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Indeed, a dramatist on the lookout for a bit of "comic business" not "adapted from the French" could not do better than drop into a trakteer in Moscow or, better still, Kazan and make good use of his eyes and his notebook for twenty minutes or half an hour.
The solid foundation beneath was worn with hollows and ridges, that vividly recalled the oukhabas of the post road. Streets were full of sleds and sleighs, the latter dashing at a rapid rate. In the region near the station there were so many signs of 'Trakteer' as to suggest the possibility of one half the inhabitants selling tea, beer, and quass to the other half.
What the Agora was to the Athenian, what the Forum was to the Roman, what the "tea-house" still is to the "heathen Chinee" and the "ice-house" to the West Indian, all this, and more, the trakteer is to the Russian.
I tell you that I saw nothing of the street and yet now I know that at the door of the little trakteer there were two men and a woman laughing, that an isvotchik was drawn up in front of a high white block of flats, asleep, his head fallen on his breast, that the wonderful light, faintly blue and misty like gauze hung down from the sky, down over the houses, but falling not quite on to the pavement which was hard and ugly and grey.
While sipping his tea the inquirer after truth allows his eye to wander over the room, and sees in every feature the "interior" displayed by every Russian trakteer from the White Sea to the Black bare whitewashed walls, toned down to a dull gray by smoke and steam and grease; plank floor; double windows, with sand strewn thickly between them; rough, battered-looking chairs and tables, literally on their last legs; and close-cropped waiters in dingy shirt-sleeves, with flat, wide-mouthed faces that look very much like a penny with a hole through it.
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