It was evening and we had arrived at Petrograd. For many years I had wanted to see the northern capital. I had thought of it as a town planned by a genius, slowly growing amid surrounding swamps, and in my childhood I had pictured that genius as steadily working as a carpenter—in a white paper cap—having always in his mind\'s eye the town that was to grow on the Baltic Sea, the seaport that should give his country free access to the civilisation of the West. He was a great hero of mine because of his efficiency; after all I see no reason why I should dethrone him now that I realise he had the faults of his time and his position.

But in life I find things always come differently to what one pictures them. The little necessities of life will crop up and must be attended to first and foremost. The first thought that came to me was that I had to part with the friends I had made on the journey. Right away from the borders of China the Cossack officer and I had travelled together; I had met the Hussar officer and his wife soon after I had joined the train, and we seemed to have come out of one world into another together. It made a bond, and I for one was sorry to part. They were going to their own friends or to a Russian hotel, and the general consensus of opinion was that I would be more comfortable in a hotel where there were English or at least French people.

“Go to the Grand Hotel, Madame,” suggested the Hussar officer\'s wife, she who spoke perfect French.

So Buchanan and I loaded our belongings on to a droshky that looked smart after the ones I had been accustomed to in Asia, bade farewell to our friends “till after the war”—the Cossack was coming to England then “to buy a dog”—and drove to the Grand Hotel.

The Grand Hotel spoke perfect English, looked at me and—declined to take me because I had a little dog. I was very much astonished, but clearly I couldn\'t abandon Buehanan, so I went on to the Hotel d\'Angleterre, which also declined. I went from hotel to hotel and they all said the same thing, they could not think of taking in anyone accompanied by a dog. It was growing dark—it was dark, and after a fortnight on the train I was weary to death. How could I think of the glories of the Russian capital when I was wondering where I could find a resting-place? I couldn\'t turn Buchanan adrift in the streets, I couldn\'t camp in the streets myself, and the hotel porters who could speak English had no suggestions to make as to where I could bestow my little friend in safety. Six hotels we went to and everyone was firm and polite, they could not take a dog. At last a hotel porter had a great idea, the Hotel Astoria would take dogs.

“Why on earth didn\'t someone tell me so before?” I said, and promptly went to the Hotel Astoria. It was rather like going to the Hotel Ritz, and though I should like to stay at the Hotel Ritz I would not recommend it to anyone who was fearing an unlimited stay in the country, who had only forty pounds to her credit and was not at all sure she could get any more. Still the Hotel Astoria took little dogs, actually welcomed them, and charged four shillings a day for their keep. I forgot Peter the Great and the building of the capital of Russia, revelling in the comforts of a delightful room all mirrors, of a bathroom attached and a dinner that it was worth coming half across the world to meet. My spirits rose and I began to be quite sure that all difficulties would pass away, I should be able to get back to England and there would be no need for that desperate economy. It was delightful to go to bed in a still bed between clean white sheets, to listen to the rain upon the window and to know that for this night at least all was well. I had seen no English papers; I knew nothing about the war, and it is a fact one\'s own comfort is very apt to colour one\'s views of life. Buchanan agreed with me this was a very pleasant world—as a rule I do find the world pleasant—it was impossible anything could go wrong in it.

And the next day I received a snub—a snub from my own people.

I went to the British Consulate full of confidence. Every foreigner I had met all across the world had been so pleased to see me, had been so courteous and kind, had never counted the cost when I wanted help, so that I don\'t know what I didn\'t expect from my own countrymen. I looked forward very mueh to meeting them. And the young gentleman in office snubbed me properly. He wasn\'t wanting any truck with foolish women who crossed continents; he didn\'t care one scrap whether I had come from Saghalien or just walked down the Nevsky Prospekt; I was a nuisance anyway, his manner gave me to understand, since I disturbed his peace and quiet, and the sooner I took myself out of the country the better he would be pleased. He just condescended to explain where I could get a ticket straight through to Newcastle-on-Tyne; people were doing it every day; he didn\'t know anything about the war, and his manner gave me to understand that it wasn\'t his business to supply travellers with news. I walked out of that office with all the jauntiness taken out of me. Possibly, I have thought since, he was depressed at the news from France, perhaps someone was jeering him because he had not joined up, or else he had wanted to join up and was not allowed. It was unlucky that my first Englishman after so long should be such a churlish specimen. I felt that unless my necessity was dire indeed I should not apply to the British Consulate for help in an emergency. I did not recover till I went to the company who sold through tickets, across Finland, across Sweden and Norway, across the North Sea to Newcastle-on-Tyne. There I bought a ticket for fifteen pounds which was to carry me the whole way. It was a Swedish company, I think, and the office was packed with people, Poles, Letts, Lithuanians and Russians, who were naturalised Americans and who wanted to go home. Everybody took the deepest interest in Buchanan, so much interest that the man in charge asked me if I was going to take him, I said “Of eourse,” and he shook his head.

“You will never get him through Sweden. They are most strict.”

Poor Buchanan! Despair seized me. Having been to the British Consulate, I knew it was no use seeking advice there. I suppose I was too tired or I should have remembered that Americans are always kind and helpful and gone there or even dared the British Embassy. But these ideas occurred to me too late.

You may travel the world over and the places you visit will often remain in your mind as pleasant or otherwise not because of any of their own attributes, but because of the emotions you have suffered in them. Here was I in St Petrograd, and instead of exploring streets and canals and cathedrals and palaces my whole thoughts were occupied with the fate of my little dog. I “had given my heart to a dog to tear” and I was suffering in consequence. All the while I was in Petrograd—and I stayed there three days looking for a way out—my thoughts were given to James Buchanan. I discussed the matter with the authorities in the hotel who could speak English, and finally Buchanan and I made a peregrination to the Swedish Consulate. And though the Swedish Consulate was a deal more civil and more interested in me and my doings than the English, in the matter of a dog, even a nice little dog like Buchanan, they were firm—through Sweden he could not go.

I read in the paper the other day that the world might be divided into men and women and people-who-hate-dogs, and these last will wonder what I was making such a fuss about, but the men and women will understand. My dear little companion and friend had made the lonely places pleasant for me and I could not get him out of the country save by turning round and going back across Europe, Asia and America!

I went back to the place where I had bought my ticket. They also were sympathetic. Everyone in the office was interested in the tribulations of the cheerful little black and white dog who sat on the counter and wagged a friendly tail. I had many offers to take care of him for me, and the consensus of opinion was that he might be smuggled! And many tales were told me of dogs taken across the borders in overcoats and muffs, or drugged in baskets.

That last appealed to me. Buchanan was just too big to cany hidden easily, but he might be drugged and covered up in a basket. I went back to the Astoria and sent for a vet. Also I bought a highly ornamental basket. The porter thought I was cruel. He thought I might leave the dog with him till after the war, but he translated the vet\'s opinion for me, and the vet gave me some sulphonal. He assured me the little dog would be all right, and I tried to put worrying thoughts away from me and to see Petrograd, the capital of the Tsars.

But I had seen too much. There comes a moment, however keen you are on seeing the world, when you want to see no new thing, when you want only to close your eyes and rest, and I had arrived at that moment. The wide and busy streets intersected with canals, the broad expanse of the Neva, the cathedral and the Winter Palace were nothing to me; even the wrecked German Embassy did not stir me.

I was glad then when the fourth morning found me on the Finland station. The Finland station was crowded and the Finland train, with only second and third class carnages and bound for Raumo, was crowded also, and it appeared it did not know its way very well as the line had only just been opened to meet the traffic west diverted from Germany. A fortnight before no one had ever heard of Raumo.

And now for me the whole outlook was changed. This was no military train, packed as it was, but a train of men, women and children struggling to get out of the country, the flotsam and jetsam that come to the surface at the beginning of a war. And I heard again for the first time since I left Tientsin, worlds away, English spoken that was not addressed to me. To be sure it was English with an accent, the very peculiar accent that belongs to Russians, Lithuanians, Poles and Letts Americanised, and with it mingled the nasal tones of a young musician from Central Russia who spoke the language of his adopted land with a most exaggerated accent and the leisurely, cultivated tones of Oxford.

I had come from the East to the West!

The carriage was open from end to end and they would not allow Buchanan to enter it. He, poor little man, in the gorgeous basket that he objected to strongly, was banished to the luggage-van, and because the carriage was hot, and also because I felt he would be lonely separated from me, I went there and kept him company.

And in that van I met another Russian naval officer and deepened my obligations to the Russian navy. He sat down beside me on one of the boxes, a tall, broad-shouldered, fair man who looked like a Viking with his moustache shaved off. I found to my joy he spoke English, and I confided to him my difficulties with regard to breakfast. I was so old a traveller by now I had learned the wisdom of considering carefully the commissariat. He was going to the forts on the Finnish border of which he was in command, but before he left the train we would arrive at a refreshment-room, and he undertook to arrange matters for me. And so he did.

Petrograd does not get up early, at least the Hotel Astoria did not, and the most I could manage before I left was a cup of coffee, but I made up for it at that first refreshment-room. The naval officer took entire charge and, revelling in his importance, I not only had a very good breakfast but made the most of my chances and, filling up my basket with a view to future comforts, bought good things so that I might be able to exchange civilities with my fellow-passengers on the way to Raumo. I had eggs and sausages and new bread and scones and a plentiful supply of fruit, to say nothing of sugar and lemons and cream and meat for Buehanan—the naval man looking on smiling—and when I had really done myself well I turned to him and demanded what I ought to pay.

“Nothing, Madame. In Russia when a gentleman takes a lady for refreshment he pays!”

Imagine my horror! And I had stocked my basket so lavishly!

My protests were useless. I was escorted back to our luggage-van and my thoughts led gently from the coffee and eggs I had consumed and the sausages and bread I had stowed away in my basket to the state of the war as it struck the Russian naval mind.

Had I heard about the sea fight in the Mediterranean? Not heard about the little Gloucester attacking the Goeben, the little Gloucester that the big German battleship could have eaten! A dwarf and a giant! Madame! Madame! It was a sea fight that will go down through the ages! Russia was ringing with it!

“Do you know anyone in the English navy?”

I said I had two brothers in the senior service, a little later and I might have said three.

“Then tell them,” said he earnestly, “we Russian sailors are proud to be Allies of a nation that breeds such men as manned the Gloucester!”

The Finnish border was soon reached and he left us, and the day went on and discipline I suppose relaxed, for I brought Buchanan into the carriage and made friends with the people who surrounded me. And then once again did I bless the foresight of the Polish Jewess in Kharbin who had impressed upon me the necessity for two kettles. They were a godsend in that carriage. We commandeered glasses, we got hot water at wayside stations and I made tea for all within reach, and a cup of tea to a thirsty traveller, especially if that traveller be a woman, is certainly a road to that traveller\'s good graces.

Finland is curiously different from Russia. They used to believe in the old sailing-ship days that every Finn was a magician. Whether they are magicians or not, they have a beautiful country, though its beauty is as different from that of the Amur as the Thames is from the Murray in far-away Australia. Gone were the wide spaces of the earth and the primitive peoples. We wandered through cultivated lands, we passed lake and river and woods, crossed a wonderful salmon river, skirted Finland\'s inland sea: here and there was a castle dominating the farmhouses and little towns, the trees were turning, just touched gently by Autumn\'s golden fingers, and I remembered I had watched the tender green of the spring awakening on the other side of the world, more, I had been travelling ever since. It made me feel weary—weary. And yet it was good to note the difference in these lands that I had journeyed over. The air here was clear, clear as it had been in China; it had that curious charm that is over scenery viewed through a looking-glass, a charm I can express in no other words. Unlike the great rivers of Russia, the little rivers brawled over the stones, companionable little streams that \'made you feel you might own them, on their banks spend a pleasant afternoon, returning to a cosy fire and a cheery home when the dusk was falling.

And this evening, our first day out, we, the little company in my carriage, fell into trouble.

We spoke among us many tongues, English, French, German, Polish, Russian, Lettish, and one whose tongue was polyglot thought in Yiddish and came from the streets, the “mean streets” of London, but not one amongst us spoke Finnish, the language of the magicians, or could even understand one word of it. This was unfortunate, for the Films either spoke no language but their own or had a grudge against us and declined to understand us. That didn\'t prevent them from turning us out that night in a railway station in the heart of Finland and leaving us to discover for ourselves that every hotel in the little town was full to overflowing! Once more I was faced with it—a night in a railway station. But my predicament was not so bad shared with others who spoke my language. There was the Oxford man and the musician with a twang, there was the wife of an American lawyer with her little boy and the wife of an American doctor with her little girls—they all spoke English of sorts, used it habitually—and there were four Austrian girls making their way back to some place in Hungary. Of course, technically, they were our enemies, while the Americans were neutral, but we all went in together. The Russian-American musician had been in Leipsic and was most disgustingly full of t............