Through Scandinavia to Moscow

The monotonous plains of Russia were yet filled with nomadic hordes of pagan barbarians when Cordova was a paved city, its streets illuminated by night, its libraries and its University the center of the most advanced learning of the age; when the gigantic and splendid cathedrals of England and France were everywhere raising their mighty walls and spires for the perpetual glory of God and the inspiration of mankind; when the fleets of Lisbon and Genoa were discovering the farthest and most distant splendors of the Orient and Occident; when Venice was mistress of Byzantium and Florence patron of Rome; when Hebrew savants, under the benign influence of Saracen rule, were among the most learned and renowned leaders of Moslem science; when the Israelites of Italy and France were intermarried among the proudest of the nobility and were even counselors of Kings; when Hebrew learning and Hebrew wealth gave added momentum to the impulse of the Renaissance. While during the centuries of the world’s reawakening, even as during the preceding centuries of the Crusades, just as throughout the long duration of the dominion of Rome and of the Eastern Empire, the Jew was ever recognized for his learning, culture and wealth.

When St. Cyril and his Byzantine monks, in the seventh century, gave Greek Christianity to the Russian Pagan, the Russian yet remained content with outward forms and ceremonies. He continued pagan at heart and persevered in worshiping the ancient ghosts and spirits, even as in many parts of Russia he does to-day. He put on a Christian coat, but he kept his pagan hide; and the Russian Orthodox Christian has always remained a semi-pagan.

The great mass of the Russian people were serfs sold with the land up to 1860, when Alexander II gave them nominal freedom, but a freedom without lands and without schools; a so-called freedom which has left the individual peasant, the mujik, as landless, as bitterly poor, as benightedly ignorant to-day as he was a thousand years ago; nor does the autocratic-bureaucracy of the Czar give him hope of a better day. I journeyed through some of the richest farming lands in Russia, and the farmers, the mujiks, whom I saw tilling the soil, plowing and digging in the fields, were so poor that their feet were wrapped in plaited straw, too impoverished to afford the luxury of a leathern boot! The government absorbs all the profits of the crops in payment for these lands and in taxes, as return for having made the mujiks nominal owners of the soil and emancipating them from serfdom.

On the other hand, the nobles are forbidden by caste spirit and tradition to enter into any career except the service of the state. The younger nobles and ruling breeds among the Russian people are all sucked into the employ of the state by the maelstrom of bureaucracy. The youths of the nobility and gentry, and the more or less educated classes, must enter the navy, the army, and the service of the state. A government job for life is their only hope. They are not permitted to make money for themselves independently; they can only make money for the government of the Czar and for themselves through “Graft.”

The government wishes to do everything in Russia. It deliberately invades the spheres of private enterprise; it deliberately seeks all the profit; it deliberately destroys the ambition and the power of the person; it deliberately annihilates and stifles individual initiative. In Russia, the government runs all the railroads, most of the mines, many of the iron mills. It raises cotton; it raises wheat; it farms and it manufactures. It buys and sells. It runs all the telegraphs and telephones and express business. It opens all private letters and reads all the printed books and newspapers. It permits no letter to go through the mails, nor book nor newspaper to be read, which it deems to express sentiments inimical to the supremacy of the autocracy. I was threatened with imprisonment in Russia for snapping a kodak without government permit. I was under police and military supervision and escort all the time I traveled in Russia, even short as it was. Nor did I dare to send a letter to America from Russia, but wrote my thoughts with locked doors, and mailed my writings only when safe beyond the eye of the Russian government spy.

Thus we find that, on the one hand, the peasantry are crushed, thrust down and pitilessly held in ignorance and superstition and bitter poverty; on the other hand, all the best ability and brains of the governing classes are commandeered into the army, or navy, or life-long government service, and with meager salaries and small pay. The big grafts, the soft snaps, the juicy chances must all belong to the government and flow into the coffers of the Czar to keep fat and easy the Imperial family and the swarms of parasitic tid-bit hunters who leech them.

But even in autocratic Russia, the grasping clutch of autocracy cannot hold up all the avenues of commerce, however far-reaching its embrace may be. Hence, in those lines of enterprise, not absorbed and appropriated by the government, there is left open a clear path to whosoever may have the acumen to seize the opportunity. Here is the chance of the Jew. Endowed with a keen and subtle intellect, educated by his own masters often to the highest training of the intelligence and disciplined by the hardships of persecution, he is at once an overmatch for the ignorant, brutal, poverty-haunted mujik, and fully the equal of the best breeds of governing Slavs. Those intellects which are the equals of his own are not in competition with him. The ablest of the Slavs are earning a small salary in the army, in the navy, or as government officials; making what they can for themselves by more or less open graft, it is true, but without the incentive of other personal gain. So the Jew gets on in Russia. This progress is in spite of the jealousy and the hatred and the pillaging hand of the envious Slav.

There is, here and there, considerable wealth among many of the Jews in Russia. This is not true of all the Jews. Most of the Jews are poor, frightfully poor, made and kept so by the laws; but there is wealth among some of the Jews. The few wealthy Jews do not always keep these riches within the dominions of the Czar. The Russians complain that the rich Jews, while making their money in Russia, yet lay it up in the banks of Berlin, of Vienna, of Paris and particularly of London. When a Russian Governor wishes to squeeze a little extra pocket money out of the Jews of his district, his city, his province, he cannot always lay hands on their money hoards. Sometimes, then, he lets the street urchins plague them a little; the squeezed and squalid peasant is allowed to vent his envy of their wealth, even to knocking a Jew down; now and then, these meanly-minded boys, these pinch-bellied peasants get out of hand and, stung by their blood lust, too hastily massacre more Jews than the Governor intended. This is about the size of the job that Governor Von Raaben found to his credit in Kischineff. The poor Jews suffered for the prosperity of their rich brethren. The embittered and down-crushed mujik, galled and soured by reason of his own hapless and seemingly hopeless condition, vented his spleen at the first handy object, and the Jew was handier, though not more hated, than the uniformed official of the governing autocracy.

The Russian, as an individual, is of a kindly nature. He is good to his wife, good to his children, good to his beasts. He has none of the Roman-Spanish pitilessness to dumb creatures. But the Russian, after all, is an Asiatic. The old saying, “Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tartar,” is as true to-day as when the Cossacks of Catherine II impaled and crucified men and women and children of the fleeing Mongol horde, when these simply sought to migrate beyond the hectoring reach of Russian rule.

No bloodier chapter mars the annals of history than that of the Russian slaughter of nigh the entire Tekke Turkoman race in her warfare of 1881 on the shores of the Caspian, at Geok Tepe, when seven thousand women and children were stricken down in cold blood as they fled from Kuropatkin’s ruthless Cossacks.

Nor is the world done shuddering yet at the atrocious barbarities under General Gribski, Governor of Blagoveschensk, who commanded the deliberate drowning of the Chinese inhabitants of that city but a few years ago, in 1898, and in a season of prevailing peace, drove them before the knouts and bayonets of his Cossacks into the hopeless waters of the river Amoor by unnumbered thousands, old men and women and little children, so that for many weeks, nay months, the great river was so choked with the swollen bodies of the dead that navigation was at a standstill.

No Roman sack and pillage of a conquered city, not even the taking and wreck of Jerusalem by Titus and his legions, equals in horror and cold blood these late Russian slaughters; not even the fire and sword of Attila and his avenging Huns wrought such woe and terror as have been wrought in these recent years by the servants of the Czar; nor are the tormented souls of Alva and his Spanish veterans more deeply marked with blood-soaked scars than is the Russian autocracy of to-day; nor mediaeval, nor modern times, nor pagan, nor Moslem warfare, have known so monstrous a series of godless massacres of helpless humankind as those now standing to the credit of the Russian autocracy during the last twenty-five years.

The crime of Kischineff is no more heinous than have been the slaughters of Geok Tepe, Blagoveschensk and a thousand lesser human killings, nor more heart-sickening than were those awful visitations of Slavic blood-lust upon creatures defenseless, helpless, abjectly terror-struck. It is only that it was committed in a season of profound peace, against a peaceful people, and at a time when all the world had the leisure to hear the dying wails of the hapless women and helpless children raped and ravished and torn asunder in the open day.

Notwithstanding these crimes which mar the pages of recent Russian history, none would be more astonished than the Russian himself, if he were made aware of the world-wide condemnation these crimes provoke. He would protest against so harsh an estimate of Russian conquest; at most, when confronted with the facts, he would shrug his shoulders and urge that the responsibility lies not upon Holy Russia, but upon those who oppose her destiny to conquer and absorb. The thoughtful Russian will declare that after all it is no more than the inevitable struggle of the survival of the fittest, and demonstrate that there are no feuds of race, other than the universal hatred of the Jew, within the dominions of the Czar.

From the Russian viewpoint these arguments are not unreasonable; the vast military establishment upon which rests the autocracy, necessitates foreign wars with weaker peoples, if for no other reason than to keep a busied soldiery from thinking too much upon grievances at home; through commercial expansion in Asia, won by bayonet and sword, the autocracy has sought to secure compensation for the suppression of commercial opportunity at home!

The problems of Russia are, after all, economic rather than racial, and it is up to Russia to solve these in accordance with the lessons and example of the enlightened nations of the west; let the nobility and educated classes, who are now sucked into and absorbed by the bureaucracy, take full part in the commercial and industrial life of the empire and receive full reward for the exercise of their energy, intelligence and skill; let them lift from the mujik the crushing weight of the Imperial taxes, divide with him the almost illimitable acreage of the Imperial domain; and leave to him his fair share of the earnings won by his sweat and toil, and there will be no more Geok Tepes, Blagoveschensks, nor Kischineffs, nor will there be longer hatred of the Jew.

XXIII.
Across Germany and Holland to England—A Hamburg Wein Stube, the “Simple Fisher-Folk” of Maarken—Two Gulden at Den Haag.

London, England,

Hotel Russell, September 27, 1902

Crossing the Russian border in the night, we arrived at Berlin almost before the dawn; the city lies only three hours (by train) beyond the Russian line.

The station we entered was spacious and clean, in sharp contrast to the dirty stations of Russia; we were evidently come into a land blessed with a civilization of higher type. Leaving the car, we were instantly beset by a regiment of smartly uniformed porters—old soldiers all of them—and were piloted by one tall veteran to a waiting fiacre, which soon carried us to the Hotel Savoy. It was early, not yet five o’clock, but the streets were already alive with an orderly and animated throng, who appeared to be workmen largely, carpenters, masons and day-laborers, each clad in his distinctive laborer’s garb. They were on their way to work, for the working day is long in Germany, ten and twelve hours, and the workingman is up betimes. We passed over asphalted streets where men in military-looking uniforms, with hose in hand, were washing down their surfaces, while others with big coarse brooms were sweeping them clean. Berlin is a clean city, clean and neat as the proverbial German in America is known to be. Alighting from our carriage, I was greeted in my own tongue, by the friendly mannered concierge, who instantly marked me for an American, and gave us comfortable quarters such as American dollars usually secure.

H and I were now alone, our companions, Mr. and Mrs. C having left us at Warsaw, where they would spend a week or two and learn something of Poland. Perhaps I might tell you right here, that the next morning, as we were leaving the hotel, I felt a hand upon my shoulder and, turning round, faced the two Chicago travelers just then arrived. They had cut short their stay in Warsaw, for the only American-speaking guide in that city was away on a vacation, and German and French to them were as impossible as Polish. They confessed, also, that they had sorely missed their American fellow-travelers, and had hurried after us, hoping they might induce us to sojourn a little while in their good company.

We spent our single day without trying to see museums and picture galleries, but taking a guide and a carriage, drove about the city and viewed its avenues and parks, its markets and busy thoroughfares, and noble public buildings, to catch what glimpse we might of the waxing Capital of the German Empire. The first impression Berlin makes upon the stranger, especially the stranger new-come from Russia, is that of its cleanliness and orderliness; and, I think, I here also felt the sympathy of blood-kinship with the well set-up and neatly clad men and women, whose faces might have been those of my fellow countrymen of St. Louis, Cincinnati or New York. Berlin, to-day, fitly typifies modern Germany and the modern German spirit. We drove everywhere over smooth streets, kept scrupulously clean. On either hand stretched miles of new and handsome buildings, modern in architecture and modern in construction, while the signs I saw were in Latin Text, instead of the Gothic, a striking evidence of German progression.

When we came to the lovely Unter Den Linden, we left the carriage and wandered beneath its umbrageous trees and enjoyed, as every one must, the beauty of its vistas of greensward and carefully tended flowers. The German loves his flowers almost as devotedly as does his English cousin. We strolled also along the famous Thier Garten, which would be a magnificent boulevard in any city; and which the German Kaiser has sought to ornament with innumerable ponderous groups of sculpture, preserving for the astonished world the commonplace memories of paltry ancestors. How much better would it have been to have adorned this stately thoroughfare with statues of illustrious Germans, whose great deeds and works have contributed to the world’s enlightenment and the Fatherland’s renown! To a Democrat, bred to contemn the empty glitter and pretense of inherited privilege, it almost stirs one’s anger to see so splendid a public highway as the Thier Garten thus arrogantly defaced.

In this Capital of an Empire, whose foundation is set on bayonets and swords and the “biggest guns,” where militarism runs riot, there is no surprise in finding the streets filled with soldiers and officers, and to meet frequently a marching company, nor does it astonish one to see here the extreme development of the spirit of military caste. Here, the civilian, man as well as woman—no matter how well clad he or she may be—must turn aside for strutting officer and also, as for that, for the common soldier, and all traffic must hold back to let a company of soldiery pass by, even though they are out only on errand of trivial exercise. Here in Germany, perhaps as nowhere else, have the clever supporters of Royal and Imperial pretension worked the army racket to the limit, through creating a perpetual scare that greedy neighbors will devour the Fatherland. The citizen of Berlin is never allowed to forget that little more than a century ago, Cossack hordes pastured their ponies in the parks and gardens of the German capital; and can gallop there again from their Polish camps in a single day. The army has been built up on the pretense that it is necessary for national defense, and thus the Kaiser, who is permitted to occupy the position of army chief, holds at his command these enormous military forces, while he uses them the rather to exalt his own prerogative and subvert the people’s inborn rights of individual sovereignty, which is the highest gift of God to man.

The splendid building of the Reichstag, where the Socialist party of Germany, to-day, makes its almost vain attempt toward securing to the people a freer exercise of man’s natural rights, is thus menaced by the colossal military group which stands before it, as though to teach the lesson that the sword still rules the Fatherland.

In the evening, our guide, who had privately confessed to me that within the year he would travel to New York there to become manager of a great hotel, led us to one of the more notable Bier Garten, where we saw a most German vaudeville, the feats of whose performers were greeted with vociferous hochs, and where we listened to a splendid band, and where H had her first sight of ponderous Germans absorbing beer, with which spectacle she was much impressed.

Wednesday, we were early astir, driving to the Hamburgischer Bahnhoff, where we took the fast nine o’clock express for Hamburg, and flew along over a well-ballasted road-bed through a dead-flat country, in what the Germans proudly call their “fastest” train. The panorama was one of market gardens and intensely cultivated land. It was a monotonous prospect, where the alikeness of the vistas was emphasized by the sentinel stiffness of the ever recurring rows of Lombardy-poplars. As in Russia, men and women were everywhere working in the fields and gardens, but unlike Russia, they were well clad and well fed, and bore an air of thrifty contentment. There was no dilapidation anywhere. We saw no longer the tumbled-down shacks of the mujik, but everywhere substantial, neat homesteads of brick and stone.

Ours was a through train connecting with the Hamburg-American Line of steamers for New York, and with the through railway express traffic for France and Belgium, via Cologne. The passengers were chiefly of the well-to-do commercial classes, or those substantial travelers who would hasten quickly between Germany and France. None the less, at the few stations where we halted, did the entire company instantly burst forth, hastening to the long counters, where they convulsively swallowed foaming schooners of beer and eagerly devoured sundry dainties, such as rye bread spread with goose grease and over-laid with kraut or wurst, and varnished pretzels salted to the limit. Even the babies were held at the open windows and foaming mugs of beer poured into them by their fond parents. The passion of the German for his bier equals the Russian’s thirst for vodka.

We reached Hamburg a little after half past one, when, taking a fiacre, we immediately drove to Cook’s Tourists’ Agency, where I booked to London, via Amsterdam, The Hague, the Hook of Holland, and Harwich. Then, for an hour, we strolled about the city.

Hamburg possesses fine retail shops and abounds in restaurants, Bier-Keller and Wein-Stuben, establishments devoted to the solace of the inner man.

Stricken with hunger-pangs, and not knowing just where to go, I accosted a tall and prosperous-looking burger, telling him we were Americans in search of food. Lifting his hat, he “begged to be allowed to guide us to the finest Wein Stube” in the town, whither his own steps were at that moment bent. He led the way to a quiet side street, where, descending a flight of stone steps, he introduced us to the portly master of the stube. We entered a succession of large cellars, paneled and ceiled in oak and floored with patterned tiles, where small round-topped wooden tables were set about. We were conducted to a cozy corner, and Rhine wine, cheese, sausage and fresh rye bread were set before us, as well as mustard and sour pickles and pats of sweet unsalted butter, and to this was added a palatable stew.

The room was filled with men—big, well-fed, well-clothed men, apparently merchants, ship-masters and men of affairs. They fell-to upon their flagons of wein, their wurst and kraut, their braten and fisch with serious and deliberate devotion. It was that time of day when, in America, the prospering businessman eats lightly, smokes sparingly and touches liquor not at all, holding his intellect alert and whetted to its keenest edge. We watched with wonder these men of Hamburg, while they poured down quart after quart of wine, the air growing thick with the fumes of strong tobacco. This capacity of Hans to eat heavily and mightily liquor-up and yet transact affairs, bespeaks a hardness of head and toughness of stomach which ranks him neck and neck alongside his cousin Bull as co-champion of the bibulating, gastronomizing world.

Although H was the only woman in the stube, being recognized as Americans, we were treated by the company with greatest courtesy and that invariable friendliness with which, in Germany, my countrymen are everywhere received.

Upon departing, Mein Host presented me with an attractive little ash-tray to add to my collection of souvenirs and, with much ceremony, bestowed also upon mine frau an illuminated catalogue of his store of wines.

Later, we entered a comfortable landau and for several hours were driven about the city. Hamburg has always been an important city and one where great volume of business has been transacted. In the Middle Ages it was a member of the Hanseatic League; in after days it was a Free City and, even at this time, its citizens view its absorption within the German Empire not altogether with satisfaction. It bears the marks of great antiquity. Quaint and picturesque are the lofty mediaeval buildings which lean over its canals, where men and women push, with long poles, blunt-ended canal boats and clumsy-looking, but storm-proof, sloops and luggers, among perpetual cries and clamors; where sturdy black tug boats incessantly shove their way; and where is a jam and jostle of inland water-life not unlike that seen in Holland. Many narrow streets cross these canals on high-built bridges, bearing a continuous and deliberately-moving traffic.

Hamburg also possesses noble boulevards, long and straight and wide, and well-shaded with umbrageous lindens, where, set back behind high walls and strong-barred gates, are miles of sumptuous mansions, in which her merchant princes maintain their households in unostentatious luxury. The wealth of the merchants of Hamburg is said to exceed that of the aristocratic office-holding classes of Berlin.

There are also spacious docks in Hamburg, convenient and modernly equipped, where, year by year, gathers an increasing shipping to fetch and carry the rapidly developing foreign commerce of the German Empire. The wealth and energy of the German Hinterlands pours itself eagerly into Hamburg’s lap and the ancient mediaeval city now finds itself, unlike somnolent Copenhagen, at the very forefront of Europe’s activity. Hamburg is, commercially, more alive and active than Berlin, and as a port receives more shipping than London. Hamburg is almost as wide awake as is New York.

After our drive, we came to the Hotel Europaer, where we dined and rested, and then departed a little before midnight for Amsterdam. Although this is the regular passenger service to Holland, there was no through sleeper, and we were compelled to change at Oestenburg, where we caught the night express from Cologne. Then in a comfortable “schlafwagen,” wrapped in our sea-rugs, we slept soundly the balance of the night.

We arrived at Amsterdam near eight o’clock and found our way to the Hotel Victoria, near the station, where I enjoyed such delicious coffee two years ago, and there we breakfasted: coffee,—a great pot of fragrant Java,—abundant milk, sweet and delicious,—rolls and big fresh eggs, and a fish which much resembled the Danish roed spoette and English sole. It was a delightful breakfast, such as one is always sure to have in Holland.

Two years ago, I devoted my time to viewing the city, so now we resolved to see somewhat of the country beyond the limits of the town. Thus it happened that we boarded a taut little boat in the midmorning and all day long steamed through canals, with many locks, passing above picturesque farmsteads and villages, down upon which we looked from the higher level of the diked-up waters, and floated at last upon the Zuyder Zee. We later visited the Island of Maarken with its fisher-folk in quaint and ancient costume. Once “simple peasants,” but now, alas! ruined by the staring, money-shedding tourist. We had scarcely set foot upon the Island, when we were stormed by a horde of men and women, boys and girls, each demanding “mooney,” and imploring us to snap the kodak at them for the cash; begging us also to visit their particular homes, where we would be allowed to look inside the door, and perhaps inspect the house, for more Dutch cents and even gulden. So persistent were these “simple fisher-folk” that I almost fell into dire mishap. H suggested she should take my photograph, whereupon I arranged myself before the camera, when, just as the kodak clicked, a vrow and several kinderen rushed up and took position by my side, thus necessarily appearing in the picture, as you will see. The lady backed by her brood thereupon demanded, “Mooney, mooney, mooney.” Naturally, I refused to pay for what had been given without request. The little company immediately raised a loud lament, at sound of which an immense and bow-legged fisherman appeared upon the scene, lifting a great oar and threatening my annihilation, unless money were put up. However, I was firm and fearless, and finally convinced him that I had not requested the family to stand before the lens, while I showed him I had already added half a gulden to his chest for inspection of the home. Comprehending this at last, his anger then turned upon his spouse, and he sulkily drove her and the kinderen within their door, using language that sounded much like the English damn.

Leaving the Island, we came home across the Zee and passed through the huge new locks of the River Amstel, the “Dam” of which, keeping out the waters of the Zuyder Zee, gives to the city its name,—Amstel-dam.

The little boat we sailed upon was chiefly filled with Holland folk, for we were behind the tourist season. They were a quiet, undemonstrative company and, on the deck, sat about in little groups and were served with Schiedam schnapps in small glasses by white-aproned waiters and smoked long, light-colored Sumatra cigars. The proverbial Hollander, fat and chunky with an enormous pipe, is now a mere tradition. The Dutchman of to-day, like his English cousin, is long and lean, and might almost be taken for a New England Yankee.

An hour by rail brought us to “Den Haag.” We passed among broad meadows, marked by wide black ditches from which gigantic pumps incessantly suck out the seeping waters and pour them into the sea. These meadows were once the bottom of the ocean, the soil being composed of the rich alluvial silt which the continental rivers have for centuries discharged. Indeed, Holland may be said to consist of the submerged deltas of the rivers Scheldt and Rhine, which the indefatigable industry of man has rescued from the sea. These lands are of inexhaustible fertility and upon them, everywhere, we saw grazing herds of black-and-white Holstein cows, whence come the butter and cheese for which Holland is famous, and the delicious milk which is so abundantly offered us at every meal. The roadbed ran high above the meadows, down upon which we looked. Here and there we espied a cluster of neat farm buildings, reminding me much of the Dutch homesteads along the Hudson River valley, and stretching from Albany along the Mohawk, in New York,—with this difference, however, that here, each house and barn and garden lay surrounded with its own diminutive canal, where were little foot-bridges and skiffs fastened near the kitchen door, even a large canal boat being often moored against a barn, the better to float away the loaded hay. The Dutchman finds life intolerable unless he has his own canal right at his threshold.

Farther along, the landscape was marked with innumerable windmills turning their ponderous arms slowly to the breeze which crept in from the sea; we counted I do not know how many, there seemed never to be an end. The people we saw were stout and rosy-cheeked, and moved with less alertness than do the Norwegians, nor did they have about them that air of busy-ness which the modern German begins to show. The impression made by the Hollander is that of sureness and deliberation. The cocky strut of the Frenchman, who moves ever as though on dress-parade, is entirely wanting to the Hollander, whose demure exterior gives no hint of the wealth, the talent, the high importance hid within.

The journey from Amsterdam to The Hague takes scarcely an hour, and before we knew it we drew in to the large station of the Dutch capital. The soldierly-clad porters are not here as numerous as in Germany, nor did those who served us move with so self-conscious and self-important a gait. Men in quiet, dark-blue uniforms quickly put our baggage into an open fiacre and we drove to the hotel of the “Twe Stadten,” a comfortable inn facing a large well-shaded “park.” We were given a commodious chamber looking out upon a pretty garden and dined, at a later hour, in the long, low-ceilinged dining room. The guests were few, only one other party beside ourselves dining thus late. They were two tall and white-haired dames, gowned in black silk with much old lace round about the throat, and with them a petite and pretty Señorita, who spoke in Spanish and insisted upon puffing cigarettes. She led the way from the dining room smoking jauntily, the two chaperones following respectfully behind.

In the morning we spent delightful hours in the national picture galleries looking at the priceless collections of the Rembrandts and Rubens, which the Dutch government has here assembled; in the afternoon we strolled about the clean, quiet city, beneath the over-spreading elms; and then we supped at Scheveningen, where we saw the sea again and the last of the season’s fashionable folk.

A moment before leaving our hotel to take the train, which would carry us to The Hook, I had my last adventure among the canny Dutch. Upon the table in our chamber lay an attractive little ash-receiver, which any smoker must needs long to own. Quite naturally, it became entangled with our sundry purchases and scattered belongings and with them was inadvertently put away. Just as we were quitting the apartment, the head waiter of the inn, in whose charge we seemed to be, burst in upon us with wild anxiety in his eye and explained in broken English, that he instantly observed, upon scrutinizing the chamber, that a most valuable piece of Delft ware had mysteriously disappeared. Perhaps we had broken it? At any rate, it was gone and he would be held responsible for its loss. Two gulden would barely replace it! “What should he do?” Naturally, I explained that my wife by mistake had probably packed it up, and begged him to advise the office that, upon settling my bill, it would give me pleasure to deposit two gulden against the loss. At a later time, when exhibiting this relic to wiser eyes, I was forced to recognize that the little ash-receiver was merely common ware, of value perhaps ten Dutch cents! So much for the knowing Dutchman who traps the traveler in search of souvenirs!

Two hours after leaving The Hague we were upon the ship which would carry us to England. By early morning we were again at Harwich, and we arrived in London by mid-afternoon. Our only fellow passenger upon the train was a tall, dark, silent man, who carried with him an enormous overcoat of fur. We thought him a Russian, and wondered if he also had come directly from the Empire of the Czar.

We are now returned to London, whence we departed five weeks ago. We have crossed the North Sea, and journeyed through Denmark, and Norway, and Sweden, and visited their capitals. We have voyaged across the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland; we have caught a passing glimpse of Helsingfors, and looked upon St. Petersburg and Moscow, and traveled many hundred versts through the Empire of the Czar. We have sped through Germany and felt at home in the noble cities of Berlin and Hamburg. We have tarried in Amsterdam and Den Haag, where we felt the strangely familiar atmosphere of Dutch New York. We have looked upon many peoples of the Teutonic races and, when among them, have felt that subtle throb of kinship, which common blood and common origin awake; we have also plunged a moment within the mediaeval and yet semi-barbarous dominions of the Slav and found ourselves upon the threshold of mysterious Asia.

We have everywhere been thankful in our hearts that we were born and bred beneath the Stars and Stripes in the great Republic of the West, where hope and opportunity are not merely our own, but are also the loadstars which beckon thither the youth and vigor of these older peoples of the World.

INDEX

• Aabo Elv, 89
• Alexander Nevsky Monastery, 156
• Amagertorv, The, 22
• American Belles and Viking Beaux, 119
• American Dollars and Norse Farms, 111
• American Emigration from Norway, 113
• American Influence on Norway, 48
• American Navy, Norse Sailors in, 53
• American Spirit, 112
• Amsterdam, 223
• Arctic Twilight, The, 115
• Ash Receiver, Incident of, 227
• Aurdals Vand, The, 60
• Baegna Elv, 60
• Baltic Sea, Crossing the, 138
• Baltic Sea, A Storm on,140
• Bandaks Vand, 108
• Belts, Big and Little, 11
• Berlin, City of, 216
• Berlin, Hotel at Moscow, 169
• Bier Garten, Berlin, 218
• Blagoveschensk, 211
• Boerte Dal, 107
• Borgund, Ancient Church of, 72
• Breifond, Hotel, 93
• Bruce Fjord, 75
• Brute, A Titled, 82
• Brzesc (Brest), 199
• Buarbrae Glacier, The, 89
• Bug River, 199
• Caste, Influence in Russia, 207
• Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, 175
• Cathedral St. Basil the Blessed, 175
• Cathedral St. Savior, 173
• Churches and Schools in Norway, 104
• Churches, St. Petersburg, 155
• Climate of Western Coast Norway, 76
• Coasting Down the Laera Dal, 71
• Condit, Mr. and Mrs., 138
• Copenhagen, 13
• Cossack Hordes, 217
• Cruelty of Ivan the Terrible, 176
• Cruelty of Peter the Great, 187
• Cruelty of Past Czars, 174
• Cruelty of Modern Russia, 210
• Dalen, 106
• Danish Friends, Our, 11
• Democratic Trend in Sweden, 126
• Denmark, A Small Country, 28
• Dinner Party, An Evening, 36
• Dining Service at Ed., 44
• Discontent of Russian Masses, 153
• Dogs of Copenhagen, 24
• Dutch, Impressions of the, 226
• Eida, 84
• Eids Elv, 110
• Eikon, The, 171
• Elsinore, 33
• Esbjerg, 9
• Etna Elv, Along the, 56
• Fagernaes, 63
• Farming in Norway, 71
• Fat Farm Lands of Russia, 197
• Finland, 142
• Finland, The Gulf of, 145
• Flaa Vand, 110
• Fleischer’s Hotel, 82
• Fog, The, leaving Harwich, 3
• Folgefonden, Ice Field, 89
• Fosheim, 63
• France and the Jews, 202
• France, Modern France, Contrasted with Russia, 198
• French Fellow-travelers, Our, 90-97
• Frydenlund, Night at, 58-60
• Gammel Strand, The, Fish-market, 23
• Geok Tepe, 210
• German Bride, The Lovely, 43
• German Fellow-travelers clamor for Bier, Our, 97
• German Car, In a, 200
• German Ogre Hungry for Denmark, 19
• Germany, We Enter, 214
• Germany, Journey to Hamburg, 218
• Gors Vand, 92
• Government Monopoly in Russia, 207
• Graft, Mulcted for Passports, 150-159-195
• Granheims Vand, 62
• Gravens Vand, 84
• Gribski, General, 210
• Grungedals Vand, 106
• Gudvangen, 78
• Gulden at Den Haag, Two, 228
• Hague, The, 228
• Hamburg, 220
• Hamlet’s Ghost and Grave, 35
• Hangoe, We Make Port, 140
• Hardanger Fjord, The, 85
• Harvesting in Norway, 65
• Harwich, Departure from, 1-3
• Harwich, Return to, 228
• Haukeli Fjeld, The, 97
• Haukeli Fjeld, Descending from the, 107
• Haymow Flying Through the Air, 71
• Height of Land, Crossing above Nystuen, 69
• Helsingborg, 41
• Helsingfors, 143
• Herring Catch at Elsinore, 38
• Hoch der Kaiser, 189
• Holger Danske, Legend of, 35
• Holland, Passing Through, 225
• Hollander of Today, The, 225
• Hook of Holland, The, 227
• Hotel Berlin, Moscow, 169
• Hotel Breifond, Horre, 92
• Hotel Continental, Stockholm, 122
• Hotel Dagmar, Copenhagen, 13
• Hotel de’l Europe, St. Petersburg, 149
• Hotel Fleischer’s, Voss, Norway, 82
• Hotel Haukelid, Norway, 97
• Hotel Kristiania Missions, 46
• Hotel Savoy, Berlin, 214
• Hotel Sleibot, Elsinore, 38
• Hotel Stalheim, Norway, 75
• Hotel Twee Stadten, The Hague, 227
• Hotel Victoria, Amsterdam, 223
• Imperial Apartments, St. Petersburg, 155
• Imperial Mail Train, Russia, 158
• Ivan the Terrible, 176
• Izvostchiks, 147-149-168
• Jew, Cultivated Citizen of the World, 204
• Jews’ Opportunity, The, 206
• Jewess, Russian, 202
• Jewish Synagogue, Moscow, 203
• Jotunheim, 61
• Jutland, to Funen and Zealand, 13
• Juno, A Viking, 70
• Kilefos, 78
• King Oscar II, an Incident, 134
• Kischineff, Massacres of, 210
• Kremlin, The, 173
• Kristiania, 46
• Kristiania to Stockholm, 49
• Kronborg, 34
• Kronstadt, Fortress of, 145
• Laera River, The, 72
• Laerdalsoeren, 70
• Lap Dish-wiper, A, 109
• Life and Color of Swedish Capital, 129-132
• Loeken Upon the Slidre Vand, 63
• London, Departure, 1
• London, Return to, 228
• Lotefos and Skarsfos, 90
• Lubin, The Eating Room at, 162
• Maarken, Island of, 223
• Maarken, In a Tight Place, 224
• Maidens Milking Goats, 101
• Maristuen, 69
• Militarism, in Germany, 217
• Military Guard, 160-163
• Minsk, 199
• Moscow, En Route to, 158-161
• Moscow, Arrive at, 167
• Moscow, 168
• Moscow, Our Guide in, 169
• Moscow, Street Life, 178
• Moscow, We Leave, 195
• Mujiks, Frightful Poverty of the, 197-208
• Mujiks, Hatred of Bureaucrats, 187
• Naeroe Fjord, 78
• Nelson, U. S. Senator, 81
• Neva, Entering the River, 146
• Nordsjoe Vand, 110
• North Sea, Crossing the, 3
• Norwegian Bride, A, 119
• Notes and Comments on Norse Life, 103
• Notice to Police, 150
• Novo Dievitchy, Monastery, 191
• Novogorod, 125
• Odda, The Voyage to, 87
• Odda to Horre, 91
• Odnaes, 55
• Ole Mon, Our Driver, 56
• Ole Mon, I Fall into Rhyme, 74
• Opheims Vand, 80
• Pageant of Russian Mass, 182
• Palaces of St. Petersburg, 154
• Passport System of Russia, 136-146
• Peat Beds in Norway, 114
• Peter the Great, 185
• Petrovsky, Chateau, 193
• Pixies and Sprites, 100
• Poland and the Poles, 199
• Police at St. Petersburg, 149
• Problems of Russia Economic, 212
• Raaben, General von, 210
• Railroads—Danish, 10-31
• English, 1
• German, 218
• Norwegian, 41-81
• Russian, 160-163-195
• Swedish, 118
• Rand Fjord, Upon the, 55
• Recruiting Farm Hands for America, 113
• Red Square, Moscow, 174
• Religious Feeling in Russia, 180
• Rembrandt, 227
• Revolution in Russia Inevitable, 199
• Roldals Vand, 92
• Roosevelt, Russians Admire, 166
• Rubens, 227
• Rundals Elv, 82
• Rurik, House of, 125-176
• Russians Barbarians, 179
• Russian Dirt, 200
• Russia, How We Entered, 136
• Russia, Mediaeval and Pagan, 185
• Sandven Vand, 89
• Scandinavian State, United, 19-127
• Scheveningen, 227
• Schools, in Norway, 104
• Schools, Lack of, in Russia, 156-165
• Seljestad Hotel, Our Hostess, 91
• Seljestad Juvet, 91
• Serfs, in Russia, 206
• Ships, on North Sea, 3
• Ships, on Gulf of Finland, 138
• Skansen Park, 131
• Skien, 108
• Skjervefos, The Roaring, 83
• Skodshorn, The Legend of the, 65
• Skogstad, The Night at, 67
• Sleeping Car, Swedish, 118
• Slidre Vand, 63
• Smidal Fjord, 75
• Smolensk, 195
• Snow, The First, 191
• Snows, Distant, 60
• Sogne Fjord, On the, 75
• South African Trooper, Incident, 2
• Sparrow Hills, 177
• Staa Vand, 97
• Staavanger, 88
• Stalheim to Vossvangen, 81
• Stars, We are the, 105
• Stockholm, 129
• Stockholm and the Swede, 123
• Stockholm, The Hotel at, 122
• Stockholm, Life and Color of, 128
• St. Peter and St. Paul, Church of, 156
• St. Petersburg, 148
• Stranda Vand, The, 60
• Summary of Impressions, 229
• Sund, The, 32
• Sund, The, Crossing to Sweden, 41
• Swede and Norsk, Differentiation of, 124
• Swedish Coffee House, A, 133
• Swedish Sleeping Car, A, 118
• Telemarken Fjords, The, 108-110
• Teutonic Kinship, 189
• Thier Garten, Berlin, 216
• Three Continents, 184
• Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, 26
• Tomlevolden, 56
• Tonsaasen, Sanitorium of, 57
• Trolls and Pixies, 65
• Trolls and Witches, 98
• Tver, City of, 163
• Tvinde Elv, 81
• Twilight, the Arctic, 115
• Ulivaa Vand, 97
• Utro Vand, 69
• Vangs Vand, 81
• Vangsmjoesen Vand, 60
• Valdai Hills, 163
• Volga River, 125-163
• Voss or Vossvangen, 81
• Voxli Vand, 106
• Warships, Incident of American, 53
• Wealth of Churches, St. Petersburg, 156-157
• Wealth of Few, Poverty of Many, Russia, 148-152-157
• Wealth of Few, Russia, 209
• Wedding Party, A, 120
• Wein Stube, Hamburg, 220
• Western Alps of Norway, 88
• Winter, Preparation for, 115
• Workingmen’s Square, 187
• Zuyder Zee, 223