Side Bar

"During my visit to Russia the winter of 1912 one of its great holidays took place--the blessing of the waters of the Neva River in front of the Winter Palace overlooking the Neva. The ceremony took place on January 6, according to Russia's calendar of that time (January 19 by the rest of the world). Tzar Nicholas II and the Imperial family, who had been living for several past years in the Alexander Palace in Tzarskoye Selo, came into St. Petersburg to the Winter Palace the day before the ceremony. On that morning I witnessed the Dowager-Empress Marie Dagmar, mother of Tzar Nicholas II (a sister of Queen Alexandra of England), coming down the Nevski Prospekt from the Anitchkov Palace, her winter residence on the Nevski, to join the Imperial family at the Winter Palace."

-- Ralph Sylvester Bartlett, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, 1958.