3-052-565 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Russian Sketches, 1880. 'Water Carriers; A Street Tea; Staff Officer; General's Aide-de-Camp; The Dvornik's Night Watch; Heavy Goods Sledge...The "dvornik," or nocturnal door-keeper, seated on the steps of an aristocratic town mansion, with his staff and lantern, and bearing the winter night cold in his thick furred great coat and woollen cap, has lately been put more on the alert by the panic of Nihilist conspiracies and the attempted blowing up of the Czar's own Palace...staff officers are seen in mutual converse at a little distance apart. The institution of ready, cheap, and easy tea-drinking, which prevails everywhere in Russia, might perhaps be imitated by England...with some advantage, to the promotion of sobriety and temperance. The tea is poured directly from a sort of urn, called a "samovar"...it is drunk without milk, only sweetened by a lump of sugar and flavoured also with a slice of lemon. We have no doubt those girls and boys in the street find it a palatable beverage...Our Artist's Sketches [depict] the method by which two men contrive, with a pole and sling, to carry one small cask of water up and down the city; and the sort of vehicle that is used for the conveyance of merchandise when the streets are covered with snow'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.