session—a sort of one step monopolist. The hooter was sounded and off the train started : just as it got well going an old boy whom she had beaten off ten minutes earlier, darted out from a corner, jumped on to the step, took hold of the parcel, put it under his arm, and smiled benignly at the lady who we could see was giving him the length of her tongue for his pains. But he was getting to Moscow anyhow and I suppose cared little for the insults she was hurling at his head.
Our own train on this occasion was simply a sweltering mass of humanity. When we poured out on to the platform at Moscow it seemed that the crowd would never get through. We talk of crowds at cup-tie matches, but this crowd appeared to exceed them—and yet everybody went along quietly without any hurrying, for hurrying is the last thing that Russians ever will take part in.
I am not sure how people pay for travelling. I know they have to get tickets and I know too that you pass certain officials to get on to the platform, but it seemed to me that travelling was pretty easy and that a considerable number of people at the villages were engaged in travelling a good part of their time—at least it takes a good deal of time to go twenty or thirty miles.
In the theatres it is also a wonderful sight
