much there was to be sorry for in the prevailing conditions of life. In spite of everything,
though, there was always a cheeriness which
seemed to keep them going and which made
it impossible for conditions to destroy either
their vitality or their hopes.
I wish I could give an adequate picture of my railway journey out and home to see Peter Kropotkin. He lives at a little place 60 versts from Moscow. Although so short a distance it takes many hours to do the journey, partly owing to lack of fuel, but also largely owing to the fact that at each station an enormous crowd attempts to get into the trains already overcrowded. There is nothing like it in all the world that I know of.
I am told that even before the revolution trains were crammed in this sort of fashion. Picture to yourself an ordinary closed railway waggon with no seats, with doors in the centre and people obliged to climb up the best way they can and then stand for hours on end packed like sardines. This is how part of the train is made up. Other parts are made up of ordinary carriages, not exactly like ours, but very similar, except they are all “ corridors ” and each ordinary carriage is warmed by a wood fire. But most carriages these days are not heated at all. When a carriage gets full the steps are loaded with people, when these
