Word: whistly
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...rooms teeming with relatives, family retainers and hangers-on. Nearly all of Russia's 19th century writers were members of the much maligned gentry, and their fiction is full of portraits of country squires doing what they do in these photographs, picnicking under the birches, hunting bear, playing whist or idling away time. Though many landowners were deeply in debt, as they complained in countless novels, a few of the noble Russian families possessed highly conspicuous wealth. A glimpse of the sumptuous Sheremetev Palace in St. Petersburg recalls the astonishing fact that before Russia's serfs were emancipated...
...discuss the implications--and the potential beneficial effects--of the forthcoming research with him. I was greeted at the gate to his palatial home by a dog which, somewhat surprisingly, spoke seven languages and, after he showed me to the front door, challenged me to a game of whist...
...lobster wearing a bib that said "Kosher," and out into the yard, where I hid in six-foot tall blades of grass which were reading copies of Pravda. I made it to my car, but to my chagrin, it was being eaten--by the very dog whose invitation to whist I had foolishly declined earlier in the afternoon...
...nose." The next morning, after "drinking early and freely of the waters," Fithian sortied out among the wooden cabins in the village to see if he had any acquaintances among the crowds gathered for the season. That night he observed "a splendid ball," as well as games of whist, five-and-forty and calico Betty. When he sought some night air out among the bushes, he was a little surprised to see "amusements in all shapes ... constantly taking place among so promiscuous a company." Fithian went to bed soon after midnight, but he could still hear "soft and continual serenades...
...southernmost outpost of Russia's vast American colony, lay only 100 miles up the California coast from San Francisco. American ships regularly anchored at New Archangel (now Sitka), a thriving capital that boasted two scientific institutes, a public library, a college, and such civilized amusements as the theater, whist parties and formal balls. Then in 1867, Russia ceded its American possession to the U.S. for $7,200,000-a price that comes to about $12 per square mile. It was the crowning irony of one of the more ironic chapters in Russian history. For Russia did not really want...