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38, the same white-walled churches with colored or gilded domes, and the same gastínnoi dvor or city bazar. In the bazars of these Russian provincial towns you may find, if you search diligently, almost everything that the empire produces, and a great many things that it does not produce. In roaming through gastínnoi dvor of Ekaterínburg a day or two after our arrival, we happened to get into what seemed to be a small grocery. The chief clerk or proprietor, a bright-faced, intelligent young peasant, answered good-humoredly all our questions with regard to his business and stock in trade, allowed us to taste certain Asiatic commodities that were new to us, and gave us as much information as he could concerning a lot of Russian and Chinese nuts that lay in open bags on the counter, and that attracted our attention because many of them were new to us. After we had examined them all, and tested experimentally a few of them, the young groceryman said, "I have in the back part of the shop some very curious nuts that were sold to me a year or two ago as 'African nuts.' Whether they ever came from Africa or not I don't know,—the Lord only does know,—but the people here don't like the taste of them and won't buy them. If you will condescend to wait a moment I will get a few."

"What do you suppose they are?" inquired Mr. Frost as the young man went after the "African" nuts.

"Brazil nuts, very likely," I replied, "or possibly cocoa-nuts. I don't believe anybody here would know either of them by sight, and they are the only tropical nuts that I can think of."

In a moment the young groceryman returned, holding out toward us a handful of the fruit of the plant known to science as Arachis hypogaea.

"Why, those are peanuts!" shouted Mr. Frost in a burst of joyful recognition. "Americanski peanuts," he explained enthusiastically to the groceryman, "kushat khorosho" [American peanuts eat well], and he proceeded to