Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/46

18 were testifying to their success by the size of the dinners they were eating, and the volume of the alcohol they were consuming, while sallow-faced students from the middle schools were already in the singing stage, prior to their final resting-places beneath the table. There was, moreover, a considerable contingent of persons of doubtful virtue.

The decorations in the restaurants and other public places of recreation and pastime were of a most primitive character. Walls covered with loud yellow paint, vermilion curtains, sky-blue sofas, seemed to be the highest efforts of local art, and to contribute no little to the enjoyment of the visitors. Some of the restaurants had stages for impromptu theatricals, but, judging from the quality of the audience, I fear that the art would not have proved inspiring or entertaining if I had witnessed it. Under such circumstances as the above I heard a gramophone bawl forth a Russian comic song, followed immediately by the strains of the "Songe d'Automne" and other beautiful waltz airs from Western Europe. What irony! The air which I had last heard in an English ballroom I now heard in a low coffee-house of a Siberian mining town.

Next day I strolled down to the quay on the banks of the Yenisei and found a rough wooden platform laid on piles against which some grimy paddle-steamers were moored. On the banks lay stacks of merchandise waiting to go up country by the first steamer as soon as the ice broke. There were sacks of flour from Tomsk, reaping machines from America, ploughs from European Russia, cream separators from Sweden and Germany, and bales of cotton manufactures from Moscow. Incidentally I may