You may read and read that the summer day at St.Petersburg is twenty hours long, but until you see that the sun scarcely sets, you cannot take it in.
"I wondered whether the laboring man worked eight or ten hours under my window; it seemed to me that he was sawing wood the whole twenty-four! "W.

came in one night after a stroll, and described a beautiful square which he had come upon accidentally.

I listened with great interest, and said, 'I must go there in the morning; what is the name of it ?'--'I don't know,' he replied.--'Why didn't you read the sign ?' I asked.--'I can't read,' was the reply.--'Oh, no; but why didn't you ask some one ?'--'I can't speak,' he answered.

Neither reading nor speaking, we had to learn St.Petersburg by our observation, and it is the best way.
Most travellers read too much.
"There are learned institutions in St.Petersburg: universities, libraries, picture-galleries, and museums; but the first institution with which I became acquainted was the drosky.

The drosky is a very, very small phaeton.