Every article almost in the Tolkutshi Ruinok may be described as cheap and nasty, and yet what vistas of yet worse and worse wares unfold themselves as you wander on to the outskirts of the market, where disbanded apparel and invahded furniture are exposed for sale. Things may be seen there, of which it is difficult to imagine that they can still retain a money value. Rags, bits of ribbon, fragments of paper, and broken glass ; clothes that the poorest isvoshtshik has dismissed from his service, and petticoats that the humblest housemaid has thought herself bound to lay aside. Yet all these things, and others, which a gostinnoi dvor merchant would scarcely use except to warm his stove, are not arranged without some show of taste and elegance, nor are they offered without a multitude of civil speeches and lofty panegyrics to the barefooted beggar, to the gipsey and Jewess, who timidly hover around the rich repositories, and cast many a longing glance at the many things with which they might cover their nakedness or decorate their huts, but the possession of which they are unable to purchase with the copper coin within their grasp. The crumbs swept from the tables of the rich are here gathered together ; and though the joint stock of many of these shops be not worth one of the blue notes staked at a card-table in the salon of a noble, yet each article has its estimated value, below which it will not be parted with, — no not for one quarter of a copek.
Perhaps for a stranger, the most interesting portion of this world of markets, is that of the Tshukin Dvor, where the birds are sold. Two long rows of booths are full of Hving specimens of ornithology : pigeons, fowls, geese.
ducks, swans, larks, bulfinches, siskins, and hundreds of other singing birds are there collected, and form the most picturesque and variegated menageries that can be imagined. Each booth is of wood, and open in the front, so that the whole of its contents rnay be seen at once by the passing stranger, who is saluted with such a concert of cackling, crowing, chattering, cooing, piping, and warbling, as would suffice to furnish the requisite supply of idyllic melodies for a hundred -vdllages. Between the opposite booths are usually such bridges as I have already described, from which the pictures of saints are suspended, for the edification of the devout. On these bridges, and on the roofs of the booths, whole swarms of pigeons are constantly fluttering about, the peaceful Russian being a great lover of this gentle bird. Each swarm knows its own roof, and the birds alloAv themselves to be caught without much difficulty, when a bargain is about to be concluded. The pigeon is never eaten by a Russian, who would hold it a sin to harm an animal, in whose form the Holy Ghost is said to have manifested itself. Pigeons are bought, therefore, only as pets, to be fed and schooled by their masters. It is curious to see a Russian merchant directing the flight of his docile scholars. With a little flag fastened to a long staff he conveys his signals to them, makes them at iiis will rise higher in the air, fly to the right or left, or drop to the ground as if struck by a bullet from a rifle.
The poor little singing birds, — the larks, nightingales, linnets, bulfinches, &c., — must be of a hardier race than in more southern lands ; for in spite of the bitter frost, they chirrup away merrily, and salute with their songs every straggling ray of sunshine that finds its way into their gloomy abodes. The little creatures receive during the whole long winter not one drop of water, for it would be useless to offer them what a moment afterwards Avould be converted into a petrified mass. Their little troughs are accordingly filled only with snow, which they must liquify in their own beaks when they wish to assuage their thirst.