Shortly before my departure from Moscow, I had the good fortune to catch a thief who was just about to rob me in a regiilar Russian style. I had wearied myself with running about the town, and had tlirown myself upon the sofa behind a large screen, when I heard some one come into the room and begin rummaging among my moveables, evidently not knowing that any one else was near. I called out " Kto tam ?" (Who is there ?) " It is I," was the answer. The rascal wanted to cheat me into the belief that he was my servant ; but when I looked from behind the screen to get a nearer view of this " I," I saw quite another physiognomy than any 1 was used to. The fellow let fall the linen he had scrambled together, and cried out with a look of anxious and excessive humility, " Ah, excuse me, sir ; pray forgive me. I have made a mistake. I thought this was No. 12, and I see it is No. 11," added he, looking at the immber of the room as if quite sm-prised. As I could not prove his guilt, I let the rogue go with a warning to look at numbers a little more carefully in future ; but I held it a duty to other travellers, to awaken the landlord's attention to the unobservant eyes of his servant. In no country arc people safer from deep-laid, long-concerted plans of robber)^ than in Russia ; but In no country does opportunity make so many thieves,
nowhere are picklocks and snappers up of unconsidered trifles more frequent. To pilfer or pick up unexpectedly some useful article, to borrow for an uncertain time, to make mistakes in the numbers of the rooms, these are their usual ways of stealing, from which one Is not secure even with the best-natured of " old cucumber-eaters," who, when detected in the most glaring theft, will simply tell you of some article or other " God has given it me."
The Russians are often called " onion " Russians by the Germans, from the quantity of onions they eat : they might for the same reason be called " cucumber-eaters ;" for they undoubtedly devour more of this vegetable than any other European people, particularly in Moscow, where all Russian peculiarities more abundantly flourish than elsewhere. Cucumbers and cucumber-water are to be had at every corner. The former are eaten in many ways, though rarely prepared in a very inviting manner ; the latter is drunk in abundance as a cooling beverage. In the greater number of taverns, large vessels full of It are always in readiness, and at many a post station the starved traveller is reduced to cucumbers and cucumber-water as the only attainable refreshment. In the streets they carry about pails full of cucumbers, neither salted nor seasoned with any other condiment, and with bundles of wet bunches of bass, they continually moisten and refresh the insipid fruit. In the same way many other raw vegetables of an insipid sourish taste are carried about ; — sourness is quite characteristic of the Russian national table ; the various kinds of berries and small pears which are brought in enormous quantities from the Ukraine are sour, and so are the very favourite "" matshonnitje yahloh'' (raw apples), preserved in the same way as the cucumbers, and so are many other fruits of the same kind. The Ryilsan apples are a very peculiar species. They are allowed to freeze in winter for sale in summer ; they look in this state like baked apples, but yield an abundance of sweet and refreshing juice, while in the unfrozen state they are very dry and quite destitute of flavour.
Among the many things that surprise foreigners in Russia none do so more than the extraordinary uniformity of dialect throughout the empire. In a tract of more than 400 miles in extent, none but a practised ear can detect any difference even of pronunciation. When I have questioned Russians about a Moscow dialect, they denied the existence of any important distinction between the speech of Moscow and that of St. Petersburg. I only noticed one or two trifling diflcrences ; one was that the Moscovites say "ew^o" for "e^to"(that), with a few trifling peculiarities of the same kind.