But these objects were few and far between.

The deadly monotony of the scene--the trackless level, the preposterous dimensions of the plain, the sense of distance that is conveyed only by the steppe and the great desert of Gobi when the snow lies on it--all these tell the same grim truth to all who look on them: the old truth that man is but a small thing and his life but as the flower of the grass.
Across the plain of Tver, before the north wind, a single sleigh was tearing as fast as horse could lay hoof to ground--a sleigh driven by Paul Howard Alexis, and the track of it was as a line drawn from point to point across a map.
A striking feature of the winter of Northern Russia is the glorious uncertainty of its snowfalls.

At Tver the weather-wise had said: "The snow has not all fallen yet.

More is coming.

It is yellow in the sky, although March is nearly gone." The landlord of the hotel (a good enough resting-place facing the broad Volga) had urged upon M.le Prince the advisability of waiting, as is the way of landlords all the world over.