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The nobleman, in his gilded carriage with liveried servants, stops and pays the tribute of an uncovered head to some saintly image by the bridge or the roadside; the peasant, in his shaggy sheepskin capote, doffs his greasy cap, and, while devoutly crossing himself, utters a prayer; the soldier, grim and warlike, marches up in his rattling armor, grounds his musket, and forgets for the time his mission of blood; the tradesman, with his leather apron and labor-worn hands, lays down his tools and does homage to the shrine; the drosky-driver, noted for his petty villainies, checks his horse, and, standing up in his drosky, bows low and crosses himself before he crosses the street or the bridge; even my guide, the saturnine Dominico and every body knows what guides are all over the world halted at every corner, regardless of time, and uttered an elaborate form of adjurations for our mutual salvation.
I have seen more drunken people here than during all my residence in England, and, generally, early in the day. Their liquor, so far as I have observed, makes them good-natured and sociable, imparting a perhaps needed geniality to their cold natures. After breakfast we took a drosky, or whatever these fore-and-aft-seated vehicles are called, and set out for three miles distant.
The good 'traeger' who took possession of them and their hand-bags, put their boxes on a baggage-bearing drosky, and then got them another drosky for their personal transportation. This was a drosky of the first-class, but they would not have thought it so, either from the vehicle itself, or from the appearance of the driver and his horses.
They have been found in but a single instance, and there is a suspicion that the few discovered on that occasion were a "plant." We remained two days at Ekaterineburg, repairing sleighs and resting from fatigue. On account of the holidays, we paid double prices for labor, and were charged double by drosky drivers.
He brought us back accounts of many singular adventures, how he had been seen by a dog, chased by a cat, and nearly run over by a drosky, the name given to the vehicles which in St. Petersburg take the place of our London cabs. "Have a care, brother, have a care!
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