The paper attempts to describe a microcosm of the Russian town of classical pores, that is, XIX - early XX century. The author cities statistical data on the birth of the urban population, which concern their social functioning, and then goes on to describe the typical way of life of their inhabitants and a geographical and cultural environment in which it takes place. While pondering the question, what are the common purely urban values to unite rich and poor, firmly buried in the traditional Russian way of life of merchants and European-style living and the thought of intellectuals, the author comes to the conclusion that these values can be expressed in two metonymies - the clock and the scale. These concepts are fundamentally characterised the affection, not only Western European, but also Russian citizens to the human values such as precision, punctuality, organisation and much more necessary in urban life, unlike the village.