Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/264

258 Jews use the abacus in counting, and they work it with wonderful rapidity. We saw it in St. Petersburg, but it was not so much employed there as in Moscow. The abacus has undergone very little change in two or three thousand years. It was introduced by the Tartar conquerors of Russia, and promises to remain permanently in the Empire.

"What a quantity of silks, embroideries, silverware, and the like are piled in the bazaar! and what an array of clothing, household goods, furniture, and other practical and unpractical things of every name and kind! It was the Bazaar of St. Petersburg over again, with the absence of certain features, that suggested Western Europe and the addition of others belonging to the Orient. The second-hand market was encumbered with

old clothes, pots, pans, boots, furniture, and odds and ends of everything, and we were so pestered by the peddlers that we went through the place pretty quickly.

"The guide took us to Romanoff House, which was built near the end of the sixteenth century, and was the birthplace of Michael, the first Czar of the present reigning family. Of the original house only the walls remain; the interior was destroyed by the French, who plundered the building and then set it on fire, and only the great thickness and solidity of the walls preserved them.

"Romanoff House, as we saw it to-day, is an excellent example of the