnesenski Prospekt, sat a young man of ruddy complexion. He was sitting at a table, bending toward the one dusty window, and attentively examining a white twenty-five ruble note. The room, dusty and dark, was wretched enough.
Word Of The Day