Moscow was settling into its winter stride. The theaters were opening, the ballet would begin, the shops were beginning to sell the thick cotton quilted clothing and the felt boots that people wear in winter. Children appeared in the streets in caps with earflaps, and with fur-lined collars on their thick coats. At the American Embassy technical sergeants who were experts in electricity were busily rewiring the whole building. Last winter the wiring burned out, and without the electric heaters they were used to, the Embassy staff had to work in overcoats.

We went to dinner at a house where five young American officers of the Military Attaché’s staff lived. It was a very good dinner, but they do not live very happy lives, for they even more than the others are restricted in their movements, and they must live the most circumspect of lives. I presume that the Russian Military Attaché in America is rather carefully watched too. In front of their house stands a permanent militia man in uniform, and every time they leave their house they are accompanied by invisible followers.

Inside the pleasant house we sat at dinner with the American officers, and we had American food—a leg of lamb, and green peas, and a good soup, and salad, and little cookies, and black coffee. And we thought how four hundred years ago, perhaps in a house like this, British and French officers, young men in gold and red uniforms, had sat over their port, while outside in front of the gate the

Russian guard in a helmet carried a pike and watched over them. These things do not seem to have changed very much.

Like all tourists, we made the trip to the little town of Klin, seventy kilometers from Moscow, to visit the home of Tchaikovsky. It is a pretty house, set in a large garden. The lower floors are now used as library, as storehouse for music manuscripts, and as a museum. But the upper floor where the composer lived has been left just as it was. His bedroom is as he left it—a big dressing gown hanging beside the narrow iron cot, a small writing table under a window. The ornate dressing table and mirror with the drape of heavy paisley presented to him by a feminine admirer stands in a corner, with his hair tonic still on it. And his living-room with the grand piano, the only one he ever owned, has not been changed. Even his desk has his little cigars in a bowl, and his pipes, and stubs of pencil. The pictures of his family are on the walls, and out on a little glass porch where he took his tea there is a clean sheet of music manuscript paper. His nephew is the curator—a handsome old man now.

He said, “We want to make Tchaikovsky’s house seem as though he has just stepped out for a walk and would soon return.”

This old man lives mostly in the past. He spoke of the musical giants as though they were still alive—of Moussorgsky, and Rimski-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky, and the rest of the great group. And the house was indeed full of the presence of the composer. The piano is tuned and played once a year. It is played by the best pianist available, and the music is recorded. Mr. Tchaikovsky, the nephew, played for us for a while, and the piano was mellow and a little out of tune.