Just before the wonderful Russian Spring blossoms suddenly into the short, warm Russian Summer, all St. Petersburg begins to talk of going to the "village." OF course everybody does not go, otherwise there would be nobody left here, bat certainly everybody talks of going, and this talk shows what a passion this people has for country life. It also discloses the fact that practically everybody in this great city has got in some government" or other an old ancestral wooden shanty, a bit of incorrigible forest, and " few acres of land, whither he can repair in summer time as the guest of relatives or as part proprietor, and lounge about fr a couple of weeks in a brilliantly-coloured blouse (called in Rassian Rubashka"), fastened at the waist by a brilliantly-coloured cord with tassels at the ends of it.
As for those unfortunates whom business compels to visit the capital daily, they try to get as near nature as they can by taking entirely or, more often, in part, a suburban "datchs."" "Dat chas" are, I need hardly say, country houses, and the near neighbourhood of the Capital is covered with clusters of them, the principal clusters bein situated along the Gulf of Finland and, inland, at the imperial residence of Tearskoe Solo and the Grand Unical residence of Pavlovsk.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.