Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/52

 24 there are two public middle schools or gymnasia, for boys and girls, where the classical curriculum of the Government is taught, including Latin, German, French, history, geography, and a certain smattering of theoretical science, which is taught only from books. Then there are a large seminary, or priests' training college, seventeen urban elementary schools kept up by the urban authority, where the rudiments of reading and writing are learned by the citizens, and one small technical institute for teaching mechanical work among the railway employees. Education, therefore, is not utterly neglected.

There is also a public library, which consists of a low dingy shed with dusty second-hand novels. These seemed to have been cleared out of some library in Moscow to make room for something better. A sluggish youth in uniform, acting as the librarian in charge, did not look as if he could even read.

At the north end of the town, facing an open space, there is a great barn-like building made of plastered wood, which is called the museum. The idea of a museum in Siberia struck one as ridiculous at first. Inside I saw a remarkable collection of articles, some of which were very interesting, but all of which were without much order or arrangement. Stuffed birds, in various stages of moth decomposition, were pushed up against a very good collection of local minerals, geological specimens, and some interesting maps. The curator, who, I afterwards gathered, was a political exile from Poland, showed a superficial knowledge of everything, but very little real knowledge of anything. It gave one the impression that the authorities, feeling bound to be up to date, had copied the Western European models and grafted