But circumstances have blighted its early inspiration, and the article
it was to have been will never be written, the telling word-pictures
designed on board the transport never executed.
Figure the disgust of five adventurers who, landing at the Murman
base, sternly braced to encounter the last extremity of peril and of
hardship, to sleep in the snow and dig one another out o' mornings,
to give the weakest of their number the warmest icicle to suck, the
longest candle to chew--found themselves billeted in a room which the
landladies of home would delight to advertise! Its walls were hung
with such pictures as give cheap lodgings half their horror; it was
encumbered with countless frail chairs and "kiggly" tables, and upon
every flat surface had settled a swarm of albums, framed photographs,
china dogs, wax flowers, penholder-stands, and all the choicest
by-products of civilization struggling towards culture. As we were not
to be frozen by exposure or immediately attacked by Bolshies, we might
reasonably have expected to be asphyxiated by the Russian stove; but
even this consolation was denied us, since Madame, convinced that
the English are mad in their love of fresh air, consented to leave it
unlit.
When first we arrived, five large soldiers with five large kits, the
aspect of the room filled us with terror.
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