"The Government appointed in every district an arbiter' to persuade the peasants. The arbiter failed. Then troops were quartered in their huts, homes were starved, old people were beaten by drunkards, daughters were violated. The peasants grew more wild, and then began the flogging. In a vil lage like ours, where they refused to leave their plots, they were driven into line on the village street; every tenth man was called out and flogged with the knout; some died. Two weeks later, as they still held out, every fifth man was flogged. The poor ignorant creatures still held desperately to what they thought their rights; again the line, and now every man was dragged forward to the flogging. This process lasted five years all over Russia, until at last, bleeding and exhausted, the peasants gave in. "I heard heartrending stories in my little school-house, and many more through my father, the arbiter of our district. The peasants thronged to our house day and night. Many were carried in crippled by the knout; sobbing wives told of husbands killed before their eyes. Often the poor wretches literally wallowed, clasping my father's knees, begging him to read again the manifesto and find it was a mistake, beseeching him to search for help in that mysterious region-the law court. From such interviews he came to me worn and haggard. "I now saw how ineffectual were my attempts. I felt that tremendous economic and political changes must be made, but, still a Liberalist, I thought only of reform. To seek guidance, to find what older heads were thinking, I went, at nineteen, with my mother and sister, to St. Petersburg. Into our compartment on the train came a handsome young prince returning from official duties in Siberia. For hours he discussed with me the problems that were rushing upon us. His words thrilled like fire. Our excited voices rose steadily higher, until my mother begged me, as my nurse had done before, to speak low. The young prince is now an old man in exile. His name is Peter Kropotkin. "In St. Petersburg I entered the central group of Liberalists-men and women of noble birth and university training, doctors, lawyers, journalists, novelists, poets, scientists, the most highly educated people in Russia. Since higher education for women was strictly forbidden, they had already become criminals by opening classes for women in the natural and political sciences. All these classes I eagerly joined, constantly attending their secret meetings. Again my mother grew frightened, and at last she took me home. During the next three years, however, I returned again and again, traveled to other cities, and met Liberal people all over Russia. "Then my father called me home. Here I resolved to support myself and help the peasants. My father built me a small boarding-school for girls, and through the influence of my relatives I received many pupils. He built, too, a cottage, in which I could teach the peasants. I now drew closer to them. I began to realize the dull memory every peasant has of flogging and toil from time immemorial. I felt their subconscious but heart-deep longing for freedom. "Three years later I married a liberal, broad-minded landowner, who took deep interest in the zemstvos, our district moot. He established for me a peasants' agricultural school. Several of the younger landowners became interested in our work. We met together frequently; and this was my last attempt at Liberalist reform. "He is a poor patriot who will not thoroughly try his Government before he rises against it. We searched the laws and edicts; we found certain scant and long-neglected peasants' rights of local suffrage; and then we began showing the peasants how to use these rights those who had lived close to the peasants. "We put on peasant dress, to elude the police and break down the peasants' cringing distrust. I dressed in enormous bark shoes, coarse shirt and drawers, and heavy cloak. I used acid on my face and hands; I worked and ate with the peasants; I learned their speech; I traveled on foot, forging passports; I lived 'illegally.' "By night I did my organizing. You desire a picture? A low room with mud floor and walls. Rafters just over your head, and still higher, thatch. The room was packed with men, women, and children. Two big fellows sat up on the high brick stove, with their dangling feet knocking occasional applause. These people had been gathered by my host-a brave peasant whom I picked out-and he in turn had chosen only those whom Siberia could not terrify. When I recalled their floggings; when I pointed to those who were crippled for life; to women whose husbands died under the lash-then men would cry out so fiercely that the three or four cattle in the next room would bellow and have to be quieted. Then I told them they themselves were to blame. They had only the most wretched strips of land. To be free and live, the people must own the land! From my cloak I would bring a book of fables written to teach our principles and stir the love of freedom. And then far into the night the firelight showed a circle of great broad faces and dilated eyes, staring with all the reverence every peasant has for that mysterious thing-a book. "These books, twice as effective as oral work, were printed in secrecy at heavy expense. But many of us had libraries, jewels, costly gowns and furs to sell; and new recruits kept adding to our fund. We had no personal ex sand educated people traveled among the peasants. Weary work, you say. Yes, when the peasants were slow and dull and the spirit of freedom seemed an illusion. But when that spirit grew real, one felt far from weary. Then, too, we had occasional grippings of hands with comrades. We could always encourage each other, for all had found the peasants eager; to own the land had been the dream of their fathers; their eagerness rose, and stout words of cheer were sent from one group to another. An underground system was started, a correspondence cipher was invented, the movement spread through thirty-six great provinces of Russia and became steadily better organized. So the People's Party was established. "The System, alarmed by their spies, made wholesale arrests. I was under a peasant's name in Podolia. In my wallet was our manifesto, also maps showing the places already reached and those next to be organized. A servant-girl spied them and told the servant of the local police agent. An hour later he came rushing in and jerked the manifesto from my wallet. His eyes popping with excitement, he read the paper in a loud, thick voice. As that simple but stirring proclamation of freedom, equality, and love was read, the poor, ignorant people thought it the longed-for proclamation from the Czar. The news spread. Men, women, and children rushed up. The District Attorney came, and he too read it aloud. Then suddenly the chief of police arrived, glanced at the wild, joyous faces around, and seized the document. 'What is this?' he asked me, roughly. Propaganda,' I replied, with which the attorney, the gendarme, and the priest are viciously inciting the people.' sprang up covered with vermin. I leaned against the walls and found them damp. So I stood up all night in the middle of the hole. And this was the beginning of Siberia. "I awaited trial in a new St. Petersburg prison. My cell was nine feet long, five feet wide, and seven feet high. It was clean, and a hole above gave plenty of air. My bed was an iron bracket, with mattress and pillow of straw, rough gray blanket, coarse sheet and pillow-case. I wore my own clothes. "In solitary confinement? No. I joined a social club. "On that first evening I lay in the dark telling myself that our struggle must go on in spite of this calamity, and yet fearful for it, as we fear for things we love. I lay motionless, and solitary confinement began to work on my mind, as the System had planned it should. Suddenly I sat up quickly. I could hear nothing, but as I started to lie down my ear approached again the iron pipe supporting my cot. Tick, tick, tickity, tick, tick. I felt along the pipe, and found that it went through to the next cell. Again I heard. Tick, tick, tick, tickity, tick. I had once heard a code planned at a meeting in Moscow, but I could not recall it. At last I had an idea. There are thirty-five letters in the Russian alphabet. I rapped. Once! Then twice! Then three times! So on until for the last letter I rapped thirty-five. No response. Again, slowly and distinctly. My heart was beating Steps came slowly down the corridor. The guard approached and passed my door. His steps died away. Suddenly-Tick-Tick, tick !-Tick, tick, tick 1—and through to thirty-five! Then slowly we spelled out words, and by this clumsy code the swifter code was taught "In jail I was led down to the Black After that, for three years, the Hole.' As I came down, two besotted pipe was almost always talking. How wretches were stumbling up. I was fast we talked ! The pipe sounded pushed in, the heavy door slammed, and bolts rattled in total darkness. At once I was sickened by the odor. I took a step forward and slipped, for the floor was soft with filth. I stood still until, deadly sick, I sank down on a pile of straw and rags. A minute later I was stung sharply back to consciousness, and now. me. so " Her gray head bent over the table, her face was flushed, her eyes flashed back through forty years of danger and prison, and her strong, subtle fingers rolled out the ticks at lightning speed. "Our club had over a hundred members in solitary confinement; some in cells on either side of mine, some below and some above. Did we tell Yes, and good ones! Young students, keen wits, high spirits!" She laughed merrily, becoming Babushka. "How some of those youngsters made love! A mere boy, two cells to my right, vowed he adored the young girl of nineteen five cells to my left on the floor above, whom he had never laid eyes on. I helped tick his gallant speeches and her responses continually along. They passed to the cell below hers, and were ticked up the heating-pipe to her by a sad little woman who grieved for her babies. Did they ever meet? Ah, Siberia is large as your States and France and England and Germany all together. "Our club was not all a club of pleasure. Some died of consumption; others killed themselves, and others went insane. The pipe raved sometimes. It spoke many sad good-bys to wives and children. But the pipe was not often so, for a Revolutionist must smile though the heart be torn. We older ones continually urged the young girls to be strong, for they told us how they were taken out and brutally treated to make them give evidence. A very few broke down, but there were many young girls who endured unshaken months of this brutality. "From new prisoners we heard cheering news. The fire of our Idea had spread among workmen as well as peasants; in the factories many were arrested, some were imprisoned here and joined our club, but were soon condemned into exile. Still the Idea spread. In 1877 came that tremendous demonstration on the Kazan Square in St. Petersburg. Hundreds were imprisoned; again many joined our club and were condemned, sent us last words of cheer along the pipe, and so were rushed off to Siberia. "In 1878 we were tried. One hun dred had died or gone insane. We one hundred and ninety-three were packed into a little hall. Over half had belonged to our club, and I had a strange shock as I now looked at these clubmates with whom I had daily talked. White, thin, and crippled, but still the same stout hearts! We nerved each other to refuse to be tried, for the trial we knew was to be a farce; the jury allowed us by law was not given us; we had only a jury of seven, of whom but one was a peasant. Our judges had been appointed by the Czar. They divided us into groups of ten or fifteen; the trials lasted half a year. When my turn came, I protested against this farce; for this I was at once taken out and my prison term was lengthened to five years as hard-labor convict in the mines. This is the punishment given to a murderer. My term served, I was a Siberian exile for life. "Secretly at night, to avoid a demonstration, ten of us were led out. Other tens followed on successive nights. In the street below were eleven 'telegas 'heavy hooded vehicles with three horses each. Into one I was placed, a stout gendarme squeezed in on each side, to remain there two months. Just before my knees sat the driver. We went off at a gallop, and our five-thousand-mile journey began. The Great Siberian Road was feelingly described by Mr. Kennan. A succession of bumps of all sizes; our springless telegas jolted and bounced; my two big gendarmes lurched; our horses continually galloped, for they were changed every few hours; we bounced often a whole week without stopping over ten minutes day or night; we suffered agony from lack of sleep. Our officer ordered the gendarmes never to leave us. At times we women held shawls between the gendarmes and our friends. Three wives who had come to share their husbands' exile were treated the same. We were all dressed in convict clothes. The men had also heavy chains on feet and wrists; their heads were partly shaved. Our officer kept the money given him by our anxious. friends at home, and gave us each the Government allowance of about five cents a day. For sleep we were placed in the étapes [wayside prisons]. Mr. Kennan has well described the cellsreeking, crawling, infected with scurvy, consumption, and typhoid. They had log walls roughly covered with plaster. The air was invariably noisome; the long bench on which we slept had no bedclothes. Through the walls we heard the endless jangling of fetters, |