Stacey_mb Thank you, that was interesting. This kind of information fills in those holes in books or other reading material where the meaning of a phrase isn't always familiar to the reader.

Borscht is delicious and while the variety I ate wasn't in a hotel, it was on the "circuit" of DM's meal preparation. The only "belt" involved was a loosening after indulging in helpings of beet soup, served by DM with homemade biscuits.

And for those of us who didn't know: Snuff is a smokeless tobacco made from ground or pulverised tobacco leaves. It is inhaled or "snuffed" into the nasal cavity, delivering a swift hit of nicotine and a lasting flavoured scent (especially if flavouring has been blended with the tobacco). Was that the same as "take a powder"? Or was the powder something else?

Wash one’s hands When you wash your hands of something, you have dismissed it from your attention and plan to pay it no further heed. The expression comes from the action of Pontius Pilate (Matthew 27:24): “When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.”