Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/101

 Rh sonality. He seemed to be engaged in the usual apelike habit of eating nuts. Inside the bank, before a long counter, was a motley assortment of Minusinsk traders, mostly Russians and Kazan Tartars, who had casually strolled in some hours before to get a bill of exchange drawn or a cheque cashed, and had been waiting many hours, squatting in the corner of the room in true Eastern style. It did not take long to discover that this was, after all, the true East with only a thin veneer of West upon it. Behind the counter was the row of loutish-looking clerks who might have just been brought in from ploughing the fields. They were engaged in leisurely writing out forms in large childlike letters, as if they were at a board school examination, stopping every few minutes to drink cups of tea, which were in a continuous process of circulation among the bank staff.

The chief clerk was an anæmic youth with an academic air, who had evidently not been to the barber for at least twelve months. He had been let loose from one of the middle schools after having acquired a knowledge of reading and writing, a smattering of history and geography, and a little dangerous political idealism. The bank manager, who was surrounded by a halo of sanctity in a special room, and to whom we presented letters, was an evil-looking creature, who looked as if a not remote ancestor of his had been sent away from old Russia for old Russia's good.

After a brief conversation we expressed a desire to draw some cash, and I was therefore left to attend to this process in the main room of the bank. I first had to wait till the greasy crowd of Kazan Tartars and Siberians had completed their financial