Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 March 1886 — Life in St. Petersburg. [ARTICLE]

Life in St. Petersburg.

It may bo well here t<> remind the reader that the habit of IJying in lodgings is general in St Petersburg. So far as Russian life is a bivouac, the term "lodgings" is aptly used; etymologically, it corresponds with the English “house," or “home,” and is, therefore, without the sense usually associated with, it in; the West. In the capital a mab who lives in his own house occupies little more than a corner of it, or sleeps in a palace. Some of the richest families are content with lodgings, and but few of them need all the apartments which constitute a St. Petersburg flat. This is in itself suggestive of the scale upon which houses are built-in the great Russian cities. But it is all too inadequate as preparation forthe statement tnat a St. Petersburg lodging-house frequently contains as many as a thousand rooms, with a population of from two thousand to three thousand persons. The finest apartments are on the ground floor; the poorest are reached by ascent of from ten to twelve stories. A suit of Six rooms suffices for the wealthiest lodgers who have no palace of their own. Two or three supply all the needs of the well-to-do tradesman and his family; the majority of professional mpn who are bachelors, m arly all teachers and students, and a large class offofficials, find themselves amply accommodated by a single apartment. The cost of lodgings depends, of course, upon such elements as situation, number, and furnishing of rooms, height of flat, and service. As a rule, it may be said that, taking into consideration the general purchasing power of the \money expended—a precaution consistently neglected in international comparisons of this kind — house-rent is somewhat higher in St. Petersburg than it is in Paris or London. I offer these details simply in order that the reader may be the Better prepared for a singular custom to which I here- invite his attention. Rent charges in Russia are invariably exacted “in advance,” even when a lodger surrounds himself with luggage valuable enough to yield the amount of a whole year’s arrears. Upon personal property of this kind there can be legally no lien. The same Russian law which hampers foreigner and native alike with the police surveillance of passport regulations, seizing every opportunity to throw obstacles in the way of free movement, gives to a lodger the fuMest right to carry off his luggage in the teeth of an irate landlord clamoring for the settlement of his unpaid bill. Any forcible detention of property in such cases 1b treated °by the easy it is, under these circumstances, to attach to a whole class an undeserved stigma of sordid caution, or of suspicious distrust of their fellow-beings, will be at once seen. The law itself is an interesting survival: its origin, as a defense of personal rights in the country where the modern ukase so frequently ignores them, must lie sis deeply in historical causes as the democratic period itself.— Atlantic.