under the protection of the friendly express train. So far my journey has been beautifully simple and proved my theory to perfection, for it might easily have been difficult if the world were n't so full of those people who like to be nice to women traveling alone.

In fact I feel as if I had been handed along from place to place on a series of silver platters. In Peking, in the short week I had after Owen's wireless came from Urumchi, everyone set to work helping me, and with shoppings and packings and farewells I left there in a whirl. Then at Mukden a young Englishman, friend of a friend in Peking, tended to all the irksome business of transferring luggage for me, securing my reservation and seeing me safe on to my next train.

The train this time was on the Japanese line which runs from Mukden to Changchun, and had Pullman cars so exactly like those in America that it made me homesick, since I felt already out of China and yet not in America, for the porters were small and Japanese instead of big and black, and there were neatly folded kimonos and leather slippers supplied to destroy the illusion of the curtained berths.

From Changchun to Harbin I felt farther still from China, for the train and porters were Russian. The porters in the Harbin station were Russian, too, and wore big white aprons.

At Harbin I was looked after again by friends of friends, who helped me to secure my visa for Chinese Turkestan and changed my money, partly into yen for my railway ticket, partly into Harbin dollars for last odds and ends of shopping, and partly into rubles to use in Siberia; who entertained me delightfully and gave me introductions to people in Manchouli and here; and who saw me off at the station with fudge and fruit cake and mince pies.

I wish I could tell you about Harbin, as I am sure it is like no place else on earth. It is a Russian city in China, ugly and crass like other frontier towns, full of riffraff, and famed for the extravagance of its night life and its cabarets crowded with the débris of the Russian imperialist refugees and Chinese a little carried away by the feeling of race superiority given by their ability to domineer over the ragtag and bobtail of white Russians who form a large part of the city's population. The Chinese flaunt their Russian women in an attempt to live up to the youngsters of the American and European business communities, who flaunt their Russian women in an attempt to live up to the East.

In Manchouli on the Russian border I had to wait a day to arrange with the customs for permission to carry four cameras and a lot of films and photographic supplies through Siberia. I was met at the station by the Chinese postmaster and by Manchouli's only English-speaking inhabitant, the latter a most surprising person to find in that scraggly frontier town—a delightful hermit who raises goldfish and Angora cats and who entertained me charmingly in his little study lined with books and Persian rugs. All my meals in Manchouli I had with him and wished there might be more.

At Manchouli, too, I had my first experience of a Russian hotel, cold and ugly enough, where I managed to ask for tea and hot water, and where a price list on the door, which I laboriously spelled out with the help of my pocket dictionary, informed me how much I must pay for each, as well as for the towel and sheets and pillowcase which I had also ordered in my best phrase-book Russian, and how much I should have had to pay had I had a samovar or a bath.

While I was being entertained by

the friendly postmaster or the charming Englishman, by some mysterious means permission was obtained for all my luggage to go through uninspected and my ticket was bought, and I had only to wait in the station master's inner office while other passengers' suitcases were being emptied and their most private belongings exhibited to the public gaze. Then post-office coolies carried my luggage on to the train, where I discovered to my delight that I had a pleasant compartment entirely to myself.

On Russian trains one travels 'hard' or'soft' or 'wagon-lits'-a 'hard' ticket entitling one to an unupholstered berth in a car much like a third-class sleeping car on the Continent, a 'soft' ticket to a berth in a well-fitted secondclass compartment, and 'wagon-lits' to a place on one of the old international sleeping cars taken over by the Trans-Siberian and run only on the semiweekly express trains. I traveled 'soft' and found it clean and comfortable, probably more comfortable with my compartment all to myself than if I'd traveled grandly 'wagonlits,' though I was amused to discover that I was looked down on socially by the other foreigners on the train, who spoke of it condescendingly as traveling 'Russian' in contrast to traveling 'international.'

Out of the window of my compartment was snow - crisp, sunny snow everywhere as far as I could see. Lake Baikal was buried deep, with little sleighs darting across it like black flies, and I wondered if they were anything like the sleigh that I should travel in after I left the railway.

It was a great lark to hop out at little stations in the tingling cold and eat a bowl of hot cabbage soup with sour cream in it at the station buffet, or buy a circle of hot fresh bread, new butter, and a little roasted chicken for

my supper from a peasant woman at a wooden stall.

After four sunny, snowy days of Siberia I reached here this morning and wished again that I were n't trying to carry quite so much luggage to the middle of Asia. Watching it on and off trains had become a dizzier process at every stop. Here it was speedily loaded on a sledge, and when I told the whiteaproned porter I was waiting for the train to Semipalatinsk he trundled it half a block to a sort of left-luggage office and deposited it in a heap on the floor.

I had rather expected I should have to spend this eighteen hours' wait between trains sitting on it in the station, but I find that it would not have been allowed in the station at all, which is far too crowded with people to leave room for their luggage, so I am. free of it till 3.45 in the morning, which is the ungodly time my train departs for Semipalatinsk.

The ticket office is closed till train time, and with my six phrases of the Russian language, the jam of passengers, and my jam of luggage I felt quite hopeless about ever getting it and me on to the train without assistance. I had a letter to somebody somewhere here, but when I looked out of the station door the city seemed a long way off and the day felt very cold. However, I took a deep breath and

set out.

There was a row of droshkies across from the station. I chose the kindestlooking of the drivers and showed him the address on my letter. He answered with a torrent of language which I finally assorted into meaning that it would cost me five rubles to get there in a droshky, but I could go in an automobile for thirty kopecks.

'Where is the automobile?' I asked. 'I'll show you,' volunteered a small boy at my heels, and led me to the top

of the hill, where a motor bus was rapidly filling with passengers.

After a ride of twenty minutes all the passengers helpfully put me off at a street corner, and one of them, who was also dismounting, led me to a building the address of which corresponded to the one on my letter. A great many people lived in the building, none of whom seemed ever to have heard of the man I was looking for until one told me he had moved away, he did n't know where. Well, Nova Sibersk is a rather large city, and I was on a wide street of shops and public buildings; but, now that it seemed to be difficult, I wanted more than ever to find my friend of the letter. So I kept on showing people the name on the envelope and rather enjoyed the sensation of feeling like a waif. And after a while I was somehow shoved along to a large new office building and into a room filled with clerks and typists and up to a very busy and important-looking man at a desk in one corner. He was friendly and to the point.

'What do you want?' he asked.

'I want someone to buy my ticket and help me on to the train for Semipalatinsk to-night,' I answered.

'Very well,' he said, and spoke to a clerk.

In a minute a villainous-looking chap in a huge fur hat swaggered in. He looked like a very tough driver of a very big brewery wagon.

"This man,' said my friend, 'will do all you want. He will come to the station at ten to-night. Pay him three rubles for his services. Is there anything else?'

'No, thank you,' I answered gratefully, and came back to the station.

I am ensconced here in the first-class buffet, a small room with a fancy counter covered with fruit in piles and pastries in rows, and two long tables covered with once white cloths and

laden with rubber plants and Christmas trees in pots and silver candelabra and three-tiered cake plates, and surrounded by a varied collection of jaded travelers, all of the men in high boots and huge coats of every known kind of fur and fur hats, some of them quite as big as dishpans. And all of them have beards. Siberia should have been called 'Sibeardia'!

In the waiting room outside, too, there is a wonderful collection of humans Buriats and Tatars and Mongols and others of the strange races who occupy corners of Siberia, many of them, in fur hats and tightwaisted coats and high boots, looking exactly like various versions of Santa Claus.

My guide may look like a ruffian, but he seems to have a good heart. He has just come in, though it is only three instead of ten, and has gallantly brought me some tea and cakes and settled down to be friendly. With the aid of my pocket dictionary we have been holding spirited conversation. He has no feeling for the alphabet at all, but is indefatigable in thumbing through pages of the dictionary until he finds the word he wants. He has told me how many Communists there are in England, in France, in Germany, and the total for the world, and has asked me numberless questions about both China and America. I am writing this while he looks up words in order to tell me something new and remarkable about Soviet Russia. 'Did you know John Reed?' he has just asked me. 'I worship him. He was Russia's wonderful friend.'

He has also been pointing out to me various individuals here in the waiting room and whispering to me darkly that they are 'white' and 'no true friends of Russia.' Then, pointing to a young woman across the table with whom I had been trying to talk before he came

in, he scrambled through the dictionary to point out to me that she was an 'entertainer of suspected persons.'

This city used to be called Novo Nikolayevsk until the people who no longer honor tsars changed it to 'New Siberia,' and it has been growing fast since the building of the branch railway to Semipalatinsk has brought Central Asian commerce here instead of by river to Omsk. And it is a New Siberia. I wish I could tell you what a feeling I have had of the difference between the people here and on the train and the Russians of the old Russia whom I have known in New York and Peking. The latter live so tragically in the past, whereas these people live so hopefully for the future.

But my ardent guide has brought me some soup, so I must change my pencil for a spoon. I'll write more on the train.

February 2

I am on the last train I'll see this year, and not only is it a very strange train, but I am very surprised to be here.

At ten last night my guide was still entertaining me when a woman with a shawl over her head came up and muttered in his ear. "That's my wife,' he grinned. 'She wants me to come home. I'll be back before one to tend to your luggage.'

As my train did n't leave till 3.45 I had n't worried when at one he had n't returned. But a few minutes after one the 'entertainer of suspected persons' came rushing up to me, talking very excitedly, and others joined her, all trying to explain something to me in very rapid Russian, which I finally gathered to be that there was a rule that no baggage would be weighed and checked after one o'clock, also that the left-luggage room closed at one. Well, I knew that a rule was a rule in Russia.

I'd been running into them all day. No luggage allowed in the waiting room. No sleeping allowed in the station. It was almost as bad as America. I began to see visions of waiting another twenty-four hours in the station without sleeping, and knew it could n't be done.

By this time a crowd had collected, all trying to tell me what to do. But the young woman took me by the arm and marched me to the baggage room, where the man was just locking up. He was surly at first, but weakened at her tale of my sad plight and promised to wait till I could bring my stuff to be weighed. Then we rushed to the leftluggage office half a block away and found it locked. She banged on the door and a very cross man appeared, but she finally melted him too and he promised to keep open till we could find a porter.

But we could n't find a porter. She told my tale to every porter in the station, but they were all busy. Finally we went to the first baggageman with a second tale of woe. He was grumpy, but produced a porter, and the porter got my eleven pieces of baggage over in several trips, my efficient friend waiting at one baggage room and I at the other; it was weighed, I paid the excess, and we sat on it till train time, having kept both baggage offices open an hour after their closing time.

All this to prove that it is lucky for women traveling alone that there are so many Boy-Scout-intentioned people in the world.

Miss Entertainer of Suspected Persons was very friendly and saw me on to the train, which was a good thing, too, as the porter put me on the wrong car and there was a most awful fuss and I should n't have known what it was all about.

Just before the train started, who

should appear but the faithless guide, with a pathetic tale of how he had gone to sleep, and demanding his three rubles for what he had n't done; and since I could n't explain to a car of interested spectators about how he had n't earned it, it seemed easier to pay.

This train is all 'hard,' but I slept well on my broad berth, across from a frowzy woman in a red kerchief who ate raw fish in the middle of the night. We are jogging slowly across more fields of snow, stopping longer than we go and yet running quite according to schedule. This leisurely rate gives me long walks at the tiny stations, where I buy piroshkies, delicious hot meat pastries, and eat them as I walk and feel farther and farther away from anything I've ever known before. To-morrow I reach Semipalatinsk, the jumping-off place where I start my long trip by sleigh to Chinese Turkestan.

SEMIPALATINSK, February 3 Life becomes more and more surprising. You'd be aghast at where I am living, but it's wonderful - a tenement room with a family of four and a dog and a cat and two boarders. And none of them can speak anything that I can speak, but just the same we have a merry time.

This journey is being so difficult that I feel more exhilarated and on top of the world each time I accomplish a stage of it. Whereas certainly the fact that I am here at all is no credit to me, but only because Russia is so full of nice people.

I must confess that when I reached here I felt somewhat as if I had come to a blank wall across my way, and that a rendezvous with one's husband at a place called Chuguchak in Chinese Turkestan seemed almost as impossible as everyone in Peking had told us it was. It must be possible. Chuguchak is on the map, and other people

go there. But it is four hundred miles away, across desolate wastes of snow. The road, they tell me, is well-nigh impossible and the cold terrific. To get there I must hire a sleigh and, if possible, I must find a traveling companion, as the sleigh drivers are unreliable and there are Kirghiz bandits on the road. And I'm sure I don't know how to accomplish all this. The people here seem horrified at the idea of my attempting it. Of course, lack of language is my chief difficulty, as my Russian is quite inadequate for anything so complicated.

My only move when I came to Semipalatinsk was to find a woman about whom I knew nothing at all except that her name was Kosloff and that her husband worked in the post office. I had met her brother when we were marooned in Kweihwa last summer and he had given me a letter to her.

When I arrived, after thirty-three hours 'hard,' and climbed out of the dim car into a glittering world of snow, I was assaulted by a mob of drivers all inviting me with howls to ride in their sleighs. They were mostly grinning red-skinned Orientals, Sarts or Tatars, and they had comic little sleighs about the size and shape of baby carriages attached to horses that looked huge and rawboned compared with China ponies. Beyond the sleighs was a white plain across which rose roofs and towers and church domes of the city.

The frowzy woman watched my luggage in the car while the porter made trips back and forth, and then she slid merrily off with her man in a tiny raft of a sleigh lined with straw. I picked the merriest driver; he piled his baby carriage with my luggage, and me perched on top, till I was certain we'd topple over. And sure enough we did, right in the middle of the plain. The sleigh turned quite over, the driver and