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327 ADVENTURES IN EASTERN SIBERIA 327 •could not find anybody who seemed sober enough to know the difference between a horse and his harness. We there- fore brought our baggage into the crowded station-house, and sat down in an unoccupied corner to study intoxicated humanity and await further developments. Every person in the house was drunk, except ourselves and one small baby in arms. The father of this baby, a good-looking young Russian officer in full uniform, wandered unsteadily about the room, animated apparently by a hazy idea that he ought to be collecting his scattered baggage so as to be in readiness for a start; but the things that he picked up in one place he dropped feebly in another, and every minute or two he would suspend operations to exchange with his intoxicated companions fragmentary reminiscen- ces of the day's festivity. Finally he seemed to be struck by a happy thought, and, making his way in a devious •course to one corner of the room, he took up his saber, which was leaning against the wall, and, carrying it to his intoxicated wife, committed it solemnly to her care with directions to take it out to the sleigh. She was sober •enough to remark, with some asperity, that as she had a young baby in her arms, and as the temperature out-of- doors was twenty degrees below zero, he had better take the saber to the sleigh himself. At this he clasped the sheathed weapon dramatically to his breast, rolled his eyes in a fine frenzy upward, and declared with emotion that the saber was his first bride, that he never would forsake it, and that, in view of all the circumstances, he tvould take it out to the sleigh himself. A moment later, however, he dropped it, and but for the supervision of his second bride would have forgotten it altogether. About eight o'clock, after watching for an hour or two such performances as these, I succeeded in capturing the stdrosta, and addressing to him some very energetic re- marks I sobered him sufficiently to make him understand that we must have horses at once or there would be trouble.