Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/138

132 and about fifty thousand in it. Remember, the mass of the population does not know how to read and write as in America, and consequently the circulation of the newspapers is confined to a small portion of the community.



"A paper of great influence, probably the greatest in the Empire, is the Moscow Gazette. It is supposed to be the organ of the Emperor, with whom its editor, Mr. Katkoff, is on terms of intimacy. Important edicts of the Government are frequently foreshadowed in the Gazette, and the national and international pulses are often felt through its columns. But, with all its influence, the Gazette does not circulate more than twenty thousand copies-at least according to the figures at my command. The Moscow Gazette is more frequently quoted by foreign writers than any other journal in Russia; and if it were published in French rather than in Russian, we should probably hear of it even more frequently than we do."

"It's a pity they don't give us a French edition of it," said Frank. "I would like very much to read the paper and know what it has to say,