Our one experience of this device was coupled with a good deal of amusement, and initiated us into some of the laws of the Russian post-office as well. To begin my story intelligibly, I must premise that no Russian could ever pronounce or spell our name correctly unaided. A worse name to put on a Russian official document, with its H and its double o, never was invented! There is no letter h in the Russian alphabet, and it is customary to supply the deficiency with the letter g, leaving the utterer to his fate as to which of the two legitimate sounds-the foreign or the native-he is to produce. It affords a test of cultivation parallel to that involved in giving a man a knife and fork with a piece of pie, and observing which he uses. That is the American shibboleth. Lomonosoff, the famous founder of Russian literary language in the last century, wrote a long rhymed strophe, containing a mass of words in which the g occurs legitimately and illegitimately, and wound up by wailing out the query, "Who can emerge from the crucial test of pronouncing all these correctly, unimpeached?" That is the Russian shibboleth.
As a result of this peculiarity, our passports came back from each trip to the police office indorsed with a brand-new version of our name. We figured under Gepgud, Gapgod, Gabgot, and a number of other disguises, all because they persisted in spelling by the eye, and would not accept my perfect phonetic version. The same process applied to the English name Wylie has resulted in the manufacture of Villie. And the pleasant jest of it all was that we never troubled ourselves to sort our passports, because, although there existed not the slightest family resemblance even between my mother and myself, we looked exactly alike in those veracious mirrors. This explained to our dull comprehension how the stories of people using stolen passports could be true. However, the Russians were not to blame for this particular absurdity. It was the fault of the officials in America.
On the occasion to which I refer, we had gone out of St. Petersburg, and had left a written order for the post-office authorities to forward our mail to our new address. The bank officials, who should certainly have known better, had said that this would be sufficient, and had even prepared the form, on their stamped paper, for our signature. Ten days elapsed; no letters came. Then the form was returned, with orders to get our signatures certified to by the chief of police or the police captain of our district! When we recovered from our momentary vexation, we perceived that this was an excellent safeguard. I set out for the house of the chief of police.
His orderly said he was not at home, but would be there at eleven o'clock. I took a little look into the church,-my infallible receipt for employing spare moments profitably, which has taught me many things. At eleven o'clock the chief was still "not at home." I decided that this was in an "official" sense only, when I caught sight of a woman surveying me cautiously through the crack of the opposite door to the antechamber. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that a woman calling upon a chief of police was regarded as a suspicious character; and rightly, after various shooting incidents in St. Petersburg. My suspicions were confirmed by my memory of the fact that I had been told that the prefect of St. Petersburg was "not at home" in business hours, though his gray lambskin cap-the only one in town-was lying before me at the time. But I also recollected that when I had made use of that cap as a desk, on which to write my request, to the horror of the orderly, and had gone home, the prefect had sent a gendarme to do what I wanted. Accordingly, I told this orderly my business in a loud, clear voice. The crack of the door widened as I proceeded, and at my last word I was invited into the chief's study by the orderly, who had been signaled to.
The chief turned out to be a polished and amiable baron, with a German name, who was eager to render any service, but who had never come into collision with that post-office regulation before. I remarked that I regretted not being able to certify to ourselves with our passports, as they had not been returned to us. He declared that the passports were quite unnecessary as a means of identification; my word was sufficient. But he flew into a rage over the detention of the passports. That something decidedly vigorous took place over those papers, and that the landlord of our hotel was to blame, it was easy enough to gather from the meek air and the apologies with which they were handed to us, a couple of hours later. The chief dispatched his orderly on the spot with my post-office petition. During the man's absence, the chief brought in and introduced to me his wife, his children, and his dogs, and showed me over his house and garden. We were on very good terms by the time the orderly returned with the signature of the prefect (who had never seen us) certifying to our signatures, on faith. The baron sealed the petition for me with his biggest coat of arms, and posted it, and the letters came promptly and regularly. Thereafter, for the space of our four months' stay in the place, the baron and I saluted when we met. We even exchanged "shakehands," as foreigners call the operation, and the compliments of the day, in church, when the baron escorted royalty. I think he was a Lutheran, and went to that church when etiquette did not require his presence at the Russian services, where I was always to be found.
As, during those four months, I obtained several very special privileges which required the prefect's signature,-as foreigners were by no means common residents there,-and as I had become so well known by sight to most of the police force of the town that they saluted me when I passed, and their dogs wagged their tails at me and begged for a caress, I imagined that I was properly introduced to the authorities, and that they could lay hands upon me at any moment when the necessity for so doing should become apparent. Nevertheless, one friend, having applied to the police for my address, spent two whole days in finding me, at haphazard. After a residence of three months, other friends appealed in vain to the police; then obtained from the prefect, who had certified to us, the information that no such persons lived in the town, the only foreigners there being two sisters named Genrut! With this lucid clue our friends cleverly found us. Those who understand Russian script will be able to unravel the process by which we were thus disguised and lost. We had been lost before that in St. Petersburg, and we recognized the situation, with variations, at a glance. There is no such thing as a real practical directory in Russian cities. When one's passport is vised by the police, the name and information therein set forth are copied on a large sheet of paper, and this document takes its place among many thousand others, on the thick wire files of the Address Office. I went there once. That was enough in every way. It lingers in my mind as the darkest, dirtiest, worst-ventilated, most depressing place I saw in Russia.
If one wishes to obtain the address of any person, he goes or sends to this Address Office, fills out a blank, for which he pays a couple of kopeks, and, after patient waiting for the over-busy officials to search the big files, he receives a written reply, with which he must content himself. The difficulty, in general, about this system lies here: one must know the exact Christian name, patronymic, and surname of the person wanted, and how to spell them correctly (according to police lights). One must also know the exact occupation of the person, if he be not a noble living on his income, without business or official position. Otherwise, the attempt to find any one is a harder task than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. A person who had been asked to call upon us, and who afterward became a valued friend, tried three times in vain to find us by this means, and was informed that we did not exist. This was owing to some eccentricity in the official spelling of our name. An application to the American Legation, as a desperate final resort, served the purpose at last. The same thing happened when the telegraph messenger tried to find us, to deliver an important cablegram. Still, in spite of this experience, I always regarded my passport as an important means of protection. In case of accident, one could be traced by it. A traveler's passport once registered at the police office, the landlord or lodging-house keeper is responsible for the life of his guest. If the landlord have any bandit propensities, this serves as a check upon them, since he is bound to produce the person, or to say what has become of him. In the same way, when one is traveling by imperial post carriage, the postilion must deliver his passenger safe and sound at the next post station, or be promptly arrested. The passport serves here as a sort of waybill for the human freight. When a foreigner's passport is registered for the first time, he receives permission to remain six months in the country. At the expiration of that period, on formal application, a fresh permit is issued, which must be paid for, and which covers one year. This takes the form of a special document, attached to the foreign passport with cord and sealing-wax; and attached to it, in turn, is a penalty for cutting the cord or tampering with the official seal. These acts must be done by the proper officials. I thought it might be interesting to attend to securing this special permit myself instead of sending the dvornik (the yard porter), whose duties comprise as many odds and ends as those of the prime minister of an empire.