At Christmas-tide there is a great augmentation in the queer "Vyazemsky" and other cakes, the peasant laces, sweet Vyborg cracknels, fruit pastils, and other popular goods, on which these petty open-air dealers appear to thrive, both in health and purse. The spacious area between the bazaar and the sidewalk of the Nevsky is filled with Christmas-trees, beautifully unadorned, or ruined with misplaced gaudiness, brought in, in the majority of cases, by Finns from the surrounding country. Again, in the week preceding Palm Sunday, the Verbnaya Yarmaraka, or Pussy Willow Fair, takes place here. Nominally, it is held for the purpose of providing the public with twigs of that aesthetic plant (the only one which shows a vestige of life at that season), which are used as palms, from the Emperor's palace to the poorest church in the land. In reality, it is a most amusing fair for toys and cheap goods suitable for Easter eggs; gay paper roses, wherewith to adorn the Easter cake; and that combination of sour and sweet cream and other forbidden delicacies, the paskha, with which the long, severe fast is to be broken, after midnight matins on Easter. Here are plump little red Finland parrots, green and red finches, and other song-birds, which kindly people buy and set free, after a pretty custom. The board and canvas booths, the sites for which are drawn by lot by soldiers' widows, and sold or used as suits their convenience, are locked at night by dropping the canvas flap, and are never guarded; while the hint that thefts may be committed, or that watching is necessary, is repelled with indignation by the stall-keepers.
There is always a popular toy of the hour. One year it consisted of highly colored, beautifully made bottle-imps, which were loudly cried as Amerikanskiya zhiteli,-inhabitants of America. We inquired the reason for their name.
"They are made in the exact image of the Americans," explained the peasant vendor, offering a pale blue imp, with a long, red tongue and a phenomenal tail, for our admiration.
"We are inhabitants of America. Is the likeness very strong?" we asked.
The crowd tittered softly; the man looked frightened; but finding that no dire fate threatened, he was soon vociferating again, with a roguish grin:-
"Kupiti, kupi-i-iti! Prevoskhodniya Amerikanskiya zhiteli! Sa-a-miya nastoyashtschiya!"-Buy, buy, splendid natives of America! the most genuine sort!
Far behind this Gostinny Dvor extends a complex mass of other curious "courts" and markets, all worthy of a visit for the popular types which they afford of the lower classes. Among them all none is more steadily and diversely interesting, at all seasons of the year, than the Syennaya Ploshtschad,-the Haymarket,-so called from its use in days long gone by. Here, in the Fish Market, is the great repository for the frozen food which is so necessary in a land where the church exacts a sum total of over four months' fasting out of the twelve. Here the fish lie piled like cordwood, or overflow from casks, for economical buyers. Merchants' wives, with heads enveloped in colored kerchiefs, in the olden style, well tucked in at the neck of their salopi, or sleeved fur coats, prowl in search of bargains. Here sit the fishermen from the distant Murman coast, from Arkhangel, with weather-beaten but intelligent faces, in their quaint skull-caps of reindeer hide, and baggy, shapeless garments of mysterious skins, presiding over the wares which they have risked their lives to catch in the stormy Arctic seas, during the long days of the brief summer-time; codfish dried and curled into gray unrecognizableness; yellow caviar which resists the teeth like tiny balls of gutta-percha,-not the delicious gray "pearl" caviar of the sturgeon,-and other marine food which is never seen on the rich man's table.
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. Outside hangs a large image of the "Saviour-not-made-with-hands,"-the Russian name for the sacred imprint on St. Veronica's handkerchief,-which is the most popular of all the representations of Christ in ikoni. Before it burns the usual "unquenchable lamp," filled with the obligatory pure olive-oil. Beneath it stands a table bearing a large bowl of consecrated water. On hot summer days the thirsty wayfarer takes a sip, using the ancient Russian kovsh, or short-handled ladle, which lies beside it, crosses himself, and drops a small offering on the dish piled with copper coins near by, making change for himself if he has not the exact sum which he wishes to give.
Inside, many ikoni decorate the walls. The pale flames of their shrine-lamps are supplemented by masses of candles in the huge standing candlesticks of silver. A black-robed monk from the monastery is engaged, almost without cessation, in intoning prayers of various sorts, before one or another of the images. The little chapel is thronged; there is barely room for respectfully flourished crosses, such as the peasant loves, often only for the more circumscribed sign current among the upper classes, and none at all for the favorite "ground reverences." The approach to the door is lined with two files of monks and nuns: monks in high klobuki, like rimless chimney-pot hats, draped with black woolen veils, which are always becoming; tchernitzi, or lay sisters, from distant convents, in similar headgear, in caps flat or pointed like the small end of a watermelon, and with ears protected by black woolen shawls ungracefully pinned. Serviceable man's boots do more than peep out from beneath the short, rusty-black skirts. Each monk and nun holds a small pad of threadbare black velvet, whereon a cross of tarnished gold braid, and a stray copper or two, by way of bait, explain the eleemosynary significance of the bearers' "broad" crosses, dizzy "reverences to the girdle," and muttered entreaty, of which we catch only: "Khristi Radi"-For Christ's sake.
People of all classes turn in here for a moment of prayer, to "place a candle" to some saint, for the health, in body or soul, of friend or relative: the workman, his tools on his back in a coarse linen kit; the bearded muzhik from the country, clad in his sheepskin tulup, wool inward, the soiled yellow leather outside set off by a gay sash; ladies, officers, civilians,-the stream never ceases.
The only striking feature about the next building of importance, the Gradskaya Duma, or City Hall, is the lofty tower, upon whose balcony, high in air, guards pace incessantly, on the watch for fires. By day they telegraph the locality of disaster to the fire department by means of black balls and white boards, in fixed combinations; by night, with colored lanterns. Each section of the city has a signal-tower of this sort, and the engine-house is close at hand. Gradskaya Duma means, literally, city thought, and the profundity of the meditations sometimes indulged in in this building, otherwise not remarkable, may be inferred from the fact discovered a few years ago, that many honored members of the Duma (which also signifies the Council of City Fathers), whose names still stood on the roll, were dead, though they continued to vote and exercise their other civic functions with exemplary regularity!
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. It has been up nearly all night, and there is but little inducement to early rising when the sun itself sets such a fashion as nine o'clock for its appearance on the horizon, like a pewter disk, with a well-defined hard rim, when he makes his appearance at all. 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.