From time to time something would occur to remind me
that I was not seeing Russia at all. I took Russian lessons free a young student who had been recommended to my fathe (and this makes me laugh) by the Procurator of the Hell Synod. He was a tall young Balt with hair like a braid pile carpet and he believed very deeply in the efficacy d universal suffrage. He spoke of this electoral device with aim religious fervour. He explained to me in his clumsy Gertnai that it was the only alternative to revolution. And one do he took me to a students' meeting. I retained from the meeting a slight dissatisfaction with that denial of al enthusiasm which I was being taught at Balliol. Walking with my student one day along the quays I passed a beggar squattiq there with his cap beside him. I threw some money into dot cap and passed on. My student reproved me for the no chalance of my gesture ; poverty, he explained, was a bell thing and should not be treated with irreverence. I feb ashamed and irritated. Ashamed, since I had not meant Ern gesture to be off-hand. Irritated by the eternal Russian trid of trying to make the ordinary seem unusual. * *
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