in white, but not floury, who is circulating
restlessly among the Iks, and bears before
him a flat tray, or shallow basket, full of bread
of the multiform shapes the Russians delight
in—bread in long twisted rolls; bread
in double semicircles, hollow, like a pair
of handcuffs; bread in round balls, and
bricks and tablets, and big flat discs, and
lumps of no particular shape. Some of
this seems white and light enough, almost
cake or puff-paste in appearance; but
the great mass is of the approved Rye
or Pumpernickel pattern; and, though
appetisingly light in its rich brownness
without, is, when cut, as dark as the skin
of a mulatto. This Ik is a Xhlaïbchik,
literally Bread-man—if indeed Ik or Chik
or Nik may be understood to mean man.
Perhaps the Ik is only synonymous with
our "er" in Costermonger, Fishmonger,
Fruiterer, Poulterer. The Xhlaïbchik is
doing a smart trade on the bridge among
the Iks (whom I hope you have by this
time discovered form part of the Tchornï-
Narod, the Black people); for from four to
five in the morning is breakfast time with
them. Some other peripatetic tradesmen
minister to the co-epicurean wants of the Iks.
There is the Tchaïchik—the teaman—who
carries a glowing samovar beneath his arm
wrapped in a thick cloth, from whose centre
protrudes a long horizontal spout and tap.
He also carries, by a strap over his shoulder,
a flat tray, covered with a fair linen cloth, on
which is his array of tumblers, and earthen
mugs, pewter spoons, lumps of sugar, (seldom
called for) and slices of lemon, much in
demand. He serves his tea, all hot, as the
merchant in the cab-rank centre of the
Haymarket, London, does his potatoes. The tea
is of the very coarsest, bitterest, and vilest of
flavour. I tasted it, and it costs two copecks
a tumbler. It is full of strange ingredients
that float about in it, herbaceous, stony, gritty
and earthy; but it is not adulterated in
Russia, being made from the cheap brick
tea—so called from the bricks or ingots into
which the leaf is compressed—brought by
caravans out of China, by way of Kiatka.
It is written that you must eat a peck
of dirt before you die; and I think that
about four tumblers of hot Petersburg
street tea would go a long way towards
making up the allowance. There is another
Tchaïchik—the cold tea man. He with a
prodigious vase of glass, with a pewter top,
and through whose pellucid sides (the vase's)
you can see the brown liquid frothing with
much oscillation, and with much sliced lemon
bobbing up and down in it, leans moodily
against the parapet of the Novi-Most; for
the morning air is a nipping and an eager
one, and the cry is, as yet, almost entirely for
warm tea. Not so with the Kolbasnik, or
dealer in charcuterie:—there is positively
no strictly English word for it, but seller of
pork fixings will explain what I mean. He
is a blithe fellow with a good face, and a
shirt so bright that he looks like a Russian
Robin Red-breast, and goes hopping about
among the Iks, vaunting his wares, and
rattling his copecks, till a most encouraging
diminution begins to be apparent in his stock
of sausages, pig's and neat's feet, dried tongue,
hung beef, salted pork fat (a great Kolbasnik
delicacy, in lumps, and supplying the place of
bacon, of whose existence the Russians seem
unaware), and balls of pork mincemeat,
resembling the curious viands known in cheap
pork butchery in England, I believe, as
Faggots.

There are, as yet, few women or children
crossing the bridge; and of those few the
former are counterparts of the Okhta
milk-women, without her yoke and bundle
of tin cans. There pass occasionally, silent
files of soldiers, clad either in vile canvas
blouses, or else in grey capotes gone to rags,
whose military character is only to be divined
by their shaven chins, and closely cropped
heads, and long moustaches. These are men
drafted off from the different regiments not
on actual duty, to work in the docks, at
unloading ships at the custom-house; or
warehousing goods; or at the private trades,
or occupations at which they may be skilled.
They receive wages, which are said facetiously
to go towards the formation of a regimental
reserve fund; but, which in reality go to
augment the modest emoluments of his
excellency the general, or his high-born honour
the major, or his distinguished origin the
captain.

The background of these groups is made
up by the great Iks of all Iks, the Moujiks,
the Rabotniks (the generic term for workmen,
as a Moujik and Christian are for slaves),
the indefinable creatures in the caftans who
are the verb active of the living Russ
condemned for their lifetime to be, to do, and to
suffer. This is why they tarry on the bridge
on their way to work: these multifarious
Iks. There is a shrine-chapel at its foot
towards Wassily-Ostrow:—a gilded place, with
pictures, filagree, railings, silver lamps
suspended from chains, huge waxen candles
continually burning, and steps of black
marble. Every Ik, every woman and child,
every soldier, every Ischvostchik as he passes
this shrine, removes his hat or cap, crosses
himself, and bows low before it. Many bow
down and worship it—literally, grovelling in
the dust; touching the earth repeatedly with
their foreheads, kissing the marble steps
and the feet of the Saint's image, and looking
devoutly upward as though they longed to
hug the great, tall, greasy wax candles.
Not the poorest Ik, but fumbles in his
ragged caftan to see if he can find a
copeck for the Saint's money-boxes, which,
nailed to the wall, guard the staircase like
sphynxes.

Drive on thou droschky (of which the
Ischvostchik has reverently lifted his hat,