O N 
 
 4 O 
 ClJ %<v 
 
 «'o;o'* ^'^ 
 
 
 V.^'^ * 
 
 
 
 
 
 O • f 
 
 .- .S^^vr, 
 
 
 
 .<?vJ 
 
 
 *o;o^* .<b^ 
 
 
s • • 
 
 
 
 
 o w o ' ."^^ 
 
 0^ : 
 
 
 
Lit- 
 
 A RUSSIAN 
 COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
A RUSSIAN 
 COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 « 
 WITH OTHER STORIES AND SKETCHES 
 OF RUSSIAN LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE KENNAN 
 
 Author of ** Siberia and the Exile System," etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1915 
 
^1 
 
 Copyright, 1912, 1915, by 
 The Century Co. 
 
 Copyright, 1897, by 
 Houghton, Mifflin and Company 
 
 Copyright, 1902, 1912, 1913, 1914, by 
 The Outlook Company 
 
 Published, February, 1915 
 
 FEB 26 1915 
 
 CU39374a 
 
To 
 
 MY WIFE 
 
 Comrade in Russia and * 'General Encourager' 
 
 in all Ventures and Adventures 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 3 
 
 II A SINGING BIRD OF PREY • ^^ 
 
 III RUSSIAN " MOUSE TRAPS " . , 55 
 
 IV A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 85 
 
 V THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN . . . .111 
 VI " A HEART FOR EVERY FATE " .... o .. 139 
 
 VII "THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 179 
 
 I THE CHECKERBOARD SQUARE 185 
 
 II THE GIRL IN NO. 59 206 
 
 VIII A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 237 
 
 IX NAPOLEONDER 261 
 
 X THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 289 
 
 For permission to reprint the stories and sketches in- 
 cluded in this volume I am indebted to the courtesy of The 
 Outlook, the Century Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and 
 the Macmillan Company. 
 
 (jr. K.. 
 
 Broadwater, 
 
 Baddeck, Nova Scotia, 
 1915. 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY 
 OF ERRORS 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY 
 OF ERRORS 
 
 I 
 A EUSSIAN COMEDY OF EREORS 
 
 THE young Russian Jew, Leon Khairanski, 
 was in trouble. When the "underground'' 
 office of his revolutionary newspaper, The Free 
 Word, was discovered and raided by the St. 
 Petersburg police, in June, 1879, he happened, 
 by a fortunate chance, to be absent, and so 
 escaped arrest; but he was forced to go into 
 hiding, and after living a precarious existence, 
 for two weeks or more, in the houses of his 
 friends, changing his sleeping quarters almost 
 every night, he determined to seek safety abroad. 
 Getting out of Russia, however, is sometimes 
 quite as difficult as getting in. Nobody can 
 leave the Empire without presenting his pass- 
 port and getting written permission from the 
 authorities, and this Khairanski dared not at- 
 tempt, for the reason that the passport on which 
 
 3 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OP ERRORS 
 
 he was living was forged, and he had changed his 
 name to correspond with it. He might as well 
 give himself up to the police at once as go to the 
 Foreign Office with forged documents and ask 
 permission to leave the Empire. In this emer- 
 gency, he thought of his friend Isaac Gordon — 
 also a Jew — who was a clerk in one of the city 
 banks. ^ Isaac was a man of about his own age, 
 and of the same racial type. He was not con- 
 nected in any way with the revolutionary move- 
 ment ; had never even been suspected of "political 
 untrustworthiness" ; and was, in every sense of 
 the word, a "safe'' man. 
 
 "If I can only borrow his passport for a few 
 days," thought Khairanski, "I can get out of the 
 Empire on it without the least difficulty. His 
 reputation is good, and he might naturally 
 enough be going to Germany on the business of 
 his bank.'' 
 
 THE LOST PASSPORT 
 
 Acting promptly on this happy thought, Khai- 
 ranski that night made his way to the rooms of 
 
 1 There is a well known Jewish family in Russia which 
 bears the Scotch name of Gordon [accented on the second 
 syllable]. One of the most distinguished members of it was 
 the poet and novelist, Leon Gord6n, originally Judah Loeb 
 Ben Asher, who was born in Wilna in 1831, but who re- 
 moved afterward to St. Petersburg. 
 
 4 
 
A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 Isaac Gordon, who was then living in an apart- 
 ment house on the Voznesenski Prospekt. He 
 found his friend sitting at an open window, 
 smoking a cigarette and listening to the faint 
 music of an orchestra playing in a popular sum- 
 mer resort on the Fontanka. 
 
 ^^Well! This is sl surprise!" exclaimed Gor- 
 don in a cordial tone, as Khairanski entered the 
 room. "Where have you been for the last 
 month? I 'd about given you up for lost. I saw 
 by the papers that the police had raided your 
 newspaper office, and I did n't know but they 'd 
 put you in a ^stone bag.' ^ Draw up a chair, take 
 a cigarette, and account for yourself." 
 
 Khairanski had dreaded to propose the pass- 
 port scheme, partly because he knew that Gor- 
 don did not approve of the revolutionary move- 
 ment in the extreme form which it was then 
 taking, and partly because the request that he 
 had to make was one which involved the risk of 
 serious consequences. Encouraged, however, by 
 his friend's cordial greeting, he said : 
 
 "I 'm not in a ^stone bag' yet, but I 'm likely to 
 be, if somebody does n't come to the rescue. I 
 
 2 A descriptive term invented by the Russian peasants to 
 designate the oubliettes in the castle of Schlusselburg. It 
 was afterward applied to any cell or dungeon in a fortress. 
 
 5 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 have n't been to see you lately because I 'm ^ne 
 legalni^ [an illegal person], and I didn't want 
 to compromise you by coming to your apartment. 
 You think, perhaps, that you know me, but you 
 don't. Permit me to introduce myself — Ivan 
 Bezpassportni [John Passportless] , formerly 
 editor of The Free Word, and now a fugitive 
 from justice." 
 
 "What's happened?" asked Gordon seriously. 
 
 "Nothing yet," replied Khairanski, "but some- 
 thing 's going to happen as soon as the police find 
 out where I am. I 've been dodging from house 
 to house, at night, for two weeks, sleeping by 
 turns in all the ^conspirative' quarters that I 
 know. I 'm about at the end of my rope, and 
 I 've come to you to ask if you '11 lend me your 
 passport, and let me use your name, until I can 
 escape into Germany." 
 
 The expression of gravity in Gordon's face 
 deepened. Laying down his cigarette, he closed 
 the window softly, lowered the transom over the 
 door, and then, returning to his seat, looked 
 searchingly, at his friend and inquired in a low 
 tone : 
 
 "Have you become a terrorist?" 
 
 "No," replied Khairanski. "Before God I 
 have n't ! I 'm not guilty of any crime except 
 
 6 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 editing a revolutionary newspaper. But that's 
 serious enough in these days — it means penal 
 servitude if I 'm arrested." 
 
 Gordon seemed to reflect. 
 
 "What am I to do without a passport, if I lend 
 you mine?" he inquired. 
 
 "It will only be for a few days," pleaded Khai- 
 ranski. "I '11 send it back to you by registered 
 post from Berlin. You 're not under suspicion ; 
 your mail will not be opened ; and there is n't one 
 chance in a hundred that you '11 need your pass- 
 port before I return it to you." 
 
 Gordon lighted another cigarette and med- 
 itated. 
 
 "Suppose that you 're recognized by one of the 
 secret detectives at the frontier, and arrested 
 with my passport in your possession? That 
 may mean a term of fortress imprisonment for 
 me." 
 
 "It is n't possible I" said Khairanski. "I 'm 
 not known by sight to the police in St. Peters- 
 burg, still less to the detectives at the frontier. 
 Your height, features, eyes and complexion cor- 
 respond in a general way with mine. We don't 
 look alike, but we should be described in about 
 the same words. Your passport will fit me per- 
 fectly; but if worst comes to worst, and I am 
 
 7 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 arrested, I '11 swear that I stole your passport 
 while you were away from your rooms." 
 
 Gordon shook his head. 
 
 "I 'm afraid that story would n't go," he said. 
 "No man, in these days, leaves his passport 
 around where it can be stolen." 
 
 "But no question will ever be raised," said 
 Khairanski eagerly. "The document will be in 
 perfect order. You '11 have permission to leave 
 the Empire and I '11 go in your place ; that 's all. 
 There won't be the least excuse for raising the 
 question of personal identity at the frontier. 
 I '11 get out without a single inquiry." 
 
 Again there was an interval of silence. 
 
 "All right !" said Gordon at last. "It 's a risk, 
 but for old friendship's sake, I '11 take it. But 
 you 'd better stay with me for a day or two, and 
 let the passport go to the authorities from my 
 apartment. You 're fairly safe here, and when 
 the permit comes — ^s' Bokhem !' " [Go, with 
 God.] 
 
 Three days later, Leon Khairanski, with Isaac 
 Gordon's passport and a permit to go abroad in 
 his pocket, took the night express for Berlin. 
 
 After he had gone, Gordon felt increasing anx- 
 iety with regard to the possible consequences of 
 the irrevocable step that he had taken. He was 
 
 8 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 not afraid of being called on to produce his pass- 
 port while it was out of his possession ; but he did 
 fear that Khairanski would be recognized, or sus- 
 pected, by the frontier police, and that an inquiry 
 would be made by telegraph with regard to the 
 authenticity or ownership of his papers. The 
 revolutionary movement had already taken a ter- 
 roristic form ; the police were following up every 
 clue which could possibly lead to the discovery 
 and identification of conspirators ; and mass ar- 
 rests, on general suspicion, were being made al- 
 most every night in the "politically untrust- 
 worthy" class. Jews, in particular, were the ob- 
 jects of strict surveillance, because they had 
 taken an active part in the revolutionary move- 
 ment from the very beginning. On racial 
 grounds alone Khairanski might be suspected and 
 detained at the frontier, because his passport ex- 
 plicitly stated that he was a Jew. 
 
 The more Gordon thought of these things, the 
 more apprehensive he became ; and in reflecting 
 upon the course that it would be safest to pursue, 
 he finally decided to pretend that he had lost his 
 passport, and that Khairanski, after finding and 
 advertising it, had been overcome by the tempta- 
 tion to use it, as a means of escaping from police 
 pursuit. In order to prearrange evidence which 
 
 9 
 
A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERROES 
 
 would support this story, he went to the office of 
 the newspaper Golos, on the very night of Khai- 
 ranskfs departure, and left there for publication 
 the following advertisement : 
 
 PASSPORT 
 
 Found in the street, a lost passport, in the name 
 of Gordon. The owner can obtain it by calling and 
 identifying it at the apartment of Khairanski, Little 
 Garden Street, No. 62. 
 
 Unfortunately, Gordon could not remember, 
 with certainty, the number of the house where 
 Khairanski had lived. He thought it was "62" 
 but he was not sure. A mistake, however, could 
 not matter much, because nobody would ever 
 claim the passport, and if there should be occa- 
 sion to use the advertisement as a proof of the 
 fixed-up story, it would be easy to explain the 
 wrong number as a clerical or typographical 
 error.^ 
 
 Fear, however, is a bad counselor; and when 
 Gordon, through apprehension, advertised as 
 "found'' the passport that had never been lost, he 
 committed a serious error. Then, when he lo- 
 
 3 No directories were published at that time in Russian 
 cities. A person's residence could be ascertained only 
 through written application at a municipal address bureau. 
 
 10 
 
A EUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERROKS 
 
 cated Khairanski's apartment at Little Garden 
 Street, 62, instead of 26 [the right number], he 
 made a bad matter worse, and prepared the way 
 for extraordinary and surprising consequences. 
 
 Under the system of "preventive censorship," 
 which was then in force in Russia, the contents of 
 newspapers were submitted to two different sets 
 of offlcials. Reading matter of all kinds went to 
 the censor proper, who modified, red-penciled or 
 prohibited such articles as seemed likely to have a 
 "pernicious tendency," or to endanger the safety 
 of the State by "exciting the public mind." Ad- 
 vertisements, on the other hand, were sent to the 
 police, who had full power of supervision and 
 control. 
 
 When the proof sheets of the Golos reached the 
 central police station, on the night of Khai- 
 ranski's departure from St. Petersburg, they were 
 distributed among a number of subordinate of- 
 ficials for examination. Advertisements of mer- 
 chandise were only casually glanced at ; but par- 
 ticular attention was given to notices of books 
 and theatrical performances, as well as to 
 "Wants," "Lost," "Found," "Funerals," and an- 
 nouncements of lectures or meetings. When the 
 short-haired, shabbily-uniformed officer to whom 
 
 11 
 
A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERROKS 
 
 the sheet containing Gordon's advertisement had 
 been given, handed it in at the desk, the chief in- 
 quired curtly, "Well, anything in it?'' 
 
 "Nothing of importance, sir, unless, — there 's 
 an advertisement of a passport found. It may be 
 of no consequence, but it 's a little queer. Pass- 
 ports are not often lost in these days." 
 
 The chief took the slip and glanced at Gordon's 
 advertisement. 
 
 "They 're both Jewish names," he said. "Bet- 
 ter look it up. No Jew ever lost a passport. 
 Send a man to 62 Little Garden Street to inquire. 
 Tell him to examine the passport carefully and 
 get the full name, number, date, and place of 
 issue." 
 
 "Slooshioo S' " [I obey], replied the officer. 
 
 Half an hour later, the second officer returned 
 and reported, "No such man there, sir. I 
 routed out the dvornik [janitor] and half a 
 dozen of the lodgers. They all say that no Khai- 
 ranski ever lived there." 
 
 The chief reflected a moment and then said, 
 "There 's something about it that is n't clean. 
 Find out where Gordon and Khairanski live and 
 arrest them both at eight o'clock to-morrow morn- 
 
 
 mg. 
 
 "There 's probably more than one man of each 
 
 12 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 name/' suggested the officer respectfully. "We 
 don't know which of them are implicated.'' 
 
 "Well," said the chief impatiently, "arrest 
 them all. There can't be more than a dozen of 
 them. We ought to get something out of a lot of 
 Sheenies like that. Have them taken, with all 
 persons found in their rooms, to the Litovski 
 Zamok, and lock them up in one of the large ka- 
 meras ; we '11 sift them later." 
 
 "Slooshioo S'." 
 
 THE FUEL CARTRIDGE 
 
 When Alexander Gordon, traveling salesman 
 for The Fuel Cartridge Company of Indianapolis, 
 finished his trip through Iowa and Minnesota, he 
 had every reason to be satisfied with the results 
 of his work. He had been showing and selling a 
 newly invented appliance for the safe and expedi- 
 tious kindling of fires in kitchen stoves. Acci- 
 dents, due to the pouring of kerosene from half- 
 empty cans upon slowly burning wood, had sug- 
 gested to a thoughtful Hoosier the use of an as- 
 bestos cylinder, half as big as a rolling-pin, which 
 could be saturated with the petroleum, placed 
 just inside the front damper, and set on fire. Ex- 
 periment proved that the flame from it would ig- 
 nite the most incombustible wood, and that the 
 
 13 
 
A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERROES 
 
 use of it would reduce the danger of accidental 
 explosion to nil. 
 
 A company had been formed to manufacture 
 the device, under the name of "fuel cartridge/^ 
 and salesmen had been sent into the field to intro- 
 duce it. Gordon had been showing samples and 
 establishing agencies in Minnesota, and had met 
 with gratifying success. When he returned to 
 St. Paul, after a week's campaign in the coun- 
 try, he found awaiting him a telegram from his 
 company, directing him to "report in Indian- 
 apolis immediately for foreign service." He took 
 the night express for Chicago, and at three o'clock 
 on the following afternoon presented himself at 
 the home office. The managing director greeted 
 him cordially and said, "We 've sent Atkinson to 
 take your place in the Northwest, and we want 
 you to go to Russia. There ought to be a big field 
 there for the fuel cartridge. The climate is cold, 
 the winters are long, most of the people burn 
 wood, and petroleum from the Baku wells is 
 cheap. A cartridge is needed in practically every 
 house. We want you to go to St. Petersburg 
 and organize the business. How does it strike 
 you?" 
 
 "It suits me," said Gordon briefly. "When do 
 you want me to start?" 
 
 14 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 "The sooner the better," replied the manager. 
 "I '11 have samples, circulars, and a letter of 
 credit here for you to-morrow. Suppose you go 
 to Washington for your passport and sail on 
 Saturday's steamer?'' 
 
 "All right," said Gordon. "I 'm on." 
 
 "You '11 have to be careful and prudent," said 
 the manager. "There 's a good deal of political 
 disturbance in Russia just now, and it 's a des- 
 potic government. Don't get mixed up with ni- 
 hilists, and don't have any dealings with the of- 
 ficials if you can help it. They 're said to be 
 very arbitrary." 
 
 "From what I know of Russian officials, said 
 Gordon judicially, "they 're cocky because every- 
 body knuckles down to them. The people have 
 all been serfs, and they 're as meek and submis- 
 sive as sheep. I saw a lot of them in Minnesota 
 last week — ^spirit wrestlers' they called them- 
 selves — but they didn't have spirit enough to 
 wrestle with a June bug. You could walk all 
 over them. Anybody could put up a front with 
 such people as that. If the Russian officials 
 heard a little straight American talk occasion- 
 ally they would n't get so cocky." 
 
 "I 've no doubt you could give them the 
 straight talk, all right," said the manager with 
 
 15 
 
A EUSSIAN COMEDY OF EREORS 
 
 an amused smile, "but don't do it; keep away 
 from them; it'll be safer." 
 
 On the following day Gordon started for 
 Washington ; obtained there a passport from the 
 State Department; and sailed from New York 
 Saturday morning for Liverpool. 
 
 Two weeks later, from the deck of a Wilson 
 Line steamer in the Gulf of Finland, the repre- 
 sentative of The Fuel Cartridge Company caught 
 his first glimpse of St. Petersburg — a huge 
 shining dome and a four-hundred-foot lance of 
 gold, rising above the dark green forests at the 
 mouth of the Neva. When the customs offlcers 
 and gendarmes came on board he had his first 
 experience of Russian methods. His passport 
 was stamped and returned to him without ques- 
 tion, and his samples, which he had slipped into 
 the legs of trousers at the bottom of his trunk, 
 were not discovered; but the gendarmes took 
 away from him a dozen or more personal and 
 business letters; three or four English and 
 American magazines; and a single book — 
 Dixon's "Free Russia" — which he had bought in 
 London. The officers explained their seizure of 
 these things by saying that they had no time then 
 to give them careful examination; but they as- 
 sured the owner politely that he could recover 
 
 16 
 
A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 his property by calling for it in person at the 
 central police offlce. 
 
 If Gordon's correspondence had not been 
 seized, he might not have thought it worth while 
 to reclaim the book and magazines; but among 
 his letters were three from his best girl, which 
 he had carelessly left in his suit-case when he 
 changed his cap and sea-going reefer for "shore 
 clothes." The idea of leaving those letters to 
 be read, reread and commented upon by a 
 lot of Russian police clerks was intolerable. 
 The very thought of it exasperated him, and 
 when, accompanied by a courier interpreter, he 
 left the Hotel d'Angleterre for the police station, 
 he was in a very irritable state of mind. The 
 reception given him when he entered what 
 seemed to be the main room of the station did not 
 tend to restore his equanimity. Nobody, at first, 
 paid any attention to him; but when he ap- 
 proached a large desk, over which hung a colored 
 lithograph, or oil painting, of the Emperor, the 
 uniformed official who was sitting thereat looked 
 him over with a scowl and said sternly, "Take off 
 your overcoat!" 
 
 The courier whispered to Gordon in English, 
 "It 's the custom, you know ; I forgot to tell you ; 
 there's an icon (a picture of the Virgin and 
 
 17 
 
A EUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 Child) and a portrait of His Majesty in the room, 
 and it isn't thought respectful to wear over- 
 coats." 
 
 Gordon controlled himself with an effort, took 
 off his overcoat, and threw it over one arm. 
 
 ^'Go out in the entry with your overcoat !" said 
 the unappeased official savagely. "This is no 
 place for overcoats." 
 
 The courier softened the command in transla- 
 tion and said in a frightened whisper, "I '11 take 
 out the coat"; but Gordon had understood the 
 official's tone, if not his words, and he became 
 forthwith a slumbering volcano of suppressed 
 wrath. 
 
 When the courier returned, after depositing 
 the offending garment in the entry, the official 
 inquired, with a slight relaxation of severity, 
 "Shto vam oogodno?" [What is it you wish?] 
 
 "I want the books and letters that the gen- 
 darmes took away from me on the steamer yes- 
 terday," replied Gordon, with rising temper. 
 
 "What is your name?" 
 
 "Alexander Gordon." 
 
 The official turned to a clerk and said, "Find 
 his things." 
 
 In a moment they were brought. The letters 
 
 18 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 were intact; but ^^Free Russia'^ had apparently 
 been mutilated, and several articles, as well as 
 all the advertising pages, had been torn out of 
 the magazines. When the disjecta membra were 
 put into his hands, Gordon looked them over 
 with assumed coolness, and then, feeling an im- 
 pulse to be as offensive as possible, said to the 
 courier, "Tell him that I presume he has had the 
 front and back pages of the magazines torn out 
 because they contained advertisements of ivory 
 soap. From the observations I 've made since 
 I came into the Empire, and from what I see here 
 I judge that soap is a prohibited article." 
 
 The terrified courier did not dare to put these 
 insulting words into Russian, but the English- 
 speaking clerk who had censored the magazines 
 and who had brought them to the desk translated 
 them. 
 
 The face of the official darkened with wrath, 
 and turning to the English-speaking clerk he 
 said, "Bring me the man's passport, and the 
 parts that you cut out of the magazines." 
 
 When they were brought, he looked them 
 through and then, addressing the American, said, 
 "You bear a Jewish name; are you a Jew?" 
 
 "Do I look like a Jew?" replied Gordon hotly. 
 
 19 
 
A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 ^^Of course I 'm not a Jew ! A Jew is just as 
 good, though, as any other man, and I 'd far 
 rather be a Jew than a Russian policeman." 
 
 "There are plenty of Jews in your country," 
 said the official, "and if I were sure that you are 
 one, I 'd send you to the frontier with a criminal 
 gang by etape. Did you know that one of your 
 magazines contained a poem entitled ^Tyranni- 
 cide'?" 
 
 "I did n't know it," replied Gordon, "but it 's 
 likely enough. What of it?" 
 
 "It 's a direct incitement to Czar-murder, and 
 the possession of such literature in Russia is a 
 penal offense. You 've seen fit to insult one of 
 His Majesty's officers in the performance of his 
 duty, and I '11 show you that you can't do it with 
 impunity. Take him to the lock-up," he ordered, 
 turning to two policemen who were standing 
 near. 
 
 Gordon, by this time, was in a towering pas- 
 sion. He felt an almost irresistible impulse to 
 start what an American collegian would call a 
 "rough-house" by assaulting personally the red- 
 faced official who dared to send a free American 
 citizen to the lock-up ; but he had not wholly lost 
 his reason, and choking down his wrath, he al- 
 lowed himself to be escorted by the two officers 
 
 20 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 to a temporary-detention cell in another part of 
 the building. There he spent the rest of the day 
 and the night. 
 
 When, on the following morning, he was set at 
 liberty, he returned to the Hotel d' Angleterre ; 
 fortified and cheered himself with a good break- 
 fast and a cigar ; and then, feeling somewhat en- 
 couraged, put a fuel cartridge and two or three 
 descriptive circulars in his pocket, and went to 
 see some Russian hardware dealers whom he 
 hoped to interest in his invention. On his way 
 down the Nevski, he had occasion to use his 
 handkerchief, and in taking it from his pocket, he 
 accidentally pulled out also his business circu- 
 lars, which dropped unnoticed to the sidewalk. 
 If these circulars had contained only the English 
 descriptive text, they probably would not have 
 attracted attention; but they were embellished, 
 unfortunately, with a picture of the fuel car- 
 tridge in operation ; and the flames issuing from 
 the cylinder inevitably suggested to any Russian 
 mind, an exploding bomb. Inasmuch as bombs 
 were then becoming the favorite weapons of the 
 nihilists, the peasant who happened to pick up 
 the circulars thought it his duty to hand them to 
 the nearest policeman. 
 
 When, a little later, Gordon returned to his 
 
 21 
 
A EUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERROKS 
 
 hotel, the proprietor, who was a German, met 
 him at the outer door and said in an excited 
 whisper, ^^The police are in your room." 
 
 He apparently expected his guest to rush for a 
 droshky and make his escape; but Gordon, 
 conscious of innocence, said merely, "The police 
 be d — d!'' and walked quietly upstairs to his 
 apartment. But he little expected to see what 
 he did see when he opened his door. There were 
 four police officers in the room, all armed with 
 sabers and revolvers. His trunk had been forced 
 open, and its contents had been taken out and 
 strewn in wild confusion over the floor. The 
 single fuel cartridge that he had left in one of his 
 trouser-legs had been found, and had been pru- 
 dently placed in a wash-basinful of water. Be- 
 fore he had time to realize what it all meant, two 
 of the officers sprang upon him and seized him 
 by the wrists, while the other two drew their 
 revolvers, as if in expectation of desperate resist- 
 ance. A rapid search of his person brought to 
 light a second fuel cartridge, which was placed in 
 the basinful of water beside the first. 
 
 "You are under arrest," said the officer who 
 seemed to be in command. "You '11 find it safer 
 not to resist." 
 
 22 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 But Gordon was so dazed that lie did not even 
 think of resistance. 
 
 "Take him to the Litovski Zamok/' said the 
 same officer. "Put him in a solitary-confinement 
 cell and see that he does n't communicate with 
 anybody." 
 
 In two or three minutes Gordon found himself 
 in a closed carriage, with a police officer on each 
 side of him, and in less than a quarter of an hour, 
 he was incarcerated in a seven-by-nine cell in the 
 Litovski Zamok, where, after his money, letter of 
 credit, and personal papers had been taken away 
 from him, he was finally left alone. In the three 
 days of solitary confinement that followed, he 
 had ample time to put facts together, draw infer- 
 ences, and reflect upon the vicissitudes of the fuel 
 cartridge business. 
 
 The Russian authorities, meanwhile, investi- 
 gated the bombs. The pyrotechnic expert to 
 whom they were submitted allowed them to soak 
 forty-eight hours in a pan of water. He then 
 ventured to dissect them, and found, to his sur- 
 prise, that they contained nothing but asbestos, 
 and that it would have been impossible either to 
 explode them or burn them. The chief of police, 
 in the meantime, had had a translation made of 
 
 23 
 
A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 the descriptive circular, and as soon as he re- 
 ceived a report from the expert, stating that the 
 cylinders were, and always had been, harmless, 
 he ordered the prisoner's release. 
 
 When Gordon returned to the Hotel d'Angle- 
 terre, the proprietor welcomed him with joy. "I 
 knew it would be all right," said the sympathetic 
 German. "The Russian police are stupid. 
 They imagine they see an elephant when it 's only 
 a mouse.'' 
 
 "I'm no mouse," said Gordon gloomily, "but 
 I think I 've had enough of this country. A man 
 never knows over night what 's going to happen 
 to him. I 'm going back to London to-mormw." 
 
 But how can any mortal know what is in the 
 lap of the gods? While the representative of the 
 Fuel Cartridge Company was packing his trunk 
 that evening, a compositor in the office of the 
 Golos was setting up the advertisement of the 
 lost passport, and just as Gordon was falling 
 asleep, the chief of police was issuing an order 
 for a round-up of Jews. 
 
 Gordon rose late on the following morning and 
 had tea and rolls in his apartment. He then 
 went downstairs, and had just lighted a cigar 
 and taken up a copy of the London Times in the 
 reading room, when the proprietor came to him 
 
 24 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 with a policeman and said, "You're wanted 
 again." 
 
 "What's the matter now?" demanded the in- 
 censed American. "Can't I keep out of jail one 
 whole day?" 
 
 "I don't know," replied the landlord. "The 
 officer says you are to go with him. Perhaps 
 they want to ask you something more about the 
 bombs." 
 
 "D — ^n the bombs!" said Gordon fervently. 
 "But I don't wonder the people in this country 
 use them. If I'm not back before Saturday, 
 send my trunk by the Wilson Line steamer to 
 Brown, Shipley & Co., London, and cable the 
 Fuel Cartridge Company, Indianapolis, U. S. A., 
 that I 'm in jail." 
 
 Again the prisoner was taken to the Litovski 
 Zamok. This time, however, he was not shut up 
 in a solitary-confinement cell, but was conducted 
 to a large kamera, twenty or thirty feet square, 
 from which, as he approached it, he could hear a 
 babel of commingled voices. When the door was 
 thrown open, he entered what seemed to be a 
 ward in a lunatic asylum. The kamera was 
 crowded with men — all apparently Jews — who 
 were shouting, gesticulating, protesting, inquir- 
 ing, and arguing, in a perfect frenzy of excite- 
 
 25 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 ment. As Gordon did not understand a word of 
 Russian, he found it impossible to get any ex- 
 planation of this prison mass-meeting of jabber- 
 ing, gesticulating Jews, or of his own personal 
 relation to it. It seemed to him like a wild Old 
 Testament nightmare. At last he found among 
 the prisoners the treasurer of a Jewish benevo- 
 lent society, who spoke English. From him he 
 demanded, "What 's the row? Who are all these 
 people?'' 
 
 "The police have made a raid on the Gordon 
 and Khairanski families," said the young Jew 
 excitedly, "and nobody knows why. There are 
 five Gordons and six Khairanskis here already.'' 
 
 "Which are you?" inquired Alexander with 
 sympathetic interest. 
 
 "I 'm a Gordon," replied the young Jew. 
 
 "Then the Lord have mercy on your soul !" said 
 Alexander solemnly. "I 'm a Gordon myself, 
 from America, and I 've been in jail three times 
 this week. What '11 happen to a Russian Gordon 
 is beyond imagination." 
 
 In further conversation, Alexander learned 
 that there were present eight or ten Jews of other 
 names, who had happened to be in the Gordon 
 and Khairanski apartments when the arrests 
 
 26 
 
A RUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 were made. They, too, had been gathered in, 
 and among them were four or five needy students 
 in the university, who had merely called at the 
 treasurer's house to receive the quarterly sti- 
 pends which were due them from the benevolent 
 society's fund. There the police had happened 
 to find them, and had taken them into custody as 
 "frequenters" and "associates." 
 
 In course of time, the excitement quieted down, 
 and early in the afternoon, the chief of police 
 began to separate the sheep from the goats by the 
 process which he called "sifting." One after 
 another, the Jews were interrogated and taken 
 away separately for further examination, and the 
 kamera gradually emptied. When Alexander 
 Gordon's turn came, near the close of the second 
 day, he was taken to the prison office. There he 
 found the English-speaking clerk from the cen- 
 tral police station, who said to him, "His Excel- 
 lency directs me to inform you that your passport 
 and a permit to leave the Empire have been sent 
 to your hotel. He suggests that you make imme- 
 diate use of them both." 
 
 Gordon took the night express for Berlin that 
 evening, and as soon as he reached London, he 
 sent to his employers the following cable : 
 
 27 
 
A KUSSIAN COMEDY OF ERRORS 
 
 Fuel Cartridge Co., 
 Indianapolis. 
 They jail a man in Russia if he mentions soap, if 
 he sells fuel cartridges, or if his name is Gordon. Am 
 coming home. 
 
 Alexander Gordon. 
 
 28 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
II 
 
 A SINGING BIKD OF PREY ^ 
 
 ^^T T'OU ask how I happened to go to Siberia to 
 j[ study music/' said my Russian friend Hart- 
 veld, as we sat smoking in the open-air restaurant 
 of Brunn's Park, Helsingfors. "I might reply 
 by asking you how you happened to go there to 
 study penal servitude. I presume the induce- 
 ment in both cases was the same. You thought 
 you would find, among the political exiles in 
 Siberia, characters, conditions and stories of 
 personal adventure that would be novel and in- 
 teresting, and that you could use as literary 
 material. 
 
 ^^I expected to find there, among the com- 
 mon criminals, the runaway convicts, and 
 the ^Ivan Dontremembers' ^ songs and melodies 
 
 1 For the essential facts of this story I am indebted to the 
 Russkoe Bogatstvo, and to the well known collector of Rus- 
 sian folk-songs, V. N. Hartveld, of St. Petersburg.— G. K. 
 
 2 When a hard-labor convict has escaped from prison in 
 one part of Siberia, and has been rearrested in another part, 
 where he is not known, he tries to conceal his identity and 
 
 31 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 that would be original and striking, and that 
 would be the expression, in musical form, of 
 strong emotion and very unusual experience. 
 The field of folk-music in European Russia had 
 been carefully and thoroughly worked. Large 
 collections of peasant songs had been made, and 
 we knew all the varied forms in which the 
 thoughts and feelings of the common people find 
 musical and poetical expression ; but nobody had 
 ever collected the songs of penal servitude. I 
 happened to hear two of them in Moscow, some 
 years ago, and was so strongly impressed by the 
 originality of the melodies to which the words 
 had been set that I conceived the idea of going to 
 Siberia and making a study of convict music — 
 the music of the exile parties, the forwarding 
 prisons, and the mines. I had some reputation 
 in Russia as a collector of folk-songs, and my 
 relations with the higher bureaucratic officials in 
 St. Petersburg happened to be such that my ap- 
 plication for permission to visit the prisons and 
 the penal settlements was promptly and courte- 
 ously granted. Armed with letters from the 
 Prison and Exile Department, I left St. Peters- 
 prevent an examination of his record by calling himself 
 "Ivan Dontremember." There are dozens of these "Ivans" 
 in every large Siberian prison. — G. K. 
 
 32 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 burg in June, 1908, and spent the whole summer 
 in Siberia going as far east as the mines of 
 Nerchinsk, on the headwaters of the Amur, and 
 visiting all the more important prisons and penal 
 settlements from the Urals to the Pacific." 
 
 "Did you succeed in getting the convicts to 
 sing for you?" I inquired. 
 
 "Yes," he replied, "but with great difflculty. 
 Singing in the prisons had always been strictly 
 forbidden ; and it was hard to make the convicts 
 believe that a request so extraordinary and un- 
 precedented as a request for songs was not an 
 official trap of some kind that would get them 
 into trouble. When the warden of the prison 
 went with me into one of the kameras ^ and said 
 to the prisoners, Well, boys, how about some 
 music for this gentleman? He wants to hear you 
 sing'; there was dead silence. The convicts — 
 most of them burglars, highwaymen, or mur- 
 derers — stared at me with surprise, curiosity and 
 suspicion, but did not open their mouths. When 
 the warden pressed them for a reply, and assured 
 
 3 A "kamera," in a Russian prison, is a large room in 
 which are confined a dozen or more prisoners. A "cell" is 
 usually a much smaller apartment, intended for a single 
 occupant. A "kartser," or dungeon, is a still smaller pun- 
 ishment-cell, which has no chair, bed, or bedding, and which, 
 as a rule, is perfectly dark. — G. K. 
 
 33 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 them that I was not an official, but merely a col- 
 lector of folk-songs, who would not get them into 
 any trouble, one of them, speaking for the others, 
 would say respectfully, ^We don't know any 
 songSj Your High Nobility; music is not one of 
 our sins.' Then I would have to explain who I 
 was and what my objects were, and the warden 
 would have to argue and persuade for half an 
 hour, before the prisoners could be brought to 
 admit that they knew any songs, or had ever sung 
 any. Siberian convicts — naturally enough per- 
 haps — regard with great suspicion official re- 
 quests and proposals that seem to them 
 extraordinary or inexplicable. Why should 
 they be strictly forbidden to sing for their own 
 amusement, and then suddenly be asked to sing 
 for the satisfaction of a chinovniJc [official] from 
 St. Petersburg? It might be some new kind of 
 scheme to entrap them into a compromising ad- 
 mission; and the safest thing to do was to dis- 
 claim knowledge of music altogether. But they 
 generally yielded at last, when they became con- 
 vinced that I was really a musician, not a 
 chinovnihy and that singing for me would not 
 lead to any unpleasant consequences. And won- 
 derful songs and melodies I got out of some of 
 
 34 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 them ! Did you ever happen to hear, in eastern 
 Siberia, the ^Leg-fetter March'?'' 
 
 <^No/' I replied, ''I think not. I heard in the 
 trans-Baikal a sort of wailing chant, which the 
 convicts sang as they marched through the peas-^ 
 ant villages on their way to the mines ; but it had 
 no marked time and was a begging-song, rather 
 than a march." 
 
 "That's not it," said Hartveld. "The *Leg- 
 f etter March' has no words ; it is a melody, not a 
 song. On the road, the convicts hum it, with 
 closed lips, and in the prisons they mark the time 
 with a rhythmical clashing of leg-fetter chains, 
 and add a weird buzzing accompaniment made 
 by blowing on paper-wrapped combs. If you 
 have never heard it, I can't possibly give you an 
 idea of it without instruments and a chorus. 
 You may think from my description, that it is a 
 childish performance, more likely to excite laugh- 
 ter and ridicule than serious emotion; but, in 
 reality, it is an extraordinary and tragic thing, 
 and fairly makes the ants crawl up and down 
 one's back. After my return from Siberia, I got 
 together a chorus and a small orchestra and gave 
 a series of concerts, in which I introduced songs 
 of penal servitude and the ^Leg-fetter March'; 
 
 35 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 but the effect of the march on the audiences was 
 such that the Government finally prohibited it. 
 Thousands of Russian concert-goers now know 
 the air, but to play it on an instrument in public, 
 or even to hum it, is a misdemeanor. 
 
 "From a musician's point of view, the melodies 
 of many of the convict songs have great novelty 
 and originality, due in part, perhaps, to the fact 
 that they have been borrowed from, or influenced 
 by, the aboriginal music of the Asiatic natives. 
 Hundreds of convicts make their escape, every 
 year, from the Siberian prisons or mines, and 
 wander, for months, over the tundras, or through 
 the taiga [primeval Siberian forests], seeking 
 shelter and food, now and then, in the tents and 
 yourtes of the Samoyedes, the Buriats, or the 
 Yakuts. When they are finally recaptured, they 
 bring back to the prisons, and set to Russian 
 words, the airs that they have learned from the 
 natives with whom they have been living. Mel- 
 odies that have originated in this way are almost 
 as hard to sing or play as they are to transcribe, 
 on account of their unfamiliar scale-intervals 
 and abrupt changes of mode or key ; but the con- 
 victs catch them with great quickness of ear, and 
 reproduce them with surprising accuracy and 
 skill. In the Tobolsk prison, for example, they 
 
 36 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 have a song, consisting of solo and chorus, in 
 which the key — B flat major — is changed to a 
 different one in every phrase ; and that 's a trick 
 that the most experienced opera singer would 
 have difficulty in performing without the aid of 
 instruments." 
 
 "How do they get such skill," I inquired, "if 
 they are not allowed to sing in their kameras and 
 have no practice?" 
 
 "Most Russian peasants are born with a musi- 
 cal ear," replied Hartveld, "and they have i)lenty 
 of practice before they get into prison. Besides 
 that, they do sing more or less, in spite of pro- 
 hibition. The turnkeys are often fond of music, 
 and they let the prisoners sing, now and then, in 
 a subdued tone, when the higher prison authori- 
 ties are out of the way. Then, too, the best 
 voices have practice in the choirs of the prison 
 churches. But it is impossible to account for 
 the extraordinary skill that some of them show, 
 not only in vocal music but in instrumental. 
 You probably could n't find a balalaika, a violin, 
 or a stringed instrument of any kind, if you 
 should search the Siberian prisons from Tobolsk 
 to Nerchinsk; and yet, in one of the loneliest 
 ostrogs of the trans-Baikal, I ran across a bala- 
 laika-player — a common convict and a wholly un- 
 
 37 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 educated peasant — whose technique was simply 
 marvelous. Did you happen to visit, in the 
 course of your investigation, the east-Siberian 
 mine of Gorni Zerentui?" 
 
 "Yes/' I replied, "I spent a day or two there in 
 the winter of 1885-6. It impressed me as the 
 dreariest, most God-forsaken place in all the 
 trans-Baikal. The prison, too, if I remember 
 rightly, was one of the worst that I saw." 
 
 "They 've put up a new building since your 
 time," said Hartveld, "and, as Siberian prisons 
 go, it is n't so bad ; but the place, as you say, is 
 dreary and lonely. You feel as if you were ten 
 thousand miles away from the world of living 
 men. But it was there that I found my bala- 
 laika-player. The warden and I had been 
 through nearly all the rooms in the large build- 
 ing, and had not been able to find a single 
 prisoner who would sing, or who was willing to 
 admit that he ever had sung. Finally, we went 
 to the kamera of the ^bezsrochni' — the life-term 
 convicts — where we found eighteen men, all mur- 
 derers, and most of them men who had made 
 homicide a profession, or who, at least, had killed 
 more than once. At the stem command of the 
 guard, ^Smeerno! Po mestam!' [Silence! Take 
 your places !] they all sprang to their feet, with a 
 
 38 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 great clashing of chains; formed a semicircular 
 line in front of the sleeping-platforms ; and with 
 hands and arms held rigidly at their sides, stood 
 ^at attention.' 
 
 "^How do you do, boys?' said the warden 
 affably. 
 
 " ^We wish you health, Your High Nobility !' 
 shouted the prisoners hoarsely in unison, using 
 the prescribed form of response to an official 
 greeting. 
 
 " ^What do you say, boys, to singing a few 
 songs for this gentleman? He has come from St. 
 Petersburg, with the permission of the higher 
 authorities, to study your music ; and he will be 
 very much obliged if you '11 sing for him. How 
 about it?' 
 
 ^^Dead silence. 
 
 " ^Don't be suspicious, boys, just because we 
 ask you to do something that is usually forbid- 
 den. It 's all right ; nothing will happen to you. 
 This gentleman is not a chinovnik, or a revizor 
 [investigating officer] ; he 's a musician ; and he 
 wants to hear your songs, and write the tunes 
 down on paper, so that he can compare them with 
 the songs and tunes of the prostoi narod [com- 
 mon people] in Russia. He has already col- 
 lected hundreds of songs, and he knows that you 
 
 39 
 
A SINGING BIKD OF PKEY 
 
 have some good ones. Don't be obstinate — sing 
 for Mm/ 
 
 ^^Dead silence. The prisoners eyed us sullenly 
 and suspiciously from under their brows, but did 
 not open their lips. 
 
 " ^Semyonof !' said the warden, addressing one 
 of them directly. ^You must know who the 
 singers are in this kamera — tell us. We are not 
 trying to trap anybody, or get anybody into 
 trouble.' 
 
 " We are birds of prey, Your High Nobility,' 
 replied Semyonof. 'Even when we are out of 
 the cage we don't sing — we tear meat.' 
 
 " 'It 's of no use,' said the warden, turning to 
 me, 'they won't sing — at least until they have 
 talked it over among themselves. We '11 try 
 again later.' 
 
 "We were about to leave the kamera when an 
 old convict, with snow-white hair and beard, and 
 the face of a patriarch, halted us by saying, 
 'There 's Klochkof, Your High Nobility. He 
 was bragging, only a little while ago, that he 
 could sing, and he even used to fool with a bala- 
 laika.' 
 
 "As we afterward learned, the convict thus 
 pointed out was not a favorite among his com- 
 
 40 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 rades, and they were quite ready to get Mm into 
 trouble by betraying bim. 
 
 "'Good for Klocbkof!' cried the warden. 
 ^He 's a better man than any of you. Step out, 
 Kloehkof !' 
 
 "The convict thus summoned came forward 
 slowly, rolling a little from side to side as he 
 lifted the heavy chains of his leg-fetters. At a 
 distance of six or eight feet, he stopped, raised 
 his eyes from the floor, and looked steadily at the 
 warden, without the least sign of fear or em- 
 barrassment. He was still a young man — thirty- 
 five years of age, perhaps — with a compact, ath- 
 letic figure, a strong but expressionless face, 
 dark, opaque eyes, and chestnut-brown hair, long 
 on one side and cut short on the other from the 
 forehead to the nape of the neck. 
 
 " 'The boys say you can sing, Klochkof,' said 
 the warden. 'Is that so?' 
 
 " 'They 're only making game of me, Your High 
 Nobility,' replied the convict. 'Long ago, when 
 I worked in a factory, I used to pay some atten- 
 tion to such things, but now — ' 
 
 " 'Well, don't you do it now?' 
 
 "A sudden flash of animation gave unwonted 
 fire to the convict's dull eyes. 
 
 41 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 "^What's the use of denying it?' he replied. 
 ^I know a few songs.' 
 
 ^^His comrades exchanged glances signifi- 
 cantly, as if to say : ^Now he 's in for it.' 
 
 " ^When will you sing for me, Klochkof ?' I 
 asked. 
 
 ^^ 'I can't sing without an accompaniment, 
 Your Honor. If I had a balalaika now, — per- 
 haps — ' 
 
 " ^All right ! I '11 get a balalaika for you. 
 When will you sing?' 
 
 " ^Whenever Your Honor pleases.' 
 
 " ^He can come to the office when we 're ready,' 
 said the warden. ^Let me know when you 've 
 looked up a balalaika, and I '11 send for him 
 again.' 
 
 " ^Who is this Klochkof?' I asked, after we had 
 left the kamera. ^What 's his history ?' 
 
 " ^The Devil only knows !' said the warden. 'I 
 can tell you more or less about the character of 
 every other man in the prison ; but I 've never 
 been able to make this one out. He is a quiet, 
 orderly convict; obeys the rules, and gives us no 
 trouble ; but he seldom speaks, even to his fellow 
 prisoners, and when a man is silent all the time 
 it must mean something — it is n't natural. Of 
 course there are many convicts who are not talk- 
 
 A2 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 ative; but Klochkof is a regular champion of 
 silence. So far as speech is concerned he might 
 be a Trappist monk. I don't know what it 
 means, but there 's something mysterious in it.' 
 
 " ^How did he become a convict?' I inquired. 
 
 " ^That involves another mystery/ replied the 
 warden. ^We know what his crime was, but 
 that 's all we do know. In a peasant village of 
 the province of Yaroslav, he rushed into a 
 church where a wedding was taking place ; killed 
 the bridegroom and the bride, with two blows of 
 a short -handled ax ; and then quietly gave himself 
 up. He refused to explain his act ; attempted no 
 justification of himself when he was tried; and 
 made no plea for mercy when he was sentenced to 
 penal servitude for life. He was silent then, and 
 he has been silent ever since. Take him all in 
 all, he 's a problematic character. I never before 
 heard him say as much as he has said to-day.' 
 
 "On the following afternoon, I succeeded in 
 finding an old, much-used balalaika, in the house 
 of a ticket-of-leave convict of the Free Com- 
 mand * and the warden sent an armed guard to 
 
 4 Convicts whose behavior in prison has been satisfactory- 
 are released on a limited ticket of leave, before the expira- 
 tion of their penal terms, and are allowed to live in houses 
 of their own, just outside of the prison stockade. They are 
 known as the "Free Command." — G. K. 
 
 43 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 bring Klochkof to the office. In five minutes he 
 appeared, walking clumsily and awkwardly in 
 heavy fetters whose looped-up chain clashed 
 between his legs at every step. At sight of the 
 balalaika in my hands he straightened himself a 
 little, and a faint flush of color came into his 
 face. 
 
 " ^Here 's your balalaika, Klochkof/ I said. 
 We succeeded in finding one.' 
 
 " ^Will Your Honor please let me take it?' he 
 asked. 
 
 " ^Certainly ! Here !' and stepping forw^ard I 
 put it into his hands. He took it carefully, 
 pressed it against his body, and stroked it gently, 
 as if he were caressing a pet animal. 
 
 " ^Well !' I said expectantly. ^Are you going 
 to sing for us now?' 
 
 " ^Why should n't I sing?' he replied, Vhen I 
 have a balalaika ; but it 's years since I held one 
 in my hands. Give me a little time for practice 
 — three days. Your Honor — in three days I '11 
 learn to play it again, and then I '11 sing for you.' 
 
 ^^I consulted the warden in a whisper and he 
 agreed to let Klochkof have the instrument for 
 three days in his kamera. Then, turning to the 
 prisoner, he said : ^All right, Klochkof ! We '11 
 give you time for practice. Limber up your 
 
 44 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 fingers and show us what you can do. In three 
 days we '11 send for you again.' 
 
 ^^ ^Grant me one more favor, Your High Nobil- 
 ity !' said the prisoner imploringly. ^I 'm afraid 
 that if I play in the kamera, the boys will laugh 
 at me and make fun of me. They may even do 
 something to hurt the balalaika — break the 
 strings, perhaps, or smash it altogether. Please 
 put me into solitary confinement, Your High No- 
 bility ! Then I can practise in peace.' 
 
 " ^I can't do that,' said the warden, frowning. 
 'The solitary confinement cells are all occupied.' 
 
 u ^Perhaps there 's an empty kartser [dungeon] 
 where you could put me,' suggested Klochkof 
 diffidently. 
 
 " ^Well, you are a crank !' replied the warden 
 with a contemptuous laugh. ^You're the first 
 prisoner that has ever asked me, as a favor, to 
 shut him up in a kartser. Why, you lunatic, you 
 don't seem to realize what a kartser is. There 's 
 nothing there to sit on, and not a glimmer of 
 light. You won't find it much fun to stand up, 
 or sit on a stone floor, for three days, in pitchy 
 darkness, and all alone.' 
 
 "^It's easier to play standing up,' replied 
 Klochkof, ^and as for loneliness — there '11 be two 
 of us ; the balalaika and I.' 
 
 45 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 " ^Have it your own way/ said the warden. ^If 
 you want to play blindman's-buff with a bala- 
 laika in a Jcartser^ I 've no objection. But don't 
 whine to be let out, if you get tired of it, because 
 I won't let you out. Let's see — to-day is Thurs- 
 day. Sunday afternoon you '11 see God's light 
 again, but not before.' 
 
 "The warden waved his hand in dismissal ; the 
 guard shouted: ^By the left, wheel! March!' 
 and with a measured clashing of leg-fetter chains 
 Klochkof disappeared. 
 
 "After dinner, on Sunday, I went to the prison, 
 with my note-book and pencils, and the warden 
 sent for the entombed balalaika-player. He was 
 brought to a large empty room, adjoining the 
 office, where there was ample air space, and 
 where a writing table had been placed for me. 
 The prisoner came in looking pale and worn, but 
 not at all disheartened or depressed. His hair 
 was in disorder; his long gray coat was soiled 
 and rumpled ; his eyes were half closed to exclude 
 the unfamiliar light; and his person seemed to 
 exhale a faint peculiar odor, like that of a damp 
 cellar; but with these exceptions he was un- 
 changed. I thought I could see the afterglow of 
 recent excitement or exaltation in his tired face, 
 but his demeanor was quiet and self-possessed. 
 
 46 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 The audience that awaited him consisted of two 
 soldiers armed with rifles, two turnkeys with 
 revolvers in their belts, the warden of the prison 
 and myself. Holding the balalaika to his breast, 
 the prisoner bowed to us respectfully and said : 
 'Shall I begin?' 
 
 " Whenever you 're ready,' I replied. 
 
 'at happened to be a bright, clear August day, 
 and going to one of the windows, where the sun- 
 light fell upon him, Klochkof picked out a plain- 
 tive melody on the strings of the balalaika and 
 began to sing. His voice was a mellow tenor, 
 not extraordinary in volume or compass, but 
 sweet and sympathetic. At first, he did not 
 greatly impress me — he seemed to lack confi- 
 dence and spirit — but when, with a wonderfully 
 brilliant balalaika accompaniment, he began the 
 popular Siberian exile song, 'My Fate,' he 
 seemed, suddenly, to become inspired, and sang 
 with a sympathetic depth of feeling that was even 
 more remarkable than the technical skill with 
 which he gave it expression. 
 
 " 'The man is a born musician !' I said to my- 
 self. *He could teach phrasing to many of our 
 best operatic tenors.' 
 
 "But the singing — wonderful as it seemed to me 
 in that place — was surpassed by the extraordi- 
 
 47 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 nary brilliancy of the accompaniment. The 
 balalaika is a wretched musical instrument, at 
 best, but in Klochkof s hands it became a mando- 
 lin played by an Italian master. His technique 
 was something maryelous! If Troyanoyski, the 
 soloist in Andreyef s orchestra, is the Sarasate of 
 the balalaika, Klochkof is its Paganini. Such 
 balalaika playing — such playing on an instru- 
 ment of any kind — one rarely hears. 
 
 "When the gifted convict finished his last song, 
 I grasped his hand, and, in my enthusiasm, 
 thanked him almost effusively. 
 
 " ^Please get the warden to let me keep the 
 balalaika a little longer,' he whispered to me, 
 while I was still holding his hand. ^Persuade 
 him to leave it with me a day or two more.' 
 
 "I made the desired request, but the warden 
 declared it absolutely inadmissible. ^It is 
 against all rules,' he assured me, ^and I might 
 have to answer for it to an inspector." 
 
 " ^Bring me the balalaika,' he said to Klochkof. 
 
 "Then there happened something that I still 
 remember as astounding, tragic, and almost ter- 
 rible. The quiet, submissive, undemonstrative 
 convict suddenly became as fierce and menacing 
 as a tigress about to be deprived of her young. 
 His face lost every trace of color ; his eyes seemed 
 
 48 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 to fill with blood and fire ; and holding the bala- 
 laika to his breast with one hand, he threw him- 
 self into a fighting attitude, and cried hoarsely 
 and fiercely : ^I '11 never give it up ! You can't 
 have it ! I '11 kill the first man that tries to get 
 it!' 
 
 "I was absolutely paralyzed with amazement. 
 
 " Take the balalaika away from the prisoner,' 
 said the warden in a cold, stern voice. 
 
 ^The soldiers and turnkeys, with their hands on 
 their weapons, sprang toward the defiant convict, 
 who stood motionless, with murder in his eyes, 
 breathing heavily and clasping the balalaika to 
 his breast. Before they reached him, he realized, 
 even in his paroxysm of furious passion, that he 
 could not successfully resist four armed men. 
 Dropping the balalaika, he stood for an instant 
 looking at it, with an expression of wild grief and 
 misery in his face, and then, throwing himself on 
 the floor, burst into a storm of convulsive sobs. 
 Never in my life had I seen such agonized weep- 
 ing. It was the expression not merely of disap- 
 pointed expectation and thwarted impulse, but of 
 all the hopeless misery of a wrecked existence. 
 The loss of the balalaika brought to him a vivid 
 realization of all that he had missed in lif e^ — love, 
 freedom, music, happiness, everything — and the 
 
 49 
 
A SINGING BIKD OF PREY 
 
 agonized consciousness of irretr-ievable disaster 
 was deepened and intensified by acute regret and 
 unavailing remorse. 
 
 "The sobs and inarticulate cries of the prisoner 
 finally became so wild and hysterical that the 
 warden sent for the prison surgeon; but it was 
 ten minutes before we could get the weeping and 
 distraught man quiet. When, at last, he had 
 recovered self-command, I thanked him again for 
 singing, and told him that I should leave five 
 rubles for him at the prison office. 
 
 " ^Your Honor,' he said through his tears, 'I 
 don't want money for that. Just let me take the 
 balalaika once more — for a minute.' 
 
 "I gave it to him. He stroked it caressingly, 
 pressed his lips to it twice, and then surrendered 
 it. As the guards were about to take him away, 
 he turned again and said : Tlease, Your Honor, 
 grant me one favor more. When you get back to 
 Russia, you may find yourself, sometime, in the 
 province of Yaroslav. If you ever do, please go 
 to the village church of Romanof-Borisoglebsk ; 
 light a candle before the portrait of the Holy 
 Mother of God that hangs on the left side of the 
 chancel ; and have a mass said for the repose of 
 the soul of — of — Marya Ivanovna !' 
 
 "He spoke the name with a half-strangled sob, 
 
 50 
 
A SINGING BIRD OF PREY 
 
 and seemed to be on the point of breaking down 
 again ; but in a moment he recovered self-control, 
 and bowing low to me said: ^Good-by, Your 
 Honor; God grant you a safe return to your 
 home.' 
 
 "The guard threw open the door ; the prisoner 
 went out ; and the clashing of his leg-fetter chain 
 grew fainter and fainter as he marched down the 
 corridor to the kamera of the hez-sroclini. I 
 never saw him again. 
 
 "Who was Marya Ivanovna, and what had 
 been the convict's relations with her? Was the 
 candle to be lighted, and the mass to be said, for 
 the repose of the soul of the bride who had been 
 killed with an ax, as she stood before the altar, 
 in that village church of Romanof-Borisoglebsk? 
 
 "I never knew." 
 
 51 
 
EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 
 
Ill 
 
 EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 
 
 ALTHOUGH the peculiar form of police em- 
 buscade known as a "mouse trap" has had 
 its fullest development and its widest application 
 in Russia, it did not originate in that country, 
 nor did it receive there its strikingly appropriate 
 appellation. It was imported, a century or more 
 ago, from France, and the name that it bears was 
 given to it, in 1829, by Alexander Dumas. The 
 distinguished French story-teller described it, in 
 "Les Trois Mousquetaires," as follows: 
 
 "The invention of the mouse trap does not date 
 from our days. As soon as societies, in process 
 of formation, created police, the police, in turn, 
 invented mouse traps. As our readers may not 
 be familiar with the slang of the Rue de Jeru- 
 salem, and as it is fifteen years since we applied 
 this term, for the first time, to the thing, we may 
 be allowed, perhaps, to explain to them what a 
 mouse trap is. When, in a house of any kind, an 
 individual suspected of crime is arrested, the 
 
 55 
 
RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 
 
 arrest is kept secret ; four or five men are placed 
 in ambuscade in the first apartment, the door is 
 opened to all who knock, it is then closed after 
 them, and they are arrested; so that, at the end 
 of two or three days, the police have in their 
 power all the persons who are accustomed to visit 
 the place. And that is a mouse trap." 
 
 Dumas does not explain that the first arrest is 
 made, and the trap set, at a late hour of the night 
 — generally between one and three o'clock A. m. 
 — so that the "mice" will not become aware of it 
 and avoid the dangerous locality. You may call 
 upon a "politically untrustworthy" friend in the 
 evening ; drink tea with him ; discuss the state of 
 the country; and go home at midnight without 
 having seen or heard anything to excite suspicion 
 or suggest peril; but if you return to the same 
 house or apartment early the next morning, you 
 are liable to fall into a mouse trap, set by the 
 police in the dead hours of the night. The trap, 
 moreover, catches and holds every person who 
 enters it, regardless of nationality, dress, social 
 position, or official rank. Russian revolutionists 
 are accustomed to assume all sorts of disguises, 
 from the blue frock coat and wrinkled top-boots 
 of the gendarmerie to the sword, epaulettes, and 
 golden cords of the general staff ; and if the Czar 
 
 56 
 
RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 
 
 himself, in the uniform of the Preobrazhenski 
 Guards, should visit, incognito, a house in which 
 a trap had been set, he would be arrested 
 promptly and sent to the nearest uchastoh, or 
 precinct station-house, for identification. No 
 discretionary power, of any kind, is given to the 
 police officers in charge. The mice caught may 
 not look at all like the mice for which the trap 
 was set; but even if they appear to be ermine, or 
 lizards, or small blind kittens, they must go to 
 the uchastoh for examination and judgment. 
 
 Some years ago, Mr. Baddeley, the enterpris- 
 ing and well informed St. Petersburg correspond- 
 ent of the London Standard, happened to hear, 
 one hot July morning, that at a late hour on the 
 previous night, the police had made an attempt 
 to arrest a number of nihilists who were holding 
 a conspirative meeting in an apartment house sit- 
 uated near the intersection of the Gorokhovaya 
 Street and the Kazanskaya. Resistance had 
 been offered by the conspirators; a number of 
 pistol shots had been exchanged; and one of the 
 police officers, it was said, had been killed. 
 Thinking that this revolutionary incident would 
 afford interesting material for a letter to the 
 Standard, Mr. Baddeley determined to visit the 
 apartment where the fighting had occurred, pick 
 
 57 
 
RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 
 
 up such details as could be had, and get accurate 
 "local color" for his story. Everybody in the 
 neighborhood seemed to be afraid to give him 
 information with regard to so dangerous a sub- 
 ject as the arrest of nihilists, and as he could not 
 ascertain the number of the house in which the 
 seditious meeting had been held, he had some 
 difflculty in finding his way to the place. A 
 street policeman finally showed him the house, 
 and told him that the nihilist apartment was in 
 the third story. Ascending two flights of rather 
 dark stairs, he knocked at the first door that pre- 
 sented itself, with the intention of asking for 
 further directions. Somewhat to his surprise, 
 the door was opened promptly by a police officer. 
 
 "I 'm looking for the apartment where the 
 nihilists were arrested last night," said the corre- 
 spondent; "is this it?" 
 
 "Yes," replied the police officer. 
 
 "May I come in?" 
 
 "It is not forbidden," said the officer courte- 
 ously, "Pazholuitia !" [Enter, please.] 
 
 "Thank you," said Baddeley, and removing 
 his hat, he stepped into a rather large, simply 
 furnished room, on whose hardwood floor there 
 were a number of inexpensive rugs, and against 
 whose walls hung a few engravings of scenery in 
 
 58 
 
EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 
 
 the Caucasus and a portrait of Herzen. This 
 reception room, or parlor, opened into two or 
 three smaller chambers, in one of which there 
 was a bed that did not seem to have been recently 
 occupied, and in another a circular, chair-sur- 
 rounded table, a polished brass samovar, half a 
 dozen tea glasses in filigree holders of plated sil- 
 ver, and two or three ash-receivers filled with 
 unbumed ends of cigarettes. The furniture 
 everywhere was comparatively cheap and plain, 
 and with the exception of the portrait of Herzen 
 in the front room, there was nothing in the whole 
 apartment to distinguish it from a hundred sim- 
 ilar suites in that part of the city. The police 
 officer went into all the rooms with the corre- 
 spondent, and watched attentively the latter's 
 movements ; but he refused to be drawn into con- 
 versation, and in reply to every question with 
 regard to the events of the previous night he 
 replied briefly and formally, "Ne magoo znat" 
 [I have no means of knowing]. 
 
 After inspecting the apartment, and taking 
 mental note of all the facts and details that he 
 thought he could work into his description, 
 Baddeley thanked the police officer for his 
 courtesy and started for the door. The officer, 
 however, interposed an arm and said firmly, "Ex- 
 
 59 
 
EUSSIAN "MOUSE TKAPS" 
 
 cuse me, please, you must remain here. You 
 were at liberty to come in, but you cannot go 
 out." 
 
 "But I 'm the St. Petersburg correspondent of 
 the London standard" explained Baddeley. "I 
 merely came in to look at the place for the pur- 
 pose of describing it in a letter to my paper." 
 
 "I have no means of knowing who you are," 
 replied the officer ; "that does n't concern me. 
 My orders are to arrest and detain every person 
 who comes here." 
 
 "But that 's absurd !" said Baddeley. "I 'm 
 not a nihilist, nor even a Russian. I 'm an 
 Englishman, and I came here merely to look 
 around." 
 
 "I see that you are not a Russian," said the 
 officer imperturbably, "and I presume you can 
 convince the proper authorities that you are all 
 right ; but I must detain you here until I can send 
 you to the uchastok under guard. They '11 find 
 out there who you are. An officer has just gone 
 to the station-house with another prisoner, and 
 as soon as he returns he can take you." 
 
 Baddeley tried to argue the question, and to 
 show the officer how preposterous it was to arrest 
 a newspaper man, and a foreigner, who merely 
 wished to get local color for a descriptive letter ; 
 
 60 
 
KUSSIAN ^^MOUSE TRAPS" 
 
 but the officer was inexorable, and finding that 
 he had fallen into a mouse trap, Baddeley lighted 
 a cigarette, seated himself on the low sill of one 
 of the open windows, and amused himself by 
 watching the passing droshkies, and listening 
 to the discordant cries of the fruit peddlers in the 
 street below. Presently, he saw his friend Dob- 
 son, the St. Petersburg correspondent of the Lon- 
 don Times, walking along the Gorokhovaya and 
 looking up at the houses, as if he were in search 
 of something whose exact location he did not 
 know. 
 
 "Hello, Dobson!'' he hailed. 
 
 "Hello !" replied the Times man. 
 
 "Where are you going this hot day ?" 
 
 "I 'm looking for that beastly nihilist apart- 
 ment," replied Dobson. "Have you found it?" 
 
 "Yes," shouted Baddeley cheerfully, "it's up 
 here." 
 
 "Can I come up?" 
 
 "Certainly! Climb two flights of stairs and 
 knock at the first door. It 's a mighty interest- 
 ing place. I '11 show you the blood on the wall. 
 I 'm going to make two columns out of it." 
 
 Congratulating himself on his good luck in 
 coming across Baddeley, and in thus finding out 
 where the nihilist apartment was, Dobson has- 
 
 61 
 
RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 
 
 tened upstairs, knocked at the door, and was ad- 
 mitted, as his colleague had been, without ques- 
 tion. He, too, was a little surprised to find a 
 police officer acting as janitor, but as Baddeley 
 was still sitting on the window sill, coolly smok- 
 ing a cigarette, he assumed, of course, that in- 
 spection of the apartment was permitted and 
 that everything was all right. The two news- 
 paper men then went through the rooms, examin- 
 ing the walls for bullet holes and blood, and even 
 looking in the teapot on the samovar, to see 
 whether the nihilists had finished drinking tea 
 before they were arrested. The police officer 
 went everywhere with them, and watched atten- 
 tively all their movements; but he volunteered 
 no information, and in reply to Dobson's ques- 
 tions merely repeated the dry official formula, 
 ^^Ne magoo znat." 
 
 After fully satisfying his curiosity, the Times 
 man said to his companion : "Well, I 've seen all 
 I want to, let 's go'' ; and leaving the open win- 
 dow, where Baddeley had again taken his seat, 
 he started for the door. To his great surprise, 
 the police officer seized him by the arm and said : 
 "Neilza!" [You can't go.] 
 
 "Zachem neilza?" [Why can't I?] demanded 
 Dobson. 
 
 62 
 
BUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 
 
 "Because you 're under arrest. I '11 send you 
 to the station-house as soon as I can, but for the 
 present you must remain here. There '11 be 
 another officer here in an hour or so." 
 
 Dobson protested, stormed, and explained 
 indignantly that he was the correspondent of the 
 London Times and had come to the apartment 
 merely for information; but his statements and 
 remonstrances had no effect. 
 
 "You can explain everything at the station- 
 house," said the officer; "I have no authority to 
 release you." 
 
 "Are you under arrest, too, Baddeley?" in- 
 quired Dobson. 
 
 "Of course," replied the correspondent of the 
 Standard, "You did n't suppose I was sitting in 
 a third-story window, on a dirty noisy street, for 
 fun, did you? I should have got out of here 
 long ago if I could. I was pinched." 
 
 "Why did n't you tell me so when you hailed 
 me in the street?" 
 
 "I'm not an information bureau," replied 
 Baddeley coolly. "You asked if you could come 
 up, and I told you you could. You did n't say 
 anything about going down. You wanted to see 
 a nihilist apartment, did n't you? Well, you 've 
 seen it." 
 
 63 
 
EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'' 
 
 "Yes, but I would n't have come up if I had 
 known that it was a trap." 
 
 "Of course not," replied his colleague unsym- 
 pathetically, "but when you investigate anything 
 in this country you 've got to take your chances. 
 The only safe way is to send somebody ahead to 
 poke the trap with a stick." 
 
 The two correspondents were held in the 
 nihilist apartment for an hour or more, and were 
 then sent under guard to the precinct station- 
 house. There they established their identity by 
 summoning one of the secretaries of the British 
 embassy, and after receiving a politely worded 
 caution, tempered with expressions of official 
 sympathy and regret, they were released. 
 
 When I returned to St. Petersburg, from my 
 second Siberian expedition, mouse traps gave me 
 more anxiety than all other forms of police activ- 
 ity taken together. I had brought with me from 
 the trans-Baikal and the mines a large number of 
 letters from political exiles to their relatives and 
 friends, and these letters I had promised sacredly 
 to deliver in person. Many of the writers had 
 been forced, for years, to confine their corre- 
 spondence with their families to postal cards, 
 which they were compelled to submit to the 
 police for censorship. Practically everything on 
 
 64 
 
RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'^ 
 
 these cards, except the assurance of continued 
 existence, was erased by the official censors 
 through whose hands they passed, and the un- 
 fortunate exiles, longing for some better and 
 freer means of communication, welcomed me, 
 with pathetic eagerness, as a man who was going 
 back to the civilized world and could take uncen- 
 sored letters to the husbands, wives, parents and 
 children who were dear to them. It was a penal 
 offense to carry such letters, but I could not 
 fairly ask exiles and convicts to put themselves 
 in my power by giving me all the information I 
 wanted, and then deny them a last opportunity, 
 perhaps, to communicate freely with their rela- 
 tives in European Russia. I knew that such let- 
 ters would be a source of constant anxiety — and 
 possibly of danger — but I never hesitated to take 
 them. Many, if not most, of the persons to 
 whom they were addressed were under suspicion 
 of political untrustworthiness, and were liable at 
 any time to arrest; and in attempting to deliver 
 them personally, I ran the risk of falling into a 
 mouse trap with the incriminating letters in my 
 possession. I took every precaution that my 
 own ingenuity and the experience of the exiles 
 could suggest, but I never knocked at the door 
 of an untrustworthy person without half expect- 
 
 65 
 
KUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS^' 
 
 ing that it would be opened by a police officer, 
 who would politely invite me to come in. Then, 
 too, in my search for information with regard to 
 political conditions, I had to go to apartments 
 where revolutionary work was actually being 
 carried on, and these of course were particularly 
 dangerous. One such apartment was occupied 
 by a very intelligent and charming woman whom 
 I shall call Madame Chartoriski. I had visited 
 it several times, and had been repeatedly warned 
 that I ran great risk in calling there. "We are 
 distributing revolutionary literature from here," 
 said the lady of the house, "and this is the head- 
 quarters of the Exile Red Cross. We may be 
 arrested any night, and if you continue to come 
 here, you must clearly understand that you are 
 in danger of falling into a police ambuscade. 
 We cannot warn you when to stay away, because 
 we don't know when the blow will fall ; but fall it 
 undoubtedly will, sometime. I had a letter from 
 an exiled friend, only last week, in which he re- 
 proached me for neglect of duty. ^You must be 
 idle or timid,' he said, ^because if you weren't 
 you would have been in Siberia long ago.' But 
 we are not neglecting the work — we have simply 
 had good fortune." 
 
 It would have been prudent to stay away from 
 
 66 
 
BUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'^ 
 
 this place, but Madame Chartoriski, who con- 
 cealed and sheltered Stepniak after he assassi- 
 nated General Mezentsef, was exceptionally 
 well informed with regard to the whole revolu- 
 tionary movement, and I could not afford to miss 
 the facts and explanations that she was able to 
 give me. My wife, however, felt so much anxiety 
 for my safety that she finally prevailed upon me 
 to let her accompany me, and the first visit that 
 we made together to the revolutionary apart- 
 ment on the Liteini Prospekt was the last. 
 There was no dvornik^ or janitor, at the street 
 door, and as we entered it, we encountered 
 a bearded man in a soft felt hat and dark civilian 
 dress who was coming down the first flight of 
 stairs. At sight of us, he stopped, stood for a 
 moment in apparent irresolution, and then, turn- 
 ing quickly, ran up the uncarpeted steps and dis- 
 appeared. As we passed the first landing, an 
 unseen hand behind one of the closed doors made 
 slowly three spaced knocks as if signaling to 
 some one above or below. The knocks, and the 
 behavior of the man on the stairs, were mys- 
 terious, if not disquieting; but it seemed to me 
 quite as safe to go on as to turn, without appar- 
 ent reason, and try to leave the building. If 
 Madame Chartoriski had been arrested and a 
 
 67 
 
RUSSIAN ^^MOUSE TRAPS'^ 
 
 mouse trap had been set in her apartment^ we 
 probably should not be allowed to escape, and 
 precipitate flight would only show that we knew 
 we were on dangerous ground. The door of the 
 revolutionary apartment was at the head of the 
 second flight of stairs. On all my previous 
 visits, I had found it not only closed, but locked, 
 and it was never opened until Madame Charto- 
 riski and her associates had ascertained with cer- 
 tainty who was outside. On this particular day 
 it was ajar, and that fact alone was sufiicient to 
 show that something had happened. We turned 
 quickly and were just in the act of descending 
 the stairs when a man in civilian dress threw the 
 door wide open and demanded: "Shto vam 
 oogodno?'' [What do you want?] In the exist- 
 ing circumstances we did not want anything, but 
 remembering that I had seen a physician^s door 
 plate on the flrst floor, I muttered something 
 about looking for a doctor and continued to de- 
 scend. The man came to the head of the stairs 
 and watched us until we turned at the first land- 
 ing, but made no attempt to detain us. Who he 
 was, and what significance the signal knocks 
 behind the closed door had, we never knew. All 
 that we were able to learn was that Madame 
 Chartoriski had found it extremely dangerous to 
 
 68 
 
EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 
 
 remain longer in the place where I first met her, 
 and had removed to a remote part of the city, on 
 the Finland side. What eventually became of 
 her I do not know. Perhaps she eluded success- 
 fully the vigilance of the police — perhaps she 
 moved, finally, to Siberia, where, according to 
 her exiled correspondent, she had "long been 
 due." 
 
 In every large Russian city, the police keep 
 an alphabetical list of all persons who are be- 
 lieved to be in sympathy with the revolutionary 
 movement, or who, for one reason or another, are 
 regarded as "politically untrustworthy." Such 
 persons are liable to be arrested on suspicion at 
 any time, and are almost sure to be taken into 
 custody after the assassination of a high official, 
 when there is no clue to the assassin, and when 
 the police hope to get a clue by a drag-net system 
 of arrest and investigation. At such times, a 
 hundred arrests or more are often made in a 
 single night, and in the houses or apartments of 
 perhaps half the prisoners mouse traps are set to 
 catch all comers. The police in charge of the 
 traps are strictly enjoined to send to the nearest 
 precinct station-house every person caught, no 
 matter what plausible account he may give of 
 himself, and no matter what he may look like. 
 
 69 
 
EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 
 
 Revolutionists and terrorists often wear uni- 
 forms, and a man who declares that he is a 
 colonel of gendarmes, or a general of division, 
 may really be a dangerous conspirator in dis- 
 guise. The instructions thus given to the trap- 
 tenders are always implicitly obeyed, and they 
 sometimes bring about results of an extraordi- 
 nary and wholly unforeseen character. 
 
 On a certain night in March, the police, in one 
 of their raids on the politically untrustworthy 
 class, arrested in St. Petersburg a physician 
 named Dr. Kadyan. A mouse trap was set in his 
 house about two o'clock in the morning, and his 
 family, of course, was prevented from communi- 
 cating in any way with the outside world. His 
 sister. Miss Kadyan, happened to be one of the 
 principal teachers in a well known school for 
 young women, patronized, and in part supported, 
 by the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhaelovna. 
 On the 14:th of March — the day that followed the 
 arrest and the setting of the mouse trap — the 
 school held its annual exhibition. The distin- 
 guished patroness herself was not present; but 
 the relatives and friends of the pupils had as- 
 sembled in large numbers, and on the stage of 
 the exhibition hall, under draped flags and a por- 
 trait of the Czar, sat Actual State Councilor 
 
 70 
 
EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 
 
 Dmitrief, Government Inspector of Schools, who, 
 in honor of the occasion, wore his full dress uni- 
 form and all his orders. The program an- 
 nounced that the exhibition would begin with a 
 series of exercises by the class of Miss Irina 
 Kadyan; but at ten o'clock — the hour of open- 
 ing — Miss Kadyan had not made her appearance. 
 After waiting for her ten or fifteen minutes, the 
 lady principal of the school sent a pupil to the 
 Kadyan house, with instructions to bring the 
 teacher back with her, or ascertain the reason for 
 her unexplained absence. The pupil of course 
 fell into the mouse trap and failed to return. 
 The audience waited, whispered, and watched the 
 door; the Inspector of Schools fidgeted, twisted 
 his watch chain, and gazed at the ceiling ; and the 
 lady principal, after explaining to His Excel- 
 lency that Miss Kadyan must be seriously ill, sent 
 a second pupil, post haste, to find out what had 
 happened to the first. The mouse trap snapped 
 again, and the second pupil was heard of no 
 more. Suspecting, at last, that the police were 
 responsible for these mysterious disappearances, 
 and feeling sure that she could clear up any pos- 
 sible misunderstanding in which her teachers 
 and pupils might be involved, the principal had a 
 droshky called and proceeded to the scene of 
 
 71 
 
EUSSIAN "MOUSE TKAPS" 
 
 action herself. But the mouse trap is no re- 
 specter of persons, and the lady principal fared 
 no better than her messengers. She told the 
 police in charge of the trap that she was the 
 principal of the Grand Duchess Mikhaelovna's 
 school ; that it was the day of their annual exhi- 
 bition; that she had left the Goyernment In- 
 spector of Schools fretting and fuming on the 
 platform ; and that if she were not releas'ed, there 
 would be no exercises and the Grand Duchess 
 would be greatly incensed. The police merely 
 replied that they would send her to the precinct 
 station-house as soon as possible, and that she 
 could explain everything there. 
 
 The Government Inspector of Schools, left with 
 an audience, a corps of teachers, and a school 
 exhibition on his hands, grew more and more 
 impatient and exasperated, and finally an- 
 nounced to the wondering and half-frightened 
 assembly that there was apparently some idiotic 
 misunderstanding, and that if they would be 
 good enough to wait a few moments, he would 
 go personally to the Kadyan house and clear it 
 up. In his own mind he was satisfied that noth- 
 ing short of police interference could have pre- 
 vented the return of the lady principal, and he 
 determined to show the guardians of law and 
 
 72 
 
EUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 
 
 order that to break up an exhibition in the school 
 of a Grand Duchess, and to put in a humiliating 
 position an Actual State Councilor and a Gov- 
 ernment Inspector of Schools who was faithfully 
 discharging his duty was a very serious matter. 
 He called his droshky, drove hastily to the Kad- 
 yan house, burst in at the front door without 
 knocking, and was arrested so promptly that it 
 took his breath away. 
 
 "Why you !'' he shouted furi- 
 ously to the sergeant of police, as soon as he 
 could recover himself, ^Do you know who I am? 
 I'm Actual State Councilor Dmitrief, Govern- 
 ment Inspector of Schools and representative of 
 Her Highness the Grand Duchess Ekaterina 
 Mikhaelovna. How dare you put me under 
 arrest ! I '11 report your impertinence to His 
 Majesty himself, and we '11 see whether you have 
 authority to lay hands on an Actual State Coun- 
 cilor and break up an exhibition in the school of 
 a Grand Duchess. The stripes shall be torn from 
 your sleeve and you shall be thrown out into the 
 street !" 
 
 The police officer trembled and turned pale at 
 this fierce attack, but he had been repeatedly 
 warned not to judge from appearances, and this, 
 after all, might be a terrorist. They were some- 
 
 73 
 
RUSSIAN "MOUSE TEAPS" 
 
 times equally impressive and furious. One of 
 them, in the disguise of a gendarme officer, and 
 with forged papers, had almost succeeded in get- 
 ting the governor of Yakutsk to turn over to him 
 the notorious political criminal Chernishevski. 
 
 "I 'm sorry, Your Excellency," he finally re- 
 plied respectfully, "but I must obey my orders. 
 I have n't the honor to know Your Excellency by 
 sight, but even if I recognized you, I should be 
 compelled to detain you. I will have Your Ex- 
 cellency escorted to the uchastok at once, and of 
 course you will be immediately released." 
 
 The Inspector of Schools, still storming and 
 threatening, went out, got into his droshky, and 
 proceeded under guard to the station-house. 
 
 The audience in the exhibition hall, mean- 
 while, hardly knew what to do. That anything 
 could have happened to the lady principal and 
 the Government Inspector of Schools was almost 
 inconceivable, and yet^ — they did not return. At 
 the suggestion of one of the older teachers, a mes- 
 senger was finally sent to the palace of the Grand 
 Duchess Ekaterina Mikhaelovna to inform her 
 that, within an hour, two pupils, the lady princi- 
 pal, and the Government Inspector of Schools, 
 had disappeared in the house of Dr. Kadyan, and 
 to ask her whether something could not be done 
 
 74 
 
RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'^ 
 
 to clear up the mystery. The Grand Duchess 
 immediately sent one of her couriers to the house 
 to find out what had happened. The door 
 opened to the courier's knock, and the mouse trap 
 snapped on the fifth victim. By this time, how- 
 ever, the sergeant of police had become convinced 
 that the callers from the school and palace of the 
 Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhaelovna were not 
 disguised revolutionists, and although, in detain- 
 ing them, he had adhered faithfully to his in- 
 structions, he thought it prudent to go himself 
 with the last of them to the uchastoh and make 
 such explanations as might be needed. In due 
 course of time, all of the prisoners except Miss 
 Kadyan were released, with profound apologies ; 
 but, meanwhile, the audience in the school hall 
 had dispersed, and the exhibition had been in- 
 definitely postponed.^ 
 
 In Russia, mouse traps of the pattern de- 
 scribed by Dumas were not, as a rule, baited. 
 They were merely set in the runways that polit- 
 ical "mice" frequented, or in the holes to which 
 they were accustomed to go. If the mice fell 
 into them, it was because they were unsuspecting 
 
 1 The details of this story were given to me by a promi- 
 nent member — at one time president — of the Free Economic 
 Society, of St. Petersburg, the oldest scientific organization 
 in Russia. — G. K. 
 
 75 
 
EUSSIAN "MOUSE TKAPS" 
 
 or incautious, not because they were attracted by- 
 bait. There were, however, traps of another 
 type, in which a lure was used, and these traps 
 frequently caught cats, as well as mice. When 
 General Alexander Zurofl was gradonachalniky 
 or prefect, of St. Petersburg, he was greatly 
 troubled by his inability to discover the locations 
 of two secret revolutionary printing offices, 
 which were turning out large quantities of liter- 
 ature of an extremely "dangerous tendency.'' 
 The police, from time to time, brought to him 
 pamphlets, leaflets, and proclamations, which 
 they had seized in midnight searches, and which 
 bore the imprint either of the party of "The 
 People's Will" or of the "Black Division"; but 
 they could not tell him where these seditious pub- 
 lications originated. They had raided the whole 
 politically untrustworthy class, and had searched 
 every house in the city where it seemed at all 
 probable that a printing press might be con- 
 cealed; but their widely thrown drag-nets had 
 brought in nothing, and the persons in whose 
 possession the seditious literature had been 
 found steadfastly refused to say where they ob- 
 tained it. 
 
 In these circumstances, the idea occurred to 
 General Zuroff that it would be a good plan to 
 
 76 
 
RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS^^ 
 
 open a decoy printing office of his own. By 
 striking off revolutionary leaflets, and getting 
 disguised police agents to distribute them with 
 caution and secrecy among disaffected operatives 
 in factories, he might be able to open communica- 
 tion with the real revolutionists who were en- 
 gaged in the same work, and find out, through 
 them, where the printing presses of The People's 
 Will and the Black Division were situated. 
 
 There was great rivalry, at that time, be- 
 tween the two independent branches of the Rus- 
 sian secret service — the police and the gen- 
 darmes. Each tried to surpass the other in the 
 discovery and frustration of political con- 
 spiracies, and neither made known to the other 
 its methods or plans. General Zuroff therefore 
 said nothing to General Drenteln, the Chief of 
 Gendarmes, with regard to the decoy printing 
 office, but quietly opened it, in a house on Little 
 Garden Street, and, with the aid of disguised 
 agents, began to strike off revolutionary leaflets, 
 and to distribute them, with apparent caution 
 and secrecy, among factory operatives registered 
 in the police books as politically untrustworthy. 
 
 Although General Drenteln, the Chief of Gen- 
 darmes, had not been able to locate the printing 
 presses of the People's Will and the Black Di- 
 
 77 
 
EUSSIAN ^^MOUSE TRAPS^' 
 
 vision, he very soon discovered the decoy plant of 
 the police in Little Garden Street; and, suppos- 
 ing of course that it really was what it purported 
 to be, he drew up a revolutionary proclamation 
 of the most incendiary character ; gave it to two 
 long-haired detectives in soft felt hats, shabby 
 coats, and green spectacles; and instructed the 
 latter to take it to the "underground' ' printing 
 office in Little Garden Street, and, if possible, 
 get fifty copies of it struck off, to be used after- 
 ward as evidence. The disguised police agents 
 in the Little Garden Street trap received the dis- 
 guised detectives from the gendarmerie with 
 feelings of satisfaction that they could hardly 
 conceal. ^^At last," they thought, "we are on the 
 right track. We '11 do this work, and when the 
 revolutionists in green spectacles come for it, 
 we '11 improve our acquaintance with them, se- 
 cure their confidence, and gradually get into 
 touch with the circle to which they belong. 
 Some of their fellow conspirators higher up must 
 know where the other printing offices are." 
 
 The disguised police agents promised to have 
 the proclamations done by nine o'clock on the 
 following evening; and at the appointed hour, 
 the disguised gendarmes returned, received the 
 copies, and were just in the act of paying for the 
 
 78 
 
RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS" 
 
 work when, at a given signal, half a dozen of 
 their associates, in full uniform and with re- 
 volvers in their hands, burst in at the door, seized 
 the disguised agents of the police, and rushed 
 them off to prison. On the following morning. 
 General Drenteln called upon General Zuroff and 
 said to him, with an air of modest pride a.nd sat- 
 isfaction, "It gives me pleasure to inform Your 
 Excellency that I have at last discovered one of 
 the revolutionary printing offices that have given 
 us both so much trouble. My men raided the 
 place last night, found the press, obtained abun- 
 dant evidence of criminal activity, and took into 
 custody the men in charge.'^ 
 
 General Zuroff, stunned by this unexpected 
 announcement and chagrined at the triumph of 
 his rival, leaned back in his chair and for a mo- 
 ment said nothing. Then, with an air of as- 
 sumed indifference, he asked : "Where was it?'^ 
 
 "At No. 16 Little Garden Street,'' replied the 
 Chief of Gendarmes. 
 
 General Zuroff revived. He himself had 
 failed, but at least General Drenteln had not suc- 
 ceeded. 
 
 "I regret to inform Your Excellency," he said 
 quietly, "that the printing office at No. 16 Little 
 Garden Street was mine. I opened it a week or 
 
 79 
 
BUSSIAK "MOUSE TEAPS^^ 
 
 two ago; and if this unfortunate misapprehen- 
 sion had not occurred, I should probably have 
 succeeded in entrapping the men of whom we are 
 in search. I shall have to ask Your Excellency 
 to release my agents ; they were acting under my 
 orders." ^ 
 
 Kussia now has a constitutional parliament, 
 and the famous "Third Section/' of which Gen- 
 eral Drenteln was chief, has been abolished; but 
 mouse traps are still in use, and thousands of 
 unwary citizens fall into them every year, and 
 are sent to precinct station-houses for examina- 
 tion, merely because they call upon friends or 
 acquaintances of whose arrest they are unaware. 
 Ambuscades of this type are so useful, under the 
 present regime, that they are not likely to be 
 abandoned until martial law has been abolished 
 and arrests are regulated by the civil code. A 
 bill to secure inviolability of the person was laid 
 before the Kussian Duma in November, 1909, but 
 it had been framed by the Government; it did 
 not limit in any way the extraordinary powers 
 given to the police under the provisions of mar- 
 tial law ; and it was so manifestly a sham reform 
 that even the conservatives voted against it, and 
 
 2 The facts in this case are from General Zuroff himself. — 
 G. K. 
 
 80 
 
RUSSIAN "MOUSE TRAPS'^ 
 
 it was sent back to the committee that reported 
 it. In that committee it still lies. Martial law 
 is wholly incompatible with personal inviolabil- 
 ity, and so long as two-thirds of the Russian 
 people are governed by "Rules for Reinforced 
 Defense" and "Rules for Extraordinary De- 
 fense/^ the administration will continue to make 
 use of agents provocateurs and mouse traps. 
 
 81 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
IV 
 A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPOKT 
 
 WHEN Thomas Bailey Aldrich was editor 
 of The Atlantic Monthly in the early 
 eighties he was accustomed to spend a part of 
 every summer abroad. His annual excursions 
 were generally short, and were confined, for the 
 most part, to the well-known countries of West- 
 ern Europe, but while he was planning one of his 
 trips the idea occurred to him that it might per- 
 haps be interesting to repeat a flying visit to 
 Eussia which he and Mrs. Aldrich had made 
 some years before. 
 
 The terroristic campaign of the so-called 
 nihilists in 1879-1880 and the assassination of 
 Alexander II in 1881 had again attracted the 
 attention of the world to the empire of the Czar, 
 and it seemed to Mr. Aldrich that he might get in 
 St. Petersburg and Moscow, even in a week or 
 two, a better understanding than he then had of 
 the Russian revolutionary movement, and at the 
 same time increase his knowledge of a country 
 
 85 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 and a people that had always made a strong 
 appeal to his curiosity and his imagination. 
 
 After a consultation with Mrs. Aldrich, who 
 accompanied him on all his transatlantic excur- 
 sions, he bought a Murray's "Guide to Russia 
 and Finland,'' looked up available routes, sent 
 his old passport to the State Department for 
 renewal, had it viseed at the Russian Legation, 
 and started for St. Petersburg by way of London, 
 Hanover, Berlin, and Eydkuhnen. 
 
 The passport on which Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich 
 traveled when they made their first visit to Rus- 
 sia was issued to "Thomas Bailey Aldrich and 
 wife," but in renewing this document the State 
 Department, through the error of some clerk or 
 copyist, omitted the words "and wife," and made 
 it cover the husband only. 
 
 Mr. Aldrich did not notice this omission prior 
 to his departure, and even if he had noticed it he 
 probably would have thought that a passport for 
 himself would be quite sufficient to establish the 
 identity of his wife, and that if he were admitted 
 to the empire on it, she would be, as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 The Russian government, however, was accus- 
 tomed to treat husband and wife, for all adminis- 
 trative purposes, as separate and distinct person- 
 
 86 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 alities. In their domestic relations they might 
 be one; but in their relations to the Foreign 
 Office and the Passport Bureau they were two, 
 and each must be provided with a "veed," 
 or identification paper, setting forth name, na- 
 tionality, age, height, color of eyes and hair, 
 shape of nose and chin, and such other personal 
 peculiarities as would definitely connect the doc- 
 ument with the bearer and thus prevent illegal 
 substitutions and transfers. In practice, and 
 when there were no reasons for suspicion, the 
 government often recognized and honored a joint 
 passport, but in such cases it required a distinct 
 statement that the document covered two persons 
 and a certification that such persons were hus- 
 band and wife. 
 
 When, therefore, Mr. Aldrich started for St. 
 Petersburg with a wife, and a passport for him- 
 self only, he was as sure to get into trouble as he 
 would have been if he had tried to cross the At- 
 lantic with a wife and only one steamer ticket. 
 Through a purely fortuitous combination of cir- 
 cumstances, however, the trouble did not come at 
 the time or place where it might have been ex- 
 pected, viz., the Russian frontier. Passports are 
 not required in western Europe, and Mr. and 
 Mrs. Aldrich reached Eydkuhnen, the last Ger- 
 
 87 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 man railway station, without being required to 
 show the single passport that was supposed to 
 cover two. When, however, the train crossed the 
 little brook that separates Germany from Russia 
 and rolled into the Russian frontier station of 
 Verzhbolov, or Wirballen, the impending trouble 
 was due, and, from every official point of view, 
 was absolutely unavoidable. The Queen of Eng- 
 land and the Prince Consort could hardly get 
 into the empire on a single passport, much less 
 the editor of an English or American magazine 
 and his wife. 
 
 Passengers bound northward and eastward 
 alight from the German train at Verzhbolov and 
 are guided by gendarmes into a large bare room 
 opening on the railway platform, where a force 
 of police officers and customs inspectors collects 
 passports and receives baggage. 
 
 The central part of this room is inclosed by a 
 low quadrangular counter separated into sec- 
 tions by slender posts bearing the letters of the 
 alphabet from "A" to '^7iP Around the square 
 formed by this counter the baggage of the passen- 
 gers is distributed for inspection, every trunk 
 being placed under or near the letter that begins 
 the owner's name. 
 
 In the center of the baggage-counter inclosure 
 
 88 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 is a bare wooden table, at which sit half a dozen 
 uniformed police officers and secret-service de- 
 tectives, whose business it is to examine pass- 
 ports. 
 
 As fast as the trunks are distributed in the let- 
 tered sections they are opened and inspected by 
 the customs officers, and, at the same time, the 
 passports are handed over the counter to the 
 police, who take them to the central table, ex- 
 amine them carefully, make sure that they have 
 been properly viseed, and see that the names of 
 the bearers are not on the official list of persons 
 who, for one reason or another, are not permitted 
 to enter the empire. 
 
 As the room contains no seats, passengers are 
 obliged to stand until their personal effects have 
 been inspected and their passports examined and 
 stamped. They then show their documents to an 
 armed soldier, who stands at a side door, and are 
 permitted to pass into the waiting room of the 
 station, where there is a good restaurant, and 
 where they may take dinner if they feel so in- 
 clined before getting into the train for St. Peters- 
 burg. 
 
 So far as passengers from western Europe are 
 concerned, the threshold of the door where the 
 armed soldier stands is the boundary line of Rus- 
 
 89 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 sia. While a traveler remains in the baggage- 
 and-passport-inspecting department he is, con- 
 structively, in Germany ; but as soon as he passes 
 the soldier who guards the entrance to the wait- 
 ing room he has the freedom of the Russian Em- 
 pire, or, at least, such freedom as the empire 
 affords. 
 
 When the German train arrived at Verzhbolov 
 Mrs. Aldrich was suffering from a severe sick 
 headache, and did not feel able to stand while the 
 baggage and papers of a trainful of passengers 
 were being examined. As soon, therefore, as her 
 husband had handed in his passport and trunk 
 keys, she asked him to inquire whether she might 
 not be permitted to go into the waiting room, 
 where she could find a seat and get a cup of tea. 
 
 Mr. Aldrich stepped to the counter and said in 
 French to a good-looking young Russian officer : 
 "My wife is suffering from a sick headache and is 
 hardly able to stand. Can she not be allowed to 
 go into the waiting room? I will remain here 
 until the passports and baggage have been exam- 
 ined." 
 
 The officer looked at Mrs. Aldrich, saw that she 
 was really ill, and assuming, of course, that she 
 had a passport, which had already been handed 
 in, and which her husband would get and return 
 
 90 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 to her after the examination, he replied, with a 
 courteous and sympathetic bow: "Certainly. 
 I '11 arrange it at once'' ; and, calling a subordi- 
 nate, who was standing outside the counter, he 
 directed him in Russian to take the lady to the 
 door and pass her through. 
 
 Thirty seconds later Mrs. Aldrich, without a 
 passport, crossed the threshold which formed 
 constructively the boundary line of Russia, and 
 sank into a seat at a long, white restaurant table 
 on which were vases of tastefully arranged flow- 
 ers, crystal bowls of sparkling cut loaf sugar, 
 ornamental baskets filled with delicately 
 browned "boolkee" or Russian rolls, glittering 
 tea glasses in silver holders, artistically stacked 
 bottles of Kakhetinski wine from the Caucasus, 
 and tall epergnes of polished fruit from the 
 sunny hillsides of Asia Minor or the Crimea. 
 
 Recovering a little from the fatigue and the 
 car sickness of the long day's ride, Mrs. Aldrich 
 ordered a glass of fragrant Kiakhta tea and 
 drank it slowly (in Russia), while her husband 
 watched the inspection of his baggage and waited 
 impatiently for his passport (in Germany). 
 
 About half -past five the customs officials fin- 
 ished the examination of trunks and returned the 
 keys to their owners, and a few moments later a 
 
 91 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPOET 
 
 police officer who had not seen Mr. Aldrich be- 
 fore and who did not know that he had a wife, 
 came to the "A" section of the baggage counter, 
 holding a passport above his head and calling out 
 "Aldrich! Aldrich!" Mr. Aldrich, of course, 
 answered promptly to his name and the police 
 officer, after glancing first at the passport and 
 then at its solitary owner, handed over the docu- 
 ment with a courteous "Eezvoltia!" [Be good 
 enough to receive] and returned to the table in 
 the center of the enclosure. The passport had 
 been stamped in dark blue ink with the words : 
 "Shown at Verzhbolov, upon entering the Em- 
 pire, July — , 188-.'' This stamp was equivalent 
 to an order directing the armed sentry at the 
 door to pass the bearer of the document into the 
 waiting room. 
 
 Mr. Aldrich then rejoined his wife, and half an 
 hour later they took seats in the Eussian train 
 and started for St. Petersburg, utterly un- 
 conscious of the fact that they had broken Eus- 
 sian law by making one passport serve for two 
 persons, and had deceived and evaded the most 
 vigilant and suspicious body of frontier police in 
 all Europe. 
 
 But their trouble was yet to come. The scene 
 of it had been shifted from Verzhbolov to St. 
 
 92 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 Petersburg, but it was still pending. There is 
 a well-known peasant proverb which declares 
 that ^'si human being in Russia consists of a body, 
 a soul, and a passport''; and Mr. and Mrs. Al- 
 drich were soon to learn that it is impossible to 
 live, move, or have one's being in the empire of 
 the Czars without possessing every one of these 
 closely associated elements of human personality. 
 A single passport, moreover, will not serve for 
 two bodies and two souls, even though the two 
 have been made one by the marriage ceremony. 
 
 After a long and uninteresting ride of twenty- 
 four hours across the unfenced, scantily culti- 
 vated and poverty stricken plains of western 
 Russia, Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich reached St. Peters- 
 burg; alighted from the train on a platform 
 where the number of men in uniform seemed to 
 be out of all proportion to the number in civilian 
 dress; gave their hand baggage to a bearded 
 hackman in a long-skirted, sash-encircled coat, 
 and a stiff, low-crowned felt hat ; took their seats 
 in a one-horse droshky that seemed hardly bigger 
 than a baby wagon for two-year-old twins; and 
 jolted away over the rough cobblestone pave- 
 ments to the Hotel d'Angleterre [I cannot now 
 remember whether Mr. Aldrich told me that they 
 went to the" Hotel d'Angleterre or the Hotel de 
 
 93 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 France ; but for the purposes of this narrative it 
 makes no difference] . 
 
 As soon as they had selected rooms, the man- 
 ager called upon them and asked them for their 
 passports, which, he said, must be sent that even- 
 ing to the police station of the Admiralty pre- 
 cinct for registry. When Mr. Aldrich produced 
 his single passport the manager said: "It will 
 be necessary to have madame's also." 
 
 "But,'' replied Mr. Aldrich, "madame is my 
 wife, and is included in my passport ; she has n't 
 any of her own." 
 
 The manager shook his head and said that he 
 did not think the police would be satisfied with 
 one passport for two people. 
 
 "Why not?" inquired Mr. Aldrich. "We 
 crossed the frontier together on one passport. If 
 it had n't been all right they would n't have let 
 us in." 
 
 The manager still seemed to be doubtful, but 
 as he had no reply ready for this argument, and 
 did not himself understand how they had suc- 
 ceeded in getting across the frontier, he took the 
 passport, bowed, and withdrew. 
 
 At the front entrance of every hotel in St. 
 Petersburg there is a large blackboard bearing 
 the numbers of the hotel rooms, upon which the 
 
 94 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 names of guests are "clialked up" as they arrive. 
 Whether this is meant to be a convenience for 
 persons wishing to know who are staying in the 
 hotel, or whether it is intended to facilitate the 
 work of the officials whose duty it is to keep track 
 of strangers, I do not know ; but, in either case, it 
 serves as a register, which passers-by may inspect 
 without going beyond the front door. 
 
 The police of the Admiralty precinct were not 
 long in discovering that the blackboard of the 
 Hotel d'Angleterre bore the names of two per- 
 sons who called themselves "Aldrich," while only 
 one "Aldrich" passport had been sent to the 
 precinct station-house for registry. 
 
 This, clearly, was a matter that needed investi- 
 gation. It might be a new stratagem of the 
 nihilists— an attempt to shelter a politically 
 dangerous Russian woman, possibly a bomb- 
 thrower, under the name and passport of an 
 American sympathizer. It was well known, 
 even in Russia, that among the residents of Bos- 
 ton, New York, and Chicago there were all sorts 
 of American citizens, from politically untrust- 
 worthy Polish refugees to Russian traitors and 
 Jewish anarchists. A "bird'' of such feather 
 might easily come to Russia to help on "the 
 cause," and might try to shelter under his wing 
 
 95 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 a female nihilist, who, if her real name were 
 known, would be liable to immediate arrest. At 
 any rate, the woman must be satisfactorily ac- 
 counted for in some way. She could not have^ 
 come with the man from the United States, be- 
 cause the frontier police never would have per- 
 mitted her to enter the empire without a pass- 
 port. ^^Thomas Bailey Aldrich," alone, might 
 be a commercial traveler or an innocent Cook's 
 tourist, but ^^Thomas Bailey Aldrich" plus an 
 unexplained woman formed an extremely sus- 
 picious, if not a criminal, combination. 
 
 Before Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich had fully recov- 
 ered from the fatigue of their long journey across 
 Europe a boy appeared at their door with the 
 announcement that a police officer from the Ad- 
 miralty precinct was below and wanted to see 
 them. 
 
 ^^Send him up," said Mr. Aldrich, with the 
 prompt decision of a man who has never had 
 reason to dodge the police; "he probably wants 
 further information about that confounded pass- 
 port." 
 
 In a few moments the manager appeared in a 
 state of obvious perturbation, and ushered in an 
 officer in blue uniform, who glanced sharply at 
 
 96 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 Mrs. Aldrlch, and then said, bowing courteously 
 to her husband, "Excuse me, please ; I have been 
 sent to get the lady's passport." 
 
 "Tell him," said Mr. Aldrich to the manager, 
 "that the lady is my wife, and that she has n't 
 any separate passport." 
 
 "Where did the lady deign to come from?" 
 inquired the officer, framing his question with a 
 scrupulous observance of every Russian form of 
 courtesy. 
 
 "She came from Boston with me," replied Mr. 
 Aldrich. 
 
 "In what way did she see fit to cross the fron- 
 tier without documents?" persisted the officer. 
 
 "Documents!" exclaimed Mr. Aldrich im- 
 patiently. "I've got a passport, haven't I? 
 And she is my wife. She crossed the frontier 
 with me and nobody said a word about separate 
 documents for her." 
 
 "It is strictly forbidden," said the officer im- 
 pressively. "No lady is allowed to cross the 
 frontier without a passport. Madame cannot be 
 in Russia without the permission of the Verzh- 
 bolov police indorsed on a proper document." 
 
 "But that 's all foolishness !" cried Mr. Aldrich 
 hotly. "My wife is in Russia, and the Verzhbo- 
 
 97 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 lov police let her in on my passport. They know 
 their business, don't they? And, if not, whose 
 fault is it?'' 
 
 The officer evidently regarded further argu- 
 ment as unprofitable, and, taking a memorandum 
 book from his pocket, made a brief note in it and 
 said: "It will be my duty to report that mon- 
 sieur came into the empire at Verzhbolov on the 
 — th of July, with an American passport, prop- 
 erly indorsed, and that madame is pleased to be 
 in his company at the Hotel d'Angleterre, St. 
 Petersburg, without documents of any kind." 
 And, replacing the memorandum book in his 
 pocket, he bowed politely again and withdrew. 
 
 Mr. Aldrich was well aware, of course, that 
 this would not be the end of the passport misun- 
 derstanding, and he was not surprised, therefore, 
 when, half an hour later, the police officer reap- 
 peared and said, with formal courtesy, "The 
 Chief of Police asks that you will be good enough 
 to accompany me to his office." 
 
 "I suppose that is equivalent to an order for 
 my arrest," said Mr. Aldrich to the manager; 
 "but could anything be more stupid? The police 
 at the frontier let us in on one passport, and then 
 the St. Petersburg police arrest us because we 
 have n't two. If we were traveling with a baby, 
 
 98 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 I presume they 'd want a third. Item : One 
 baby; features undeveloped; stature, knee-high 
 to a grasshopper; name, not yet decided upon; 
 occupation, tourist, chaperoning his parents ; but 
 what preposterous nonsense! I wonder if the 
 Chief of Police will put brass tags on us !" 
 
 Mr. Aldrich, his courier and the officer, then 
 descended the stairs to the front entrance; 
 passed the blackboard whose inscription "Al- 
 drich 2" had first called attention to the numer- 
 ical discrepancy between bodies and passports; 
 took seats in droshkies, under the curious scru- 
 tiny of three or four Russian bystanders who 
 whispered "politicheski" [politicals] as they 
 passed ; and were driven to the office of the Chief 
 of Police. There they found a middle-aged, uni- 
 formed official, with a severe countenance and 
 short upstanding hair, who was sitting at a flat- 
 topped desk, receiving reports from three or four 
 police officers and detectives, who stood in re- 
 spectful attitudes under a large oil portrait of 
 the Czar. 
 
 Requesting his involuntary guest from the 
 United States to take a seat, the bristle-haired 
 official, addressing Mr. Aldrich through his 
 courier, began his examination as follows: 
 
 "Do you understand Russian?'' 
 
 99 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 "Not a word/^ replied Mr. Aldrich. 
 
 "What is your name?'' 
 
 "Thomas Bailey Aldrich." 
 
 "Your passport states that you are an Ameri- 
 can citizen; what is your place of residence in 
 America?" 
 
 "Boston, Mass." 
 
 "Have you ever been in Russia before?" 
 
 "I have; I spent a few days here some years 
 ago." 
 
 "Ah! Then this is not your first visit. Tour- 
 ists don't often come to Russia twice." 
 
 "I should n't think they would," remarked Mr. 
 Aldrich dryly, "if it 's your practice to arrest all 
 who come a second time." 
 
 "Are your visits to Russia made for business 
 purposes?" 
 
 "Fortunately they are not. Are business men 
 under suspicion? I thought only authors, stu- 
 dents, and Jews were arrested at sight." 
 
 "Nobody is arrested who obeys the laws," said 
 the official severely. "What is your occupa- 
 tion?" 
 
 "To this question," said Mr. Aldrich in telling 
 the story afterward, "I did n't know exactly 
 what reply to make. I thought of calling myself 
 a poet ; but I wasn't at all sure that my claim to 
 
 100 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 that distinction would be universally recognized. 
 In Boston, at least, there were differences of 
 opinion with regard to it. So I finally described 
 myself modestly as an editor.'' 
 
 This reply seemed to excite more interest than 
 the fact itself warranted. The group of officers 
 exchanged significant glances, and in their half- 
 whispered comments Mr. Aldrich caught the 
 word ^^zhoornalist." Realizing too late that it 
 was a mistake to call himself an editor in a coun- 
 try where the press was so largely revolutionary, 
 he hastened to explain that although he was a 
 "zhoornalist," he was not a political "zhoornal- 
 ist," but the editor of a literary magazine, which 
 had never made any attempt to cover the field of 
 foreign politics. This, he thought, would set 
 matters right and prevent any possible misunder- 
 standing as to his purpose in visiting Russia. 
 To his great surprise, however, this reply 
 seemed to make matters worse. The Chief of 
 Police turned on him quickly and said : 
 
 "Didn't you tell me a minute ago that you 
 were wholly ignorant of Russian — that you 
 did n't know a word of it?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Mr. Aldrich, "and I don't know 
 a word of it." 
 
 "But you understood what we were saying 
 
 101 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 about your profession, although the interpreter 
 did n't translate it to you." 
 
 ^^I caught the single word ^zhoomalist,' and 
 that is so much like our corresponding English 
 word that I recognized it. I did n't understand 
 anything else that you said." 
 
 The Chief of Police transfixed the editor of The 
 Atlantic Monthly with a piercing glance of scru- 
 tiny, but for a moment said nothing. Then, ap- 
 parently, he thought of a test that would con- 
 clusively settle the question of Mr. Aldrich's 
 acquaintance with Russian. If he knew any- 
 thing at all of that language, he never could 
 stand being grossly insulted in it. A man may 
 have self-control enough to refrain from answer- 
 ing an insult with a blow, but when he is called 
 a swindler, a liar, and a thief he will react per- 
 ceptibly in some way, provided the words convey 
 any meaning to his mind. 
 
 Watching Mr. Aldrich intently, the Chief of 
 Police said slowly in a level monotone and with- 
 out emphasis: "Gdai tee nashol ettu babu, 
 moshenik tee etakoi? Kak tee smeyesh poka- 
 zatsa v' poradochnoi gostinitze s' baboi oo koto- 
 roi dazhe passporta nyett? Ya tebia pashloo v' 
 tiurmoo, tee s — s — , shtob droogoi ras tee ne smiel 
 obmaneevat nachalstva." ["Where did you pick 
 
 102 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 up that woman, you lying swindler? How dare 
 you show yourself in a respectable hotel with a 
 woman who has n't even a passport? I '11 send 
 
 you to jail, you , so that another time 
 
 you '11 know better than to try to deceive the 
 authorities."] 
 
 "What does he say?" inquired Mr. Aldrich, 
 turning to his courier with a cheerful air of ex- 
 pectant interest. 
 
 But the courier was evidently in distress. His 
 face was flushed, and little drops of perspiration 
 appeared on his forehead. 
 
 "It 's nothing — nothing at all," he stammered. 
 "I don't know how to — but don't pay any atten- 
 tion — he was talking to himself. You don't have 
 to answer — it 's of no consequence — I '11 tell you 
 later." 
 
 The Chief of Police, having thus satisfied him- 
 self, experimentally, that Mr. Aldrich knew no 
 Russian, proceeded with his examination as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 "What is the object of your present visit to 
 Russia?" 
 
 Mr. Aldrich might have replied that he was in 
 search of local color for a poem to be entitled 
 "God Save the Czar" ^ but he contented himself 
 
 1 He wrote this poem after his return from Russia. Its 
 
 103 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPOKT 
 
 with the statement that he merely wished to see 
 the country and the people. 
 
 "You have said that the lady who accompanies 
 you is your wife." 
 
 "She is.'' 
 
 "Did she come from America with you V^ 
 
 "She did.'' 
 
 "How did she get across the frontier without 
 a passport?" 
 
 "She crossed on my passport, which includes 
 us both." 
 
 "But the frontier police do not allow two per- 
 sons to enter the empire on one passport." 
 
 "They did allow it in this case." 
 
 "Was madame with you when you showed your 
 passport to the sentry at the door of the waiting 
 room at Verzhbolov?" 
 
 Suddenly it flashed upon Mr. Aldrich that his 
 wife was not with him when he passed the sentry 
 — she had been allowed to precede him because 
 she was ill. Neither was she with him when the 
 
 nature was such that it would have made another visit to 
 the empire inexpedient, if not impracticable. He also began 
 a Russian story, to be entitled "The Little Blue Coupe," but 
 whether he ever finished it or not, I do not know. It does 
 not appear in his published works. The subject was sug- 
 gested by the bullet-pierced coupe in which the Czar was 
 riding when an attempt was made to assassinate him. — 
 G. K. 
 
 104 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 police officer came to the baggage counter, hold- 
 ing a paper above his head and calling out "Al- 
 drich! Aldrich!" That happened in Germany 
 and Mrs. Aldrich was already drinking tea in 
 Russia. She had crossed the frontier on the 
 passport of a sick headache ! 
 
 When Mr. Aldrich, with evident frankness and 
 sincerity, made this explanation to the Chief of 
 Police the latter modified a little the severity of 
 his demeanor. Perhaps, after all, these travel- 
 ers were not nihilistic wolves in sheep's clothing. 
 The explanation seemed to show inexcusable if 
 not incredible carelessness on the part of the 
 frontier police, but it was plausible — very plaus- 
 ible. Pending verification of the story, however, 
 it was clearly his duty to detain both of the sus- 
 pects. If the woman were released she might 
 suddenly disappear, and then he would be held 
 responsible for any crime that she might subse- 
 quently commit. 
 
 After briefly exchanging impressions and opin- 
 ions with the other officers who were present the 
 Chief of Police turned again to Mr. Aldrich and 
 said, with a noticeable access of courtesy : "I re- 
 gret to subject you to temporary inconvenience, 
 but our regulations with regard to passports are 
 very strict, and I shall have to detain you and 
 
 105 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 madame until I can communicate with the fron- 
 tier police at Verzhbolov." 
 
 "May I write a note to the American Minis- 
 ter?" inquired Mr. Aldrich. 
 
 "That is not forbidden," replied the Chief of 
 Police, with an air of surprise. "Are you person- 
 ally acquainted with the Minister?" 
 
 "Certainly," said Mr. Aldrich. 
 
 "And does his Excellency, the Minister, know 
 madame?" 
 
 "Not yet, but he will when I present her to 
 him." 
 
 "Why, that simplifies the whole matter," said 
 the Chief of Police, with a forced smile of seem- 
 ing friendliness and cordiality. "His Excel- 
 lency, the Minister, can issue a passport to 
 madame at once, and then her position in St. 
 Petersburg will be quite legal. This is evidently 
 an unfortunate misunderstanding, due to ma- 
 dame's sick headache and to the inexcusable care- 
 lessness of our frontier police. They should not 
 have allowed you to proceed until they had ex- 
 plained to you that a passport for a husband does 
 not cover a wife unless she is specifically men- 
 tioned and described in it. But it was an acci- 
 dent^ — a chance combination of circumstances — 
 for which monsieur and madame are not at all to 
 
 106 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPORT 
 
 blame. Will it be convenient for you to go to the 
 legation now?'' 
 
 "The sooner the better," replied Mr. Aldrich. 
 
 The relieved "suspect'' then went to the hotel 
 for his wife, and, accompanied by the same officer 
 who had first visited them, they drove to the 
 American Legation, where they surprised Minis- 
 ter Hunt by informing him that they were under 
 arrest for lack of "documents." Would he not 
 be good enough to legalize Mrs. Aldrich's po- 
 sition, and complete her personality, by provid- 
 ing her body and soul with a passport? The 
 Minister welcomed them cordially ; gave Mrs. Al- 
 drich a certificate of nationality and personal 
 identity, duly authenticated by the seal of the 
 legation, and expressed the hope that, as soon as 
 they should have the freedom of the city, they 
 would do him the honor of dining with him. As 
 soon as the matter had been satisfactorily ar- 
 ranged, the police officer released Mr. and Mrs. 
 Aldrich from custody, and they drove back to the 
 Hotel d'Angleterre, congratulating themselves 
 upon their escape from the widespread net of 
 Russian passport laws and police regulations. 
 They were not arrested or questioned again, but 
 they had good reason to believe that, throughout 
 their subsequent stay in the empire, they were 
 
 107 
 
A BODY, A SOUL, AND A PASSPOET 
 
 constantly under secret police surveillance, and 
 they did not feel wholly free from anxiety and 
 apprehension until they recrossed the German 
 frontier. 
 
 In every large Eussian prison, there is a row of 
 gloomy kameras [cells holding from ten to fifty 
 prisoners], intended for vagrants, tramps, and 
 unidentified wanderers over the face of the earth. 
 In capital letters, above the door of each of these 
 kameras, is the single word "Bezpassportni'' 
 [passportless]. If the editor of The Atlantic 
 Monthly and Mrs. Aldrich had happened to go 
 directly from the German frontier to Novgorod, 
 Kiev, Tver, or any provincial town where the 
 United States had no diplomatic representative, 
 their bodies and souls would probably have spent 
 the night in one of these cells, while their single 
 passport awaited further investigation in the 
 "suspect'' file of the local police. 
 
 108 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
V 
 
 THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 IN originality of conception and ingenuity of 
 execution, the escape of Prince Krapotkin 
 from tlie prison of the Nikolaievsk Military Hos- 
 pital in St. Petersburg in 1876 is probably un- 
 paralleled in prison annals. Twelve conspira- 
 tors outside the prison took part in it, but not 
 one of them was ever arrested or suspected, al- 
 though many of them were subsequently ban- 
 ished to Siberia for other political offenses. The 
 escape was made in broad daylight, about five 
 o'clock in the afternoon, in the presence of three 
 armed soldiers, and with such novel accessories 
 as cherries, opera-hats, a louse, music, a black 
 mare, and a microscope. The chances were at 
 least ten to one that it would fail, notwithstand- 
 ing the extraordinary ingenuity with which it 
 was planned; but every device and stratagem 
 worked perfectly, and the liberated prisoner 
 dined that night in Donon's restaurant, the most 
 fashionable in St. Petersburg, while the entire 
 
 111 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 police force of the capital was ransacking the 
 city in search of him. Nobody even imagined 
 that he would be shrewd and bold enough to take 
 his dinner in so public a place, and not a single 
 detective looked for him there, although search 
 was made in scores of other places, and every exit 
 from the city was so carefully guarded that a 
 mouse could hardly have crept through unob- 
 served. 
 
 Prince Pierre Krapotkin, the hero of this 
 extraordinary jail-delivery, is a member of one of 
 the oldest noble families in Russia, and was born 
 in Moscow on the ninth of December, 1842. He 
 received his early education in one of the gym- 
 nasia of his native city, and from there he was 
 sent to the School of Pages in St. Petersburg, 
 where at that time the sons of wealthy families 
 of the nobility were trained for a military career. 
 In very early youth he showed an adventurous 
 spirit and a love of natural science, and when he 
 was graduated from the School of Pages, and was 
 permitted to choose the branch of the army in 
 which he would serve, he asked for and received 
 an appointment as first lieutenant in the Ussuri 
 regiment of Amur Cossacks, which was then sta- 
 tioned in the east-Siberian territory of Trans- 
 baikalia. Three or four weeks later he started 
 
 112 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 for liis field of service, and early in July, after a 
 journey of nearly four thousand miles with post- 
 horses, he reached Irkutsk, and reported to Gen- 
 eral Kukel, the goyernor-generars chief of staff. 
 Curiously enough, the first duty assigned to him 
 was an investigation of the east-Siberian prisons. 
 He little thought, while he was noting in his 
 memorandum-book the hardships and privations 
 of convict life in Transbaikalia, that in less 
 than twelve years he himself would be deprived 
 of his liberty and would be threatened with in- 
 carceration in one of the very prisons he was 
 investigating. 
 
 During the ^ye years of his military service, 
 Krapotkin made many long and difficult jour- 
 neys on horseback through eastern Asia, explor- 
 ing the wildest mountain fastnesses of Man- 
 churia and Transbaikalia, and writing for the 
 Imperial Geographical Society full descriptions 
 of the unknown regions that he visited. When, 
 therefore, he returned to St. Petersburg in 1867, 
 he had an established reputation as an explorer 
 and scientist, although he was only twenty-five 
 years of age. 
 
 His experience and observations in Siberia had 
 so increased his interest in science and so broad- 
 ened his views of social and political problems 
 
 113 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 that lie was unwilling to remain longer in the 
 service of a government whose methods he disap- 
 proved, and in 1867 he resigned his commission 
 and entered the St. Petersburg University as a 
 student, with the intention of fitting himself 
 more thoroughly for scientific work. His father, 
 who had opposed his resignation from the army, 
 would not give him any financial assistance ; but 
 the young scientist managed to support himself 
 by teaching and writing for the press until he 
 completed his studies. The Imperial Geographi- 
 cal Society then elected him secretary of its phys- 
 ical-geography section, and sent him to Finland 
 to make a study of that country's geological 
 structure and glaciers. 
 
 At that time it was his ambition to be ap- 
 pointed to the general secretaryship of the 
 Geographical Society, a position which would 
 give him congenial employment and at the same 
 time assure him a livelihood. The coveted ap- 
 pointment was tendered to him while he was in 
 Finland, but in the meantime he had become so 
 deeply interested in the condition of the op- 
 pressed Russian peasants and in the movement 
 for their enlightenment and emancipation that 
 when the offer was finally made, he declined it, in 
 order that he might be free to work for an object 
 
 114 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 that seemed to him even more important than the 
 advancement of science. The death of his father, 
 General Krapotkin, which occurred shortly after- 
 ward, put him in possession of a large fortune, 
 and finding himself relieved from the necessity 
 of seeking remunerative employment as a means 
 of self-support, he determined to devote himself 
 wholly to the cause of Russian freedom. Under 
 the assumed name of Borodin he joined a Social- 
 istic circle organized in St. Petersburg by Nicho- 
 las Tchaykovsky, and began to distribute forbid- 
 den literature to the peasants in the provinces, 
 and to give surreptitious talks to working-men 
 in the factories, on the state of the country and 
 the necessity for a readjustment of social and po- 
 litical conditions. 
 
 In those days the life of an agitator or propa- 
 gandist outside the walls of a prison was very 
 short; and in 1874, at the age of thirty -two, 
 Krapotkin was arrested and thrown into the 
 fortress of Petropavlovsk. In most civilized 
 countries, persons accused or suspected of crime 
 are brought into court for preliminary examina- 
 tion soon after their arrest, and are indicted and 
 tried within a reasonable time; but in Russia, 
 where there is no writ of habeas corpus, political 
 offenders are often taken into custody on mere 
 
 115 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 suspicion, and are held in solitary confinement 
 for two or three years while the police look for 
 incriminating evidence against them. In Kra- 
 potkin's case, the "preliminary investigation'' 
 lasted two years, and during the whole of that 
 time the prisoner lay in a dark and damp case- 
 ment of the fortress, without legal counsel and 
 without any means of compelling the authorities 
 to hasten their proceedings. At the request of 
 the Imperial Geographical Society, of which he 
 was still a member, he was permitted to have 
 writing materials, and in the twenty-four months 
 of his confinement he wrote the greater part of 
 his most important scientific work — a treatise on 
 the glacial period in northern Europe and Asia. 
 Long before the end of the second year of his 
 imprisonment his health began to fail under the 
 bad sanitary conditions of his life, and in June, 
 1876, when his strength had been greatly reduced 
 by scurvy, and w^hen it was thought that he could 
 not live more than a few months, he was trans- 
 ferred to a small prison connected with the Niko- 
 laievsk Military Hospital, in the northern out- 
 skirts of the city. This prison was primarily 
 intended for the detention and treatment of mil- 
 itary criminals taken ill while awaiting trial; 
 but it was also used occasionally for political 
 
 116 
 
CI V 
 
 + + +0 + 
 
 0) 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 -G + 
 
 J. + 
 
 n 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 9 + 
 
 D 
 
 toi 
 
 + fO 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PKINCE KEAPOTKIN 
 
 offenders whose health had broken down in other 
 prisons where the conditions of life were more 
 trying. 
 
 So long as Krapotkin remained in the fortress 
 of Petropavlovsk, it was virtually impossible for 
 his friends to set him free or even to communicate 
 with him; but as soon as he was transferred to 
 the less carefully guarded prison of the military 
 hospital, they began to consider plans for his lib- 
 eration. Their first step was to make a careful 
 study of his environment. The building in 
 which he was confined stood directly opposite the 
 military hospital, on the other side of the street, 
 and was used mainly as a sort of lazaret for sick 
 or convalescent soldiers awaiting trial on crim- 
 inal charges. Although it occupied a large part 
 of the space between two parallel streets, it had 
 no opening on either of them, and could be en- 
 tered only through a grassy yard, two hundred 
 yards long and half as wide, which was inclosed 
 by a wooden stockade, and which communicated 
 with the street by means of a heavy gate large 
 enough to admit wagons. This yard was used 
 as a place of deposit for the hospital's winter sup- 
 ply of wood; but it also served as an exercise- 
 ground for convalescent prisoners, who were 
 allowed to walk in it, one at a time, under the 
 
 118 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 supervision of armed sentries. Outside the 
 stockade, at the eastern end of the yard, was a 
 narrow cross lane uniting the two streets be- 
 tween which the prison was situated, and di- 
 rectly opposite the southern end of this lane 
 stood an unoccupied dwelling-house, or bunga- 
 low, the upper windows of which commanded a 
 view not only of the lane, but of the whole prison 
 yard. 
 
 After making a careful survey of the prison 
 and its environment, the conspirators proceeded 
 to open communication with Krapotkin. This 
 they succeeded in doing through one of the 
 lazaret guards, whom they induced to carry notes 
 written in cipher between them and Krapotkin. 
 For a time neither the prisoner nor his friends 
 could think of any plan of escape that gave 
 promise of success ; but while they were carrying 
 on their correspondence with regard to ways 
 and means, an event occurred that gave them a 
 suggestion. The authorities of the military hos- 
 pital began to lay in their winter supply of fire- 
 wood. This, perhaps, would have had little sig- 
 nificance if the wood had been stored in or about 
 the hospital itself; but it was not. It was taken 
 into the spacious yard of the lazaret and piled 
 against the stockade at the eastern end of the 
 
 119 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 inclosure. In order to permit the entrance of 
 the wood carts, the street gate was opened at 
 short intervals daily for several weeks, and was 
 frequently left open for an hour at a time while 
 the drivers of the carts unloaded and piled their 
 wood. In any other than a hospital prison, this 
 gate would undoubtedly have been guarded by a 
 sentry; but inasmuch as the occupants of the 
 lazaret were all weak from sickness, it was not 
 thought likely that they would attempt to escape 
 even through an open gate. Day and night two 
 sentries paced back and forth in front of the 
 prison door, and when the convalescent prisoners 
 were allowed, one at a time, to walk for exercise 
 in the yard, they were incessantly watched, and 
 were restricted to the path worn out in the grass 
 by the sentries' feet. They would have to run a 
 hundred yards in order to reach the gate, and 
 even if sick men w^ere able to do this, they would 
 almost certainly be overtaken by the sentries be- 
 fore they could get out into the street. The risk 
 of opening the gate, therefore, or even of leaving 
 it open, seemed to the prison authorities so 
 trifling as to be negligible. Krapotkin's friends, 
 however, estimated the chances differently. 
 They believed that if an unfettered prisoner 
 should make a dash for the gate at an opportune 
 
 120 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 time, when neither of the two sentries was near 
 him, it was not at all improbable that he might 
 outstrip pursuit and reach the street in safety. 
 Of course one of the sentries might shoot him, 
 but this risk would have to be taken. Krapotkin 
 was not so likely to be shot as an ordinary 
 prisoner would be, because he was known to be 
 a political offender of high rank and position, 
 whom it would be unsafe to kill without express 
 orders. Then, too, the sentries would confi- 
 dently expect to overtake and recapture alive a 
 man who had recently left a hospital bed and 
 who was presumably utterly incapable of violent 
 physical exertion. Krapotkin, however, was not 
 so weak as he seemed to be. A month of good air 
 and nourishing food had largely restored his 
 strength, and when the dash for the gate was pro- 
 posed to him by his friends outside, he assured 
 them that he felt quite capable of undertaking it, 
 and that he believed he could reach the street in 
 safety. This feature of the plan was therefore 
 agreed upon. In the course of his daily walk be- 
 tween four and five o'clock in the afternoon, Kra- 
 potkin was to watch for an opportunity to dart 
 through the gate when it should be left open by 
 incoming wood carts, and his friends outside 
 were to have a fast horse and a vehicle waiting 
 
 121 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PEINCE KKAPOTKIN 
 
 for him on the prison side of the street, and as 
 near to the gate as possible. 
 
 There were three serious dangers, however, 
 which would have to be guarded against. The 
 street upon which the prison yard opened ran 
 eastward into the northern end of the Nevskii 
 Prospekt, and it was not thought prudent to try 
 that route. The fugitive, therefore, would have 
 to turn into the narrow lane at the eastern end 
 of the yard, cross through it to the next parallel 
 street, and then take another lane leading to an 
 unfrequented part of the suburbs. This, how- 
 ever, was precisely the route followed by the 
 wood carts, and at the critical moment the latter 
 might obstruct or block the way. The first lane, 
 moreover, and the streets that it united were 
 included in the beat of a policeman who was on 
 duty every afternoon, and who might be roused 
 to decisive action by the hue and cry that would 
 follow the escape. This policeman, therefore, 
 must be removed. Finally, an armed sentry 
 stood at the entrance to the military hospital, 
 just across the street from the prison, and there 
 was danger that he might shoot either at Krapot- 
 kin as the latter emerged from the gate or at the 
 horse that carried him away. If possible, there- 
 fore, this sentry must be temporarily disarmed. 
 
 122 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 The next step in tlie plot of the conspirators 
 was to make the sentries and the prison authori- 
 ties so familiar with the vehicle to be used that 
 they would not regard it with suspicion when it 
 should wait for Krapotkin in front of the gate. 
 Two weeks before the day fixed for the escape, a 
 highly polished and fashionable droshky, drawn 
 by a stylish black mare and driven by a coachman 
 in livery, brought to the entrance of the military 
 hospital a richly dressed lady and gentleman, 
 evidently persons of wealth and rank, who had 
 apparently come to the hospital to see or inquire 
 about some sick officer in whom they were inter- 
 ested. Both alighted and entered the immense 
 building, while the coachman, in order to make 
 room for any vehicle that might come later, drove 
 ahead a little, and stopped to wait nearly in 
 front of the sentry-box. Ten or fifteen minutes 
 later the gentleman and lady came out of the 
 hospital, reentered their vehicle, and were driven 
 away in the direction of the Nevskii Prospekt. 
 The gentleman was Dr. Crest Edward Veimar, a 
 wealthy surgeon of St. Petersburg, who thought 
 out most of the stratagems of the plan and took 
 the leading part in its execution ; the lady was an 
 intimate personal friend of Krapotkin; and 
 the coachman was a member of the Tchaykov- 
 
 123 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 sky Socialistic circle to which Krapotkin be- 
 longed. 
 
 Every day or two thereafter, for a whole fort- 
 night, Dr. Veimar and his companions repeated 
 this manoeuver, until the sentries and prison 
 authorities finally became so accustomed to see- 
 ing this droshky bring a lady and gentleman to 
 the military hospital that they paid no further 
 attention to it. At first the coachman waited for 
 his passengers just beyond the hospital entrance 
 and on that side of the street ; but in the second 
 week, when everybody had become familiar with 
 the vehicle, he ventured to cross over and wait on 
 the other side, near the gate of the prison yard. 
 Sometimes Dr. Veimar went into the hospital 
 with the lady who accompanied him, sometimes 
 he remained outside in the droshky; but before 
 the end of the second week nobody noticed what 
 he did or where the droshky waited. The vehicle 
 and its occupants had ceased to attract attention 
 and had become a semi-permanent feature of the 
 environment. 
 
 While Dr. Veimar and his associates were thus 
 familiarizing the prison authorities and the sen- 
 tries with the vehicle to be used, the other con- 
 spirators were finding out who owned the unoccu- 
 pied bungalow south of the prison yard, devising 
 
 124 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 a scheme for disarming tlie sentry at the hospital 
 door, and investigating the life and circum- 
 stances of the obnoxious policeman. The bunga- 
 low was found to be for rent, and the conspira- 
 tors promptly took a lease of it and established 
 themselves securely in a position from which they 
 could overlook the prison yard, the transverse 
 lane, and both the streets into which the lane 
 opened. The policeman proved to be a quiet, 
 middle-aged man who had a house in the neigh- 
 borhood, and who eked out a small salary by 
 renting rooms to respectable persons of moderate 
 means in the social class to which he belonged. 
 One of his rooms was vacant, and the conspira- 
 tors ascertained what it was like and how much 
 the owner expected to get for it. Through the 
 friendly soldier in the lazaret who carried notes 
 for them, they also found out whose turn it would 
 be to take sentry duty at the door of the military 
 hospital on the day fixed for the escape, and how 
 the man could best be approached. 
 
 When all these preliminaries ^ had been ar- 
 ranged, Krapotkin's friends notified him that 
 from half-past four to half-past five o'clock on 
 the afternoon of July 12, a droshky with a fast 
 horse would wait for him just outside the gate 
 of the prison yard. When in the course of his 
 
 125 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PKINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 walk he was ready to risk the dash for the gate, 
 he was to take oif his hat. If at that time every- 
 thing had gone satisfactorily outside, he would 
 hear the music of a violin played softly near an 
 open window in the bungalow that his friends 
 had leased. So long as the music continued he 
 was to understand that the way outside was 
 clear, and that he was at liberty to make the 
 rush for the gate at the first favorable oppor- 
 tunity; but if the music should cease, he must 
 take it as an indication of unforeseen trouble, 
 and wait. The last instructions given him were : 
 "Once in the street, don't give yourself up. 
 There will be friends to defend you in case of 
 need.'' 
 
 About four o'clock on the afternoon of July 12 
 the conspirators outside the prison made their 
 final dispositions. Some of them hired and car- 
 ried away every public vehicle standing within 
 a distance of half a mile, so as to leave the prison 
 authorities no means of swift pursuit ; some sta- 
 tioned themselves along the line of the route fol- 
 lowed by the woodcarts; and some took their 
 places at the windows of the bungalow that they 
 had rented, and watched the military hospital, 
 the prison yard, and the streets. At half-past 
 four the well-known droshky made its seventh or 
 
 126 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIK 
 
 eighth appearance at the door of the military 
 hospital. One of its occupants — the lady who 
 had so often been seen before — alighted and en- 
 tered the building, while the other two drove 
 across the street as usual, and stopped to wait 
 ten or fifteen feet east of the gate through which 
 Krapotkin was to make his dash. At that time, 
 the gate was closed ; but the teamsters had been 
 drawing wood all day, and just before ^ye o'clock 
 the sentinels signaled that half a dozen carts had 
 just started for the prison with loads. Two or 
 three minutes later a bareheaded peasant, in red 
 shirt, black velveteen trousers, and dusty top- 
 boots, strolled along the street in front of the 
 military hospital, seated himself on the curb of 
 the sidewalk opposite the lane, and began to eat 
 ripe cherries out of his hat, which he held be- 
 tween his knees. The sentry at the door of the 
 military hospital could not be seen from the win- 
 dows of the conspirators' bungalow, on account 
 of an intervening corner of the prison ; and this 
 peasant was a disguised conspirator whose duty 
 it was to watch the attempt to disarm the sentry 
 and to signal to the house whether it succeeded or 
 not. His signals could be seen through the lane, 
 and in order that they should not attract atten- 
 tion, they were to be made by spitting out the 
 
 127 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PEINCE KPvAPOTKIN 
 
 cherry stones, or throwing them away to the right 
 or left, in accordance with a prearranged code. 
 
 Two minutes after this peasant took his seat 
 on the curb, a smooth-faced young man, in worn 
 but respectable clothing, who looked as though 
 he might be a poorly paid department clerk, ap- 
 proached the policeman, who was standing list- 
 lessly at the intersection of the southern street 
 and the lane, and began to make inquiries about 
 rooms to rent in that neighborhood. 
 
 ^^What kind of room do you want?" asked the 
 policeman. 
 
 The conspirator described in a general way the 
 room that he knew was available. 
 
 "I have a room of that kind myself," said the 
 policeman, ^^and it is n't at all dear. Perhaps 
 it 's the very thing you 're looking for." 
 
 After some talk about terms, the conspirator 
 asked to see it. 
 
 ^^I can't show it to you now," said the police- 
 man, "but I shall be off duty at six o'clock, and if 
 you '11 meet me here then, I '11 take you to the 
 house." 
 
 The conspirator, however, could not be there 
 at six o'clock, and wanted to see the room at 
 once. "Is it far?" he inquired. 
 
 "No," said the policeman ; "it 's quite near." 
 
 128 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 "Well, then, let ^s go. It won't take you long, 
 and there 's nothing doing here." 
 
 The policeman was anxious to rent his room; 
 there was not one chance in twenty that a short 
 absence from his beat would be noticed in that 
 sleepy neighborhood ; and after assuring himself 
 by a glance around that there was not a soul in 
 sight except the peasant sitting on the curb at 
 the other end of the lane and eating cherries out 
 of his hat, he consented to go. 
 
 The conspirator and the policeman had hardly 
 left the street south of the prison when a train of 
 six carts entered the lane, turned the corner into 
 the hospital street, passed through the gate, and 
 proceeded to the eastern end of the prison yard, 
 where the wood was being piled against the 
 stockade. As they expected to return soon, they 
 left the gate open. 
 
 Two minutes later, a slightly intoxicated peas- 
 ant made his appearance in front of the military 
 hospital, and stopped to "pass the time of day" 
 with the sentry at the door. Soldiers on duty 
 are not supposed to talk with casual passers-by ; 
 but this particular soldier was himself a peasant ; 
 he had found it tiresome and monotonous to 
 stand all day before a sentry-box in a hot sun, 
 and he was glad of an opportunity to talk with a 
 
 129 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 man of his own class who was just drunk enough 
 to be amusing. The conversation drifted from, 
 one thing to another until the disguised con- 
 spirator began to describe to the peasant soldier 
 some of the wonderful things that he had re- 
 cently seen at a public exhibition given for the 
 entertainment and enlightenment of the common 
 people. Among them was a marvelous instru- 
 ment which, when one looked through it, made a 
 louse appear as big as a dog. 
 
 ^^Cross yourself!'' exclaimed the soldier, in- 
 credulously. ^^Nothing could make a louse 
 appear as big as a dog. You were probably 
 drunk." 
 
 The conspirator, however, insisted, with ear- 
 nest if somewhat incoherent eloquence, that such 
 was the effect produced by the instrument which 
 he saw. "And what 's more," he added, "if you 
 don't believe in God's miracles, I can show you 
 one of those things right here. It 's a small, 
 cheap one, — I had to go without a pair of new 
 boots to buy it, — and of course it won't make a 
 louse into a dog ; but it '11 make one look as big 
 as a cat, and I can prove it to you. Drunk, am I? 
 I have n't had but two drinks to-day. And, any- 
 how, the instrument is n't drunk. Look at this !" 
 The speaker produced triumphantly a small, 
 
 130 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 cheap microscope. The peasant soldier was in- 
 terested. He did not believe for a moment that 
 a trumpery little brass contrivance like that 
 could possibly change the size of an insect or an 
 animal; but he did want to see what a louse 
 would look like through it, and when the peasant 
 proposed that a search be made in his hair for the 
 necessary specimen, the soldier set his rifle 
 against the sentry-box and began the entomolog- 
 ical quest, the peasant, to facilitate operations, 
 getting dow^n on his knees. 
 
 The peasant who was sitting on the curb two 
 hundred yards away eating cherries out of his 
 hat took two cherry-pits from his mouth, one 
 after the other, and threw them carelessly to the 
 right. It was the final signal: ^^All safe out- 
 side, the sentry is disarmed." 
 
 There was absolutely nothing in the whole en- 
 vironment to suggest a crisis, and yet the su- 
 preme moment had come, and thirteen hearts 
 were beating fast with anxiety and excitement. 
 
 A moment later the motionless summer air was 
 gently stirred by the music of a violin. An un- 
 seen performer in the bungalow was playing 
 softly Schubert's "Serenade." Krapotkin heard 
 it, and loosening his arms in the sleeves of his 
 long, green-flannel dressing-gown, walked slowly 
 
 131 
 
•V 
 
 THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 along the path toward the end that was nearest 
 to the gate, watching with fierce impatience for a 
 favorable opportunity to run. As the sentries 
 paced back and forth on their beat, they hap- 
 pened to come together near the end of the path 
 that was farthest from the gate while Krapotkin 
 was at the near end. The hidden violinist no- 
 ticed the lucky chance and, suddenly changing 
 time and melody, swept into one of Kontsky's 
 rapid riotous mazurkas, as though to say : "Run ! 
 Run! It's now or never!'' Krapotkin started 
 at top-speed for the gate, throwing off his dress- 
 ing-gown as he ran. Both sentries pursued him, 
 and one of them got so near that he could have 
 shot him in the back without a chance of missing ; 
 but as he had no orders to kill, and still hoped 
 to take the fugitive alive, he did not fire. Kra- 
 potkin burst through the gate, with the sentry at 
 his heels, and cast himself headlong into the 
 droshky, where stood Dr. Veimar with a cocked 
 revolver in his hand. The black mare, trained 
 specially for this emergency, started instantly at 
 full speed, and turned so suddenly and rapidly 
 into the lane that both passengers were nearly 
 pitched out. In the lane Dr. Veimar threw around 
 Krapotkin one of the light black cloaks often worn 
 by gentlemen to protect their frock coats from 
 
 132 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 dust, and opened and put on Ms head an opera- 
 hat. He then made a similar change in his own 
 dress, so that when they turned into the next 
 street south, they looked like two gentlemen go- 
 ing to or returning from an afternoon reception. 
 
 They drove first to the house of Krapotkin's 
 sister-in-law, where the fugitive's clothing was 
 changed, and then to a remote barber shop on one 
 of the islands in the Neva, where his huge, flow- 
 ing beard was removed. At the suggestion of 
 Dr. Veimar, they then went to Donon's restau- 
 rant in the city, and there in a private room they 
 took their dinner and spent the evening. The 
 house of Krapotkin's sister-in-law, where he first 
 stopped, was searched by the police almost imme- 
 diately after he left it, and searches were made 
 that evening in all the other houses where it was 
 thought possible that he might be; but the 
 shrewdest detective never imagined that he could 
 be dining almost openly in one of the most fash- 
 ionable places of public resort in St. Petersburg. 
 
 All the conspirators in the plot vanished in the 
 confusion and excitement that followed the 
 escape. The lady left the military hospital by a 
 rear door opening on another street; the watchers 
 in the bungalow abandoned their newly leased 
 premises, and were seen no more ; and as for the 
 
 133 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PKINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 poor department clerk who wished to rent a 
 room, the red-shirted peasant with the hatful of 
 cherries, and the half-intoxicated peasant with 
 the cheap microscope, nobody ever suspected that 
 they were conspirators or that their relation to 
 the affair was anything more than accidental. 
 
 Dr. Veimar was afterward sent to the mines 
 of Kara for alleged complicity in the assassina- 
 tion of General Mezentsef ; and one of the watch- 
 ers in the bungalow, who gave this story to me 
 and drew the accompanying plan, was exiled by 
 administrative process to eastern Siberia for 
 "political untrustworthiness'' ; but, as far as I 
 know, their connection with this plot was never 
 suspected. Dr. Viemar died at the mines, and 
 for that reason I have felt at liberty to mention 
 his name. 
 
 A few days after his escape, Krapotkin, 
 equipped with the passport of a friend, crossed 
 Finland by an unfrequented route, took a 
 Swedish steamer at a remote port on the Gulf of 
 Bothnia, and made his way, by Christiania and 
 Hull, to Edinburgh. He is now living near Lon- 
 don with his wife, and as all his Russian prop- 
 erty has been confiscated by the government, he 
 is compelled to support himself by literary work. 
 He has been a frequent contributor to Nature; 
 
 134 
 
THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE KRAPOTKIN 
 
 his name appears often in the proceedings of the 
 Royal Geographical Society ; he is the author of 
 important articles in the Encyclopaedia Britan- 
 nica, Chambers' Encyclopaedia, and the "States- 
 man's Year-Book'' ; and his articles on scientific 
 subjects were for many years a feature of the 
 Nineteenth Century review. His sister Helene 
 and his sister-in-law the Princess Krapotkin were 
 both arrested and thrown into prison in St. 
 Petersburg after his escape, and his brother Alex- 
 ander was banished to Siberia, where, after many 
 years of suffering, he committed suicide. Kra- 
 potkin himself never has returned to Russia, and 
 probably never will return, since there is at pres- 
 ent nothing to indicate that the empire of the 
 Czar will be in the near future a safe place of 
 residence for a thinking man. 
 
 135 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'' 
 
VI 
 
 "A HEAET FOE EVERY FATE" 
 
 NOW and then, the orbit of almost every 
 human life is crossed by a character whose 
 fortitude in suffering and indomitable courage 
 in adversity put to shame the weakness of the 
 faint-hearted, raise the standards of the daunt- 
 less, and compel even the cynic and the pessimist 
 to admit that man, at his best, is bigger perhaps 
 than anything that can happen to him. Such a 
 character came into my life when I made the 
 acquaintance of the exiled Eussian poet Felix 
 Vadimovitch Volkhovsky. I met him first in the 
 west-Siberian city of Tomsk. ^ He was then 
 thirty -eight years of age and was a man of culti- 
 vated mind, warm heart, and high aspirations. 
 He knew English well, was familiar with Ameri- 
 can history and literature, and had translated 
 
 1 This meeting was described in the Century Magazine 
 many years ago ; but Volkhovsky, at that time, was still in 
 exile, and the adventures that I purpose to relate were still 
 in the future. — G. K. 
 
 139 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 into Russian many of the poems of Longfellow. 
 He spoke to me with great admiration, I remem- 
 ber, of Longfellow's "Arsenal at Springfield," 
 and recited it to me aloud. He was one of the 
 most winning and lovable men that it has ever 
 been my good fortune to know; but his life had 
 been full of tragedy and suffering. His health 
 had been shattered by long imprisonment in the 
 fortress of Petropavlovsk ; his hair was prema- 
 turely gray; and when his face was in repose 
 there seemed to be an expression of profound 
 melancholy in his dark-brown eyes. I became 
 intimately acquainted with him, and very 
 warmly attached to him; and when I bade him 
 good-by, on my return from the mines of Kara, 
 he put his arms around me and kissed me and 
 said : "George Ivanovitch, please don't forget us ! 
 In bidding you good-by, I feel as if something 
 were going out of my life that would never again 
 come into it." 
 
 Volkhovsky's story, as it was told to me by his 
 comrades, was a sad but inspiring narrative of 
 brave and generous endeavor, thwarted and frus- 
 trated by despotic repression. He was born in 
 1847, in the south of Russia, where his parents 
 had an estate ; and he spent all the earlier years 
 of his life at home. The sympathy with the Rus- 
 
 140 
 
"A HEAET FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 sian peasants and the desire to improve their 
 condition that were so characteristic of his man- 
 hood found expression in his attitude toward 
 them, even as a child. When he was only seven 
 years of age, he happened to see a serf flogged 
 on his father's estate ; and this first experience of 
 what seemed to him shocking cruelty and injus- 
 tice so aroused and excited him that he rushed 
 into the house, with tear-filled eyes, doubled up 
 his little fists, and attacked furiously his cold 
 and austere grandfather — the first man of the 
 family that he chanced to come across. For this 
 outburst of indignation and disrespect he was 
 promptly punished; but the incident made a 
 deep impression upon his childish mind, and first 
 led him to think about the social and political 
 conditions that authorized and empowered one 
 man to have another man mercilessly flogged 
 with a whip. As the twig is bent the tree is 
 inclined; and the direction given to the boy's 
 thoughts by the flogging of a serf determined, in 
 large part, his future career, and made him, 
 eventually, a reformer, a member of the party of 
 "The People's Will," and a revolutionist. 
 
 In 1865 or 1866, he entered the Moscow Univer- 
 sity, and two or three years later joined Herman 
 Lopatin, a fellow-student, in an attempt to raise 
 
 141 
 
"A HEAKT FOR EVERY FATE'' 
 
 money for the purpose of sending teachers and 
 books to the peasants in the agricultural vil- 
 lages.^ In this work there was nothing illegal, 
 because the serfs had just been emancipated, and 
 the government professed an intention to have 
 them educated. The administration, however, 
 and especially the police, regarded with suspicion 
 every attempt to enlighten the common people 
 that had not been officially authorized and sanc- 
 
 2 Lopatin afterward became one of the most daring and 
 resourceful of the Russian revolutionists. He was often im- 
 prisoned and exiled ; made half a dozen remarkable escapes ; 
 set free the exiled Russian author Lavrof ; attempted, in the 
 disguise of a gendarme oflScer, to liberate the exiled political 
 economist Chernyshevski ; became a member of the execu- 
 tive committee of the revolutionary party ; and was finally 
 arrested, for the sixth or seventh time, tried for high trea- 
 son, found guilty, and condemned to death. His sentence 
 was subsequently commuted to imprisonment for life, and 
 shortly after my return from my second Siberian expedition 
 he was incarcerated in the fortress of Schlusselburg, where 
 he spent eighteen years. In November, 1905, just after the 
 promulgation of the Freedom Manifesto, he was released; 
 but he was then a broken-down invalid, sixty years of age. 
 In the intervals betw^een his terms of imprisonment and exile, 
 he translated into Russian Herbert Spencer's "Psychology," 
 "Sociology," and "Ethics" ; the first volume of Taine's "Or- 
 igines de la France Contemporaine" ; Grant Allen's "Evolu- 
 tionist at Large," and a number of other well known French 
 and English books of a scientific or historical nature. TUr- 
 genief knew him well, and is said to have had him in mind 
 when he created the character of Nezhdanof, in "Virgin 
 Soil."— G. K. 
 
 142 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 tioned; and in 1868, at the age of twenty-one, 
 Volkhovsky was arrested upon the charge of ex- 
 citing discontent among the peasants by furnish- 
 ing them with literature of a "pernicious tend- 
 ency." He was imprisoned at first at Moscow; 
 but two or thr^e weeks later he was taken to St. 
 Petersburg and thrown into the fortress of Petro- 
 pavlovsk. In one of the dark and sepulchral 
 casemates of that great political prison he spent 
 eight months. He was then tried by a special 
 commission, was found to be innocent, and was 
 acquitted. Returning to the south of Russia, he 
 settled in Odessa, and was shortly afterward 
 married to Miss Antonova of that city, a young 
 woman of character and education, who sympa- 
 thized with his views and aims, and who herself 
 belonged to the class described by the Govern- 
 ment as "politically untrustworthy." The do- 
 mestic happiness of the young couple, however, 
 was of short duration. Volkhovsky himself con- 
 tinued to correspond with his friend and comrade 
 Lopatin; the latter, who had been exiled to the 
 Caucasus, happened to exchange a few letters 
 with a revolutionary conspirator named Nech- 
 aief ; and in 1869, when Nechaief organized the 
 society known as "Obshchestvo Narodnoi Ras- 
 pravy" [Retributive Justice of the People] Volk- 
 
 143 
 
"A HEAET FOR EVERY FATE'' 
 
 hovsky and Lopatin were both arrested, merely 
 because intercepted letters showed that one of 
 the three had been in correspondence with the 
 other two. Lopatin succeeded in escaping from 
 his guards, and Nechaief, the real conspirator, 
 fled to western Europe ; but Volkhovsky, merely 
 because he had been in correspondence with a 
 man who had exchanged letters with Nechaief, 
 was taken to St. Petersburg and again thrown 
 into the fortress of Petropavlovsk.^ 
 
 Solitary confinement in a fortress is not re- 
 garded by the Russian Government as the sever- 
 est of its non-capital punishments ; but all polit- 
 ical offenders who have experienced it agree that 
 when it is prolonged beyond a year or two it is 
 far more injurious to mind and body than the 
 hard labor of penal servitude. I have explored 
 to their lowest depths the mines of the trans- 
 Baikal, and I know, as well as a mere observer 
 can know, the hard conditions of life in them; 
 but if I were a political offender, I should much 
 
 3 The facts, as subsequently established by judicial inves- 
 tigation, showed that although Lopatin had exchanged let- 
 ters with Necljiaief, he did not approve the latter's methods, 
 nor take any part in his conspiracy. Volkhovsky had never 
 had any relations whatever with Nechaief. (Indictment in 
 the "Trial of the 193" before the Governing Senate, p. 12. 
 Article "Lopatin" in Russian encyclopedia of Brockhaus 
 and Efron, supplementary vol. 2, p. 96.) 
 
 144 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 rather work for three years in a Nerchinsk silver 
 mine than spend three years in one of the crypt- 
 like casemates of the Petropavlovski fortress. A 
 hard-labor convict in the mines has occupation; 
 sees the outside world at least twice a day ; and 
 associates with companions in misery who are at 
 least human beings ; but a prisoner in one of the 
 casemates of the Trubetskoi bastion has nothing 
 to do but pace his cell ; sees nothing but the damp 
 walls that enclose him ; and meets no one but the 
 silent guards who bring him his food, or watch 
 him furtively through the narrow "Judas" slit in 
 the heavy door. The stillness is that of the 
 grave. There is not a footstep, nor a voice, nor a 
 sound of any kind to indicate the presence of 
 another human being in the bastion. Every fif- 
 teen minutes the bells of the fortress cathedral 
 chime out slowly the air with which the words 
 "Have mercy, O Lord !" are associated in the Rus- 
 sian liturgy, and every hour they ring the melody 
 of the ecclesiastical chant, "How glorious is our 
 Lord in Zion!" The damp, heavy atmosphere, 
 the dripping walls, the oppressive silence, and 
 the faint muffled tones of the cathedral bells 
 chiming mournful airs from the church liturgy, 
 all seem to say to the lonely and dejected pris- 
 oner, "Although not dead, you are buried." Few 
 
 145 
 
"A HEAET FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 men are strong enough to bear, without serious 
 impairment of bodily and mental vigor, such 
 complete isolation from the world of the living, 
 and such entire deprivation of the absolute neces- 
 sities of intellectual life. Many prisoners have 
 gone insane in those gloomy casemates, and many 
 more have come out of them with shattered 
 health and broken character. Volkhovsky, how- 
 ever, was a young and vigorous man, of dauntless 
 courage and invincible fortitude, and he lived 
 through two years and a half of isolation and 
 loneliness without wholly losing hope or 
 strength. His health failed, but he was sus- 
 tained to the last by an indomitable spirit. In 
 1871 he was tried in the St. Petersburg Chamber 
 of Justice, with Vladimir I. Kovalevski and 
 eighty-five other prisoners, on the charge of con- 
 spiring with Nechaief to overthrow the existing 
 form of government. Volkhovsky and Kovalev- 
 ski were able to show that they had had no rela- 
 tions whatever with Ne€haief, and both were set 
 at liberty.^ 
 
 4 Indictment in the "Trial of the 193" before the Govern- 
 ing Senate, p. 12 ; Article "Nechaief " in the Russian ency- 
 clopedia of Brockhaus and Efron, supplementary volume 2, 
 p, 274. As an illustration of the reckless and wholly un- 
 justifiable way in which arrests on suspicion were made in 
 this case I may mention the fact that Volkhovsky's fellow- 
 
 146 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 Volkhovsky, at this time, was only twenty -four 
 years of age. He had been twice tried for polit- 
 ical crime and twice acquitted; but Ms blame- 
 less record had not saved him from three years of 
 isolation in the gloom and solitude of a bomb- 
 proof casemate. As soon as he was released, he 
 joined his wife; returned with her to Odessa; en- 
 gaged in business there, and established a home. 
 
 It was practically impossible for a young man 
 of Volkhovsky's temperament and ideals to re- 
 gard with indifference the great movement for 
 the enlightenment and elevation of the peasants 
 which began in Russia in 1871, and which first 
 took definite and practical form in the impulsive, 
 generous, but quixotic crusade known as "going 
 to the people." Thousands of educated young 
 men, fired with an ardent desire to do something 
 to atone for the sins of their fathers toward the 
 recently emancipated serfs, and filled with pity 
 for the latter's ignorance and misery, went into 
 the Russian villages, into the suburbs of the 
 great cities, into factories, into workshops, into 
 all places where the peasants toiled and suffered, 
 and sought by sympathy, by cooperation, and by 
 personal instruction, to help and elevate the men 
 
 prisoner, Kovalevski, afterwards became Associate Russian 
 Minister of Finance. — G. K. 
 
 147 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'' 
 
 and women whom their fathers had bought, sold, 
 and flogged. Hundreds of cultivated and refined 
 young women, with that singular capacity for 
 self-sacrifice which is inherent in the Russian 
 character, abandoned their homes and families, 
 put on coarse peasant dress, went into the re- 
 motest, loneliest, and dreariest villages of the em- 
 pire, and, in the capacity of school-teachers, mid- 
 wives, or nurses, shared the hard prosaic life of 
 the common people, labored with them, suffered 
 with them, and bore their burdens, merely in 
 order to learn how they could best be helped. 
 Something analogous to this took place in our 
 own country soon after the close of the Civil War, 
 when educated and refined young women from 
 the New England States went south to teach in 
 negro schools; but the movement in the United 
 States never became epidemic, as it did in Rus- 
 sia, nor was it ever characterized by the reckless, 
 heroic self-sacrifice which illumines so many dark 
 pages of Russian history. Volkhovsky was soon 
 drawn into this movement, and in 1873, he organ- 
 ized in Odessa a "circle" for the promotion of 
 popular enlightenment, which was affiliated with 
 the famous circle of Tchaykovsky in St. Peters- 
 burg.^ These circles, of course, did not escape 
 
 5 Referring to the latter, Prince Krapotkin says, "Never 
 
 148 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'^ 
 
 the vigilant attention of the government. They 
 were regarded as seditious in their character, and 
 steps were at once taken to put a stop to what 
 was believed to be nothing less than a secret 
 revolutionary propaganda. 
 
 In 1874 Volkhovsky was arrested, for the third 
 time, and taken to Moscow, where he was con- 
 fined temporarily in one of the detention cells 
 of the gendarmerie. Fearing that her husband 
 would not survive another long term of fortress 
 imprisonment, Mrs. Volkhovsky, with the aid of 
 Vsovolod Lopatin — brother of Herman Lopatin 
 — made a daring attempt to set him free while he 
 was being taken through the streets from the 
 gendarmerie to the Moscow central prison. A 
 handful of snuff was thrown into the face of the 
 gendarme officer who had him in charge, and 
 availing himself promptly of his guard's tem- 
 porary blindness, Volkhovsky attempted to 
 spring into a droshky that his wife had in wait- 
 ing. Just as he reached it, the vehicle started 
 ahead at full speed, and the sudden jerk caused 
 him to miss his footing. His wife seized his arm 
 
 did I meet elsewhere such a collection of morally superior 
 men and women as the score of persons whose acquaintance 
 I made at the first meeting of the circle of Tchaykovsky. I 
 still feel proud of having been received into that family." 
 (Memoirs of a Revolutionist, p. 306.) 
 
 149 
 
^^A HEAKT FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 and tried to draw liim into the sleigh, but she was 
 not strong enough to hold him. As he fell, he 
 grasped one of the uprights of the runner and 
 clung desperately to that; but after being 
 dragged seventy-five or a hundred feet through 
 the snow he lost his hold, and two or three street 
 policemen sprang upon him before he could re- 
 cover himself. Lopatin attempted to rescue him, 
 but both were eventually overpowered.^ Volk- 
 hovsky and his wife never saw each other again. 
 She broke down completely under the strain of 
 disappointment, anxiety and grief ; was forced to 
 leave Russia in order to escape arrest ; and event- 
 ually went to Italy, where she hoped that she 
 might regain her health and strength. Life, 
 however, had been too hard for her, and she died 
 in Sicily, of a broken heart, just after her hus- 
 band had been exiled to Siberia. 
 
 Volkhovsky and Lopatin were taken to St. 
 Petersburg where they were thrown into the fort- 
 ress of Petropavlovsk to await trial. Then be- 
 gan for Volkhovsky another long term of solitary 
 confinement, which proved to be even more rigor- 
 ous and severe than the preceding terms. His 
 casemate cell was gloomy and damp, and as 
 month after month and year after year passed, 
 
 6 Indictment in the "Trial of the 193," p. 301. 
 
 150 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'^ 
 
 he not only began tO/Suffer from rheumatism and 
 anaemia, but gradually became so deaf that he 
 could no longer communicate with his fellow- 
 prisoners by means of the knock-alphabet, and 
 could hear no more the bells of the fortress cathe- 
 dral chiming at the quarter hours, "Have mercy, 
 O Lord !" and at midnight, "God Save the Czar." 
 
 The calamity that Volkhovsky feared most was 
 impairment of his mental faculties — or complete 
 loss of reason — from lack of occupation. A 
 prisoner, in such circumstances, is likely to "lose 
 his grip," and to sink into mind-destroying 
 melancholia, as the result of brooding incessantly 
 over his own misfortunes. Volkhovsky, as an 
 intelligent and resolute man, determined to com^ 
 bat this tendency by every means in his power. 
 He avoided, as far as possible, reflection and 
 retrospection, and kept his mind active by forc- 
 ing it into exercise upon subjects not connected 
 with his life. 
 
 He went over all that he could remember 
 of Russian history; arranged the facts in 
 chronological order; and then put them into the 
 best possible rhythmical form, so as to make a 
 sort of national epic. In this way he composed 
 a poetical history of Russia, in three or four hun- 
 dred stanzas, and committed it to memory. He 
 
 151 
 
"A HEAET FOE EVEKY FATE" 
 
 then thought out and memorized thousands of 
 words of doggerel poetry upon all sorts of sub- 
 jects suggested to him by his experience or his 
 imagination. When I met him in Tomsk, he 
 could still repeat hundreds of these verses, which 
 had little or no value as poetry, but which were 
 interesting on account of the circumstances that 
 brought them into existence. 
 
 Volkhovsky's third term of imprisonment 
 lasted three years. On the 30th of October, 1877, 
 he was arraigned before a special session of the 
 Governing Senate convened to try one hundred 
 and ninety-three political offenders (including 
 Volkhovsky) upon the charge of "organizing an 
 illegal society for the purpose of bringing about 
 in the near or remote future, the overthrow of the 
 present form of government and a change in the 
 existing methods of administration." "^ 
 
 At the very beginning of the proceedings, the 
 prisoners asked that they be tried together and 
 not in separate groups; that they be allowed to 
 have their own stenographer; and that the case 
 be heard, with open doors, in a room large enough 
 to accommodate a fair representation of the pub- 
 lic. The court ruled that these requests were 
 inadmissible. Most of the accused thereupon 
 
 7 Indictment in the "Trial of the 193," p. 299. 
 
 152 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'' 
 
 declined to plead, or to make any defense; and 
 some of them protested so vehemently, and with 
 so much intemperance of language, against the 
 ruling of the presiding judge (Senator Peters) 
 that they were forcibly removed from the court 
 room. The fiery orator Muishkin, before he was 
 seized and choked into silence by the guards, 
 shouted passionately, ^^This court is worse than a 
 house of ill fame. There women prostitute them- 
 selves from necessity ; but here senators sell their 
 honor, prostitute justice, and sacrifice the lives 
 of others, for the sake of rank and reward." ^ 
 
 When Volkhovsky was called upon to plead, he 
 arose in the dense throng of prisoners, and ad- 
 dressing the presiding judge respectfully, said: 
 "Will not Your High Excellency allow me to 
 come and stand directly in front of the bench ? I 
 am partially deaf, and I cannot hear, at this dis- 
 tance, the questions that may be put to me." As 
 
 8 Muishkin's speech is given in full in Bazilevski's "Po- 
 litical Crime in Russia," vol. 3, p. 296. He was condemned 
 to penal servitude for life, and after five years of imprison- 
 ment, at first in Siberia and afterward in the fortress of 
 Schlusselburg, he committed suicide, in 1882, by striking 
 the prison surgeon, in order that he might be shot. He had 
 nothing against the man whom he attacked; but he sought 
 death, and the surgeon was the only ofiicial of rank to whom 
 he could get access. (Article "Muishkin" in the Russian 
 encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron, supplementary vol. 2, 
 p. 226.)— G. K. 
 
 153 
 
"A HEAKT FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 Volkhovsky was almost the first of tlie accused to 
 address the court with the forms of courtesy, the 
 presiding judge treated him with exceptional con- 
 sideration and immediately granted his request. 
 When asked for his name and plea, Volkhovsky 
 said: 
 
 "Your High Excellency and Senators: My 
 name is Felix Vadimovitch Volkhovsky. I am 
 only thirty years of age. I have spent six years 
 in solitary confinement in a casemate of the fort- 
 ress. My health is shattered ; my hair is turning 
 gray ; I am partially deaf ; I have almost forgot- 
 ten how to talk; and my wife is dying alone in 
 Sicily.'^ 
 
 Here Volkhovsky's feeble voice broke a little, 
 and he seemed to totter on his feet, as if he were 
 about to fall. The presiding judge ordered that 
 a chair and a glass of water be brought to him. 
 Volkhovsky drank a little of the water, but de- 
 clined to take the seat. After a moment he re- 
 covered himself and in a stronger voice and with 
 bolder demeanor said: "Notwithstanding all 
 these circumstances, which are, perhaps, of a 
 purely personal nature, I should play a cowardly 
 part, and should be false to my convictions and 
 unfaithful to the people whom I have tried to 
 help, if I did not join my comrades in protesting 
 
 154 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 against a ruling which denies us a public trial; 
 segregates us in groups, prevents us from hearing 
 one another's statements ; and deprives us of the 
 most important of our legal rights. I refuse to 
 take any part in such a trial, and I decline to 
 plead. I will not give expression to my feeling 
 for this court, but it is anything you like except 
 respect." ^ 
 
 At this point, Volkhovsky was stopped by the 
 presiding judge and was ordered to take his seat. 
 Not wishing to be subjected to personal violence 
 he obeyed. 
 
 It is not necessary, so far as the story of 
 Volkhovsky's life is concerned, to give an ex- 
 tended account of the "trial of the 193." It 
 lasted from the 30th of October, 1877, to the 4th 
 of February, 1878, and ended in the acquittal of 
 ninety of the prisoners and the condemnation of 
 one hundred and three. Of the latter, four were 
 sentenced to penal servitude for life ; twenty -five 
 to incarceration in fortresses, with or without 
 hard labor; and seventy-four to confinement in 
 prisons of the ordinary type, or to exile in Siberia 
 
 9 Volkhovsky's speech is summarized in Bazilevski's "Po- 
 litical Crime in Russia" (Paris, 1895), vol. 3, "The Trial of 
 the 193," pp. 274-276. The more personal part, here given, 
 is from the recollection of one of his comrades. — G. K. 
 
 155 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'' 
 
 for terms ranging from eighteen months to 
 life.^^ 
 
 About the time that Volkhovsky's wife died in 
 Sicily, he himself was sentenced to "domestica- 
 tion" [na zheetyo] in the west Siberian province 
 of Tobolsk. The place of residence assigned him 
 was Tiukalinsk, a small provincial town of four 
 or loYe hundred log houses, which, at that time, 
 had a population of perhaps three thousand. 
 There he lived, under police surveillance, for five 
 years; supporting himself by house-painting, 
 sign-painting, book-binding, and other handi- 
 crafts, which he was compelled to learn. In 
 Tiukalinsk, his aged mother, who had gone with 
 
 10 Among the accused found guilty were two who have 
 since visited the United States. Egor Lazaref made his es- 
 cape, and lived for a time in Denver, Colorado; and Ma- 
 dame Breshkovskaya, who is now in prison in Irkutsk, spent 
 several months in New York and Boston in 1904 or 1905, 
 and made there many warm friends. 
 
 Although Alexander II was generally regarded, in western 
 Europe and America, as a just and humane man, he not only 
 disapproved the court's merciful recommendations, in the 
 cases of many of the condemned, but, at the suggestion of 
 General Mezentsef, exiled to Siberia by administrative 
 process eighty of the prisoners whom the court had acquit- 
 ted. It is perhaps a significant fact that the chief of gen- 
 darmes who made this suggestion, and the Czar who acted 
 upon it, were both assassinated within the next three years. 
 ("Political Crime in Russia," by B. Bazilevski, Paris, 1885; 
 vol. 3, p. 331.)— G. K. 
 
 156 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 Mm into exile, died, and there, two or three years 
 later, he married again. His second wife, Alex- 
 andra Sergeevna Volkhovskaya, whom I remem- 
 ber as a pale, delicate, sad-faced woman, twenty- 
 five or thirty years of age, had also been exiled 
 for political reasons, and was living in Siberia 
 alone. 
 
 In 1883, Volkhovsky was transferred to the 
 city of Tomsk, where he found congenial employ- 
 ment in the editorial office of the Siberian 
 Gazette. When I bade him good-by there, in the 
 spring of 1886, he and his wife had three children 
 and seemed comparatively happy ; but Fate never 
 spared Volkhovsky long. A little more than a 
 year after my return to the United States, he 
 wrote me a profoundly sad and touching letter, 
 in which he informed me of the death of his wife 
 by suicide. He himself had been thrown out of 
 employment by the suspension of the liberal 
 Tomsk newspaper, the Siberian Gazette; and his 
 wife had tried to help him support their family of 
 young children by giving private lessons and by 
 taking in sewing. Anxiety and overwork had 
 finally broken down her health ; she had become 
 an invalid, and in a morbid state of mind, brought 
 on by unhappiness and disease, she reasoned her- 
 self into the belief that she was an incumbrance, 
 
 157 
 
"A HEAET FOR EVEEY FATE'' 
 
 rather than a help, to her husband and her chil- 
 dren, and that they would ultimately be better 
 off if she were dead. On the 7th of December, 
 1887, she put an end to her unhappy life by shoot- 
 ing herself through the head with a pistol. Her 
 husband was devotedly attached to her, and her 
 death, under such circumstances and in such a 
 way, was a terrible blow to him. In his letter to 
 me he referred to a copy of James Russell 
 Lowell's poems that I had caused to be sent to 
 him, and said that in reading ^'After the Burial," 
 he vividly realized, for the first time, that the 
 lines, although written by a bereaved American, 
 expressed the deepest thoughts and feelings of a 
 bereaved Russian. 
 
 By means of secret prearranged addresses in 
 Russia and in the United States, I succeeded in 
 maintaining a desultory and precarious corre- 
 spondence with Volkhovsky until 1889. In the 
 spring of that year I received from him two short 
 letters filled with tidings of misfortune, and 
 then — nothing more. The two letters were, in 
 part, as follows : 
 
 "Tomsk, February 14, 1889. 
 "I write you a few lines to tell you how weary 
 I am of waiting for a letter from you ! You have 
 
 158 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'^ 
 
 probably heard before this time of the final sup- 
 pression of the Siberian Gazette, It is hard and 
 it is shameful ! You need not hesitate any longer 
 to write whatever you like about it for publica- 
 tion. You will not injure the paper because 
 there is no hope of its resurrection. 
 
 "My youngest daughter is still sick and has 
 grown so thin that it is painful to look at her. 
 She sleeps badly and often I have to be up all 
 night taking care of her. This, together with 
 constant fear for her life, disorders my nerves 
 terribly, and undermines what health I have left. 
 I am greatly disheartened, too, by loneliness, not- 
 withstanding my children and my friends. The 
 affectionate tenderness of a beloved wife is a 
 thing that some natures find it difficult to do 
 without, no matter what else they may have. It 
 is very hard, sometimes, my dear fellow, to live 
 in this world ! 
 
 "Since it became apparent that I should no 
 longer be able to support myself by newspaper 
 work (on account of the suppression of the ^i- 
 herian Gazette) I have been looking for some 
 other occupation or place; but, unfortunately, 
 the present governor is expelling political exiles 
 from all public positions, and even debarring 
 them, to some extent, from private employment, 
 
 159 
 
^^A HEAKT FOE EVERY FATE" 
 
 by showing such hostility to them that private 
 individuals dare not give them work for fear of 
 getting into trouble. I do not know how it will 
 all end. I have sent four manuscripts to St. 
 Petersburg, but none of them has been published. 
 With most cordial remembrances to your wife, 
 I am 
 
 "Yours, 
 
 "Felix." 
 
 "Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia, May 7, 1889. 
 "How long it is since I last received a letter 
 from you, and how much I have needed your let- 
 ters ! They bring to me all the mental refresh- 
 ment and all the gladness that life has for me, 
 and at times I am sorely in need of them. Fate 
 has dealt me another blow. My youngest daugh- 
 ter Katie died a month or two since of pneu- 
 monia. She had an attack of bronchitis winter 
 before last which developed into chronic inflam- 
 mation of the lungs ; but in the spring of 1888 I 
 took her into the country, where she grew better 
 and began to run about and play. Unfortu- 
 nately, however, she was exposed there to whoop- 
 ing cough, took the infection, and it ended in 
 acute pneumonia and death. She was about 
 three years old, and such a dear, lovable child! 
 
 160 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 But whose child is not dear and lovable? At 
 any rate — 
 
 "No, I can't write any more about it. This is 
 the second time within a few days that I have 
 tried to write you of her — but I cannot — it hurts 
 too much ! As long as I am busy and can talk or 
 write of other things, it seems as if the wound 
 were healed ; but let my thoughts once go to her, 
 and I feel such grief and pain that I don't know 
 what to do with myself. 
 
 "I must explain to you how I happen to be in 
 Irkutsk. It is a very simple story. Thanks to 
 the recommendation of some of my Irkutsk 
 friends I was offered here a place that was suited 
 to my tastes and abilities, and I hastened to 
 migrate. ^^ 
 
 "My warmest regards to your wife! Write 
 me! 
 
 "Affectionately, 
 
 "Felix." 
 
 11 When political offenders sentenced merely to "domesti- 
 cation" have been ten years in exile, and have behaved dur- 
 ing that time in a manner satisfactory to the authorities, it 
 is customary to give them more freedom of movement. 
 They are still kept under police surveillance, but are al- 
 lowed to go anywhere within the limits of certain provinces. 
 After sixteen years of imprisonment and exile, Volkhovsky 
 received a "ticket of leave," which is colloquially known in 
 the exile world as "a wolf's passport" — G. K. 
 
 161 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 After the receipt of the above letter, I wrote 
 Volkhovsky twice, but I heard from him no more, 
 and did not know, until long afterward, what 
 happened to him. When his last letter was writ- 
 ten, he was living with his little daughter Vera in 
 Irkutsk, and was trying, by means of hard work, 
 to lighten the sense of loneliness and bereave- 
 ment that he had felt since the death of his wife, 
 his daughter Katie, and his baby boy. Hardly 
 had life begun to seem once more bearable, when 
 there came upon him a new misfortune in the 
 shape of an order from the governor general 
 directing the private bank where he was em- 
 ployed to dismiss him. He had committed no 
 new offense, and there was no reason, so far as 
 he was aware, for this arbitrary and imperative 
 order ; but General Ignatief seemed to be of opin- 
 ion that the employment of a political exile in a 
 bank was "prejudicial to public order," and 
 Volkhovsky had to move on. The bank made 
 him a present of two hundred dollars, as an evi- 
 dence of their sympathy and regard, and leaving 
 his little daughter Vera with friends in Irkutsk, 
 he proceeded to Troitskosavsk, a small town on 
 the frontier of Mongolia, where one of his fellow- 
 prisoners in the trial of the 193 had for some time 
 been living. The police there, however, had been 
 
 162 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'^ 
 
 apprised of his dismissal from the Irkutsk bank 
 by order of the governor general, and assuming 
 of course that he must be a dangerous or trouble- 
 some man, they made life so uncomfortable for 
 him that he finally resolved to abandon, tempo- 
 rarily, his daughter Vera, whom he had left in 
 Irkutsk, and make his escape, if possible, to the 
 United States by way of the Pacific Ocean. He 
 had the money given to him by the bank, and a 
 little more derived from the sale of a small 
 volume of poems that he had published before 
 leaving Tomsk ^^ and if his small capital should 
 be exhausted before he reached his destination, 
 he determined to work as a stevedore, or a com- 
 mon laborer of some sort, until he should earn 
 enough to go on. His objective point was the 
 city of Washington, where he expected to find 
 me. The nearest seaport on the Pacific where he 
 could hope to get on board a foreign steamer was 
 Vladivostok, about twenty-six hundred miles 
 away. The distance to be traversed, under the 
 eyes of a suspicious and hostile police, was im- 
 mense; but Volkhovsky was cautious, prudent, 
 and experienced, and assuming the dress ordi- 
 narily worn by retired army officers, he set out, 
 
 12 "Siberian Echoes," by Ivan Bmt [a pen name], Mik- 
 hailof & Makushin, Tomsk. 
 
 163 
 
"A HEAKT FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 with ^^free horses'' for the head waters of the 
 Amur River^ where he expected to get a steamer. 
 
 I cannot go into the details of his difficult and 
 perilous journey from Troitskosavsk to Stretinsk, 
 from Stretinsk down the Amur by steamer to 
 Khabarofka, and from Khabarofka up the Ussuri 
 and across Lake Khanka to Vladivostok. It was 
 a journey full of adventures and narrow escapes, 
 and nothing but the coolness, courage, and good 
 fortune of the fugitive carried him through in 
 safety. For the first time in this story of Volk- 
 hovsky's life, I have used above the words "good 
 fortune.'' It came to him at last. The French 
 have a proverb which declares "Qui ne se lasse 
 pas lasse 1' adversite." [He who does not tire 
 tires adversity.] In more than seventeen years 
 of imprisonment and exile, Volkhovsky never lost 
 his grip, or acknowledged himself beaten, and 
 Fate at last relented. From the moment when 
 he resolved to escape, everything that happened 
 to him proved to be advantageous. 
 
 There were four foreign steamers in the port of 
 Vladivostok when he arrived there, and one of 
 them, a coal steamer, was flying the flag of Great 
 Britain. Volkhovsky went on board, ascertained 
 that the steamer was bound for Japan, and asked 
 the captain if he would take a passenger who had 
 
 164 
 
"A HEART FOE EVERY FATE" 
 
 neither passport nor official permission to leave 
 the empire. The captain hesitated at first, but 
 when Volkhovsky related his story, said that he 
 was able and willing to pay for his passage, and 
 exhibited my photograph and letters as proofs of 
 his trustworthiness, the captain consented to 
 take him. A hiding-place was soon found for 
 him, and when the Russian officials came on 
 board to clear the vessel, he was nowhere to be 
 seen. A few hours later the steamer was at sea, 
 and the escaping political exile, as he stood on 
 the upper deck and watched the slow fading of 
 the Siberian coast in the west, drew a long deep 
 breath of relief, and turned his face, with reviv- 
 ing hope, toward the land where a personal 
 opinion concerning human affairs is not regarded 
 as "prejudicial to public order," and where a 
 man who tries to make the world better and hap- 
 pier is not punished for it with six years of soli- 
 tary confinement, eleven years of exile, and the 
 loss of more than half his family. 
 
 The destination of the coal steamer was 
 Nagasaki; and when Volkhovsky arrived there, 
 he happened, by the sheerest accident, to get into 
 a hotel kept by a Russian. The proprietor, from 
 the very first, seemed to regard him with sus- 
 picion, and asked him so many searching per- 
 
 165 
 
"A HEAKT FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 sonal questions that Volkhovsky became alarmed. 
 Japan, at that time, surrendered escaping exiles 
 from Siberia, and there was a Russian man-of- 
 war in the harbor. In this emergency, expecting 
 every hour to be arrested by the Japanese police, 
 the fugitive went for advice and aid to the Amer- 
 ican consulate. The consul listened to his story ; 
 looked him over critically; read two or three of 
 my letters ; and then said : "It is not the duty of 
 an American consul to assist political exiles in 
 escaping from Siberia; but your case appeals to 
 me, and I will do what I can for you. If you are 
 arrested, say that you are an American citizen 
 and send for me.'' 
 
 "But," objected Volkhovsky, "how can I say 
 that I am an American citizen when I speak 
 English so badly? They '11 see at once that I 'm 
 a foreigner." 
 
 "That does n't make any difference," replied 
 the consul. "We 've got lots of citizens in the 
 States who speak English worse than you do. 
 Whatever happens, send for me ; I '11 explain 
 your English. Meanwhile I '11 go back to your 
 hotel with you, and to-morrow morning I '11 call 
 for you to take a walk. You 're an intimate 
 friend of mine — see?" 
 
 By making opportunities to show himself pub- 
 
 166 
 
"A HEAET FOE EVEEY FATE'' 
 
 licly in the company of the fugitive, the consul 
 allayed the suspicions of the hotel proprietor and 
 the Eussian naval officers, and two or three days 
 later Volkhovsky left Nagasaki for Yokohama. ^^ 
 After having paid his steamer fare from Vlad- 
 ivostok to Nagasaki, and from Nagasaki to Yo- 
 kohama, Volkhovsky found himself in the latter 
 place with hardly money enough to get across the 
 Pacific and not half enough to reach Wash- 
 ington. He made inquiries concerning vessels 
 about to sail for the western coast of America, 
 and found that the English steamer Batavia was 
 on the point of clearing for Vancouver, British 
 Columbia. Going at once on board, he asked the 
 purser what the fare to Vancouver would be in 
 the steerage. The officer looked at him for a 
 moment, saw that, although a foreigner, he was 
 unmistakably a gentleman, and then replied, 
 bluntly but not unkindly : ^^My dear sir, you 
 can't go in the steerage — it 's jammed full of 
 Chinese emigrants. Nobody ever goes in the 
 steerage except Chinamen ; it 's no place for 
 you." 
 
 13 It can do no harm now to say that the American con- 
 sul in Nagasaki at that time was Mr. Birch, of Wheeling, 
 West Virginia. I met him in the United States long after- 
 ward and he described to me the extremely favorable im- 
 pression that Volkhovsky made upon him.' — G. K. 
 
 167 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 "I must get to Vancouver," said Volkhovsky, 
 "and I have very little money. The steerage will 
 do. I have been in much worse places." 
 
 "All right !" replied the purser, "I '11 sell you 
 a steerage ticket, but you can't live three weeks 
 with Chinese emigrants. When we get to sea, 
 I '11 find a place for you somewhere." 
 
 Until the Batavia had actually sailed and was 
 out of the harbor, Volkhovsky did not dare to let 
 the passengers, or even the officers of the steamer 
 know who he really was and whence he had come. 
 He believed that he had narrowly escaped detec- 
 tion and capture in Nagasaki, and he did not 
 intend to run any more risks that could be 
 avoided. At last, however, when the Batavia 
 was far at sea, and the coast of Japan had sunk 
 beneath the rim of the western horizon, he told 
 his story to the officers of the ship, and admitted 
 to the passengers with whom he became ac- 
 quainted that he was an escaped political exile 
 from Siberia. The interest and sympathy ex- 
 cited by his narrative deepened as the officers and 
 passengers became better acquainted with him, 
 and long before the Batavia reached Vancouver, 
 he had so completely won the hearts of the whole 
 ship's company that they took up a collection for 
 the purpose of providing him with transportation 
 
 168 
 
^^A HEAET FOR EVERY FATE'' 
 
 from Vancouver to the city of Washington. To 
 this collection every soul on board contributed, 
 from the captain down to the steward, the cook, 
 and the boy who cleaned the ship's lamps.^* 
 When he left the steamer, he had money enough 
 for a first class railway ticket to Washington and 
 sixty Mexican silver dollars for incidental ex- 
 penses. My first knowledge of Volkhovsky's 
 escape came to me in a letter addressed in his 
 familiar handwriting and post-marked "Van- 
 couver." Wondering how an exile in eastern 
 Siberia could possibly have mailed a letter — or 
 had it mailed — ^in British Columbia, I tore open 
 the envelope and read the first three lines. They 
 were as follows : 
 
 "My dear George Ivanovitch : At last I am 
 free! I am writing this letter to you not from 
 that land of exile, Siberia, but from free Amer- 
 ica." 
 
 If I had suddenly received a letter post-marked 
 "Zanzibar," from a friend whom I believed to be 
 dead and buried in Alaska, I could hardly have 
 
 14 The steward became so much attached to Volkhovsky, 
 in the course of the voyage, that long afterward, in Mon- 
 treal, he came to call upon me for the purpose of making 
 inquiries about him., — G. K. 
 
 169 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 been more astonished. Volkhovsky free and in 
 British Columbia, within a few days' journey of 
 New York! It seemed utterly incredible. At 
 the time when this letter reached me, I was lec- 
 turing six nights a week in New York and New 
 England; but I telegraphed and wrote Volkhov- 
 sky that I would meet him at the Delevan House 
 in Albany on the morning of Sunday, December 
 8th. I spoke Saturday night in Utica, took the 
 night express for Albany, and reached the Del- 
 evan House about two o'clock. Volkhovsky had 
 not yet arrived, and as it was uncertain when he 
 would come I went to bed. Early in the morn- 
 ing, a bell-boy knocked loudly at my door and 
 handed me a slip of paper upon which, in Volk- 
 hovsky's handwriting, were the words, "My dear 
 fellow, I am here." 
 
 If any of the guests of the Delevan House hap- 
 pened to be passing through that corridor on 
 their way to breakfast, they must have been sur- 
 prised to see, at the door of No. 90, a man with 
 disheveled hair and nothing on but his night- 
 shirt locked in the embrace of a traveler who had 
 not had time to remove his Pacific-coast sombrero 
 and heavy winter overcoat. 
 
 Volkhovsky was in better health than I had ex- 
 pected to see him, but his face was worn and hag- 
 
 170 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE'' 
 
 gard, and at times tliere was a peculiar anxious, 
 hunted expression in Ms eyes wMch showed that 
 he had recently been under great mental and 
 emotional strain. Almost the first thing he said 
 to me was: "George Ivanovitch, I am forty 
 years of age. I have lost all my family except 
 my little daughter Vera, whom I have left in 
 eastern Siberia. I'm afraid that the govern- 
 ment, when it learns of my escape, will do some- 
 thing with her — perhaps put her in an asylum 
 where I can never see her again. If I can only 
 recover her, I may have strength, even at my age 
 and in my broken health, to begin a new life in a 
 new and strange country ; but if I lose her, I may 
 as well lie down and die." 
 
 "We '11 get your daughter," I said, "if I have 
 to go to Siberia myself, on a false passport, and 
 kidnap her." 
 
 We knew a lady in St. Petersburg who could 
 be trusted to manage the little girl's escape, but 
 she was a political suspect and it might not be 
 safe to send the necessary money to her directly. 
 I therefore wrote to a friend in one of the foreign 
 legations in the Russian capital, explained to him 
 the circumstances of the case, and asked him: 
 "Will you cash a bank draft for eight hundred 
 rubles, if I send you one, and give the money, in 
 
 171 
 
"A HEART FOE EVERY FATE" 
 
 Russian notes, to a lady who will call at tlie lega- 
 tion and present my card. You are not to know 
 who she is, and you are not to ask her any ques- 
 tions. If she presents my card, she is to have the 
 cash." This letter I sent to the Foreign Office of 
 the country that my friend's legation repre- 
 sented, with a request that it be forwarded. In 
 due course of time, I received a reply in which 
 the attache said that while it was not a part of 
 his duty to facilitate the escape of exiles — young 
 or old — from Siberia, he could not see that even 
 the Russian Government would be injured by 
 the return of a nine-year-old girl to her father, 
 and that he would therefore receive and deliver 
 the money as requested. ^^But my dear Mr. 
 Kennan," he added, "did you suppose that by 
 sending your letter to our Foreign Office you 
 could prevent inspection of it by the Russian 
 cabinet noirf Our official letters are often 
 opened, although, so far as I can judge, this par- 
 ticular one has escaped." 
 
 The money reached its destination safely and 
 was forwarded to Irkutsk. There Volkhovsky's 
 friends cut o& the little girl's hair ; clothed her 
 in the dress of a boy, and sent her, in care of 
 a trustworthy attendant, to St. Petersburg. 
 There was no trans-continental Siberian railway 
 
 172 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 at that time, and Vera and her companion made 
 the journey of nearly four thousand miles with 
 relays of post horses. In St. Petersburg, her 
 friends and the sympathetic attache committed 
 her to the care of a German gentleman, who hap- 
 pened to be traveling in Russia with his family, 
 and he and his wife undertook to get her across 
 the frontier and take her to London. In the 
 early part of 1890, Volkhovsky went to England 
 to meet her, and in June I received a cable from 
 him saying, "Hurrah ! My child has arrived.'' 
 
 In a letter, written about a year later, to a 
 friend in the United States, Hesba Stretton, the 
 well known English novelist, referred to Volkhov- 
 sky and his daughter as follows : 
 
 "Volkhovsky, who escaped from Siberia rather 
 more than a year ago, has been lecturing in Eng- 
 land all winter. He has a charming little daugh- 
 ter ten years old who was born in exile. She 
 has been staying for a fortnight with my mar- 
 ried sister and her two daughters, and they are 
 quite delighted with her; she is so original and 
 affectionate, and she has had so much tragedy in 
 her short life, which she speaks of now and then 
 as If horrors were a natural part of existence 
 to her. She was brought through Russia and 
 Siberia disguised as a boy. We hope to wean her 
 
 173 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 thoughts from these terrible subjects and give 
 her something of the ordinary joys of girlhood. 
 But her destiny must be a sad one, for she will 
 surely (and quite rightly) throw in her lot with 
 the revolutionists of Russia, and unless the revo- 
 lution comes soon, our little Vera will spend 
 much of her life in prison and in exile. She was 
 showing Annie how the orthodox Russians hold 
 their thumb and two fingers pressed together to 
 represent the Trinity during their worship, and 
 then she said : ^But God does n't mind how we 
 hold our fingers, does he?' She was moaning in 
 her sleep one night, and when Daisy woke her she 
 said: ^I dreamed there were spies in the room, 
 and I pretended to be asleep until they went to 
 sleep, and then I got up and crept to the cot 
 where my baby brother was. I said: "Hush! 
 don't make a noise, for there are spies in the 
 room," and I took him up and went to the door, 
 watching the spies all the time ; and I opened the 
 door and there were some men hung up, and my 
 father's head lay on the ground and his body was 
 a little way off covered with a white cloth.' 
 Think of that for the dream of a child of ten 
 years !" 
 
 Volkhovsky soon established himself in Eng- 
 land, and encouraged by the recovery of his 
 
 174 
 
 / 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE" 
 
 daughter, and sustained by the influences of a 
 favorable and friendly environment, he regained, 
 in great measure, his health and strength. He 
 became the editor of Free Russia^ the paper 
 established in London by the Friends of Russian 
 Freedom; wrote articles for the Contemporary , 
 National y and other English reviews ; lectured on 
 Russian subjects in all parts of Great Britain; 
 and lived, generally, a happy and useful life. 
 His daughter Vera grew up to young womanhood 
 in England ; was educated in Girton College ; and 
 when I saw her last, about three years ago, she 
 was teaching in Dumferline, Scotland. 
 
 Upon the outbreak of the revolution in Russia, 
 in 1905, Volkhovsky, then fifty -eight years of age, 
 returned to the country where he had experi- 
 enced so much sorrow and suffering, and again 
 took up the fight for freedom by establishing and 
 editing a liberal newspaper in Finland. The 
 revolutionary movement, however, failed, and he 
 was forced, much against his will, to return to 
 England. ^^I would have stayed with my com- 
 rades," he afterward said to me, "and would have 
 fought it through to the end, if I had been well 
 enough; but I can no longer endure a term of 
 fortress imprisonment, and my death in a case- 
 mate would not have helped my country." 
 
 175 
 
"A HEART FOR EVERY FATE 
 
 Volkhovsky has not lived, and probably will 
 not live, to see Russia free; but Ms life has not 
 been a failure. A greater poet than he, but not, 
 perhaps, a braver man, said, before he perished at 
 Missolonghi in the struggle for Greek inde- 
 pendence : 
 
 ^'They never fail who fight in a great cause." ^^ 
 
 15 Byron, in "Marino Faliero." 
 
 176 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
VII 
 "THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 ONE hot sunny forenoon in July, as I sat in 
 a front room of the Hotel d^Angleterre in 
 St. Petersburg, reading the morning paper, 
 Maxim, the uniformed messenger of the Ameri- 
 can legation, appeared at my door and said : 
 
 "His Excellency, the Minister, directs me to 
 Inform you that there is a package in the post- 
 office for you, from Siberia, addressed in care of 
 the legation. The police say that it must be 
 opened and examined before it is delivered. Do 
 you wish to be present at the examination, or 
 would you prefer to have His Excellency send 
 some one from the legation to represent you?" 
 
 I hardly knew what reply to make. Impulse 
 prompted me to go to the postoffice myself, but 
 Siberian experience had taught me caution, and, 
 after a moment's reflection, I decided not to put 
 myself in a position where I might be questioned 
 
 179 
 
^^THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 by the police witli regard to a package of whose 
 contents I was ignorant. Nearly all of my 
 friends and acquaintances in Siberia were polit- 
 ical exiles or convicts, and they might have sent 
 me almost anything, from a collection of pressed 
 flowers to a revolutionary manuscript. 
 
 "Tell His Excellency/' I said to the messenger, 
 "that if he can send some one from the legation 
 to get the package I shall be greatly obliged." 
 
 An hour or two later, Maxim again appeared, 
 bringing in his arms a good-sized roll, or bundle, 
 which had been sewn up in coarse linen, sealed 
 with red wax, and addressed to me, in English 
 as well as in Russian, with a broad-pointed pen. 
 The covering had been slit with a knife, and 
 through the opening I could see a wad of cheap 
 cotton cloth which had apparently been stuffed 
 back into the package without much care after 
 the examination. 
 
 "What is it?" I asked the messenger. 
 
 "God knows!" he rej^lied piously. "It looks 
 like one of my wife's old dresses." 
 
 Turning back the coarse linen wrapper, I took 
 out a roll which seemed to be made up of strips 
 of dirty, smoke-stained calico, twelve or fourteen 
 inches in width. There were a dozen or more of 
 these strips, and their aggregate length must 
 
 180 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 have been at least a hundred feet. The pattern 
 of the cloth was Asiatic, and I remembered hav- 
 ing seen material of the same kind used as a 
 lining for Kirghis tents in the mountains of the 
 Altai. But why should any one mail to me the 
 torn-up and smoky lining of a Kirghis kibitka? 
 Intrinsically, it was not worth the postage paid 
 on it, and it did not seem to be the sort of thing 
 that any of my Siberian friends would be likely 
 to send me as a curiosity. Until I unrolled the 
 last strip, I half expected to find something in 
 the center; but there was nothing. Turning 
 again to the wrapper, I examined the address; 
 but it had been written in a careful copy-book 
 hand, which was as legible as print, but which 
 had no peculiarity that made it recognizable. 
 The postmark was so blurred that I could not 
 read it, and the seals bore the impress of a Turk- 
 ish or Tatar coin. Neither inside nor outside 
 the package was there anything to show where it 
 had come from or who had sent it. Again I went 
 over the strips, shook them out, and piled them 
 one by one in a heap. Nothing in the shape of 
 a clue appeared. The secret of the package — if 
 it had a secret — ^^^as undiscoverable. But it 
 must have a secret ! No one that I knew in Si- 
 beria was likely to suppose that I would be inter- 
 
 181 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 estecl in an old Kirghis tent lining. It must 
 either contain something or mean something. 
 Could there be wiiting on the cloth? Seating 
 myself with crossed legs on the floor, I went over 
 the strips, one by one and foot by foot, with 
 microscopic closeness of examination. This 
 time my search was rewarded. One of the last 
 strips that I overhauled seemed to be a little 
 thicker than the others, and upon feeling it care- 
 fully and holding it up to the light, I found that 
 it was double, the edges of two strips having been 
 lightly basted together with thread that corre- 
 sponded exactly in color with the material. Be- 
 tween these strips, for a distance of ten or fifteen 
 feet, had been placed large sheets of very soft 
 and thin paper, closely covered with writing on 
 both sides. The language of the manuscript was 
 Russian; but inclosed in quotation marks, at 
 the head of the first sheet, was the following line 
 in English : 
 
 "The World of a Single Cell." 
 
 Although the document bore neither date nor 
 signature, I guessed in a moment what its nature 
 was and who had sent it to me, because I remem- 
 bered very well when and where I had heard the 
 play upon words contained in the title. 
 
 182 
 
^^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 In the summer of the previous year, I had met 
 in the mountains of the Altai a young Russian 
 journalist named Eugene Voronin, who had been 
 banished to that part of Siberia for connection 
 with some political affair whose precise nature 
 I did not learn. He was a young man — perhaps 
 twenty-eight years of age — with blue eyes, fairly 
 regular features of the Scandinavian type, a 
 small mustache curling up a little at the ends, 
 and closely cut, chestnut-brown hair which grew 
 so thickly that when he ran his fingers through 
 it, as he frequently did in animated conversation, 
 it stood vigorously on end and seemed to give ad- 
 ditional energy and alertness to his resolute, 
 virile face. He impressed me as a man of un- 
 usual ability and character, and in describing to 
 me his Siberian experience, he showed not only 
 skill in narration, but discriminating intelligence 
 in the selection of facts and incidents that were 
 particularly instructive or telling. Our talk, in 
 the single evening that I spent at his house, re- 
 lated chiefly to the conditions of political exile in 
 the province of Semipalatinsk ; but at a late hour 
 of the night the conversation drifted to prisons, 
 and he began to describe to me his life in one of 
 the bomb-proof casemates of the Petropavlovski 
 fortress. The few facts that he had time to 
 
 183 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 give me were so novel and interesting that when 
 I bade him good-by I said: "Why can't you 
 write all that out for me and send it to me? I 
 am going away to-morrow^ and this may be my 
 last talk with you; but I shall get back to St. 
 Petersburg next summer, and before that time 
 you may think of some way of communicating 
 with me safely, or may have a chance to send a 
 letter by some one whom you can trust. The 
 American legation will always know where I 
 am. What I should like particularly is a de- 
 scription of your prison experience on its per- 
 sonal side. Tell me what you did from day to 
 day, what impressions were made upon you, and 
 what effect solitary confinement had upon your 
 mind and character.'' 
 
 "The biggest thing of my life happened to me 
 in the fortress," said Voronin, "but it is very 
 personal ; do you want that?" 
 
 "Certainly!" I replied. "Probably it is the 
 very thing I do want. Don't be afraid to write 
 about yourself. If a man ever has an excuse for 
 egotism, it is when he is shut up alone in a bomb- 
 proof casemate. He is then the only possible 
 hero of his story, because he is the only inhab- 
 itant of his world." 
 
 "All right !" said Voronin, with a quick bright 
 
 184 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 smile, "I '11 call my recollections ^The Egotistic 
 Story of an Altruist in a World of a Single Cell' ; 
 but don't count too much on it. The police are 
 likely to take an interest in your Siberian corre- 
 spondence, and they may confiscate it. How- 
 ever, I '11 get it through to you safely if I can. 
 Good-by ! Good luck !" 
 
 The young journalist and I never met again; 
 but he did not forget his promise, and twelve 
 months after I bade him good-by in the Siberian 
 village of Ulbinsk, he not only sent me the story 
 of his fortress experience, but concealed it so skil- 
 fully in an old Kirghis tent lining that it escaped 
 the vigilance of the most experienced police in 
 Europe, and very nearly escaped mine. The 
 manuscript read as follows : 
 
 "The World op a Single Cell." 
 
 i. the checkerboard square 
 
 When I last saw you, nearly a year ago, you 
 asked me to write out for you the story of my life 
 in the fortress of Petropavlovsk. Before this 
 manuscript reaches you, you will probably have 
 heard a dozen such stories, from men who are 
 better qualified to describe prison life than I am ; 
 but all political offenders do not have the same 
 
 185 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 experience, even in the same environment, and it 
 is possible that my life differed from that of 
 other prisoners, even in so limited a world as 
 that of a single cell. At any rate, you wanted 
 me to tell you what I saw, what I did, and what 
 happened to me, in the fortress, and it is an epi- 
 sode in my personal life that I shall try to give 
 you. In thinking it over, it seems to me that I 
 shall have to begin with the checkerboard square, 
 because on that hangs all the story there is to 
 tell. 
 
 When I was arrested, about two o'clock on a 
 warm still night in June, I was taken by two 
 gendarmes, in a closed carriage, to the Litovski 
 Zamok, an old prison in St. Petersburg which, in 
 the course of your investigations, you may have 
 visited. After I had been searched, and after 
 my name, age, occupation, and other biograph- 
 ical data had been recorded in the prison regis- 
 ter, I was conducted to a fairly large but gloomy 
 cell in the second story, where I was locked up 
 and left to my own devices. Nothing of im- 
 portance happened, so far as this story is con- 
 cerned, until the next forenoon, when, as I stood 
 at the grated window, looking out into the court- 
 yard, my attention was attracted by a low tap- 
 ping on the wall that separated me from the next 
 
 186 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 cell. I had heard, of course, of the knock alpha- 
 bet, and knew that criminals in our prisons were 
 accustomed to communicate with one another 
 in this way; but I was wholly ignorant of the 
 code, and did not even know on what principle it 
 was based. All that I could do, therefore, was 
 to rap three or four times on my side of the wall, 
 in friendly response to my unseen neighbor's 
 greeting. But this did not seem to satisfy him. 
 After waiting a moment, as if in expectation of 
 something further, he began another series of 
 knocks, which lasted for two or three minutes, 
 but which had no more significance for me than 
 the tapping of a woodpecker. I was sorry that I 
 had never taken the trouble to find out something 
 about the knock alphabet, but as there seemed to 
 be little use in exchanging signals that had no 
 meaning on either side of the wall, I finally gave 
 it up, went back to the window, and became ab- 
 sorbed again in my own gloomy thoughts. But 
 the knocking continued at intervals throughout 
 the forenoon, and every time I became conscious 
 of my environment I heard the soft tap-tap-tap- 
 ping of the unseen hand in the other cell. Just 
 before the time for the midday meal it ceased; 
 but after the turnkey had brought me my dinner 
 and retired, it began again, and continued, hour 
 
 187 
 
"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELU' 
 
 after hour, until I was finally forced into making 
 an effort, at least, to understand it. The thing 
 was getting on my neryes, and besides that, my 
 neighbor might have something important to tell 
 me. 
 
 As soon as I began to listen to the knocks at- 
 tentively, I noticed that they were segregated in 
 spaced groups, and the thought occurred to me 
 that perhaps the number of knocks in a group 
 was the serial number of a letter in the alphabet, 
 one knock standing for "a,'' two for "b,'' three 
 for "c," and so on. That would be the simplest 
 possible form of knock alphabet, and the one that 
 a prisoner would naturally think of first. As 
 soon as I tested this conjecture, I found myself 
 on the right track. I was not used to thinking 
 by arithmetic, and had to go over the alphabet a 
 dozen times before I could remember what the 
 serial numbers of the letters were, but as my 
 neighbor confined himself to a single word, and 
 patiently repeated that word again and again, I 
 finally figured it out. Numerically it was 21-14- 
 4-5-18-19-20-1-14-4 ; alphabetically it proved to be 
 u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d. ^ 
 
 All day long, the prisoner in the other cell had 
 
 1 For the sake of clearness, I have substituted the English 
 for the Russian alphabet. — G. K. 
 
 188 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 been knocking out, "Understand? Understand? 
 Understand?'' making more than a liundred 
 knocks for every repetition of the word. He 
 must have thought, before he got an intelligent 
 response, that there was either great indifference 
 or extraordinary stupidity on my side of the 
 wall ; but he probably knew that he was dealing 
 with a novice and that he must have patience. 
 As soon as I grasped the significance of the nu- 
 merical inquiry, I responded eagerly "25-5-19" 
 [Y-e-s]. He then knocked out slowly and care- 
 fully : "Learn better way ; listen !" In the still- 
 ness of the prison, I could hear his actions, al- 
 most as perfectly as I could have seen them if 
 the wall had been transparent. With some hard 
 object in his hand, he gave the wall one emphatic 
 rap, and then scratched a long horizontal line 
 across it, as high up as he could reach. This was 
 followed by two raps and the scratching of a 
 second line, about a foot below the first. One 
 after another, he drew in this way seven hori- 
 zontal lines, six or eight feet long and twelve or 
 fourteen inches apart, numbering them from one 
 to seven, by means of raps, as he drew them. He 
 then scratched six perpendicular lines across the 
 first series, giving to each its number, from left 
 to right, in the same way. The whole diagram, 
 
 189 
 
"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 when finished, presented itself to my imagination 
 as a huge vertical checkerboard, with numbered 
 rows and columns. I had never before had occa- 
 sion to see with my ears, but I found it quite pos- 
 sible to do so, and I have no doubt that by 
 making proper use of a scratcher and the knock 
 alphabet, a mathematician might give a lesson in 
 plane geometry through a ten-inch wall. 
 
 As soon as my instructor completed his invis- 
 ible but audible checkerboard, he rapped out the 
 words : "Put alphabet in squares." This I suc- 
 ceeded in doing by scratching the diagram on the 
 floor with a rusty nail which I found sticking in 
 the wood-work behind the door. The man in the 
 other cell then began knocking again, but instead 
 of designating a letter by its serial number in the 
 alphabet, he located it on the checkerboard 
 square by giving the number of the row and the 
 number of the column at whose intersection it 
 would be found. I don't know who originally 
 invented this device, but it reduces by at least 
 seventy per cent, the number of knocks required. 
 To make the vowel "u" by the first method one 
 must knock twenty-one times, but the same letter 
 may be indicated on the checkerboard square 
 with six knocks. In learning this code, the be- 
 ginner must have the diagram before him, be- 
 
 190 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 cause he has to refer to it constantly ; but after 
 he has memorized the numerical values of the 
 letters, he can dispense with it altogether, be- 
 cause he no longer needs its guidance. Every 
 group of knocks then has its alphabetical equiv- 
 alent in his brain, and the translation is made 
 almost without conscious effort. After a few 
 days' practice one can easily knock out from 
 eight to twelve words a minute, and this rate of 
 speed may be greatly increased by abbreviations 
 in spelling. 
 
 The first question asked by my instructor, after 
 I had learned the square, was "Who are 
 you?" 
 
 I gave my name. 
 
 "From the gentry?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I thought so; all of our brothers" [i. e. all of 
 our kind] "know the square. Rapping to you 
 was like offering nuts to a toothless squirrel. I 
 thought you 'd never twig. What are you in 
 for?" 
 
 "Probably for something I 've written. I 'm a 
 political." 
 
 "Ah ! I know your kind. They 're not a bad 
 sort, but they all write too much. There were 
 two politicals in my party when I went to Si- 
 
 191 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 beria, and one of them was a writer. In our 
 motherland writing is risky business. Your 
 tongue will take you to Kiev, but your pen will 
 take you to Sehlusselburg," ^ 
 
 "Who are you?" I inquired in turn. 
 
 "Ivan Bezrodni" [Ivan Nameless], he replied.^ 
 
 "A hrodyagy then?'' [A tramp.] 
 
 "Precisely that ! The forest is my mother and 
 the jail my father." 
 
 "Have you been in prison long?" 
 
 "Not long here, but many times in other 
 places ; I 'm a runaway convict. Is this your 
 first imprisonment?" 
 
 "The very first," I replied. 
 
 "Then I can teach you many useful things. 
 I 'm only a muzhik — educated with copper 
 money — but I know jails as the tongue knows the 
 mouth." 
 
 My fellow prisoner did not overestimate his 
 capabilities as an instructor. In the course of 
 
 2 Kiev Is a place of old and holy churches to which thou- 
 sands of pilgrims go ; Schlusselburg is a fortress near St. 
 Petersburg to which political offenders are sent. — G. K. 
 
 3 Common criminals who escape from prison or exile and 
 become tramps usually call themselves "Ivan Nameless," or 
 "Ivan Dontremember," when they are rearrested, hoping 
 thus to conceal their identities and their records. Hundreds 
 of these "Ivans" are registered in the books of the police 
 every year. They are known as "brodyags." — G. K. 
 
 192 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'^ 
 
 the next two weeks we became fairly intimate, 
 and when I had gained his confidence, he did not 
 hesitate to share with me the extraordinary fund 
 of knowledge and experience that he had ac- 
 quired in perhaps a hundred different jails, 
 ostrogs, forwarding prisons and etapes. He 
 taught me three or four ingenious ciphers; de- 
 scribed to me methods of intercommunication 
 between cells by means of ovens, gas fixtures, 
 bread pills, pendulums, and the New Testament ; 
 told me how to hide small objects so that the 
 turnkeys would not find them in a search; and 
 impressed upon my mind the importance, in 
 prison life, of the apparently insignificant things 
 that a man may find and pick up in the courtyard 
 when he is taken out for his walk, such as but- 
 tons, pins, old nails, bits of string, pieces of glass, 
 and even half burnt matches and ends of ciga- 
 rettes. "You can't rap long nor make a clear 
 sound," he said, "with your knuckles. You must 
 have a knocker, and a button or a nail is good. 
 Hide it in the hot-air hole of your stove, or keep 
 it in your mouth when you 're searched. With a 
 pin, or the burnt end of a match, and a scrap of 
 cigarette paper you 've got writing materials. 
 Hide them in the toe of your shoe. Look every- 
 where, notice everything, save everything, and 
 
 193 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 listen for all noises. If there 's a Bible in your 
 cell, look for pin holes in the leaves." 
 
 In short, my friend the hrodyag gave me a full 
 course of instruction in the only branch of knowl- 
 edge that is studied in our prisons, viz., the art 
 of outwitting jailers. Nothing, however, that I 
 learned from him was so useful to me as the 
 checkerboard square. With a knowledge of that 
 diagram and its manifold uses, a prisoner can 
 seldom be wholly isolated, even in a bomb-proof 
 casemate. He may be, as you said, "the only 
 inhabitant of his world," but by means of the 
 knock alphabet he can enter into mental and 
 emotional relations with the inhabitants of other 
 similar worlds around him, and may thus keep 
 his faculties and sympathies alive through 
 months, and even years, of solitude and loneli- 
 ness. 
 
 I was transferred to the fortress early in 
 August. Two gendarmes came to my cell in the 
 middle of the night, waked me, ordered me to 
 dress, and then took me downstairs to a closed 
 and curtained carriage which was waiting for us 
 in the street. When I asked where we were go- 
 ing, they replied, in the words that I was to hear 
 so often in the months to come, "Prikazano ne 
 govoreet." [The orders are not to talk.] I had 
 
 194 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 little doubt that our destination was the fortress, 
 and when, after we had crossed a long bridge and 
 turned a corner, I heard the hollow echo of the 
 horses' feet from the sides and roof of a vaulted 
 passage, I knew that we were entering one of the 
 courtyards of our dreaded political prison. In 
 front of a sentinel-guarded door, the gendarmes 
 turned me over to a warden and two soldiers, 
 who took me through a long dimly lighted cor- 
 ridor to my cell. After I had put on the fortress 
 dress — coarse undershirt and drawers, felt slip- 
 pers and a long loose khalat — the jailers retired 
 and I was left alone to acquaint myself with my 
 new and strange environment. Although I was 
 young, strong, and temperamentally buoyant, the 
 cell in which I found myself chilled me with fore- 
 boding and dread. It was large and high, be- 
 cause it had been built to hold a heavy cannon ; 
 but the walls were black, cold and damp; the 
 heavily grated window was eight feet or more 
 above the floor ; and the gloominess and stillness 
 suggested a burial vault, rather than a prison 
 cell, or even a casemate. The only articles of 
 furniture in the room were the ordinary Eussian 
 stove of plastered brick ; a narrow iron bed, one 
 end of which was fastened to the wall with bolts ; 
 a shelf -like iron table, secured in the same way; 
 
 195 
 
^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'^ 
 
 a wooden commode with a hinged door; and a 
 wash-basin, into which the guard in the corridor 
 could pour water through a tube. Light was 
 furnished by a small kerosene lamp of brass, 
 which my jailers had left on the table at the head 
 of the bed when they retired. 
 
 After examining carefully every object in the 
 cell ( in accordance with the counsel of my friend 
 the hrodyag) I listened attentively for some 
 sound of human life or activity; but the silence 
 was that of a sepulcher. Suddenly, I became 
 conscious of two human eyes, staring at me from 
 a narrow slit in the heavy plank door. As I took 
 a step toward them, they vanished; and with a 
 faint click the hinged cover of the peep-hole 
 dropped into its place. The consciousness that 
 disembodied, impersonal, but vigilant eyes were 
 constantly watching me — as if I were an insect 
 under a microscope — took away the only comfort 
 there was in solitude. Aloneness I could en- 
 dure; but secret, stealthy surveillance, in ad- 
 dition to loneliness, was intolerable. "How- 
 ever," I thought, "darkness will shelter me from 
 that,'' and stepping to the table I blew out the 
 light. In a few minutes the key grated in the 
 rusty lock, the door opened, and a soldier entered 
 with another lighted lamp. 
 
 196 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 "Putting out the light is not allowed," he said, 
 "and if you do it again, we '11 put you in a place 
 where it will be dark all the time." I made no 
 reply, but when he had gone I set the lamp on the 
 floor, in the farthest corner of the cell, and threw 
 myself on the bed. Slowly and mournfully, at 
 the quarter hour, the bells in the spire of the for- 
 tress cathedral chimed out the air of the liturgi- 
 cal response : "Have mercy, O Lord !" 
 
 I fell asleep at last, but the eyes at the slit of 
 the "Judas" and the faint, far-away chiming of 
 church melodies gave form and color to a vivid 
 dream in which I imagined that I had fallen into 
 a death-like trance and was about to be buried. 
 The priest who was conducting the funeral serv- 
 ice looked into my coffin through a slit in the lid 
 and saw with comprehending eyes that I was 
 alive ; but turning away indifferently he gave the 
 signal for lowering my body into the grave, and 
 then, seizing a handful of earth, he sprinkled it 
 over me while he intoned in a deep bass voice: 
 "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, 
 and the wide world and all that dwell therein." ^ 
 With the sound of the sprinkled earth in my ears 
 
 4 The equivalent, in the Russian service, of the words 
 "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust" in the English 
 Book of Common Prayer. — G. K. 
 
 197 
 
^^THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 I awoke. Tlie lamp was still burning, but the 
 gray light of dawn was coming in through the 
 high grated embrasure. 
 
 My first day in the fortress was typical of in- 
 numerable days to come. Three times, at inter- 
 vals of four or five hours, a silent soldier handed 
 food to me through a square port-hole in the 
 heavy door. As knives and forks had been used 
 by desperate or insane prisoners as a means of 
 committing suicide, they were not furnished — at 
 least not to me. Solids, such as bread and meat, 
 were cut into slices or mouthfuls which could be 
 eaten from the hand, and for soup and porridge 
 there was provided a wooden spoon. Twice 
 every hour, on an average, a turnkey in the corri- 
 dor looked through the slit in the door to see 
 what I was doing ; but as he was shod in felt slip- 
 pers, there was no sound of footsteps to warn me 
 of his approach. The grave-like stillness of the 
 casemate was never broken save by the faint 
 distant striking of the quarter hours in the belfry 
 of the fortress cathedral, the firing of a heavy 
 gun on the parapet at noon and the chiming of 
 ^^God Save the Czar,'' at midnight. All through 
 the first day of my incarceration, I watched the 
 narrow strip of sky that I could see through the 
 high window, with the hope that the sun would 
 
 198 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 cross it ; but it never did. The window opening 
 was a tunnel through five feet of masonry and not 
 a ray of sunshine could get into it. Late in the 
 afternoon, there was a reflection from the high 
 encircling wall of the courtyard, which bright- 
 ened for a time the gloomy atmosphere of the 
 cell; but it did not last long. During most of 
 the day I sat in a gray twilight which was like 
 that of a crypt. 
 
 My first thought, after I became accustomed to 
 my environment, was that of opening communi- 
 cation, by means of the knock alphabet, with pos- 
 sible neighbors in adjoining cells; but it was 
 neither so safe nor so easy to do this in the 
 fortress as it had been in the Litovski Zamok. 
 There the walls were thin and the guards negli- 
 gent or indifferent ; but liere there might be two 
 feet of masonry between me and the occupant of 
 the next cell, and the watchful eyes at the slit 
 of the "Judas" made it dififlcult to knock without 
 being seen. However, I determined to try. 
 Seating myself near the head of the bed, I buried 
 my face in my crossed arms on the little table, 
 and, out of the corners of nearly closed eyes, 
 watched the peep-hole in the door. Presently its 
 hinged cover rose and the guard looked into the 
 cell. Seeing nothing suspicious in my attitude, 
 
 199 
 
"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 he closed the aperture and went on to another 
 casemate, while I began knocking under cover of 
 my knee. There was no response. After wait- 
 ing a moment, I knocked again ; and then, laying 
 my ear to the wall, listened with concentrated 
 attention. All that I could hear was the beating 
 of my heart. A dozen times that day, in the 
 comparatively safe intervals between the visits 
 of the guard to my door, I rapped first on one 
 side wall and then on the other; but never was 
 there an answering knock. Either the cells next 
 to mine were unoccupied, or the occupants did 
 not hear my signals. At the end of the third 
 day, I became satisfied that I was absolutely 
 isolated. The hrodyag in the Litovski Zamok 
 had assured me, out of his wide experience, that 
 intercommunication between cells was always 
 possible, in one way or another ; but he had never 
 been in the fortress. That labyrinth of stone- 
 walled corridors and casemates was an exception 
 to all prison rules and would have defied, per- 
 haps, even his ingenuity and resourcefulness. I, 
 certainly, could think of no possible way of con- 
 necting my world with any other world. So far 
 as social relations were concerned, I might as 
 well have been shut up alone in a chamber of the 
 catacombs, because the guard who handed me 
 
 200 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 food through the twelve-inch port-hole would not 
 talk, and the eyes which appeared every half 
 hour at the "Judas" slit in the door never gave 
 me a sense of human association, much less of 
 sympathetic human companionship. 
 
 It was the policy of the government, at that 
 time, to shake the courage and break down the 
 resolution of newly arrested political offenders 
 by subjecting them, for long periods, to the de- 
 pressing influences of solitude and gloom. It 
 was thought that when a man had been virtually 
 buried alive for a month or two, he would be more 
 inclined to make full confession, or, at least, that 
 he would be less able to hold his mental grip 
 under a brow-beating and terrifying examination. 
 For this reason, everything was done — particu- 
 larly at first — ^to make the conditions of impris- 
 onment as trying as possible to mind and nerves. 
 General Strelnikof even put metallic hoods over 
 the windows of prison cells, in order to deprive 
 the occupants of the cheer and comfort that they 
 might get from sunshine. In the fortress, how- 
 ever, this was not necessary, as the light which 
 came in through the high tunnels of the half- 
 walled-up embrasures was dim and feeble at best. 
 
 The first break in the monotony of my life came 
 about a month after my incarceration, when I 
 
 201 
 
^^THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 was taken to the gloomy chamber of the corps de 
 garde for examination. An official in blue uni- 
 form, whom I did not know, asked me a great 
 number of questions with regard to my political 
 activity and my associates; but as I refused to 
 answer most of them, I was sent back to my cell, 
 with the warning that if I continued to maintain 
 this obstinate attitude I might be condemned to 
 penal servitude. 
 
 Then began what seemed to me an eternity of 
 loneliness, solitude and gloom. Once a day, a 
 soldier entered the casemate to change the 
 drawer of the commode; three times a day an- 
 other handed me food through the port-hole ; and 
 once a month a third came with scissors to cut 
 my hair and nails ; but none of these men would 
 talk, or allow me to talk, and they were changed 
 so often, from corridor to corridor and from 
 bastion to ravelin, that I seldom saw the same 
 face twice. Their visits, however, were the 
 events of my life; and in the intervals between 
 them I had nothing to do but think, pace my cell, 
 listen to the faint, mournful chiming of the 
 cathedral bells, and watch apprehensively for the 
 appearance of the vigilant but impersonal eyes at 
 the slit of the "Judas." 
 
 The greatest danger of solitary confinement 
 . 202 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 under such conditions is that of going melan- 
 choly mad, and against this danger I endeavored 
 to guard by inventing occupations for mind and 
 hands. The first thing I tried was saving a part 
 of my daily ration of bread, moistening it in my 
 mouth, and then molding it into figures. This 
 promised well, and I thought it might even be 
 possible to make a few bread chessmen, with 
 which I could think out openings and endings 
 and contrive problems. I soon discovered, how- 
 ever, that this form of activity was prohibited. 
 On the second or third day, the eyes at the peep- 
 hole happened to notice what I was doing, and a 
 few moments later, a warden entered the case- 
 mate, took away my figures, and threatened me 
 with the Jcartser [a perfectly dark punishment 
 cell] . Then I tried unraveling one of my stock- 
 ings, in order to get yarn with which I could 
 invent knots and practice tying them. This, too, 
 was soon discovered and forbidden. I was 
 finally reduced to mental arithmetic and the com- 
 position and memorization of editorials; but 
 these exercises were fatiguing and did not satisfy 
 my craving for occupation and diversion. 
 
 The longing for some familiar sound to break 
 the eternal silence led me, one day, to try talking 
 aloud to myself ; but this also was prohibited, as 
 
 203 
 
^^THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 a violation of prison rules, and all that I could 
 do, when the stillness became intolerable, was 
 to hiccough artificially or cough. For three 
 months the only sounds I heard were infrequent 
 orders in a low tone from the generally silent 
 soldiers of the guard ; the dull boom of the noon 
 gun from the parapet ; and the chiming of "Have 
 Mercy, O Lord,'' "How Glorious Is Our Lord in 
 Zion,'' and "God Save the Czar,'' from the belfry 
 of the fortress cathedral. I continued to rap on 
 the side walls with my knuckles, every three or 
 four days, with a faint hope that a prisoner might 
 have been put into one of the adjoining cells 
 noiselessly during the night; but I never got a 
 response. And yet, the saying of the hrodyag 
 that intercommunication between cells is always 
 possible proved, at last, to be true. When 
 winter came on, and my health began to fail so 
 noticeably as to attract the attention of the 
 guard, I was taken out to walk, for fifteen or 
 twenty minutes every day, in the walled court- 
 yard. Presuming that other prisoners were 
 taken there separately at other times, and remem- 
 bering the instructions of the hrodyag in the 
 Litovski Zamok, I scrutinized closely every 
 square yard of trodden snow, and on the second 
 or third day I noticed, picked up, and transferred 
 
 204 
 
"THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 to my mouth, unobserved, an object that looked 
 like a small gray marble. When I had been 
 taken back to my cell and the guard had gone, I 
 examined it, and found it to be a frozen sphere of 
 bread. As soon as it thawed out, I opened it, and 
 discovered a crumpled bit of cigarette paper in 
 which groups of holes had been pricked with a 
 pin. The holes were numerically equivalent to 
 the letters "b-l-o-k'' in the checkerboard square, 
 and Blok was the name of one of my classmates 
 in the university. I had lost sight of him after 
 my graduation, and did not know that he had 
 been arrested ; but the fact that he was a fellow- 
 prisoner in the fortress gave me at once a feeling 
 of companionship, and the receipt of what was 
 practically a message from him cheered and 
 inspirited me more than anything that had hap- 
 pened to me. 
 
 Three or four days later, fortune befriended me 
 again. In the course of one of my walks in the 
 courtyard I picked up a cigarette which had been 
 thrown away by one of the guard because the 
 wrapper had burst, and that same day, at noon, I 
 found in my bowl of soup a small but fairly solid 
 piece of chopped-off bone attached to a mouthful 
 of meat. The cigarette wrapper I concealed in 
 the toe of my felt slipper, and the bone I hid in 
 
 205 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 the pillow of my bed. I then had paper and a 
 knocker. Neither was immediately available, be- 
 cause I had nothing to mark or pierce the paper 
 with, and nobody to knock to; but I felt sure 
 that I should find a use for them later, and even 
 if I did not, the mere fact that I had something 
 of my own gave me a feeling of satisfaction. In 
 the outside world, a scrap of paper and a bone 
 are not a large capital, but in a world of a single 
 cell they are wealth. With a nail, the hrodyag in 
 the Litovski Zamok had given me a full course of 
 instruction in telegraphy, applied mathematics, 
 and prison strategy, and with a little moistened 
 bread, half a cigarette and a pin, Blok had given 
 me hope, a feeling of companionship, and a new 
 interest in life. 
 
 II. THE GIRL IN NO. 59 
 
 The finding of my classmate's name in a frozen 
 sphere of bread, picked up in the courtyard, 
 turned all my thoughts into a new channel. If 
 Blok could get his name through to me by the 
 courtyard route, I could perhaps communicate 
 with him in the same way. He would scrutinize 
 the ground over which he passed even more 
 closely than I did, and would be sure to pick up, 
 in the course of his daily walk, anything that I 
 
 206 
 
"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 might drop in the course of mine. But how 
 should I make a record? My cigarette wrapper 
 would hold six or eight words, but what should 
 I write them with? Blok had apparently used a 
 pin. I had no pin, and there was absolutely 
 nothing in my cell with which I could make a 
 legible mark on thin paper. I tried rubbing the 
 quill of a small feather from "my pillow in the 
 black charred top of the lamp wick; but this 
 experiment failed. In ransacking my memory 
 for methods of recording thought practised by 
 primitive man, I happened, at last, to think of 
 the quipu, and the idea occurred to me that by ty- 
 ing groups of knots in a thread, I could make the 
 numbers of the checkerboard square. Getting 
 an unbroken thread of the necessary length 
 would be difficult, but not impossible. There 
 was material enough in the cotton cover of my 
 pillow, and I could unweave the fabric, a little 
 at a time, while lying in my bed at night. The 
 guard only glanced into the cell when I seemed to 
 be asleep, and there was little probability that 
 he would notice what I was doing. 
 
 At the end of three days I had in hand a thread 
 ten or twelve feet long, in which there were 
 more than a hundred knots. These knots, in the 
 checkerboard-square code, made the words: 
 
 207 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 "Voronin — Well — Courage." I thought at first 
 that I would follow Blok's example by enclos- 
 ing the record in a sphere of moistened bread; 
 but upon reflection I decided to tangle it up a 
 little and drop it on the ground in a snarl. It 
 would look like an innocent bit of raveling, and 
 the chances were ten to one that the soldiers of 
 the guard would give it no attention^ even if they 
 noticed it. On the following day, when I was 
 taken out for my walk, I carried the thread to the 
 courtyard in my mouth, dropped it beside the 
 path near a little tuft of withered grass, and 
 w^ent back to my cell filled with hopeful anticipa- 
 tions. Blok would find the quipu, and it would 
 encourage him, as the finding of his name in a 
 ball of frozen bread had encouraged me. I even 
 hoped that I might get a reply from him. 
 
 When I next visited the courtyard, the knotted 
 thread was gone ; but the hope that it would elicit 
 a reply was never realized. Day after day, I 
 searched the small pentagonal courtyard with 
 my eyes, as I paced across it from wall to wall ; 
 but neither on the path, nor beside it, was there 
 anything that looked promising. Still, I did not 
 allow myself to become discouraged. The 
 hrodyag in the Litovski Zamok had rapped out 
 the word "understand-' more than a hundred 
 
 208 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 times before he got into communication with me, 
 and I ought to have at least as much patience as 
 a muzhik. Besides that, these attempts at inter- 
 communication gave me something to do and 
 think of. 
 
 In the course of the next fortnight, I prepared 
 and dropped in the courtyard three more thread 
 quipus, which I made and knotted while lying in 
 my bed at night. I was also able to utilize, at 
 last, my hoarded cigarette wrapper. In a bowl 
 of fish soup, which was given me one Sunday for 
 dinner, I found a slender bone which I made into 
 an awl by sharpening it on the concrete floor. 
 With this I pricked groups of holes in the paper, 
 to correspond with numbers in the checkerboard 
 square, and inclosing the message in a small 
 bread ball, I dropped it in the courtyard. All of 
 these communications were picked up by some- 
 body. Every one disappeared within forty-eight 
 hours, and most of them within twenty-four ; but 
 not one of them ever brought me what could 
 properly be called a response. In the course of 
 January and February, I picked up in the court- 
 yard two balls of bread with scraps of cigarette 
 paper inclosed. One contained a man's name 
 written, apparently, with the end of a half -burnt 
 match, and the other a different name pricked in 
 
 209 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 the paper with a splinter or a iDin. Each of the 
 writers doubtless wished to inform somebody 
 that he had been arrested, or that he was still 
 alive ; but neither of them was known to me. 
 
 I finally became satisfied, from experiment and 
 reflection, that there was little chance of reach- 
 ing in this way any particular person. It was 
 like throwing overboard a message in a bottle at 
 sea, with the expectation that it would be picked 
 up by a particular ship. In the Trubetskoi 
 bastion, at that time, there were twenty or thirty 
 political prisoners, and all took their exercise 
 daily, but separately, in that courtyard. Some 
 of them — who had not had the benefit of a 
 hrodyag^s instruction — might not think of look- 
 ing on the ground for a bit of bread or a piece of 
 string; but most of them probably would think of 
 it, and my particular message would be found by 
 the man who happened to follow me. That man 
 might be Blok, but the chances were twenty or 
 thirty to one that it would be somebody else. . 
 
 So far as I could subsequently learn, no polit- 
 ical prisoner who was in the fortress that winter 
 ever succeeded in getting a reply to a message 
 dropped in the courtyard. Many replies were 
 made, but they all went criss-cross and fell into 
 wrong hands. Two of my quipus and the bread- 
 
 210 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 enclosed cigarette wrapper were found, but the 
 prisoners who discovered them did not know me, 
 and Blok, for whom they were intended, picked 
 up two or three communications from men who 
 were strangers to him. One of his finds, as he 
 afterward told me, was a bit of window glass on 
 which three or four words and a name had been 
 written with grease — probably from soup — 
 which congealed and became visible in the frosty 
 air of the courtyard. 
 
 About the middle of January, the severity of 
 the fortress regime, so far at least as it concerned 
 me, was relaxed. After another inquisitorial ex- 
 amination by an offlcer of the Third Section, I 
 was notified that a single member of my family 
 would be permitted to see me once a month, and 
 that I might have officially approved books in my 
 cell. The first family interview^, which was with 
 my mother, proved to be so distressing to us both 
 that I begged her not to come again. It took 
 place in a small gloomy room fitted up for the 
 purpose with two partitions, or screens, of heavy 
 wire netting. I stood behind one screen, and 
 my mother, six or eight feet away, stood behind 
 the other, while between us, at a small table, sat 
 a gendarme, who listened to all that was said, 
 and who warned us that the talk must be strictly 
 
 211 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 confined to family matters. Any reference to 
 public affairs, or contemporary events, would be 
 followed by the breaking off of the interview and 
 the withdrawal of the privilege. But to look 
 through two wire screens at my mother's tear- 
 wet, grief-stricken face, and exchange a few 
 words with her over the head of an unsympa- 
 thetic gendarme, was a refined form of torture, 
 rather than a privilege. My changed appear- 
 ance was a shock, of course, to her, while her sobs 
 and piteous inquiries about my health were very 
 trying emotionally to me. If I could have taken 
 her in my arms and comforted her, the interview 
 might have strengthened and consoled us both; 
 but what can one say across an eight-foot wire 
 cage in which there sits a hostile of&cial? 
 When, at the end of ^ye or ten minutes, the 
 gendarme rose to his feet, I took one last look at 
 my mother's convulsed, agonized face and went 
 back to my cell. Poor mother ! Momentous 
 events in the outside world, which she did not 
 dare speak about to me, made her fear that I 
 might be sent into penal servitude.^ 
 
 5 These events were the beginning of terrorism ; and the 
 assassination or attempted assassination of General Mezent- 
 sof, Chief of Gendarmes; Governor Krapotkin of Kharkof ; 
 General Drenteln, Chief of the Third Section, and finally 
 the Czar.— G. K. 
 
 212 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 More consoling to me than any possible inter- 
 view through wire screens was the permission to 
 have books in my cell. No volume less than ten 
 years old was allowed, and there were certain 
 restrictions with regard to subjects ; but science 
 and standard fiction were not regarded as in- 
 cendiary, and no objection was made to Darwin's 
 "Origin of Species'' (an expurgated Russian 
 edition which I read a second time), nor to the 
 well known works of English and American 
 novelists, with which I was less familiar than 
 with our own literature. I read at that time, I 
 remember, Dickens's "David Copperfield" and 
 "Old Curiosity Shop," and the "Leatherstocking 
 Tales" of your countryman. Cooper. Every 
 book was carefully examined, leaf by leaf, when 
 I returned it, in order to make sure that I had 
 made no marks in it, and that no paper had been 
 torn out of it. 
 
 During the remainder of the winter the con- 
 ditions of my life did not materially change, ex- 
 cept in the matter of light. As the season 
 advanced the days became longer, and the lamp 
 in my cell was lighted at 5 p. m, instead of 2, and 
 put out at 7 A. M., instead of 10; but there was 
 never light enough to be cheering, while there 
 was always enough to show the black walls, the 
 
 213 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 vaulted ceiling^ the high grated window, and the 
 eyes at the peep-hole in the door. Eight or ten 
 hours of total darkness every day would have 
 been a relief, because in darkness one's imagina- 
 tion may wander freely, while in the light it is 
 restricted by the barriers of visible reality. 
 
 Before the end of the winter my health was 
 seriously impaired. My appetite failed; assim- 
 ilation of food became imperfect; I grew emaci- 
 ated ; and began to suffer from sleeplessness and 
 neurasthenia. The state of my body, however, 
 gave me less concern than the state of my mind. 
 In spite of all that I could do, I found myself 
 sinking into an apathetic melancholia, from 
 which I was roused only by short paroxysms of 
 acute nervous irritability, in which the chiming 
 of "Have Mercy, O Lord" from the belfry of the 
 fortress cathedral every fifteen minutes, and the 
 appearance of the expressionless eyes at the slit 
 in the door every half hour, seemed to me not 
 only torturing, but absolutely insupportable. 
 But a great change was at hand. 
 
 Two or three times in the early spring, when I 
 happened to be awake in the middle of the night, 
 I heard footsteps and the jingling clash of chains 
 in the corridor. I knew that these sounds indi- 
 cated the bringing in of "important" or "danger- 
 
 214 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 ous'' political prisoners in leg-fetters; but that 
 these additions to the fortress population would 
 affect my life in any way was a thought that 
 never occurred to me. And yet^ the new comers 
 were destined to bring about a radical change 
 in the worst of the fortress conditions, and to 
 widen immeasurably the horizon of my world. 
 Throughout the winter, the number of prisoners 
 in the bastion had been so small that the jailers 
 could leave a cell empty on each side of every 
 man. This had the effect of making the isolation 
 in every case complete, because there was no pos- 
 sibility of communicating by means of knocks 
 across an empty cell. Owing, however, to an 
 event in the outside world of which I was ig- 
 norant (the adoption of the policy of terror by 
 the extreme wing of the revolutionary party ) the 
 number of political arrests suddenly and greatly 
 increased, and in the spring of 1879, the police 
 of the Third Section sent to the fortress more 
 than forty persons who were regarded as too 
 "important," or too "dangerous,'' to be confined 
 in prisons of the ordinary type.^ This compelled 
 the fortress authorities to put a prisoner into 
 
 6 At the time to which Voronin refers, General Drenteln, 
 Chief of the Third Section, caused more than a thousand 
 arrests to be made in St. Petersburg alone.: — G. K. 
 
 215 
 
"THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 every cell, and made it impossible to isolate a 
 man completely by sandwiching bim between 
 two cells that were empty. I did not know this, 
 nor did I know that the bastion was rapidly fill- 
 ing up. All of the new men came in the night, 
 and I did not always hear them unless they hap- 
 pened to be in leg-fetters. The hateful sound of 
 clashing chains generally roused me, even when 
 I was asleep, but dozens of prisoners were 
 brought in noiselessly, and nearly all of the 
 empty casemates on my corridor had been filled 
 before I even suspected it. 
 
 One morning in the late springs — I think it was 
 May, but I had almost lost count of days and 
 months, — I was startled by what seemed to be a 
 faint regular throbbing in the wall of the case- 
 mate to which the head of my bed was bolted. I 
 thought for an instant that it might be hallucina- 
 tion — I was in constant dread of that — ^but upon 
 pressing my ear to the wall I could hear it dis- 
 tinctly — knock knock — knock knock — knock 
 knock. With shaking hand I replied, using the 
 same signal. Then, in the long disused but well 
 remembered numbers of the checkerboard square 
 came the same inquiry that the hrodyag had 
 made in the Litovski Zamok : 
 
 216 
 
"THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 "Understand?'' 
 
 "Yes," I replied. 
 
 "Thank God ! Who is it ?" 
 
 "Eugene Voronin." 
 
 "I don't know the name. Have you been here 
 long?" 
 
 "About ten months. Who are you?" 
 
 "Olga Novitskaya." 
 
 A woman ! And she knew the numbers of the 
 checkerboard square! I was so astounded that 
 for a moment I made no response, but I did not 
 lose my wits. The eyes of the guard at the slit 
 of the "Judas" had made too deep an impression 
 on me to be forgotten, even in excitement. 
 
 "Stop knocking" I said. "It is nearly time for 
 the guard. Wait until I call you." 
 
 When the sentinel looked into the casemate, all 
 was quiet, and I was apparently reading. As 
 soon as he had gone, and I could count with 
 reasonable certainty upon twenty minutes of 
 safety, I knocked again for attention and in- 
 quired: "Where are you from?" 
 
 "Moscow." 
 
 "Do you know anything that has happened 
 outside this year?" 
 
 "Yes, almost everything." 
 
 217 
 
"THE A¥OELD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 "Tell me.'^ 
 
 "Have you heard of the attempt to assassinate 
 the Czar?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Then you don't know that Mezentsef" [Chief 
 of Gendarmes] "and Krapotkin" [governor of 
 Kharkof] "have been killed?" 
 
 "No ; who killed them ?" 
 
 "Terrorists; by order of the Executive Com- 
 mittee of the revolutionary party. They have 
 just tried to kill Drenteln" [Chief of the Third 
 Section] "and last of all the Czar. There have 
 been thousands of arrests." 
 
 "How did you hear? Are you just from out- 
 side?" 
 
 "No ; I have been in the Moscow prison several 
 months. I learned the knock alphabet there, 
 and they could n't keep the news from us ; it was 
 signaled to us from outside, with a book and a 
 candle, at night." 
 
 "When were you brought here?" 
 
 "Yesterday; and I was horribly afraid this 
 morning that my knocks would not be heard or 
 understood — the walls look so thick." 
 
 "Is the charge against you serious?" 
 
 "I don't know. I 'm not a terrorist, but this 
 is my second term of imprisonment. I suppose 
 
 218 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 the charge will he revolutionary propaganda. 
 I shall prohahly go to Siheria, hut I'm not 
 afraid." 
 
 During the next two or three days, I talked 
 with Miss Novitskaya perhaps a dozen times in 
 the intervals between the visits of the guard to 
 our doors, and obtained from her an outline of 
 her life and experience. She was the daughter 
 of a small landed proprietor living near Tver, 
 and had become interested, even as a young girl, 
 in the educational crusade for the uplift of the 
 peasants which was widely known in the seven- 
 ties as "going to the people." When, a few years 
 later, she became a student in the Women's Uni- 
 versity in Moscow, she taught, for a time, in a 
 secret night school for factory operatives; but 
 she was soon arrested, and was held in prison 
 about five months. Upon her release, she joined 
 a circle of fellow students — men and women — 
 who met once a week for the discussion of social 
 and political questions. This circle soon became 
 revolutionary in spirit, if not in practice; and 
 when it was broken up by the police, some of its 
 members resisted arrest, and all were thrown 
 into prison as possible terrorists. 
 
 Such, in brief, was my fellow prisoner's his- 
 tory. It was a common story. Hundreds of re- 
 
 219 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 fined and cultivated young women, at that time, 
 had a similar experience. 
 
 After I got into communication with the girl 
 in No. 59, events followed one another so rapidly 
 that I was kept constantly in a state of excite- 
 ment and emotional tension. Two or three days 
 later, a prisoner was put into No. 57, and he soon 
 began knocking to me. We did not know each 
 other, even by name ; but he had just been trans- 
 ferred from another part of the bastion, and 
 could give me news that was even more impor- 
 tant to me than that which I had learned from 
 Miss Novitskaya. 
 
 "Don't be afraid to knock," he said. "The 
 guard can't stop it, even if they see you. The 
 bastion is full, and there aren't dark cells enough 
 to hold a tenth of us. The worst they can do now 
 is to give us ^dungeon conditions' " [bread and 
 water] "and we can stand that. The dark cells 
 have already been filled." 
 
 My new neighbor's statements were soon con- 
 firmed. The guard caught me in the act of 
 knocking that very day, but could not — or at 
 least did not — carry out his threat to imprison 
 me in a dark cell. My book and exercise priv- 
 ileges were withdrawn, and I was put on a 
 dungeon diet of bread and water; but what did 
 
 220 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 I care for books or exercise or even food, when I 
 could once more exchange thoughts and share 
 emotions with sympathetic human beings? 
 
 Our jailers, however, were not at the end of 
 their resources. A few mornings later, I called 
 Miss Novitskaya and began to talk to her about 
 recent events in the outside world — events that 
 to me were so new and startling. Her knocking 
 was slower than usual, and she did not make use 
 of abbreviations in spelling, as she had been ac- 
 customed to do. Her talk, too, seemed formal 
 and perfunctory, instead of eager and impulsive 
 as it had been before. 
 
 "Are you ill?" I inquired. 
 "No; I am quite well." 
 "You seem strange in some way." 
 "I did not sleep much last night, and have a 
 headache." 
 
 She then began to talk about revolutionary ac- 
 tivity in St. Petersburg, and to inquire the names 
 of persons with whom I had been associated in the 
 circle to which I belonged. I had no reason what- 
 ever for distrusting her, but I did not care to give 
 names to any one, and particularly to a woman, 
 who, after long imprisonment, might not have 
 firmness of character enough to hold her mental 
 grip under the strain of a threatening and terri- 
 
 221 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'^ 
 
 fying examination by an experienced officer of 
 police. I therefore broke off the conversation, 
 and said that I would call her again later. 
 
 In less than an hour, my neighbor on the other 
 side — a revolutionist named Kobeko — signaled 
 to me and knocked out rapidly the words: 
 
 "Don't talk to No. 59. Novitskaya is not 
 there. They transferred her in the night to a 
 cell above yours in the upper tier, and they may 
 have put a police spy in her place. Be careful !" 
 
 So this was the explanation of the strangeness, 
 the "headache/' and the inquiries for names ! 
 
 After a moment's reflection, I determined to 
 have another short interview with the spy in No. 
 59, who knew the checkerboard square, and who 
 had set this trap for me. He responded at once 
 to my call, and, rapping out the words without 
 abbreviations, I said: 
 
 "No spy can play the part of an intelligent 
 woman, even behind a wall. You '11 succeed 
 with your lies when the just God dies." [Rus- 
 sian proverb.] 
 
 He seemed to be taken aback, and for a mo- 
 ment made no reply. Then he rapped out slowly 
 the words : 
 
 "You traitors will die before God does, and 
 some of you very soon." 
 
 222 
 
"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 This was my first experience with a police spy, 
 and it made me cautious. I did not, however, 
 cease to communicate with Kobeko, and through 
 him I learned that in a neighboring casemate — 
 No. 56 of the lower tier — was my dear friend 
 Dubrovin, a lieutenant in the Willmanstrand in- 
 fantry regiment, of whose arrest I had not heard. 
 He had been brought to the fortress in leg-fetters, 
 and Kobeko, who also knew him well, seemed to 
 think that his case was very serious, partly be- 
 cause he was an army officer, and partly because 
 he had drawn a weapon and offered resistance to 
 the police at the time of his arrest. The least 
 that he could expect, Kobeko thought, was penal 
 servitude for life. I dreaded an even worse fate 
 than that for him, because it was foreshadowed 
 in the threat of the police spy — "You traitors 
 will die before God does, and some of you very 
 soon." 
 
 Two or three days later (I know now that 
 it was the 30th of May) Kobeko called me and 
 said : 
 
 "Dubrovin is to be hanged, in one of the court- 
 yards at sunrise to-morrow morning. A priest 
 has just been with him. Can't we bid him good- 
 by with our voices, instead of with knocks. Our 
 window sashes are open, and I think he can hear 
 
 223 
 
^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 lis. Let us try, about midnight ; it will perhaps 
 be safest then." 
 
 Long before the appointed hour, I was stand- 
 ing below my window, thinking what I could say 
 to strengthen and encourage my friend and com- 
 rade in the last hours of his life. Under such 
 conditions it would be impossible to say much, 
 and possibly our jailers would prevent us from 
 saying anything. 
 
 The bells of the fortress cathedral had just 
 finished chiming the midnight melody — "God 
 Save the Czar" — when I heard a voice crying 
 "Dubrovin I" 
 
 As if answering at a roll call, a deeper voice 
 replied : 
 
 "Present." 
 
 I don't know what I expected Kobeko to say, 
 but I certainly expected him to say something, 
 and yet, Dubrovin's response was followed by 
 perfect silence. A minute passed — two minutes 
 — and still I could hear nothing. Kobeko had 
 apparently broken down under the strain of emo- 
 tion and could not speak. At last the bass voice 
 called : 
 
 "Voronin !" 
 
 "I 'm here," I replied. 
 
 "Sing Beranger's ^Old Corpora? " [a poem 
 
 224 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 that had been set to music in Russia and that we 
 had often sung together in happier days]. 
 
 I was so overcome with sympathy and grief 
 that it seemed impossible to sing, but if Beran- 
 ger's "Old CorporaF' could give my comrade any 
 comfort, I must try. Two or three other prison- 
 ers joined in at the second line, and with their 
 support I managed to get through the first 
 stanza. 
 
 "Good!'' said Dubrovin. "Sing the next 
 verse.'' 
 
 His voice was steady, but something in its 
 quality showed that he was deeply moved. I 
 made a desperate effort to go on, but broke down 
 at the third line. Not one of us was able to fin- 
 ish the second verse, although the melody, with- 
 out the words, was carried to the end by a clear 
 contralto voice in one of the casemates of the 
 upper tier. 
 
 "Thank you," said Dubrovin; "that will do. 
 Good night." 
 
 I went away from the window, threw myself on 
 my bed, and bit deep into my arm to keep from 
 sobbing. 
 
 None of us ever heard the condemned man's 
 voice again, although he rapped good-by to 
 Kobeko just before he was taken to the scaffold. 
 
 225 
 
^^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 We had not said to him what we meant to say, 
 but he had seemed reluctant to speak of his own 
 impending death, and the singing of "The Old 
 Corporal" had so unmanned us all that we could 
 not even bid him good-by without showing him 
 our weakness and thus making it harder for him 
 to die with dignity and self-possession. It would 
 have been different perhaps if we had been in a 
 normal condition, and had been accustomed to 
 use our voices and to hear the voices of others in 
 daily life. 
 
 The fortress authorities made no attempt to 
 stop our communication with Dubrovin, al- 
 though, of course, they were aware of it. Perhaps 
 they thought that by allowing us to talk and lis- 
 tening to what we said they could get information 
 that would prove useful, or perhaps even they 
 were ashamed to deny the poor privilege of a 
 farewell to a man who was to die on the scaffold 
 at dawn. I do not know. 
 
 A whole day passed before Kobeko and I tried 
 to communicate with each other again. Scanty 
 food, sleeplessness, and emotional strain had ex- 
 hausted us both, and in the depression that fol- 
 lowed Dubrovin's death we felt no impulse to 
 talk. On the second day, however, he called me 
 and said : 
 
 226 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 "Olga Novitskaya is in the casemate directly 
 over yours in the upper tier. We have found 
 that we can communicate with the upper cells 
 through our tables. They are bolted into the 
 walls, and knocks can be heard through them. 
 Put your ear to your table. Olga will call you." 
 
 In less than five minutes, Miss Novitskaya and 
 I were again in communication. Her knocks 
 came to me very faintly, but the stillness in the 
 fortress was so profound that when I pressed my 
 ear to the table I could hear them. 
 
 Then began a knock-alphabet correspondence 
 which lasted throughout the whole remaining 
 term of our imprisonment. Making the intimate 
 acquaintance of a woman, without ever seeing 
 her or hearing her voice, was for me a strange 
 experience; but it is not too much, I think, to 
 say that in the next three months I came to know 
 Olga Novitskaya better than I knew any other 
 human being except my mother. We talked of 
 everything — childhood, parents, domestic life, 
 university experience, friends, books, the state 
 of Russia, " going to the people," and the revolu- 
 tionary movement — and the more completely she 
 revealed herself to me, the more deeply I was 
 impressed by her courage, intelligence, sympathy, 
 cheerfulness, and, at times, even gaiety of spirit. 
 
 227 
 
"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 If she was ever disheartened, or depressed^ slie 
 did not show it to me. She always looked for- 
 ward to a brighter future, for Kussia and for our- 
 selves ; and if I was able to bear with reasonable 
 fortitude the hardships and privations of my 
 last three months in the Trubetskoi bastion, the 
 credit was hers. 
 
 About midsummer, when we had been freed 
 from dungeon conditions and had been permitted 
 to resume our daily walks in the courtyard, I 
 celebrated my first birthday in prison. Early in 
 the morning, Olga and Kobeko knocked to me 
 their greetings and good wishes, and a few hours 
 later the former said : 
 
 "I have just come from my walk. I picked a 
 sprig of blossoming kuroslepnik [chickweed] for 
 your birthday. I could n't send it to you, but I 
 left it at the corner of the bathhouse next the 
 path. Look for it, and imagine that it is a spray 
 of landysh [lily of the valley] . It 's all I could 
 find." 
 
 The bit of chickweed was withered when I got 
 it, but I have the dry dust of it yet. 
 
 The end of our fortress imprisonment came in 
 August. About three o'clock one morning, a 
 warden unlocked and opened the door of my cell 
 and said to me : "Come." I followed him to the 
 
 228 
 
 1 
 
^^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 office of the prison, where the commander of the 
 convoy made a careful examination of my person, 
 noted my features and physical characteristics as 
 set forth in a description which he held in his 
 hand, and at last, being apparently satisfied as to 
 my identity, received me formally from the prison 
 authorities. I was then taken to the corps de 
 garde, a large room on the ground floor, at the 
 door of which stood an armed sentry. The 
 .spacious hut low and gloomy hall was dimly 
 lighted by a few flaring lamps and candles, and 
 in the middle of it, at two long bare tables, sat 
 ten or fifteen men and women, in coarse gray 
 overcoats, drinking tea. Most of these prisoners 
 were condemned convicts from the Alexis ravelin 
 and other little known parts of the fortress, and 
 all were in leg-fetters. Near the door, in a little 
 group, stood six or eight uniformed gendarmes 
 and officers of the detective police, several of 
 them masked, who watched the prisoners in- 
 tently, whispering now and then among them- 
 selves as if communicating to one another the 
 results of their observations. The stillness of 
 the room was broken only by the faint hissing of 
 two or three brass samovars on the tables, and 
 an occasional jingle of chains as one of the con- 
 victs moved his feet. There was no conversation, 
 
^^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 and a chance observer never would have im- 
 agined that the gray-coated figures sitting si- 
 lently side by side at the tables were near friends, 
 and in some cases relatives, who had long been 
 buried in the casemates of the fortress, and who 
 were looking into one another's faces for the first 
 time in years. 
 
 As I entered the room, one of the prisoners, 
 whose face I did not at first recognize but who 
 proved to be Blok, rushed forward to meet me, 
 and as he threw his arms around me he whis- 
 pered in my ear : 
 
 ^^Don't recognize anybody but me — the gen- 
 darmes are watching us." I understood the 
 warning. The police really knew very little 
 about the history and the revolutionary records 
 of some of the politicals who were present, and 
 it was important that they should not be able to 
 get a clue to any one's identity or past history 
 by noting recognitions as prisoner after prisoner 
 was brought in. The incautious manifestation 
 of emotion by one convict, as he met another, 
 might result in the return of both to the case- 
 mates of the fortress and their detention there 
 until their mutual relations could be investi- 
 gated. This was the reason for the silence that 
 prevailed throughout the gloomy hall, and for 
 
 230 
 
"THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 the seeming indifference with which the prisoners 
 regarded one another. They were apparently 
 strangers, but in reality they were bound to- 
 gether by innumerable ties of friendship and 
 memories of the past; and as they looked into one 
 another's faces, and noted the changes that time 
 and suffering had wrought, they maintained their 
 composure only by the most heroic effort. On 
 one side of the table sat an old comrade of whom 
 we had heard nothing in years and whom we had 
 all supposed to be dead. On the other side were 
 a young man and his betrothed, who for three 
 years had not seen each other, and who, when 
 thus reunited under the eyes of the gendarmes, 
 did not dare to speak. Near them sat a pale thin 
 woman about twenty-seven years of age, who held 
 in her arms a sickly baby born in a casemate of 
 the fortress, and who looked anxiously at the 
 door every time it opened, with the hope of seeing 
 her husband brought in to join the party. Many 
 of us knew that her husband was dead, but no 
 one dared to tell her that she watched the door 
 in vain. 
 
 There were five women present when I entered 
 the room, and I looked eagerly at them all, think- 
 ing that Olga might be among them and that I 
 might recognize her; but most of them seemed 
 
 231 
 
^^THE WORLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 too old, and none of them resembled the imag- 
 inary picture that I had in my mind. I had 
 nearly abandoned hope, when a soldier came in 
 with a sixth woman — a young girl, twenty -two or 
 twenty-three years of age, with dark hair gath- 
 ered uj) in a big high knot; dark luminous eyes 
 with faint shadows under them ; a pale brunette 
 complexion; and features that were harmonious 
 and attractive without being perfectly regular. 
 
 "It must be Olga !'' I said to myself, and as she 
 took a seat at one of the tables I looked at her 
 with almost fierce intensity, as if I could compel 
 her in that way to recognize me. But her glance 
 swept across my face without a sign of interest, 
 and then became fixed on the masked police and 
 the gendarmes. She was perfectly self-con- 
 trolled, and her pale, resolute face showed 
 neither excitement nor fear. 
 
 Nothing could have been more dramatic than 
 the scene in that gloomy hall at half-past four 
 o'clock in the morning, when the last of the pris- 
 oners had been brought in. The strange and un- 
 natural stillness, in a room filled with people ; the 
 contrast between the blue and silver uniforms of 
 the gendarmes and the leg-fetters and gray over- 
 coats of the convicts; the furtive whispering of 
 the masked police and the silence and assumed 
 
 232 
 
"THE WOELD OF A SINGLE CELL'' 
 
 stolidity of the pale-faced men and women whom 
 they watched; — all this would have made the 
 scene striking and impressive, even to a chance 
 spectator. To one, however, who could look be- 
 neath the surface of things — who could appreci- 
 ate the tragic significance of the situation, and 
 see, with spiritual insight, the hot tides of hatred, 
 agony, sympathy, and pity, which surged under 
 those gray overcoats — the scene was not merely 
 striking and impressive, but terrible and heart- 
 rending. 
 
 At five o'clock in the morning, we were taken 
 in closed and curtained carriages to the station 
 of the Nikolaievsk Railway. There, under the 
 direction of armed guards, we took seats in a con- 
 vict car and began our long journey to Siberia. 
 The hard-labor convicts, who were all in leg- 
 fetters, were destined for the mines of Kara ; but 
 the administrative exiles — Miss Novitskaya, 
 Blok and I — were to be taken to Semipalatinsk, 
 Ust Kamenogorsk, and Ulbinsk. 
 
 I met Olga, for the first time, in the train. It 
 was incredibly strange to have to make the ac- 
 quaintance of her body, her voice, her facial ex- 
 pression — everything — for the first time, when I 
 already knew her soul to its profoundest depths. 
 I don't know when I first felt sure that I loved 
 
 233 
 
"THE WOKLD OF A SINGLE CELL" 
 
 her, but I think it was when I picked up the with- 
 ered sprig of chickweed that she left for me, on 
 my birthday, "at the corner of the bathhouse 
 next the path" in the courtyard of the Trubetskoi 
 bastion. 
 
 We went up the Irtish River together in a con- 
 vict barge, and before I bade her good-by at 
 Semipalatinsk, where she was to remain, we were 
 betrothed. Her term of exile was shorter than 
 mine, and when it ended she joined me in Ulbinsk, 
 where we were married soon after you were 
 there. 
 
 When I told you, a year ago, that the biggest 
 thing of my life happened to me in the fortress, I 
 warned you that it was very personal. You said 
 that you wanted the story, and here it is. 
 
 234 
 
A SACEILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
VIII 
 A SACEILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 ONE evening in February, about three years 
 ago, I chanced to be sitting in an apart- 
 ment of the Hotel Judson, in New York City, 
 talking with a young Polish lawyer from Minsk. 
 He had come to the United States a short time 
 before as a political refugee, and had brought a 
 letter of introduction to me from a valued and 
 trusted friend in St. Petersburg. As he seemed 
 to be a man of culture, courage, and resolution, 
 I felt curious to know what his history had been 
 and what the circumstances were that had forced 
 or induced him to leave his native country. 
 There were reasons enough, of course, for a man's 
 leaving Russia; but I had found in experience 
 that expatriation in such cases is generally due 
 to some specific determining cause, rather than 
 to general political conditions, and that such 
 cause is often connected with an interesting per- 
 sonal story. At the first favorable opportunity 
 therefore I asked my visitor the direct question, 
 
 237 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 "What finally made you decide to get out of 
 Russia?'' 
 
 "A Russian fox/' he replied gravely. 
 
 The answer was so unexpected and appar- 
 ently so irrelevant that I was rather taken aback, 
 and looked at him for a moment in puzzled sur- 
 prise. Then the thought occurred to me that 
 he was probably speaking figuratively, and that 
 the fox in question was some Russian official — a 
 governor or chief of police^ — who had the cun- 
 ning and subtlety with which the fox, in Russia 
 as in America, is usually credited. 
 
 "Do you mean a real fox," I asked, "or merely 
 a man with foxy characteristics?" 
 
 "I mean a real fox," he replied. "If a red Rus- 
 sian fox with pointed ears and a bushy tail had 
 not left tracks in the snow on the edge of a cer- 
 tain piece of woods four or ^ye years ago, I might 
 still be practising my profession in Minsk." 
 
 "It sounds like the beginning of a story," I said 
 encouragingly. 
 
 "It is a story," he assented, "or rather a 
 tragedy; but it isn't primarily mine. I was 
 finally brought into it, but I played only a sub- 
 ordinate part. The real actors were a Polish 
 landed proprietor and his friends, two or three 
 priests of the Greek Church, a Black Hundred 
 
 238 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 representative in the Duma, and a Russian fox. 
 It is a common saying that ^Russia is the land of 
 unlimited iDossibilities/ but, with all your Si- 
 berian experience, could you possibly imagine a 
 Russian fox entering into a conspiracy with a 
 Catholic Pole to dishonor the Holy Orthodox 
 Church?" 
 
 "Well, hardly," I replied. "The fox in our 
 fairy tales sometimes does queer things, but noth- 
 ing so queer as that. How did it happen — if it 
 did happen?" 
 
 "The story is an almost incredible one," he 
 said, "but the facts are on record in the Circuit 
 Court of Minsk, and also in the archives of the 
 Governing Senate" [the Russian Supreme Court] 
 "in St. Petersburg. The fox is dead ; but, if we 
 can trust the findings of a Russian jury, he died 
 in trying to help a Catholic Pole express his 
 hatred and contempt for the Greek faith. Have 
 you been in any of the Polish provinces of Russia 
 since the revolution of 1905?" 
 
 "No," I said. "I passed through that part of 
 the Empire several times in earlier years, but I 
 have n't been there since 1901." 
 
 "Then I 'd better begin by telling you some- 
 thing about the state of affairs in Russian Poland 
 at the time when this fox case came up. I'm 
 
 239 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 afraid you won't believe the story at all if I 
 don't give you the historical background. You 
 remember, perhaps, that the revolutionary move- 
 ment of 1905-6 received much of its support from 
 the so-called ^alien' nationalities of Russia, par- 
 ticularly the Jews, the Georgians, and the Poles. 
 When it was finally defeated, largely through 
 the bloody pogroms which were planned by the 
 monarchists and executed by the Black Hun- 
 dreds, the Government determined not only to 
 punish these ^alien' peoples for their revolution- 
 ary sympathies and activities, but, as far as pos- 
 sible, to break up their racial or national solid- 
 arity and Russianize them at the point of the 
 bayonet. Field courts-martial, punitive expe- 
 ditions, and sentences of exile almost decimated 
 the male population of the southern and western 
 provinces, and the policy of repression, which 
 has always been rigorous in Poland, became not 
 only more cruel in spirit but more openly terror- 
 istic in form. The whole country was under 
 martial law; every official who showed the least 
 sympathy with the Poles was removed or pun- 
 ished; the Black Hundreds and the fanatical 
 priests of the Russo-Greek Church were given an 
 absolutely free hand; while at the same time 
 Polish organizations of all kinds were ruthlessly 
 
 240 
 
A SACEILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 crushed. You won't fully realize this unless I 
 give you a few illustrations. In Warsaw at that 
 time there was a Polish benevolent society whose 
 object was to aid poor scholars and students in 
 the schools and universities. It had nearly two 
 hundred local branches in the various Polish 
 provinces, and it was helping thousands of young 
 Poles in straitened financial circumstances to get 
 an education. When Premier Stolypin came 
 into power, and the Black Hundreds raised the 
 cry of ^Russia for the Russians, and away with 
 the aliens !' this benevolent society, which had no 
 political or national aims whatever, was ordered 
 to close its doors and go into liquidation. 
 
 "But this is nothing in comparison with other 
 things that were done between 1907 and 1910. 
 The governor of Wilna forbade Polish actors to 
 appear in the theaters of that city ; the governor 
 of Grodno would not allow the mourners at the 
 funeral of the Polish novelist Orzheshko to carry 
 memorial wreaths in the procession; the gov- 
 ernor of Piotrkof would not permit the Hygienic 
 Society of Lodz to have a section devoted to the 
 beautifying of that city, although it had raised 
 the sum of fifteen thousand rubles for the pur- 
 pose; and the governor of Warsaw suppressed 
 the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment, 
 
 241 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 and the Society of Polish Economists, on the 
 alleged ground that they were ^prejudicial to 
 public order.' 
 
 "You may think that in such cases as these 
 governmental repression went to its extreme 
 limits ; but far from it ! It had no limits. Ag- 
 ricultural societies and consumers' leagues were 
 closed in all the Polish provinces, and even such 
 manifestly innocent organizations as the Society 
 for the Promotion of Rational Amusements, the 
 Society for Mutual Help in Case of Death, the 
 Pioneers of Cremation, the Warsaw Aviation So- 
 ciety, and the Society for the Encouragement of 
 Scientific Bee Culture, were all either suppressed 
 or prohibited. Poles were not allowed to organ- 
 ize or work together for any purpose whatever. 
 In certain public fields they were not even per- 
 mitted to act separately as individuals. Ma- 
 dame Gurskoi, a well known Polish lady, was for- 
 bidden to organize a public sale of flowers in 
 order to r'aise money for the r'elief of sufferers 
 from tuberculosis; the bandmaster of Chensto- 
 hova was punished for directing his orchestra to 
 play ^God Save Poland'; the Polish Catholic 
 priest of Ganich was arrested and fined for hang- 
 ing Polish flags from the windoAVS of his church 
 on the occasion of a visit from the bishop of the 
 
 242 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 diocese ; the Catholic priest Putyato was forbid- 
 den to give a public lecture on the catacombs of 
 Rome; and even a poor Polish peasant was im- 
 prisoned for setting up on his farm a wooden 
 cross inscribed : ^From famine, fire and war, 
 Good Lord deliver us!" Finally, the governor 
 of Podolia closed the Polish School of Refuge in 
 Mohilef, and left fifty children — mostly orphans 
 — without shelter or care. 
 
 "These are only a few of the hundreds of acts 
 of oppression and persecution which made the 
 life of the Poles at that time almost insupport- 
 able. I refer to them only that you may under- 
 stand what the atmosphere and background of 
 the fox hunt case were. In a natural and normal 
 environment a Russian fox does n't commit sui- 
 cide by prearrangement in order that he may help 
 a Catholic Pole to commit sacrilege. 
 
 "The story that I am about to tell you is known 
 to the Russian courts as the Knobelsdorf case. 
 In December, 1909, there was living near the town 
 of Mozyr, in the province of Minsk, a Polish 
 landed proprietor named Adam Knobelsdorf. 
 He was a gray -haired man about seventy years of 
 age when I made his acquaintance, but he still 
 retained his bodily activity and vigor, kept horses 
 and hunting dogs, lived largely in the open air, 
 
 243 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 and took great pleasure in field sports of all 
 kinds. He was a Catholic^ of course, in religion, 
 a man of liberal opinions, and a patriotic Pole; 
 but he had shown no more hostility to the Ortho- 
 dox Church and the Russian Government than 
 was shown by educated Poles generally, and had 
 never been engaged, so far as I know, in any 
 religious or political controversy. But the 
 Black Hundreds and the Orthodox priests hated 
 him, because he was at the same time an ino- 
 verets [heretic] and an inorodets [alien] and, in 
 the opinion of every ^true Russian,' heretics and 
 aliens are the natural enemies of God and the 
 Czar. 
 
 "A year or two after the defeat of the Russian 
 revolutionists and the establishment of the reign 
 of terror in the western provinces, this gray- 
 haired Polish gentleman, Adam Knobelsdorf, in- 
 vited two friends named Zhulkovski and Sham- 
 borski, who were spending the Christmas holi- 
 days with him, to go on a hunting expedition. 
 There had been a recent fall of snow ; the sleigh- 
 ing was good, and they proposed to go with guns 
 and dogs to a forest twelve or fifteen versts away 
 and look for foxes and rabbits. They asked two 
 tenant farmers of the neighborhood — the brothers 
 Urbanchik— to accompany them, and took along 
 
 244 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 as guide a peasant from a nearby village named 
 Kuks, and a young servant from the Knobelsdorf 
 household whose name I don't now remember. 
 There were seven of them in all, and they started 
 — two or three on horseback and the rest in sleighs 
 — on the second day after Christmas. Four or 
 five of the party carried shot-guns, and they were 
 accompanied by a small pack of hunting dogs. 
 As they drove out of the courtyard, about eight 
 o'clock in the morning, Knobelsdorf s youngest 
 daughter, who kept house for him, waved good-by 
 to him from the veranda with her handkerchief 
 and cried: 'Father! Don't hunt until you get 
 too tired, and be sure to put your heavy cloak 
 around you when you sit down to lunch.' 
 
 ^'During the earlier part of the day the hunters 
 were not very successful in finding game, and 
 after taking lunch beside a frozen brook in the 
 woods they agreed to separate, Knobelsdorf, with 
 his servant, the guide Kuks, and one of the Ur- 
 banchik brothers, taking a westerly course, while 
 Zhulkovski, Shamborski, and the other Urban- 
 chik brother went to the eastward. In order 
 that the two parties might keep in touch it was 
 agreed that each should fire a shot occasionally, 
 whether any game were found or not. Shortly 
 after parting from Knobelsdorf the second party 
 
 245 
 
A SACKILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 came upon the fresh track of a fox. The dogs 
 took it up eagerly and followed it two or three 
 versts to the edge of the forest, where it ended at 
 a hole in the foundation of an old log church or 
 chapel which had been abandoned fifteen or 
 twenty years before and had fallen into complete 
 decay. One of the dogs wormed his way into the 
 hole and under the plank floor of the building. 
 His excited barking showed that the fox was 
 there, but the animal had apparently taken 
 refuge in a place where there was so little room 
 that the dog could neither get at him nor drive 
 him out. After waiting a while the hunters went 
 into the chapel, the door of which was secured 
 only by a wooden bar. By the dim light which 
 came in through cracks in the boarded windows 
 they could see that the building was practically 
 dismantled, and that its floor was covered with 
 snow, which had blown in through openings in 
 the half-decayed roof. Locating the fox approx- 
 imately by the sound of the dog's barking, the 
 hunters cleared away the snow and tried to 
 frighten him out by stamping over his head ; but 
 the fox was more afraid of the dog than he was 
 of the noise, and would not leave the place where 
 he was apparently safe from attack. The hunt- 
 ers then went outside the chapel and tried by 
 
 246 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 voice and whistle to recall the dog ; but he would 
 not come. 
 
 '' ^Let 's go in and take up a plank in the floor/ 
 suggested Urbanchik. ^In that way we can at 
 least get the dog. We don't want to leave him 
 there.' 
 
 "This seemed to be a practical suggestion, and, 
 returning to the interior, they removed a plank 
 in 'the half-decayed floor, with the intention of 
 taking out the dog. In so doing, however, they 
 liberated both fox and dog, and the fox came 
 first. Acting, probably, on the impulse of the 
 moment, Zhulkovski fired at him, and, as the dis- 
 tance was short, the charge of rabbit-shot killed 
 him on the spot. 
 
 ^^Late in the afternoon the hunters reassembled 
 at the place where they had left the sleighs, and 
 all went home together, none imagining for a mo- 
 ment that the shooting of a fox within the walls 
 of an old, abandoned, half-ruined chapel was an 
 act of sacrilege which might have tragic conse- 
 quences. 
 
 "Some days later a Russian peasant who hap- 
 pened to be passing the chapel saw the tracks of 
 the hunting party in the snow, and, upon going 
 into the building to investigate, found blood in 
 the place where the fox had been killed. 
 
 247 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 Through his report, or through the talk of the 
 hunters themselves, who made no secret of the in- 
 cident, the sacrilegious violation of an Orthodox 
 Russian church by Polish heretics became known 
 to the ecclesiastical authorities, and, seeing an 
 opportunity to show their power and punish the 
 enemies of the true faith, they took it up. They 
 met at first with very little encouragement. The 
 local police officials made an investigation, but, 
 finding no evidence of criminal intent, and re- 
 garding the matter as a trivial one, they dis- 
 missed the case. Complaint was then made to the 
 district commander [zemsM nachalnik], but he 
 seemed to be indifferent to it and declared that he 
 had no jurisdiction. Then the case was appar- 
 ently dropped, but a year or two later a new dis- 
 trict commander was appointed, and a second 
 complaint was laid before him. He made in- 
 quiry into the circumstances, and apparently sat- 
 isfied himself that the matter was not important 
 enough to deserve serious attention. At any 
 rate, he declined to take action upon the evidence 
 presented to him. By this time, the incident had 
 come to the knowledge of the Black Hundreds, 
 and they, supported by the infiuence of Father 
 Yakubovich, a fanatical Russian priest who rep- 
 resented that district in the Duma, and the en- 
 
 248 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 couragement and sympathy of Bishop Michael, 
 another intolerant and vindictive ecclesiastic, 
 prevailed upon the investigating magistrate and 
 the procurator in the district town of Mozyr to 
 take the ^sacrilege case' up. This was in the 
 latter part of 1909. The ^nationalistic' policy of 
 Premier Stolypin and the Czar was then the 
 strongest influence in Russia, and local officials 
 everywhere were striving to win the approbation 
 of the ^higher spheres' by harrying the heretics 
 and aliens, and thus showing their devotion to 
 the Church and the Crown. The investigating 
 magistrate in Mozyr decided that there was evi- 
 dence enough to justify prosecution, and the pro- 
 curator drew up an indictment charging all of 
 the hunters with sacrilegious violation of a 
 church." 
 
 "But why all ?" I inquired. "According to your 
 story Knobelsdorf and the members of his party 
 did not participate in the crime, nor even go near 
 the chapel." 
 
 "That 's true," replied the young lawyer, "but 
 according to the theory of the prosecution 
 Knobelsdorf deliberately planned the act of sac- 
 rilege, and organized the hunting party for the 
 express purpose of desecrating a Russian place 
 of worship." 
 
 249 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 "But that^s still more preposterous/' I said. 
 "The hunters were led to the chapel by the track 
 of a fox. How could Knobelsdorf know in ad- 
 vance that a fox on that particular day would 
 run under that particular building?" 
 
 "He could n't/' replied the lawyer, "unless he 
 had an understanding with the fox. But the 
 priests avoided that difficulty by contending that 
 although the fox was not a particeps criminiSy he 
 did, nevertheless, give Knobelsdorf an opportun- 
 ity to commit sacrilege by digging his hole under 
 the floor of that particular building. Their the- 
 ory was that Knobelsdorf, who lived fifteen versts 
 from the chapel, discovered in some way that a 
 fox had a hole under it. This suggested to him 
 the idea that he might show his contempt for 
 the Russians and their religion by organizing a 
 hunting party, breaking into the chapel, tearing 
 up the floor, digging out the fox, and shooting 
 him in the very place where Orthodox believers 
 had knelt, prayed and worshiped. You see, the 
 priests had to charge premeditation and conspir- 
 acy in order to implicate Knobelsdorf at all, be- 
 cause he was not with the party that entered the 
 chapel; he was chasing rabbits three or four 
 versts away. But, besides that, Russian law 
 makes a discrimination between crimes com- 
 
 250 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 mitted thoughtlessly, or inadvertently, and 
 crimes committed with deliberate intention. 
 For the latter the punishment is much more se- 
 vere, and the priests and the Black Hundreds did 
 not intend that the aliens and heretics should be 
 let off with a fine or a few days' imprisonment." 
 
 "Were all of the hunting party Poles and Cath- 
 olics ?'' I inquired. 
 
 "No,'' he replied; "two of them — the servant 
 and the guide — were Orthodox White Russian 
 peasants, who would not be likely to enter into a 
 conspiracy to dishonor their own religion. But 
 that didn't make any difference. The priests 
 and the Black Hundreds were ready to sacrifice 
 two Orthodox believers, if necessary, in order to 
 strike successfully at five heretical Poles ; so they 
 accused them all. 
 
 "With the indictment and arrest of Knobels- 
 dorf and his companions my connection with the 
 story begins. I was then only an assistant advo- 
 cate [pomoshnik prisazhni poverenni] but I 
 helped to prepare the defense. None of us 
 thought at that time that the case could possibly 
 have serious consequences. It seemed perfectly 
 evident that there was neither premeditation nor 
 conspiracy, and that the shooting of the fox in 
 the old, abandoned, half-ruined chapel was the 
 
 251 
 
X SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 result partly of accident, and partly of thought- 
 lessness and excitement. But we soon discov- 
 ered that there was a determination on the part 
 of priests and Court to convict the prisoners of 
 premeditated sacrilege without reference to facts 
 or probabilities. 
 
 "The trial, which began in the Minsk Circuit 
 Court at Mozyr on the 2nd of June, 1910, was 
 held before a jury, but with closed doors. Five 
 Russian priests were present, ostensibly as wit- 
 nesses; but the application of a Polish Catholic 
 priest for admission was denied. The public, of 
 course, was excluded, with the exception of three 
 or four near relatives of the accused. The pro- 
 curator was assisted by B. V. Mkolski, a Black 
 Hundred advocate from St. Petersburg, who had 
 a reputation for oratory and who was supposed 
 to represent particularly the ecclesiastical 
 authorities of the diocese. The whole case 
 turned, of course, on the interpretation given to 
 the facts. Zhulkovski, Shamborski, and Urban- 
 chik admitted the killing of the fox in the chapel, 
 but said that it was an impulsive and unpremed- 
 itated act, and that the chapel seemed to them to 
 be an abandoned and half-ruined building which 
 had no more sacredness than the forest around it. 
 Knobelsdorf and his companions declared that 
 
 252 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 they were several versts away when the other 
 party came upon the fox tracks, and that they 
 knew nothing of the killing until they were in- 
 formed of it after the two parties had come to- 
 gether. The procurator, on the other hand, con- 
 tended that Knobelsdorf and his Catholic asso- 
 ciates had artfully contrived the whole scheme 
 six months prior to its execution, with the delib- 
 erate intention of desecrating an Orthodox place 
 of worship and thus showing their contempt for 
 the true faith. The heretics, he said, not only 
 killed the fox in the very shadow of God's altar, 
 but pierced with twenty-two shot-holes a portrait 
 of the Savior which was hanging on the wall. He 
 admitted that the chapel was old and somewhat 
 out of repair, but he denied that it had been aban- 
 doned. At his request, the jurors were taken to 
 the sacred edifice, and there were shown not only 
 the pierced portrait of the Savior, but a cross and 
 a copy of the New Testament which were lying 
 on the altar. These things were supposed to 
 prove that the chapel was at least in occasional 
 use as a place of worship. 
 
 "We found, some weeks later, a Russian peas- 
 ant who affirmed under oath that the cross and 
 the New Testament were placed on the altar just 
 before the inspection, and that he accompanied 
 
 253 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 the priest who carried them there. Unfortu- 
 nately we did not get this testimony in time to 
 use it at the trial. I have no doubt myself that 
 the pierced portrait of the Savior was also manu- 
 factured and put in place in order to make an 
 impression on the devout peasant jury, because 
 shot fired at a fox on the floor could not possibly 
 pierce a canvas portrait hanging at a height of 
 six feet against the wall. 
 
 "I need not go further into the details of the 
 trial. Nikolski, the oratorical advocate from St. 
 Petersburg, wept, beat his breast, and implored 
 the jury to punish men who were capable of 
 desecrating God's altar and firing shot into the 
 face of the blessed Redeemer, while the Presiding 
 Judge, after ruling strongly against the defense 
 at every opportunity, closed his charge to the 
 jury in these words : 
 
 " ^If, in spite of all these proofs, you return a 
 verdict of acquittal, it will show that this Court 
 disregards the intention of the Supreme Author- 
 ity' [the Czar] , Vhich was to create a tribunal of 
 equity and justice. A court that showed such 
 disrespect would not only be a farce, but would 
 be injurious and dangerous, because it would 
 increase by its verdicts of acquittal the num- 
 ber of unpunished crimes.' 
 
 254 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 "In view of the biased tendency of the whole 
 charge, and the flagrant illegality of its conclud- 
 ing sentences, counsel for the defense took formal 
 exceptions and requested the Presiding Judge to 
 note them in a protocol as the ground for a pos- 
 sible appeal. They were asked to put their ob- 
 jections in writing, and they did so. 
 
 "Half an hour later the jury came in with a 
 verdict which affirmed the guilt of all the accused 
 without exception. The Court thereupon sen- 
 tenced five of them to penal servitude : Knobels- 
 dorf for eight years, and the others for periods 
 ranging from two to six years, with deprivation 
 of all civil rights, and forced colonization at the 
 expiration of their respective penal terms. 
 Mercy was shown only to the two Orthodox 
 White Russian peasants, who were let off with 
 two years of simple imprisonment. 
 
 "Counsel for the condemned men carried the 
 case at once to the Governing Senate [the Rus- 
 sian Supreme Court], where it was heard, with 
 closed doors, on the 12th of August, 1910.^ It 
 
 1 Closing the doors to reporters and the public at the 
 hearing of a case in the Senate on appeal is very excep- 
 tional. It has occurred only twice in recent years. The 
 only outsiders admitted at the hearing of the Knobelsdorf 
 appeal were Bishop Michael, the intolerant ecclesiastic from 
 the Minsk diocese, and a representative from the "Novoe 
 
 255 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 was tlien discovered that the Presiding Judge of 
 the Minsk Circuit Court had omitted from the 
 record both his charge to the jury and the excep- 
 tions of the defense based upon it. The Senate 
 therefore dismissed the appeal on the ground 
 that there was nothing in the record to show ille- 
 gality in the lower court's procedure. 
 
 "Knobelsdorf s daughter then wrote a piteous 
 letter to Leo Belmont, editor of the Wolni Slovo, 
 of Warsaw, begging him to intercede in her 
 father's behalf. Belmont, in turn, addressed a 
 letter to Premier Stolypin, requesting the latter 
 to investigate the case, and to support any appli- 
 cation that might be made to the Czar for par- 
 don. No notice was ever taken of the communi- 
 cation. It was then that I finally decided to get 
 out of Russia. It did not seem to me to be a field 
 in which a Polish lawyer was likely to succeed or 
 be happy. The Knobelsdorf case was not a mis- 
 carriage of justice in the ordinary meaning of 
 those words; it was a prostitution of justice in 
 the interest of religious fanaticism and political 
 hatred. I did not care to practise my profession 
 or even to live any longer in a country where such 
 ^nightmare cases' are not infrequent, and where 
 
 Vremya," the well-known reactionary journal in St. Peters- 
 burg.— G. K. 
 
 256 
 
A SACRILEGIOUS FOX HUNT 
 
 even the courts are used by the ruling class and 
 the dominant Church as a. means of sending into 
 penal servitude those whom they choose to re- 
 gard as enemies of God and the Czar." ^ 
 
 2 I have taken no liberties with the essential facts of this 
 story. The whole narrative is true and all of the names 
 are real. On the 26th of September, 1913 — only four 
 months ago — his Majesty the Czar, in consideration of 
 Knobelsdorf's age and health, graciously remitted the unex- 
 pired part of his penal term. He was then nearly seventy- 
 four years of age, and had been a hard-labor convict about 
 three years and a half (The "Reitch," St. Petersburg, Sep- 
 tember 27, 1913). In commenting upon the prisoner's re- 
 lease, the eminent jurist and publicist Vladimir Nabokof 
 said in a signed article : "The Knobelsdorf case makes one 
 of the blackest and most melancholy pages in the history of 
 Russian justice." (The "Reitch," St. Petersburg, October 
 5, 1913.)— G. K. 
 
 257 
 
NAPOLEONDEE 
 
IX 
 NAPOLEONDER ^ 
 
 ^ A LEGEND OF THE RUSSIAN PEASANTS 
 
 Transcribed by Alexander Amphiteatrof 
 Translated by George Kennan 
 
 LONG ago — but not so very long ago, our 
 grandfathers remember it — the Lord God 
 wanted to punish the people of the world for 
 their wickedness. So he began to think how and 
 by what means he could punish them, and he 
 called a council of his angels and archangels to 
 talk about it. Says the archangel Michael to the 
 Lord God, ^^Shake them up, the recreants, with 
 an earthquake.'' 
 
 "We've tried that," says the Lord God. 
 "Once upon a time we jolted to pieces Sodom and 
 Gomorrah, but it didn't teach them anything. 
 Since then pretty much all the towns have be- 
 come Sodoms and Gomorrahs." 
 
 1 The Russian peasant's name for Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 The final syllable, "der," has perhaps been added because to 
 the ear of the peasant "Napoleon" sounds clipped and in- 
 complete, as "Alexan" would sound to us without the "der." 
 
 261 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 "How about famine?" says the archangel 
 Gabriel. 
 
 "It would be too bad for the babies/' replies the 
 Lord God. "Famine would kill the babies ; and, 
 besides that, the cattle must have food — they 're 
 not to blame." 
 
 "Drown them with a flood/' suggests Raphael. 
 
 "Clean impossible !" says the Lord God. "Be- 
 cause, in the first place, I took an oath once that 
 there should be no more floods, and I set the rain- 
 bow in the sky for an assurance. In the second 
 place, the rascally sinners have become cunning ; 
 they '11 get on steamboats and sail all over the 
 flood." 
 
 Then all the archangels were perplexed and be- 
 gan to screw about in their seats, trying to invent 
 or think of some calamity that would bring the 
 wicked human race to its senses and stir up its 
 conscience. But they had been accustomed, time 
 out of mind, to do good rather than evil ; they had 
 forgotten all about the wickedness of the world, 
 and they could n't think of a single thing that 
 would be of any use. 
 
 Then suddenly up comes Ivan-angel, a simple- 
 minded soul whom the Lord God had appointed 
 to look after the Russian muzhiks. He comes up 
 and reports : "Lord, Satan is outside there, ask- 
 
 262 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 ing for you. He does n't dare to come in, because 
 he smells bad; ^ so he 's waiting in the entry." 
 
 Then the Lord God was rejoiced. "Call Satan 
 in!" he ordered. "I know that rogue perfectly 
 well, and he has come in the very nick of time. A 
 scamp like that will be sure to think of some- 
 thing." 
 
 Satan came in. His face was as black as 
 tanned calfskin, his voice was hoarse, and a long 
 tail hung down from under his overcoat. 
 
 "If you so order," he says, "I '11 distribute your 
 calamities for you with my own hands." 
 
 "Go ahead with your distribution," says the 
 Lord God ; "nobody shall hinder you." 
 
 "Will you permit me," Satan says, "to bring 
 about an invasion of foreigners?" 
 
 The Lord God shook his finger at Satan and 
 cried: "Is that all you can think of? And you 
 so wise !" 
 
 "Excuse me," Satan says. "Why does n't my 
 plan show wisdom?" 
 
 "Because," replies the Lord God, "you propose 
 to afflict the people with war, and war is just 
 what they want. They 're all the time fighting 
 among themselves, one people with another, and 
 that 's the very thing I want to punish them for." 
 
 2 That is, with the sulphurous odor of hell. — G. K, 
 
 263 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 "Yes/' says Satan, "they're greedy for war, 
 but that 's only because they have never yet seen 
 a real warrior. Send them a regular conqueror, 
 and they '11 soon drop their tails between their 
 legs and cry, ^Have mercy, Lord — save us from 
 the man of blood !' " 
 
 The Lord God was surprised. "Why do you 
 say, my little brother, that the people have never 
 seen a real warrior? The Czar Herod was a con- 
 queror; the Czar Alexander subdued a wonder- 
 ful lot of people; Ivan-Czar destroyed Kazan; 
 Mamai-Czar, the furious, came with all his 
 hordes ; and the Czar Peter, and the great fighter 
 Anika — how many more conquerors do you 
 want?" 
 
 "I want Napoleonder," says Satan. 
 
 "Napoleonder !" cries the Lord God. "Who's 
 he? Where did he come from?" 
 
 "He 's a certain little man," Satan says, "whO' 
 may not be wise enough to hurt, but he 's terribly 
 fierce in his habits." 
 
 The Lord God said to the archangel Gabriel — 
 "Look in the Book of Life, Gabriel, and see if 
 we've got Naj)oleonder written down." 
 
 The archangel looked and looked, but he 
 could n't look up any such person. 
 
 "There is n't any kind of Napoleonder in the 
 
 264 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 Book," he says. "Satan is a liar. We have n't 
 got Napoleonder written down anywhere." 
 
 Then Satan replies: "It isn't strange that 
 you can't find Napoleonder in the Book of Life, 
 because you write in that Book only the names of 
 those who were born of human fathers and 
 mothers, and who have navels. Napoleonder 
 never had a father or a mother, and, moreover, 
 he has n't any navel— and that 's so surprising 
 that you might exhibit him, for money." 
 
 The Lord God was greatly astonished. "How 
 did your Napoleonder ever get into the world?" 
 
 he says. 
 
 "In this way," Satan replies. "I made him, 
 as a doll, just for amusement, out of sand. At 
 that very time, you. Lord, happened to be wash- 
 ing your holy face, and, not being careful, you let 
 a few drops of the water of life splash over. 
 They fell from heaven right exactly on Napo- 
 leonder's head, and he immediately took breath 
 and became a man. He is living now, not very 
 near nor very far away, on the island of Buan, 
 in the middle of the ocean-sea. There is a little 
 less than a verst of land in the island, and Napo- 
 leonder lives there and watches geese. Night 
 and day he looks after the geese, without eating, 
 or drinking, or sleeping, or smoking; and his 
 
 265 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 only thought is — how to conquer the whole 
 world.'' 
 
 The Lord God thought and thought, and then 
 he ordered, "Bring him to me/' 
 
 Satan at once brought Napoleonder into the 
 bright heaven. The Lord God looked at him, and 
 saw that he was a military man with shining but- 
 tons. 
 
 "I have heard, Napoleonder," says the Lord 
 God, "that you want to conquer the whole 
 world." 
 
 "Exactly so," replies Napoleonder; "that's 
 what I want very much to do." 
 
 "And have you thought," says the Lord God, 
 "that when you go forth to conquer you will 
 crush many peoples and shed rivers of blood?" 
 
 "That's all the same to me," says Napoleon- 
 der ; "the important thing for me is — how can I 
 subdue the whole world?" 
 
 "And will you not feel pity for the killed, the 
 wounded, the burned, the ruined, and the dead?" 
 
 "Not in the least," says Napoleonder. "Why 
 should I feel pity? I don't like pity. So far as 
 I can remember, I was never sorry for anybody 
 or anything in my life, and I never shall be." 
 
 Then the Lord God turns to the angels and 
 says, "Messrs. Angels, this seems to be the very 
 
 266 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 fellow for our business." Then, to Napoleonder, 
 he says : ^^Satan was perfectly right. You are 
 worthy to be the instrument of my wrath, be- 
 cause a pitiless conqueror is worse than earth- 
 quake, famine, or deluge. Go back to the earth, 
 Napoleonder ; I turn over to you the whole world, 
 and through you the whole world shall be pun- 
 ished.'' 
 
 Napoleonder says : ^^Give me armies and 
 luck, and I '11 do my best." 
 
 Then the Lord God says, "Armies you shall 
 have, and luck you shall have ; and so long as you 
 are merciless, you shall never be defeated in bat- 
 tle ; but remember that the moment you begin to 
 feel sorry for the shedding of blood— -of your own 
 people or of others — that moment your power 
 will end. From that moment your enemies will 
 defeat you, and you shall finally be made a pris- 
 oner, be put into chains, and be sent back to Buan 
 Island to watch geese. Do you understand?" 
 
 "Exactly so," says Napoleonder; "I under- 
 stand, and I will obey. I shall never feel pity." 
 
 Then the angels and the archangels began to 
 say to God : "Lord, why have you laid upon him 
 such a frightful command? If he goes forth so, 
 without mercy, he will kill every living soul on 
 earth — he will leave none for seed." 
 
 267 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 "Be silent!" replied the Lord God. "He will 
 not conquer long. He is altogether too brave; 
 because he fears neither others nor himself. He 
 thinks he will keep from pity, and does not know 
 that pity, in the human heart, is stronger than all 
 else, and that not a man living is wholly without 
 it.'' 
 
 "But," the archangels say, "he is not a man — 
 he is made of sand." 
 
 The Lord God replies : "Then you think he 
 did n't receive a soul, when my water of life fell 
 on his head?" 
 
 Napoleonder gathered together a great army, 
 speaking twelve languages, and went forth to 
 war. He conquered the Germans, he conquered 
 the Turks, he subdued the Swedes and the Poles. 
 He reaped as he marched, and left bare the coun- 
 try through which he passed. And all the time 
 he remembers the condition of success — pity for 
 none. He cuts off heads, burns villages, out- 
 rages women, and tramples children under his 
 horses' hoofs. He desolates the whole Moham- 
 medan kingdom — and still he is not sated. 
 Finally he marches on a Christian country — on 
 Holy Russia. 
 
 In Russia, then, the Czar was Alexander the 
 Blessed — the same Czar who stands now on the 
 
 268 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 top of tlie column in Petersburg-town and blesses 
 the people with a cross, and that's why he is 
 called ^^the Blessed." 
 
 When he saw Napoleonder marching against 
 him with twelve languages, Alexander the 
 Blessed felt that the end of Russia was near. 
 He called together his generals and field-marshals 
 and said to them, "Messrs. Generals and Field- 
 marshals, how can I check this Napoleonder? 
 He is pressing us terribly hard." 
 
 The generals and field-marshals reply, "We 
 can't do anything, your Majesty, to stop Na- 
 poleonder, because God has given him a 
 word." 
 
 "What kind of a word?" 
 
 "This kind — ^Bonaparty.' " 
 
 "But what does ^Bonaparty' mean, and why is 
 a single word so terrible?" 
 
 "It means, your Majesty, six hundred and 
 sixty-six — the number of the Beast ^ — and it is 
 terrible because when Napoleonder sees, in a bat- 
 tle, that the enemy is very brave, that his own 
 strength is not enough, and that his own men are 
 falling fast,^ he immediately conjures with this 
 
 3 A reference to the Beast of the Apocalypse. "The num- 
 ber of the beast is the number of a man ; and his number is 
 Six hundred threescore and six." Rev. xiii, 18. 
 
 4 Literally, "lying down with their bones." 
 
 269 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 same word, 'Bonaparty/ and at that instant — as 
 soon as the word is pronounced — all the soldiers 
 that have ever served under him and have died 
 for him on the field of battle come back from be- 
 yond the grave. He leads them afresh against 
 the enemy, as if they were alive, and nothing can 
 stand against them, because they are a ghostly 
 force, not an army of this world." 
 
 Alexander the Blessed grew sad; but, after 
 thinking a moment, he said : "Messrs. Generals 
 and Field-marshals, we Russians are a people of 
 more than ordinary courage. We have fought 
 with all nations, and never yet, before any of 
 them, have we laid our faces in the dust. If God 
 has brought us, at last, to fight with corpses — 
 His holy will be done! We will go against the 
 dead !'' 
 
 So he led his army to the field of Kulikova, 
 and there waited for the miscreant Napoleonder. 
 And soon afterward Napoleonder, the evil one, 
 sends him an envoy with a paper saying, "Sub- 
 mit, Alexander Blagoslovenni, and I will show 
 you favor above all others." 
 
 But Alexander the Blessed was a proud man, 
 who held fast his self-respect. He would not 
 speak to the envoy, but he took the paper that the 
 envoy had brought and drew on it an insulting 
 
 270 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 picture, witli the words, "Is this what you want?" 
 and sent it back to Napoleonder. 
 
 Then they fought and slashed one another on 
 the field of Kulikova, and, in a short time or a 
 long time, our men began to overcome the forces 
 of the enemy. One by one they shot or cut down 
 all of Napoleonder's field-marshals, and finally 
 dr6w near to Napoleonder himself. 
 
 "Your time has come !'' they cry to him. "Sur- 
 render !'' 
 
 But the villain sits there on his horse, rolling 
 his goggle eyes like an owl, and grinning. 
 
 "Wait a minute,'' he says coolly. "Don't be in 
 too big a hurry. A tale is short in telling, but 
 the deed is long a-doing." 
 
 Then he pronounces his conjuring word, 
 "Bonaparty" — six hundred and sixty-six — the 
 number of the Beast. 
 
 Instantly there is a great rushing sound, and 
 the earth is shaken as if by an earthquake. Our 
 soldiers look — and drop their hands. In all 
 parts of the field appear threatening battalions, 
 with bayonets shining in the sun, torn flags wav- 
 ing over terrible hats of fur, and tramp ! tramp ! 
 tramp ! on come the thousands of phantom men, 
 with faces yellow as camomile, and empty holes 
 under their bushy eyebrows. 
 
 271 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 Alexander, the Blessed Czar, was stricken with 
 terror. Terror-stricken were all his generals and 
 field-marshals. Terror-stricken also was the 
 whole Russian army. Shaking w^ith fear, they 
 wavered at the advance of the dead, gave way 
 suddenly in a panic, and finally fled in whatever 
 direction their eyes happened to look. 
 
 The brigand Napoleonder sat on his horse, 
 holding his sides with laughter, and shouted, 
 "Aha! My old men are not to your taste! I 
 thought so ! This is n't like playing knuckle- 
 bones with children and old women ! Well, then, 
 my honorable Messrs. Dead Men, I have never yet 
 felt pity for any one, and you needn't show 
 mercy to my enemies. Deal with them after your 
 own fashion.'' 
 
 "As long as it is so," replied the corpse-soldiers, 
 "we are your faithful servants always." 
 
 Our men fled from Kulikova-field to Pultava- 
 field ; from Pultava-field to the famous still-water 
 Don; and from the peaceful Don to the field of 
 Borodino, under the very walls of Mother Mos- 
 cow. And as our men came to these fields, one 
 after another, they turned their faces again and 
 again toward Napoleonder, and fought him with 
 such fierceness that the brigand himself was de- 
 
 272 
 
NAPOLEONDEE 
 
 lighted with them. "God save us!" he ex- 
 claimed; "what soldiers these Russians are! I 
 have not seen such men in any other country." 
 
 But^ in spite of the bravery of our troops, we 
 were unable to stop Napoleonder's march; be- 
 cause we had no word with which to meet his 
 word. In every battle we pound him, and drive 
 him back, and get him in a slip-noose; but just as 
 we are going to draw it tight and catch him, the 
 filthy, idolatrous thief bethinks himself and 
 shouts "Bonaparty !" Then the dead men crawl 
 out of their graves in full uniform, set their teeth, 
 &x their eyes upon their officers, and charge! 
 And where they pass, the grass withers and the 
 stones crack. And our men are so terrified by 
 these unclean bodies that they can't fight against 
 them at all. As soon as they hear that accursed 
 word "Bonaparty," and see the big fur hats and 
 the yellow faces of the dead men, they throw 
 down their guns and rush into the woods to hide. 
 
 "Say what you will, Alexander Blagoslovenni," 
 they cry, "for corpses we are not prepared." 
 
 Alexander the Blessed reproached his men, and 
 said, "Wait a little, brothers, before you run 
 away. Let 's exert ourselves a little more. Dog 
 that he is, he can't beat us always. God has set 
 a limit for him somewhere. To-day is his, to- 
 
 273 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 morrow may be his, but after a. while the luck 
 perhaps will turn.'^ 
 
 Then he went to the old hermit-monks in the 
 caves of Kiev and on the island of Valaam, and 
 bowed himself at the feet of all the archiman- 
 drites and metropolitans, saying, ^Tray for us, 
 Holy Fathers, and beseech the Lord God to turn 
 away his wrath ; because we have n't strength 
 enough to defend you from this Napoleonder.'' 
 
 Then the old hermit-monks and the archiman- 
 drites and the metropolitans all prayed, with 
 tears in their eyes, to the Lord God, and pros- 
 trated themselves until their knees were all black 
 and blue and there were big bumps on their fore- 
 heads. With tearful eyes, the whole Russian 
 people, too, from the Czar to the last beggar, 
 prayed God for mercy and help. And they took 
 the sacred icon of the Holy Mother of God of 
 Smolensk, the pleader for the grief -stricken, and 
 carried it to the famous field of Borodino, and, 
 bowing down before it, with tearful eyes, they 
 cried, "O Most Holy Mother of God, thou art our 
 life and our hope ! Have mercy on us, and inter- 
 cede for us soon." 
 
 And down the dark face of the icon, from un- 
 der the setting of pearls in the silver frame, 
 
 274 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 trickled big tears. And all the army and all 
 God's people saw the sacred icon crying. It was 
 a terrible thing to see, but it was comforting. 
 
 Then the Lord God heard the wail of the Rus- 
 sian people and the prayers of the Holy Virgin, 
 the Mother of God of Smolensk, and he cried out 
 to the angels and the archangels, "The hour of 
 my wrath has passed. The people have suffered 
 enough for their sins and have repented of their 
 wickedness. Napoleonder has destroyed nations 
 enough. It 's time for him to learn mercy. 
 Who of you, my servants, will go down to the 
 earth — who will undertake the great work of 
 softening the conqueror's heart?" 
 
 The older angels and the archangels did n't 
 want to go. "Soften his heart!" they cried. 
 "He is made of sand — he has n't any navel — he 
 is pitiless — we 're afraid of him !" 
 
 Then Ivan-angel stepped forward and said, 
 "I '11 go." 
 
 At that very time Napoleonder had just gained 
 a great victory and was riding over the field of 
 battle on a greyhound of a horse. He trampled 
 with his horse's hoofs on the bodies of the dead, 
 without pity or regret, and the only thought in 
 his mind was, "As soon as I have done with Rus- 
 
 275 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 sia, I '11 march against the Chinese and the white 
 Arabs; and then I shall have conquered exactly 
 the whole world.'' 
 
 But just at that moment he heard some one 
 calling "Napoleonder ! O Napoleonder !" He 
 looked around, and not far away, under a bush 
 on a little mound, he saw a wounded Russian 
 soldier, who was beckoning to him with his hand. 
 Napoleonder was surprised. What could a 
 wounded Russian soldier want of him? He 
 turned his horse and rode to the spot. 
 
 "What do you want?" he asked the soldier. 
 
 "I don't want anything of you," the wounded 
 soldier replied, "except an answer to one ques- 
 tion. Tell me, please, what have you killed me 
 for?" 
 
 Napoleonder was still more surprised. In the 
 many years of his conquering he had wounded 
 and killed a multitude of men ; but he had never 
 been asked that question before. And yet this 
 Russian soldier did n't look as if he had anything 
 more than ordinary intelligence. He was just 
 a young, boyish fellow, with light flaxen hair and 
 blue eyes — evidently a new recruit from some 
 country village. 
 
 "What do you mean — ^killed you for'?" said 
 Napoleonder. "I had to kill you. When you 
 
 276 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 went into the army, did n't you take an oath that 
 you would die?'' 
 
 "I know what oath I took, Napoleonder, and 
 I 'm not making a fuss about dying ; but you — 
 why did you kill me?" 
 
 "Why should n't I kill you," said Napoleonder, 
 "when you were the enemy — that is, my foe — 
 Gome out to fight me on the field of Borodino?" 
 
 "Cross yourself, Napoleonder !" said the young 
 soldier. "How could I be your foe, when there 
 has never been any sort of quarrel between us? 
 Until you came into our country, and I was 
 drafted into the army, I had never even heard of 
 you. And here you have killed me — and how 
 many more like me !" 
 
 "I killed," said Napoleonder, "because it was 
 necessary for me to conquer the world." 
 
 "But what have I got to do with your conquer- 
 ing the world?" replied the soldier. "Conquer 
 it, if you want to — I don't hinder — ^but why did 
 you kill me? Has killing me given you the 
 world? The world does n't belong to me. 
 You 're not reasonable, brother Napoleonder. 
 And is it possible that you really think you can 
 conquer the whole world?" 
 
 "I 'm very much of that opinion," replied 
 Napoleonder. 
 
 277 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 The little soldier smiled. "You 're really 
 stupid, Napoleonder/' he said. "I 'm sorry for 
 you. As if it were possible to conquer the whole 
 world !'' 
 
 "I '11 subdue all the kingdoms/' replied Na- 
 poleonder, "and put all peoples in chains, and 
 then I '11 reign as Czar of all the earth." 
 
 The soldier shook his head. "And God?" he 
 inquired. "Will you conquer him?" 
 
 Napoleonder was confused. "No," he finally 
 said. "God's will is over us all ; and in the hol- 
 low of his hand we live." 
 
 "Then what 's the use of your conquering the 
 world?" said the soldier. "God is over all ; there- 
 fore the world won't belong to you, but to him. 
 And you '11 live just so long as he has patience 
 with you, and no longer." 
 
 "I know that as well as you do," said Napole- 
 onder. 
 
 "Well, then," replied the soldier, "if you know 
 it, why don't you reckon with God?" 
 
 Napoleonder scowled. "Don't say such things 
 to me !" he cried. "I 've heard that sancti- 
 monious stuff before. "It 's of no use — you can't 
 fool me — I don't know any such thing as pity." 
 
 "Indeed!" said the soldier, "is it so? Have a 
 care, Napoleonder! You are swaggering too 
 
 278 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 much. Yon lie when yon say a man can live 
 without pity. To have a soul, and to feel com- 
 passion, are one and the same thing. You have 
 a soul, have n't you?" 
 
 ^^Of course I have," replied Napoleonder; "a 
 man can't live without a soul." 
 
 ^^There! you see!" said the soldier; ^^you have 
 a soul and you believe in God. How, then, can 
 you say you don't know any such thing as pity? 
 You do know! And I believe that at this very 
 moment, deep down in your heart, you are mor- 
 tally sorry for me ; only you don't want to show 
 it. Why, then, did you kill me?" 
 
 Napoleonder suddenly became furious. "May 
 the pip seize your tongue, you miscreant! I'll 
 show you how much pity I have for you !" And, 
 drawing a pistol, Napoleonder shot the wounded 
 soldier thr'ough the head. Then, turning to his 
 dead men, he said, "Did you see that?" 
 
 "We saw it," they replied, "and as long as it 
 is so, we are your faithful servants always." 
 
 Napoleonder rode on. 
 
 At last night comes; and Napoleonder is sit- 
 ting alone in his golden tent. His mind is 
 troubled, and he can't understand what it is that 
 seems to be gnawing at his heart. For years he 
 has been at war, and this is the first time such a 
 
 279 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 thing has happened. Never before has his soul 
 been so filled with unrest. And to-morrow morn- 
 ing he must begin another battle — the last ter- 
 rible fight with the Czar Alexander the Blessed, 
 on the field of Borodino. 
 
 ^^Akh !" he thinks, "I '11 show them to-morrow 
 what a leader I am ! I '11 lift the soldiers of the 
 Czar into the air on my lances and trample their 
 bodies under the feet of my horses. I '11 make 
 the Czar himself a prisoner, and I '11 kill or scat- 
 ter the whole Russian people." 
 
 But a voice seemed to whisper in his ear, "And 
 why? why?" 
 
 "I know that trick," he thought. "It 's that 
 same wounded soldier again. All right. I won't 
 give in to him. ^Why? Why?' As if I knew 
 why ! Perhaps if I knew why, I should n't make 
 war." 
 
 He lay down on his bed; but hardly had he 
 closed his eyes when he saw, by his bedside, the 
 wounded soldier — young, fair-faced, blond- 
 haired, with just the first faint shadow of a 
 mustache. His forehead was pale, his lips were 
 livid, his blue eyes were dim, and in his left 
 temple there was a round black hole made by the 
 bullet from his, Napoleonder's, pistol. And the 
 
 280 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 ghastly figure seemed to ask again, ^'Why did you 
 kill me?'' 
 
 Napoleonder turns over and over, from side to 
 side, in Ms bed. He sees that it 's a bad business. 
 He can't get rid of that soldier. And, more than 
 all, he wonders at himself. ^What an extraor- 
 dinary occurrence !" he thinks. "I 've killed mil- 
 lions of people, of all countries and nations, with- 
 out the least misgiving; and now, suddenly, one 
 miserable soldier comes and throws all my ideas 
 into a tangle !" 
 
 Finally Napoleonder got up; but the confine- 
 ment of his golden tent seemed oppressive. He 
 went out into the open air, mounted his horse, 
 and rode away to the place where he had shot to 
 death the vexatious soldier. 
 
 "I 've heard," he said to himself, "that when a 
 dead man appears in a vision, it is necessary to 
 sprinkle earth on the eyes of the corpse. Then 
 he'll lie quiet." 
 
 Napoleonder rides on. The moon is shining 
 brightly, and the bodies of the dead are lying on 
 the battlefield in heaps. Everywhere he sees cor- 
 ruption and smells corruption. 
 
 "And all these," he thought, "I have killed." 
 
 And, wonderful to say, it seems to him as if all 
 
 281 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 the dead men have the same face — a young face 
 with blue eyes, and blond hair, and the faint 
 shadow of a mustache — and they all seem to be 
 looking at him with kindly, pitying eyes, and 
 their bloodless lips move, just a little, as they 
 ask, without anger or reproach, ^^Why? Why?" 
 
 Napoleonder felt a dull, heavy pressure at his 
 heart. He had not spirit enough left to go to the 
 little mound where the body of the dead soldier 
 lay, so he turned his horse and rode back to his 
 tent; and every corpse that he passed seemed to 
 say, "Why? Why?" 
 
 He felt no longer the desire to ride at a gallop 
 over the dead bodies of the Russian soldiers. On 
 the contrary, he picked his way among them care- 
 fully, riding respectfully around the remains of 
 every man who had died with honor on that field 
 of blood ; and now and then he even crossed him- 
 self and said : "Akh, that one ought to have lived ! 
 What a fine fellow that one was ! He must have 
 fought with splendid courage. And I killed him 
 —why?" 
 
 The great conqueror never noticed that his 
 heart was growing softer and warmer, but so it 
 was. He pitied his dead enemies at last, and the 
 evil spirit went away from him, and left him in 
 all respects like other people. 
 
 282 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 The next day came the battle. Napoleonder 
 led his forces, cloud upon cloud, to the field of 
 Borodino; but he was shaking, as if in a chill. 
 His generals and field-marshals looked at him 
 and were filled with dismay. 
 
 '^You ought to take a drink of vodka, Napo- 
 leonder,'' they say; "you don't look like your- 
 self." 
 
 When the Russian troops attacked the hordes 
 of Napoleonder, on the field of Borodino, the 
 soldiers of the great conqueror at once gave way. 
 
 "It's a bad business, Napoleonder," the gen- 
 erals and field-marshals say. "For some reason 
 the Russians are fighting harder to-day than ever. 
 You 'd better call out your dead men." 
 
 Napoleonder shouted at the top of his voice, 
 "Bonaparty!" — six hundred and sixty-six! — the 
 number of the Beast. But, cry as he would, he 
 only frightened the jackdaws. The dead men 
 did n't come out of their graves, nor answer his 
 call. And Napoleonder was left on the field of 
 Borodino alone. All his generals and field-mar- 
 shals had fled, and he sat there alone on his horse, 
 shouting, "Bonaparty ! Bonaparty !" 
 
 Then suddenly there appeared beside him the 
 smooth-faced, blue-eyed, fair-haired Russian re- 
 cruit whom he had killed the day before. And 
 
 283 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 the young soldier said: "It's useless to shout, 
 Napoleonder. Nobody will come. Yesterday 
 you felt sorry for me and for my dead brothers, 
 and because of your pity your corpse-soldiers no 
 longer come at your call. Your power over them 
 is gone." 
 
 Then Napoleonder began to weep and sob, and 
 cried out, "You have ruined me, you wretched, 
 miserable soldier!'' 
 
 But the soldier (who was Ivan-angel, and not a 
 soldier at all) replied: "I have not ruined you, 
 Napoleonder ; I have saved you. If you had gone 
 on in your merciless, pitiless course, there would 
 have been no forgiveness for you, either in this 
 life or in the life to come. Now God has given 
 you time for repentance. In this world you shall 
 be punished, but there, beyond, if you repent of 
 your sins, you shall be forgiven." 
 
 And the angel vanished. 
 
 Then our Don Cossacks fell on Napoleonder, 
 dragged him from his horse, and took him to 
 Alexander the Blessed. Some said : "Napoleon- 
 der ought to be shot !" Others cried : "Send him 
 to Siberia!" But the Lord God softened the 
 heart of Alexander the Blessed, and the merciful 
 Czar would not allow Napoleonder to be shot or 
 sent to Siberia. He ordered that the great con- 
 
 284 
 
NAPOLEONDER 
 
 queror be put into an iron cage, and be carried 
 around and exhibited to the people at country 
 fairs. So Napoleonder was carried from one fair 
 to another for a period of thirty summers and 
 three years— until he had grown quite old. 
 Then, when he was an old man, they sent him to 
 the island of Buan to watch geese. 
 
 285 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
X 
 
 THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 IN the extreme northern part of the Chinese 
 Empire, about one thousand miles from the 
 city of Pekin and an equal distance from the 
 coast of the Pacific, there is a wild, mountainous, 
 densely wooded, and almost trackless region, 
 known to Chinese geographers as Khelun-tsan. 
 It forms a part of the great frontier province of 
 Manchuria, and lies, somewhat in the shape of 
 an equilateral triangle, between the rivers Argun 
 and Amur, which separate it from eastern 
 Siberia on the north, and the rivers Ur-son, 
 Khalga-gol, and Sungari, which bound it on 
 the south. A post-road leads along its southern 
 frontier from Khailar to the capital town of 
 Tsitsikhar, and there is a fringe of Cossack sta- 
 tions and Manchu pickets on the rivers Argun 
 and Amur, which form the other two sides of the 
 triangle; but the vast region bounded by these 
 thin lines of settlement is a wilderness of forests 
 and mountains, traversed only by Tungus or 
 
 289 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 Manchu hunters, and as little known to the Chi- 
 nese who own it as to the Russians whose terri- 
 tory it adjoins. Near the apex of this triangle, 
 between two lateral spurs of the Great Khingan 
 Mountains, there is a deep, wooded valley called 
 the Zhelta, through which flows a shallow tribu- 
 tary of the small Manchurian river Albazikha. 
 It is an insignificant ravine, only ten or fifteen 
 miles in length, and, from a topographical point 
 of view, it does not differ in any essential respect 
 from thousands of other nameless ravines which 
 lie among the wooded mountains of Manchuria 
 and the Trans-Baikal ; but it has a distinction not 
 based upon topography and not dependent upon 
 geographical situation, — a distinction arising 
 out of its relation to human interests and human 
 institutions. In this wild, lonely valley was 
 born, a little more than twelve years ago, the first 
 and only true republic that ever existed on the 
 continent of Asia, and its birthplace was a Tun- 
 gus grave. 
 
 In the year 1883 a Tungus hunter and trapper 
 called Vanka, who spent most of his life roaming 
 through the forests and over the mountains of 
 Manchuria and Transbaikalia, came, with a 
 bundle of furs, to the shop of a merchant named 
 Seredkin, in the little Cossack post of Ignashina 
 
 290 
 
THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 
 
 on the upper Amur, and reported that while dig- 
 ging a grave in the valley of the Zhelta for his 
 mother, who had died during a temporary stay 
 there, he had found, at a depth of three or four 
 feet in the gravelly soil, a number of small flakes 
 and nuggets of yellow metal which had the ap- 
 pearance of gold. He wished the merchant to 
 examine them and tell him what they were worth. 
 Seredkin looked at the specimens, subjected them 
 to a few simple tests, and soon satisfied himself 
 that gold they were. He purchased them at a 
 good price, promised Vanka a suitable reward if 
 he would act as guide to the place where they 
 were found, and immediately made preparations 
 to equip and send into Manchuria a small pros- 
 pecting party, under the direction of a trusted 
 and experienced clerk named Lebedkin. Two or 
 three days later this party crossed the Amur, 
 marched eighteen or twenty miles through the 
 forest to the valley of the Zhelta, and began dig- 
 ging a short distance from the grave in which the 
 Tungus had buried his mother and out of which 
 he had taken the gold. From the very first pan; 
 ful of earth washed they obtained a quarter of a 
 teaspoonful or more of the precious dust, and the 
 deeper they sank their prospecting pits the richer 
 the gravel became. In a dozen or more places, 
 
 291 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 and at various depths ranging from ten to four- 
 teen feet, they found gold in amazing quantities ; 
 and Lebedkin, the chief of the party, became so 
 excited — not to say crazed — by the vision of sud- 
 den wealth that he drank himself to the verge of 
 delirium tremens, and was finally carried back to 
 Ignashina in a state of alcoholic coma and com- 
 plete physical collapse. The laborers who had 
 been digging under his direction thereupon threw 
 off their allegiance tO' their employer, formed 
 themselves into an artel,^ and proceeded to pros- 
 pect and mine on their own joint account and 
 for their own common benefit. 
 
 Seredkin tried to keep the matter a secret 
 while he organized and equipped a second party ; 
 but the news of the discovery of a wonderfully 
 rich gold placer on Chinese territory, only fifteen 
 or twenty miles from the Amur, was too impor- 
 tant and toO' exciting to be either suppressed or 
 concealed. From the village of Ignashina it was 
 carried to the neighboring Cossack post of 
 Pokrofka, from there to Albazin, from Albazin 
 
 1 An artel is a Russian form of labor union, in which from 
 six to fifty or more men unite to do a particular piece of 
 work, or to labor together for a certain specified time. It is 
 virtually a small joint stock company, whose members share 
 equally in the work, expenses, and profits of the enterprise 
 in which they are engaged. 
 
 292 
 
THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 
 
 to Blagoveshcliinsk, and tlien.ce to all parts of 
 eastern Siberia. Before the end of the spring of 
 1884 gold-seekers bound for the new Eldorado 
 were pouring into Ignashina at the rate of one 
 hundred and fifty a day, and the little Cossack 
 settlement was suddenly transformed into a 
 pandemonium of noise, tumult, drunkenness, 
 fighting, and wild, feverish excitement. In vain 
 the Russian authorities at Chita and Blagovesh- 
 chinsk tried to stop the frenzied rush of miners 
 and prospectors into Manchuria, first by threat- 
 ening them with arrest, and then by forbidding 
 station-masters on the government post-roads to 
 furnish them with transportation. The tide of 
 migration could no more be stopped in this way 
 than the current of the Amur could be arrested 
 or diverted by means of a paper dam. The ex- 
 cited gold-seekers paid no attention whatever to 
 official proclamations or warnings, and if they 
 could not obtain horses and vehicles at the post- 
 stations, they hired telegas ^ from the muzhiks, 
 or canoes from the Amur Cossacks, and came into 
 Ignashina, by land and by water, in ever increas- 
 ing numbers. As fast as they could obtain food 
 and equipment they crossed the Amur in skiffs, 
 
 2 Small, springless, four-wheeled carts, drawn usually by 
 a single horse. 
 
 293 
 
THE ZHELTUGA EEPUBLIC 
 
 shouldered their picks, shovels, and bread-bags, 
 and plunged on foot into the wild, gloomy forests 
 of Manchuria. Before the 1st of September, 
 1884, the Tungus grave in the valley of the Zhelta 
 was surrounded by the tents and log huts of at 
 least three thousand miners ; and a more motley, 
 heterogeneous and lawless horde of vagabonds 
 and adventurers never invaded the Chinese Em- 
 pire. There were wandering Tungus from the 
 mountains of Transbaikalia; runaway Rus- 
 sian laborers from the east- Siberian mines of 
 Butin Brothers, Niemann, and the Zea Company ; 
 Buriats and Mongols from the province of 
 Irkutsk; discharged government clerks and re- 
 tired ispravniks^ from Nerchinsk, Stretinsk, 
 Verkhni Udinsk, and Chita; exiled Polish Jews 
 from the Eussian Pale of Settlement; Chinese 
 laborers and teamsters from Kiakhta and Maima- 
 chin; a few nondescript Koreans, Tatars, and 
 Manchus from the lower Amur ; and finally, more 
 than one thousand escaped convicts — thieves, 
 burglars, highwaymen, and murderers — from the 
 silver-mines of Nerchinsk and the gold-mines of 
 Kara. 
 As the valley of the Zhelta lies outside the lim- 
 
 3 Local officials who act as chiefs of police and magis- 
 trates in a Russian district, 
 
 294 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 its and beyond the jurisdiction of Russia, and is 
 separated by hundreds of miles of trackless wil- 
 derness from the nearest administrative center in 
 China, its invaders were not subject to any 
 authonty nor bound by any law ; and its history, 
 for a time, was little more than a record of quar- 
 reling, claim-jumping, fighting, robbery, and 
 murder. Gradually, however, the better class of 
 Russian miners, impelled by the instinct of asso- 
 ciation and cooperation which is so marked a 
 characteristic of the Slavonic race, began to or- 
 ganize themselves into artels, whose members 
 contributed equally to the common treasury, 
 worked together for the common weal, shared 
 alike in the product of their industry, and de- 
 fended as a body their individual and corporate 
 rights. As these little groups or associations, 
 united by the bond of a common interest, began 
 to grow stronger and more coherent, they took 
 counsel together and drew up a series of regula- 
 tions for the uniform government of the artels 
 and for the better protection of their members. 
 These regulations, however, did not have the 
 force of a constitution, binding upon all citizens 
 of the camp, nor were they intended to take the 
 place of a civil or criminal code. They re- 
 sembled rather, in form and effect, the by-laws of 
 
 295 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 a chartered corporation ; and they had no recog- 
 nized or enforceable validity, outside the limits 
 of the artels that adopted and sanctioned them. 
 In the camp at large, every man who was not a 
 member of an artel defended himself and his 
 property as best he could, without regard to law 
 or authority. For some months after the estab- 
 lishment of the camp there was no law except the 
 law of might, and no recognized authority other 
 than the will of the strongest ; but as the feeling 
 of solidarity, fostered by the artels, gradually 
 permeated the whole mass of the population, an 
 attempt was made to establish something like a 
 general government. The logic of events had 
 convinced both honest men and criminals that 
 unless they secured life and property within the 
 limits of the camp, they were all likely to starve 
 to death in the course of the winter. Traders 
 would not come there with food, and merchants 
 would not open shops there, unless they could be 
 assured of protection for themselves and safety 
 for their goods. Such assurance could be given 
 them only by an organized government, willing 
 and able to enforce the provisions of a penal code. 
 At the suggestion, therefore, of some of the artels, 
 the whole body of miners was invited to assemble 
 
 296 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 in what is known to the Russian peasants as a 
 shhod, a Slavonic variety of the New England 
 town-meeting. At this skliod, which was largely 
 attended, the situation was fully and noisily dis- 
 cussed. Robbery and murder were declared to 
 be crimes of which the camp, as a community, 
 must take cognizance ; a penal code was adopted, 
 providing that robbers should be flogged and 
 murderers put to death; and a committee of 
 safety, consisting of one representative from the 
 artels, one from the escaped convicts, and one 
 from the unattached miners, was appointed to 
 govern the camp, enforce the law, and act gener- 
 ally as the executive arm of the shhod. 
 
 The effect of this action was to diminish, for a 
 time, the frequency of robbery and murder, and 
 greatly to increase the population and promote 
 the prosperity of the camp. The news that a 
 government had been organized and three sta- 
 rosts elected to maintain order and punish 
 crime in the "Chinese California'' soon spread 
 throughout eastern Siberia, and gave a fresh 
 impetus to the tide of migration across the 
 Manchurian frontier. Russian peasant farmers 
 from Transbaikalia— a much better and stead- 
 ier class than the runaway mining laborers— 
 
 297 
 
THE ZHELTUGA EEPUBLIC 
 
 caught tlie gold fever, and started for the camp ; 
 merchants from Nerchinsk, Stretinsk, and Chita 
 sent thither caravans of horses and camels laden 
 with bales of dry goods, hardware, and pro- 
 visions; actors, jugglers, gamblers, musicians, 
 and amusement-purveyors of all sorts from the 
 east-Siberian towns, joined in the universal rush, 
 and before midwinter the gold-placer of Zhel- 
 tuga, as it was then called, had grown into a 
 rough, noisy, turbulent mining-town of more 
 than ^Ye thousand inhabitants. 
 
 To a traveler ascending the Zhelta Kiver from 
 the Amur, in the autumn of 1884, the site of the 
 town presented itself as a nearly level valley- 
 bottom about a quarter of a mile in width, strewn 
 with water-w^orn boulders and heaps of gravel 
 from the pits and trenches of the gold-diggers, 
 and bounded on its northwestern and southeast- 
 ern sides by high hills covered with forests of 
 spruce, pine, and silver birch. In the foreground 
 was a flat, grassy plain, known to the miners as 
 "Pitch-Penny Field,'' where the underlying 
 gravel was not rich enough to pay for working, 
 and where the surface, consequently, had not 
 been much disturbed. From this field stretched 
 away, on the right-hand side of the valley, under 
 the shadow of the mountain, a double line of 
 
 298 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 tents, yurts,* hologans,^ and log houses, to wliich 
 the miners had given the name Millionaire Street, 
 for the reason that it adjoined the richest part of 
 the placer. This street was a mile and a half or 
 more in length, and along it, at short intervals, 
 were scattered the principal shops of the tow^n, 
 each surmounted by a flag; twenty or thirty 
 drinking-saloons with evergreen boughs nailed 
 over their doors; and about a dozen hotels and 
 "houses for arrivers,'^ whose rudely painted sign- 
 boards bore such names as The Assembly, The 
 Marseilles, The Zheltuga, The California, and 
 The Wilderness Hotel. Filling the spaces be- 
 tween the semi-public buildings, on both sides of 
 the narrow, muddy street, stood the shedlike bar- 
 racks of the artels, the flat-roofed, earth-banked 
 yurts of the convicts, and the more carefully 
 built houses of the well-to-do Russian peasants, 
 all made of unhewn logs chinked with moss, and 
 provided with windows of cheap cotton sheeting. 
 But Millionaire Street, although it was the busi- 
 ness and aristocratic quarter of the town, did not 
 by any means comprise the whole of it. On the 
 
 4 Quadrangular log huts, shaped like deeply truncated 
 pyramids, and banked and roofed with sods or earth. 
 
 5 Conical structures of logs, roughly resembling wigwams 
 or tepees, and sometimes mounted on four high posts and 
 reached by a ladder. 
 
 299 
 
THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 
 
 opposite or southeastern side of the valley there 
 was a straggling encampment of skin tents, birch- 
 bark lodges, and wretched hovels, tenanted by 
 poor Chinese, Tungiis, and Buriats, who were em- 
 ployed as day laborers by the artels; and from 
 the southeastern end of Millionaire Street there 
 was a thin, broken line of detached huts and 
 cabins, extending up the Zhelta almost to its 
 source. The camp, as a whole, therefore, occu- 
 pied an area about a quarter of a mile wide and 
 four miles long, with the head of the ravine at 
 one end, Pitch-Penny Field at the other, and a 
 desert of stones, gravel, ditches, flumes, and 
 sluices between. 
 
 At the beginning of the winter of 1884-85, 
 there had been staked out, within the productive 
 limits of the placer, about four hundred claims, 
 more than two-thirds of which were being 
 worked. The stratum of gravel and sand from 
 which the gold was obtained probably formed at 
 one time the bed of the Zhelta Kiver. It lay at 
 an average depth of about twelve feet, under a 
 covering of alluvial soil known to the miners as 
 torfy which, doubtless, in the course of ages, 
 had been gradually washed down into the valley 
 from the circumjacent hills. This thick super- 
 ficial layer of torf had to be removed, of course, 
 
 300 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 before the auriferous sand could be reached ; and 
 as the labor of taking it away was very great, all 
 the individual miners, and nearly all the artels, 
 had adopted what was then known in Siberia as 
 the ortay or subterranean method of working a 
 deep placer. By this method, the torf, instead of 
 being removed, was undermined. The digger 
 sunk a shaft to the bottom of the auriferous 
 stratum, and then drove tunnels through the pay- 
 gravel in every direction to the boundary lines of 
 his claim, leaving the torf intact above as a roof, 
 and supporting it, if necessary, with timbers. 
 The gravel taken out of these subterranean tun- 
 nels and chambers was hoisted to the surface 
 through the shaft by means of a large wooden 
 bucket attached either to a windlass or to an old- 
 fashioned well-sweep, and the gold was then sep- 
 arated from the sand by agitation with water in 
 shallow pans, troughs, or cradles. The pay- 
 gravel of Zheltuga yielded, on an average, about 
 four ounces of gold per ton; and the precious 
 metal was worth on the spot from twelve to six- 
 teen dollars an ounce. In many cases the yield 
 was much greater than this. One fortunate dig- 
 ger unearthed a mass of virgin gold weighing five 
 pounds; and lucky finds of nuggets varying in 
 weight from one ounce to ten ounces were of fre- 
 
 301 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 quent occurrence. Even in parts of the placer 
 that were comparatively barren isolated "pock- 
 ets" were sometimes found that yielded gold at 
 the rate of twelve ounces to the Russian pood, or 
 more than fifty-five pounds to the ton. In the 
 early part of 1885 it was estimated that the Zhel- 
 tuga placer, as a whole, was yielding about 
 thirty-five pounds of gold per day, and the ac- 
 cumulated stock on hand weighed 3600 pounds 
 and represented a cash value of nearly |1,000,000. 
 The currency of the camp, for the most part, 
 was gold-dust, which, when transferred from 
 hand to hand, was weighed in improvised bal- 
 ances with ordinary playing-cards. An amount 
 of dust that would just balance four cards, of 
 standard size and make, was everywhere accepted 
 as a zolotnik,*^ and the zolotnik was valued at 
 about $1.75. One card of dust, therefore, repre- 
 sented forty-four cents. This was practically 
 the unit of the Zheltuga monetary system ; but if 
 a buyer or seller wished to give or receive a 
 smaller sum than this, the card used as a weight 
 was cut into halves or quarters, — a method that 
 suggests the "bit'' of the American miners on the 
 Pacific Coast. A pound of sugar, for example, 
 was valued in the Zheltuga currency at "two 
 
 6 One ninety-sixth part of a pound troy. 
 
 302 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 bits" of a quartered playing-card ; that is, at one- 
 eighth of a zolotnik in dust. Russian paper 
 money circulated to some extent, hut the supply 
 was insufficient, and gold-dust was the ordinary 
 medium of exchange. 
 
 Once a week, on Saturday, the lower part of 
 the valley, near Pitch-Penny Field, was turned 
 into a great market or bazaar, where traders and 
 Cossacks from the neighboring settlements sold 
 meat, flour, hard-bread, tea, sugar, soap, candles, 
 clothing, and hardware, and where thousands of 
 miners, from all parts of the placer, assembled to 
 purchase supplies. In no other place and at no 
 other time could the population and life of the 
 great mining-camp be studied to better ad- 
 vantage. The field was dotted with white cotton 
 tents and rude temporary booths, erected to shel- 
 ter the goods of the traders; scores of telegas, 
 filled with produce and provisions, were drawn 
 up in long parallel lines, with shaggy Cossack 
 ponies tethered to their muddy wheels; the stri- 
 dent music of hand-organs and concertinas called 
 the attention of the idle and the curious to yurts 
 and hologans where popular amusement was fur- 
 nished in the form of singing, juggling, or tum- 
 bling ; and in and out among these tents, booths, 
 wagons, and hologans surged a great horde of 
 
 303 
 
THE ZHELTUGA EEPUBLIC 
 
 rough, dirty, unshaven miners: some munching 
 bread or cold meat as they elbowed their way 
 from one booth to another; some crowding 
 around a wagon loaded with apples and dried 
 Chinese fruits from the valley of the Ussuri; 
 some stuffing their multifarious purchases into 
 big gray bags of coarse Siberian linen; and all 
 shouting, wrangling, or bargaining in half a 
 dozen Asiatic languages. 
 
 No American mining-camp, probably, ever pre- 
 sented such an extraordinary diversity of types, 
 costumes, and nationalities as might have been 
 seen any pleasant Saturday afternoon in that 
 Manchurian market. Thin-faced, keen-eyed Pol- 
 ish Jews, in skull-caps and loose black gabar- 
 dines, stood here and there in little stalls 
 exchanging Kussian paper money for gold-dust, 
 which they weighed carefully with dirty playing- 
 cards in apothecaries' balances ; sallow, beardless 
 Tungus hunters, whose fur hoods, buckskin 
 tunics, and tight leather leggings showed that 
 they had just come from the mountain fastnesses 
 of Transbaikalia, offered gloves, mittens, and 
 squirrel-skin blankets to red-shirted Russian 
 peasants in flat caps and high-topped boots; 
 wrinkle-eyed Mongol horsemen, dressed in flap- 
 ping orange gowns and queer dishpan-shaped felt 
 
 304 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 hats, rode through the crowded market-place on 
 wiry ponies, leading long files of solemn, swaying 
 camels laden with goods from Verkhni Udinsk or 
 Nerchinski Zavod ; uniformed Siberian Cossacks, 
 standing at the tail-boards of the small four- 
 wheeled wagons in which they had brought rye 
 flour and fresh fish from the Amur, exchanged 
 loud greetings or rough jokes with the runaway 
 convicts who strolled past, smoking home-made 
 cigarettes of acrid Circassian tobacco rolled in 
 bits of old newspaper; and now and then, 
 strangely conspicuous in black frock coat and 
 civil service cap, might be seen a retired isprav- 
 nik, or a government clerk from Chita, buying 
 tea and white loaf sugar at the stall of a Chinese 
 trader. 
 
 On the outskirts of the bazaar amusements and 
 diversions of all kinds were provided in abun- 
 dance, and from half a dozen different directions 
 came the discordant music of hand-organs and 
 balalaikas "^ calling attention to lotteries, peep- 
 shows, exhibitions of trained Chinese monkeys, 
 and large circular tents in which acrobats and 
 tumblers performed feats of strength or agility 
 before crowds of shouting and applauding spec- 
 
 7 A Russian variety of guitar, with three or four strings 
 and a triangular sounding-board of thin seasoned wood. 
 
 305 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 tators. In one place, a liuge tiger, caught in a 
 trap on the lower Amur and confined in an iron 
 cage, was an object of wonder and admiration to 
 a throng of swarthy, bullet-headed Buriats; in 
 another, a professional equestrian in dirty 
 spangled tights exhibited the horsemanship of 
 the haute ecole to a circle of hard-featured ruf- 
 fians in gray overcoats, who were easily recogniz- 
 able as escaped convicts from the Siberian mines, 
 and who still wore on their backs, in the shape of 
 two yellow diamonds, the badge of penal ser- 
 vitude. 
 
 Taken as a whole, the great bazaar, with its 
 unpainted booths, its white cotton tents, its long 
 lines of loaded wagons, its piles of merchandise, 
 its horses, cattle, and double-humped Bactrian 
 camels, its music, its vari-colored flags, and its 
 diversified population of traders, miners, Cos- 
 sacks, Russian peasants, runaway convicts, and 
 Asiatic nomads, formed a picture hardly to be 
 paralleled in all the Chinese Empire, and a pic- 
 ture strangely out of harmony with the solemn 
 mountains and primeval forests of the lonely 
 Manchurian wilderness in which it was framed. 
 
 The government of so heterogeneous and law- 
 less a population as that assembled in the valley 
 of the Zhelta presented, of course, a problem of 
 
 306 
 
THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 
 
 extraordinary difficulty ; and it is not at all sur- 
 prising that the first attempt of the artels to pro- 
 vide the camp with a civil administration proved 
 to be a failure. The three starosts elected by 
 the skhod were not men of much education or 
 character; their authority was not backed, as it 
 should have been, by an adequate police force; 
 and even when their intentions were good and 
 their orders judicious, they were virtually power- 
 less to carry them into effect. The runaway con- 
 victs from the mines in east Siberia, who com- 
 po'sed at least a third of the whole population, 
 soon discovered that the starosts had neither 
 the nerve nor the power to enforce order and hon- 
 esty in the only way in which they could be en- 
 forced, — with the hangman's rope and the lash, — 
 and therefore they promptly resumed their crim- 
 inal activity. Theft, claim- jumping, fighting, 
 and robbery with violence soon became as com- 
 mon as ever; the influence and authority of the 
 administration steadily declined as one board of 
 starosts after another was discharged for cow- 
 ardice or inefficiency; men of good character 
 from the artels refused to take positions which 
 no longer had even the semblance of dignity or 
 power ; and finally the government itself became 
 criminal, the latest board of starosts partici- 
 
 307 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 pated in a crime and fled across the Siberian 
 frontier with their plunder, and the camp re- 
 lapsed again into virtual anarchy. 
 
 This state of affairs continued for several 
 weeks, in the course of which time no attempt 
 was made either to reestablish the ineffective and 
 discredited administration of the starosts, or to 
 substitute for it a form of government better 
 adapted to the circumstances of the case. Petty 
 crimes of various sorts were committed almost 
 daily in all parts of the placer ; but as the suffer- 
 ers from them were, for the most part, the weaker 
 and less influential members of the community, 
 public feeling was not roused to the point of re- 
 newed action until the latter part of December, 
 1884, when a brutal murder, in the very heart of 
 the camp, brought everybody to a sudden realiza- 
 tion of the dangers of the situation. One of the 
 members of an artel of escaped convicts, who was 
 known to have had in his possession a consider- 
 able quantity of gold-dust, was found one morn- 
 ing in his tent, dead and cold, with his head and 
 face beaten into an almost unrecognizable mass 
 of blood, hair, brains, and shattered bones. 
 From the position and appearance of the body, 
 it was evident that the murderer had crept into 
 the tent at a late hour of the night and killed his 
 
 308 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 victim, while asleep, with repeated blows of a 
 heavy sledge-hammer, which was found, lying in 
 a pool of half -frozen blood, beside the bed. The 
 dead man's gold-dust had disappeared, and there 
 was no clue to the identity of the assassin. 
 
 The news of this murder spread in a few hours 
 to all parts of the placer; and thousands of 
 miners, attracted either by morbid curiosity or 
 by a desire to verify the statements they had 
 heard, came to look at the disfigured corpse, and 
 to discuss with one another means of preventing 
 such crimes. In the absence of an authorized 
 and responsible government, no one ventured to 
 remove or bury the body, and for nearly a week 
 it remained untouched, just where it had been 
 found, as a ghastly and impressive object-lesson 
 to the citizens of the camp. Meanwhile, the need 
 of a strong and effective government, to maintain 
 order, protect life, and punish crime, was ear- 
 nestly and noisily discussed in hundreds of tents 
 and cabins throughout the valley; and the out- 
 come of the discussion was the calling of another 
 skJiodj composed of delegates representing the 
 four great classes into which the population of 
 the camp was divided, — the artels, the convicts, 
 the unattached miners, and the Asiatics. At 
 this sJchod it was decided to organize a republican 
 
 309 
 
THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 
 
 form of government, with a single chief or presi- 
 dent, who should be authorized to draft a code of 
 laws, and who should be supported in the rigor- 
 ous enforcement of them by the full armed 
 strength of the camp. As the starosts elected 
 under the previous regime had been common 
 peasants, wholly without administrative experi- 
 ence or training and almost wholly without edu- 
 cation, and as the result of their efforts to main- 
 tain order had been general dissatisfaction and 
 disappointment, it was resolved that the presi- 
 dent to be chosen in the second experiment should 
 be a man of character and ability from the culti- 
 vated class, and, if possible, a man who had had 
 some experience as an administrative or execu- 
 tive officer. The number of such men in the com- 
 munity was extremely small; but among them 
 there happened to be a retired government official 
 — a clerk from one of the provincial departments 
 of Siberia — named Fasse, whose personal bear- 
 ing, dignity, and upright character had attracted 
 general attention, and who had the respect and 
 confidence of all the best men in the camp. 
 Upon Fasse the choice of the skhod fell; and a 
 deputation, bearing a plate of bread and a small 
 cup of salt on a wooden tray, was sent to apprise 
 him of the assembly's action, and to congratu- 
 
 310 
 
THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIO ^ 
 
 late Mm upon his unanimous election as ^^first 
 President of the Zheltuga Republic." 
 
 Fasse, who was not ambitious of distinction in 
 this field, and who fully appreciated the serious 
 nature of the responsibilities that would devolve 
 upon the ^'first President," was disposed to de- 
 cline the honor; but when the skhod agreed in 
 advance to sanction any laws that he might sug- 
 gest, to recognize and obey any assistants whom 
 he might appoint, and to give him the fullest pos- 
 sible cooperation and support, he decided that it 
 was his duty, as a good citizen, to waive personal 
 feeling, accept the position, and give the com- 
 munity the benefit of all the knowledge and ex- 
 perience he had. His first official act was to 
 divide the territory which constituted the placer 
 into ^ye districts (subsequently known as 
 "states" ) , and to invite the residents of each dis- 
 trict to elect two starshinaSy whose duty it should 
 be to act in their respective localities as justices 
 of the peace, and who should together constitute 
 the President's Council. 
 
 In the course of three or four days, starshinas 
 were elected in all of the districts (two of them 
 Chinese from the Asiatic quarter of the camp), 
 certificates of election were duly signed and re- 
 turned to the President, and the Council was 
 
 311 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 summoned to draw up a code of laws and regula- 
 tions for the government of the republic. The 
 result of their deliberations was the following 
 constitution, which was submitted to the skhod 
 Sit a special meeting, and adopted without dis- 
 sent : — 
 
 On this day of , in the year of our 
 
 Lord 188-, we, the Artels and Free Adventurers 
 of the Zheltuga Command, imploring the bless- 
 ing of Almighty God upon our undertaking, do 
 hereby promise and swear implicit obedience to 
 the authorities elected by us at this skhody and 
 to the rules and regulations drawn up by them 
 for the government of the camp, as follows : — 
 
 1. The territory belonging to the Zheltuga 
 Command shall be known as the "Amur Cali- 
 fornia,'' and shall be divided into five districts or 
 states. 
 
 2. The officers of the republic shall be a Pres- 
 ident and ten starshinas, who shall be elected by 
 the skhod, and who shall hold office for a period 
 of four months, or until the skhod relieves them 
 from duty. Executive and judicial authority, in 
 each one of the five districts, shall be vested in two 
 starshinaSy and the ten starshinas together shall 
 constitute the President's Council. These offi- 
 
 312 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 cers of the government shall wear on their left 
 arms, as evidence of their official authority, brass 
 badges bearing in incised letters the words "Star- 
 
 shina of the Amur California, th District." 
 
 The President shall receive a salary of four hun- 
 dred rubles, and each starshina a salary of two 
 hundred rubles, per month. 
 
 3. Every artel and every miner in the camp 
 shall come to the assistance of the starshinas at 
 the first call, by night or day, and shall aid them 
 in enforcing the law and maintaining order. Co- 
 operation in the infliction of punishment for 
 crime, under direction and by order of the Pres- 
 ident, the Council, or the starshinas^ shall be an 
 imperative obligation of every citizen. 
 
 4. The lightest punishment that shall be in- 
 flicted for an offense committed within the terri- 
 torial limits of the Amur California shall be ban- 
 ishment from the camp without right of return. 
 More serious crimes shall be punished by flog- 
 ging, with whip or rods, the number of blows to 
 be proportioned to the criminaPs health or 
 strength, but not to exceed in any case five hun- 
 dred. Murder shall be punished in accordance 
 with the Mosaic law of "an eye for an eye,'' and 
 the murderer shall be put to death in the same 
 manner and with the same weapon that he em- 
 
 313 
 
THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 
 
 ployed in killing his victim. Every sentence of 
 the authorities shall be executed, if possible, 
 forthwith, and in no case shall punishment be de- 
 layed more than twenty-four hours. 
 
 5. Starshinas, in their respective districts, 
 shall have the right to punish, up to one hun- 
 dred blows, at their own discretion and without 
 consulting either the President or the Council; 
 but they shall make to the President, at a fixed 
 hour every day, a report of all such cases, and 
 an official statement of the condition of affairs in 
 their districts. 
 
 6. The authorities shall have the right to put 
 any person suspected of criminal conduct under 
 the surveillance of any artel or individual, pay- 
 ing the latter for such supervision at the rate of 
 one ruble per day; and the artel or individual 
 shall be held responsible for such suspect's safe- 
 guard and good behavior. 
 
 7. The selling of spurious and manufactured 
 gold, and also the wearing of a starshina's badge 
 without authority, as a means of intimidating or 
 extorting money from any person, shall be pun- 
 ished with ^ye hundred blows of a blackthorn 
 rod. 
 
 8. In gambling with cards, the wagering of 
 clothing, tools, implements, or other like objects 
 
 314 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 of absolute necessity is strictly prohibited, upon 
 penalty of severe punishment, as is also the 
 pledging or pawning of such objects for a loan or 
 debt. 
 
 9. The firing of a gun or pistol at any hour of 
 the day or night, without sufficient and legal 
 cause, and the carrying of deadly weapons while 
 in a state of intoxication, are strictly forbidden. 
 
 10. Among those who have recently come to the 
 Amur California, ostensibly to work, are a large 
 number of persons who have no regular occupa- 
 tion, and who hang about restaurants and sa- 
 loons, living a drunken and disorderly life or 
 maintaining themselves by dishonest card-play- 
 ing. Their evil example exerts a demoralizing 
 influence upon the great mass of honest and in- 
 dustrious miners, and the citizens of the camp 
 are requested, in their own interest and for the 
 sake of public tranquillity, to point out such per- 
 sons to the authorities, in order that they may be 
 banished from the placer. 
 
 11. Every artel or individual miner 'who em- 
 ploys, or ostensibly employs, laborers shall per- 
 sonally see that such laborers are actually at 
 work, or shall make a report of them to the dis- 
 trict starshinas, so that the latter may either set 
 them at work or expel them from the settlement. 
 
 315 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 12. In view of the fact that many persons who 
 have come here are unable, for various reasons, to 
 acquire mining territory or find work, and are 
 therefore in a suffering condition, and in view of 
 the further fact that certain artels are nominally 
 in possession of much more territory than they 
 are able to develop, it has been decided to regard 
 all unoccupied and unworked claims as public 
 lands, and to distribute them among honest and 
 sober citizens who have not been able to find 
 either work or unclaimed ground. Such distri- 
 bution will begin in seven days from the date 
 hereof. Henceforth the number of claims that 
 artels will be permitted to hold in reserve with- 
 out development shall be limited to two for an 
 artel of nine men, four for an artel of eighteen 
 men, and six for an artel of twenty-seven men. 
 Eelying upon the generosity and humanity of all 
 Eussians, the government hereby gives notice 
 that undeveloped and unworked claims held by 
 artels in excess of the numbers above set forth 
 will hereafter be treated as public lands, and 
 will be distributed in accordance with the best 
 interests of the community among the poorer 
 members thereof. 
 
 13. A fund to defray the expenses of the gov- 
 ernment shall be raised by means of taxes im- 
 
 316 
 
THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 
 
 posed at the discretion of the skhod upon all 
 liquor-sellers, restaurant-keepers, traders, and 
 merchants. 
 
 14. Every person who has a store, shop, or 
 trading-place within the limits of the placer shall 
 cause a flag to be displayed on the building in 
 which such business is carried on. Failure to do 
 so within three days from the date hereof shall 
 be punished with a fine of from twenty-five to one 
 hundred rubles. 
 
 15. Every merchant or trader who pays a tax 
 or license fee for the right to carry on his busi- 
 ness shall obtain from the person authorized to 
 collect the tax a duly executed receipt for the 
 same, bearing the seal of the government and the 
 signature of the President, and shall post this 
 receipt in a prominent place in his shop, store, 
 restaurant, or saloon. 
 
 16. The sale of spirituous liquor within the 
 limits of the camp by persons who have no reg- 
 ular place of business is strictly and absolutely 
 forbidden. Persons who have regular places of 
 business shall not sell spirituous liquor until 
 they have obtained special permission to do so. 
 For every bottle sold without such permission 
 the seller shall pay a fine of from twenty -five to 
 one hundred rubles. 
 
 317 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 17. The laws of the Zheltuga Free Adventurers 
 shall apply without exception to all citizens of 
 the camp, regardless of rank, condition, national- 
 ity, or previous allegiance. Offlcers of the gov- 
 ernment, however, chosen by election, shall not 
 be punished for illegal actions until they shall 
 have been tried by the Council, found guilty, and 
 dismissed from the service. They shall then be 
 tried and punished as private citizens under the 
 general law. 
 
 18. Every artel or individual coming hereafter 
 within the territorial limits of the Amur Cali- 
 fornia shall appear within three days at the head- 
 quarters of the government to read and sign these 
 laws. Those who fail to make such appearance 
 within three days from the time they cross the 
 Amur will be proceeded against as persons un- 
 willing to submit to the authority and obey the 
 laws of the Zheltuga Command of Free Ad- 
 venturers of the Amur California. 
 
 19. As evidence that the President and star- 
 shinas referred to herein have been chosen by us 
 of our own free will, we append hereto our signa- 
 tures, and we hereby promise to treat them with 
 honor and respect. Those of us who fail to do 
 so shall be severely punished as disturbers of the 
 peace and insulters of the officers whom the Com- 
 
 318 
 
THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 
 
 mand has trusted as honest and impartial 
 guardians of its safety and tranquillity. 
 (Signed) 
 
 Electors. 
 
 Five copies of the constitution, or code of laws, 
 were prepared in manuscript, and delivered to 
 the starshinas of the five districts, who called 
 local meetings and read the documents aloud to 
 the electors. They were then signed by repre- 
 sentatives of the latter and returned to the Presi- 
 dent, who affixed to them the seal of the Amur 
 California, and deposited them in a place of se- 
 curity as the organic law of the Chinese republic. 
 
 With the beginning of the year 1885 the new 
 government entered upon the discharge of its 
 duties, and the inevitable conflict arose between 
 law and authority on one side and lawlessness 
 and crime on the other. If there were any doubt 
 of the ability of the new administration to main- 
 tain its existence and enforce its decrees, such 
 doubt was speedily removed by the boldness, 
 promptness, and energy with which the new offi- 
 cials acted. Supported by a majority of the citi- 
 zens backed by a strong posse comitatuSy smd ac- 
 companied by an adequate force of zealous execu- 
 
 319 
 
THE ZHELTUGA KEPUBLIC 
 
 tioners, the starshinas patrolled their districts 
 from morning to night, listening to complaints, 
 settling disputes, punishing crimes, and adminis- 
 tering justice generally in accordance with the 
 summary processes of a drum-head court-martial. 
 Evil-doers who thought they could deal with the 
 starshinas as they had dealt with their predeces- 
 sors, the starosts, soon discovered their mistake. 
 The new officials enforced order and justice, by 
 means of the lash, without fear, favor, or mercy, 
 and punishment followed crime with as much 
 certainty as if the sequence were a fixed law of 
 nature. 
 
 The place of execution was a frozen pond in the 
 lower part of the valley, near Pitch-Penny Field, 
 where half a dozen able-bodied Kussian peasants, 
 armed with flexible rods and formidable rawhide 
 whips, carried the decrees of the starshinas into 
 effect. The regular formula of condemnation 
 was, "To the ice with him !'' And from this sen- 
 tence there was no appeal. The criminal thus 
 condemned was taken forthwith to the frozen 
 pond, and, after having been stripped to the hips, 
 was laid, face downward, on the ice. One execu- 
 tioner then sat on his head, another on his legs, 
 and a third, with a rod or rawhide plet, covered 
 his naked back with the crisscross lacing of 
 
 320 
 
THE ZHELTUGA EEPUBLIC 
 
 swollen crimson stripes which is known to Si- 
 berian hard-labor convicts as "the bloody grid- 
 iron." 
 
 In the sentences of the starshinas no partiality 
 whatever was shown to criminals of any partic- 
 ular class or social rank. For stealing a keg of 
 hard-bread a Russian peasant was given five hun- 
 dred blows with a birch rod, and was then ex- 
 pelled from the camp; but at the same time a 
 clerk for a well-known firm of Blagoveshchinsk 
 merchants, a gentleman and a man of some edu- 
 cation, received two hundred blows for unneces- 
 sarily firing a revolver. Doubtless in many cases 
 the punishments inflicted were cruel and exces- 
 sive, but desperate ills required desperate reme- 
 dies, and in dealing with a heterogeneous popula- 
 tion, composed largely of runaway convicts from 
 the Siberian mines, it was thought better to err 
 on the side of severity than to show a leniency 
 that might be attributed to weakness or fear. 
 
 For a period of two weeks or more the dread 
 order: "To the ice with him!" might have been 
 heard almost hourly in every part of the camp, 
 and the snow on the frozen pond was trampled 
 hard by the feet of the executioners and stained 
 red with blood from the lacerated backs of con- 
 demned criminals. But the dishonest and dis- 
 
 321 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 orderly class finally learned its lesson. After 
 three men had been put to death, scores expelled 
 from the settlement, and hundreds mercilessly 
 flogged with rods or the plet, even the boldest and 
 hardiest of the runaway convicts were cowed, and 
 the whole population of the camp was brought 
 for the first time to a realization of the fact that 
 a government resting on the will and consent of 
 the governed, and supported by a posse comitatus 
 of free citizens, may be quite as powerful and 
 formidable in its way, and quite as great a terror 
 to evil-doers, as a government based on the divine 
 right of an anointed Czar, and supported by an 
 armed force of soldiers and police. 
 
 Before the 1st of February, 1885, the triumph 
 of the honest and law-abiding class in the Amur 
 California was virtually complete. The petty 
 crimes which had so long harassed and disquieted 
 the camp became less and less frequent; the su- 
 premacy of the law was everywhere recognized 
 with respect or fear; the experiment of popular 
 self-government was admitted to be successful; 
 and the skhod and its executive officers, having 
 established order, were at liberty to turn their 
 attention to minor details of civil organization. 
 Adequate revenue for the support of the govern- 
 ment was obtained by means of a judiciously 
 
 322 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 framed tariff on imports ; a post-office department 
 was organized, and provision made for a daily 
 mail between the camp and the nearest station in 
 Siberia; houses were built or set apart in the 
 several districts for the accommodation of the 
 starshinas and their clerks ; a free public hospital 
 was opened, with a staff of two physicians and 
 half a dozen nurses, and was maintained at a cost 
 of nearly thirty thousand rubles a year; the 
 organic law was revised and amended to accord 
 with the results of later experience, and the gov- 
 ernment of the republic gradually assumed a 
 form which, if not comparable with that of older 
 and more advanced communities, was at least 
 more civilized and modern than that which then 
 prevailed in Siberia. Intelligent and dispassion- 
 ate Russians who had just come from the Amur 
 California told me, when I met them at Chita, 
 Nerchinsk, and Stretinsk in 1885, that life and 
 property were absolutely safer in the Chinese re- 
 public than in any part of the Russian empire. 
 "Why,'' said one of them, "you may leave a heap 
 of merchandise unguarded all night in the 
 streets; nobody will touch it!" 
 
 The first result of the establishment of a really 
 strong and effective government in the valley of 
 the Zhelta was a remarkable increase in the pop- 
 
 323 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 ulation and the prosperity of the camp. Miners, 
 prospectors, merchants, mechanics, and "free ad- 
 venturers" flocked to it from all parts of eastern 
 Siberia. New gold-fields were discovered and 
 developed in neighboring valleys ; a large area of 
 new territory was annexed; new administrative 
 districts were organized; and before the 1st of 
 June, 1885, the Chinese republic had a population 
 of more than ten thousand free citizens, includ- 
 ing six hundred women and children, and con- 
 tained fifty hotels, three hundred shops and 
 stores, and nearly one thousand inhabited build- 
 ings. 
 
 The development of so strong and well organ- 
 ized a community as this in the wildest part of 
 Manchuria, absolutely without advice, assistance, 
 or encouragement from any outside source, is an 
 interesting and noteworthy proof of the capacity 
 of the Eussian people for self-government, and it 
 is for this reason, mainly, that the story has 
 seemed to me worth telling. Here was a popula- 
 tion as heterogeneous, as uneducated, and as law- 
 less as could be found anywhere in the Russian 
 Empire. Nearly a third of it consisted of actual 
 criminals, of the worst class, from the Siberian 
 mines and penal settlements, and fully a quarter 
 of the non-criminal remainder were ignorant 
 
 324 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 Asiatics, belonging to half a dozen different tribes 
 and nationalities. Never, perhaps, was the ex- 
 periment of popular self-government tried under 
 more unfavorable conditions. The experiment- 
 ers had no precedents to guide them, no record of 
 previous success to encourage them, and, at first, 
 no trained or educated men to lead them. Rely- 
 ing solely on the good sense and self-control of 
 the majority, they extended the right of suffrage 
 to criminals and Asiatics as well as to honest 
 men and Russians, summoned a sTcJiod in which 
 every citizen of the camp had a voice and a vote, 
 gave the criminals and aliens their share of 
 official authority by electing two convicts and 
 two Chinese as members of the Council, and then, 
 on the basis of manhood suffrage, free speech, 
 equal rights, and the will of the majority, they 
 established their republic, enacted their laws, and 
 carried to a successful termination their unique 
 experiment. As an evidence of the ability of the 
 Siberian people to govern themselves, and as an 
 indication of the form which their institutions 
 would be likely to take if they could escape from 
 the yoke of the Russian despotism, the history 
 of the Amur California seems to me to be full of 
 interest and instruction. But be that as it may, 
 it is certainly a curious and significant fact that 
 
 325 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 the first true republic ever established east of 
 the Caspian Sea and the Urals was founded by 
 representatives of the most despotically governed 
 nation in Europe, upon the territory of the least 
 progressive and the least enterprising nation in 
 Asia, and was modeled after the government of 
 the strongest and most successful nation in 
 America. 
 
 What would have been the future of the Chi- 
 nese republic if the Zheltuga Free Adventurers 
 had been left to their own devices we can only 
 conjecture. They had already demonstrated 
 their ability to deal successfully with internal 
 disorders, and if their growth and progress had 
 not been checked by external forces too strong to 
 be resisted, they might ultimately have conquered 
 and occupied a large part of northern Man- 
 churia; but of course neither Russia nor China 
 could afford to permit the establishment of a free 
 and independent state in the valley of the Amur. 
 China protested against the invasion of her terri- 
 tory as soon as she became aware of it, and called 
 upon the governor-general of the Amur to inter- 
 fere. The latter simply replied that the invasion 
 was unauthorized; that he had no control over 
 the invaders, who were a mere horde of vagrants 
 and runaway convicts; and that the Chinese 
 
 326 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 authorities were at liberty to treat them as bri- 
 gands and drive them out of the country. This, 
 however, the Chinese authorities were utterly 
 unable to do : partly because they had no force in 
 northern Manchuria strong enough to cope with 
 the Zheltuga Free Adventurers, and partly be- 
 cause the region occupied by the latter was an 
 almost inaccessible wilderness. All that they 
 could do was to send an officer up the Amur, 
 with a small escort, to find out exactly where the 
 invaders were, to ascertain their strength, and to 
 threaten them with severe punishment if they 
 refused to withdraw. 
 
 This was done in the winter of 1884-85, soon 
 after the organization of the republic and the 
 election of Fasse as President. A Chinese of- 
 ficial, with an escort of thirty-six soldiers, came 
 up the Amur from Aigun on the ice, visited the 
 camp, and found, to his surprise, that it con- 
 tained a population of more than seven thousand 
 men, fully one-third of whom were armed. See- 
 ing that it would be futile, if not dangerous, to 
 threaten so strong and well organized a com- 
 munity as this, the Chinese envoy had a brief 
 interview with President Fasse, and a few days 
 later, without having accomplished anything, re- 
 turned to Aigun. The Chinese government 
 
 327 
 
THE ZHELTUGA EEPUBLIC 
 
 thereupon renewed its protest, and insisted that 
 Kussia should take adequate measures to compel 
 the withdrawal of the Free Adventurers from 
 Manchurian territory. Protests and complaints 
 were also received from district governors, pro- 
 prietors of mines, and influential citizens in 
 various parts of eastern Siberia, who alleged 
 that the Manchurian gold fever was exciting and 
 demoralizing the Siberian population; that the 
 export of provisions tO' the Chinese republic was 
 raising the prices and increasing the scarcity of 
 food products in all the adjacent Siberian prov- 
 inces ; and that if the emigration to Manchuria 
 were not speedily checked, work in many of the 
 Siberian mines would have to be suspended for 
 want of laborers. 
 
 At a conference of the territorial governors of 
 Irkutsk, the Amur, and Transbakalia, held 
 at Blagoveshchinsk early in the summer of 1885, 
 these protests and complaints were duly consid- 
 ered, and a decision was reached to break up the 
 Chinese republic by cutting off its supply of pro- 
 visions. A few weeks later, Captain Sokolofski, 
 with an adequate force of cavalry, was sent from 
 Chita to Ignashina, with orders to establish a 
 military cordon along the Siberian frontier from 
 Albazin to the mouth of the river Shilka, to 
 
 328 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 arrest all persons attempting to cross that fron- 
 tier in either direction, to confiscate the gold or 
 merchandise found in their possession, and to 
 take such other steps as might be necessary to 
 compel the withdrawal of all Russian subjects 
 from Chinese territory. This was a death-blow 
 to the Chinese republic. Its population of more 
 than ten thousand persons, relying upon its abil- 
 ity to procure supplies from the north, had made 
 no attem]3t to cultivate the soil, and it could not 
 maintain itself in the Manchurian wilderness for 
 a single month after its communications with 
 Siberia had been severed. Fasse, the President 
 of the republic, was ordered by the Russian gov- 
 ernment to resign his position and return to his 
 country upon pain of penal servitude; the star- 
 shinaSy deprived suddenly of their chief, and 
 apprehensive of future punishment for them- 
 selves, became demoralized and abandoned their 
 posts; while the panic-stricken Free Adventur- 
 ers, hoping to evade the cordon by crossing the 
 Amur above or below it, packed up hastily their 
 gold-dust, merchandise, and other valuables, and 
 silently vanished in the forests. In less than a 
 week the population of the Amur California had 
 fallen from ten thousand to three thousand, and 
 in less than a month the camp had been virtually 
 
 329 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 abandoned by all except a few hundred desperate 
 runaway convicts, who preferred the chance of 
 starvation in Manchuria to the certainty of 
 arrest and deportation to the mines in Siberia. 
 
 The Chinese made no attempt to occupy the 
 almost deserted gold placer until December, 
 1885, when they sent a force of manegri, or fron- 
 tier cavalry, up the Amur River on the ice, with 
 orders to drive out the remaining miners and 
 destroy the camp. The soldiers reached their 
 destination, in a temperature of thirty degrees 
 below zero, on the 6th of January, 1886. The 
 only occupants of the place at that time were 
 about three hundred runaway convicts, fifty or 
 sixty Chinese and Manchus, and a few Russian 
 peasants lying ill in the hospital. The convicts, 
 at the approach of the troops, formed in a com- 
 pact body on Pitch-Penny Field and boldly 
 marched out to meet the enemy, playing a march 
 on three battered clarionets, and carrying high 
 above their heads, on a cross-shaped flagstaff, a 
 sort of ecclesiastical banner made out of a white 
 cotton sheet, upon w^hich they had painted rudely 
 in huge black capital letters the words 
 
 WE 
 
 ALEXANDER 
 
 THIRD. 
 
 330 
 
THE ZHELTUGA REPUBLIC 
 
 The Chinese cavalry, overawed by this extraor- 
 dinary banner, or perhaps uncertain as to the 
 result of a contest with the desperate ruffians 
 who carried it, allowed the convicts to pass with- 
 out molestation, and they marched away in the 
 direction of the Amur, keeping step to the music 
 of the clarionets, and relying upon the protec- 
 tion of a flag which combined the majesty of the 
 Czar with the sanctity of an emblem of truce. 
 
 When the convicts had disappeared in the 
 forest, the Chinese entered the camp with fire 
 and sword, burned all its buildings to the 
 ground, and put every living occupant to death, 
 — not sparing even the sick in the hospital. 
 Some were beheaded, some were stabbed and 
 thrown into the flaming ruins of the burning 
 buildings, and a few were stripped naked, tied to 
 trees, and showered with bucketful after bucket- 
 ful of cold water from the Zhelta River, until 
 death had put an end to their sufferings, and 
 their stiffened bodies had become white statues 
 of ice. When the sun rose over the wooded Man- 
 churian hills on the following morning, a few 
 hundred piles of smoking ruins and a few 
 ghastly naked bodies tied to trees and incased 
 in shrouds of ice were all that remained of the 
 Chinese republic. 
 
 331 
 
« 
 
 393 85 , 
 
•^•h. 
 
 
 ^oV^ 
 
 O^ * o N o A,^ 
 
 "^ ^M r^ 
 
 ^0' 
 
 

 ♦ <t? "^t •>'H/^^\y* A,^ 
 
 
 
 ^o