Excerpt from Roundabout to Moscow: An Epicurean Journey
If any reader of this book happens to be carrying about a heavy pack of fine old English prejudices, I beg that he or she will drop it before entering upon the eleven chapters relating to Russia. The best preparative for crossing the Russian frontier is to throw out of the carriage-window every English volume with which the tourist has beguiled the way in the vain hope of forming correct impressions of the country ahead.
Englishmen can not be trusted to treat Russia fairly. John Bull hates Ivanovitch. With him the Russian is always a Tartar or a Cossack. Though these terms are not, in fact, opprobrious - since the Tartar of to-day is the model business man of Russia, industrious, faithful, highly respected, and the Cossack preserves none of his ancient traits but an excessive fondness for horses, a martial spirit, and fervent patriotism - they are slurring words in the English sense.
Americans have no cause of quarrel with Russians. There is no Turkey on this continent which we feel bound to save from the jaws of the Russian bear in order to devour her ourselves. We have no distant province with 200,000,000 inhabitants of an alien race, retained by a tenure so precarious that the approach of a rival within 500 miles of the border throws us into a panic.
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