the moaning of women, the cries of sick babies. On the walls were a mass of inscriptions, names of friends who had gone before us, news of death and insanity, and shrewd bits of advice for outwitting gendarmes. Some were freshly cut, but one worm-eaten love poem looked a century old. For along

this Great Siberian Road over a million men, women, and children have dragged, two hundred and fifty thousand since 1875, people from every social class; murderers and degenerates side by side with tender girls who were exiled through the jealous wife of some petty town official.

"You keep asking me for scenes and stories. But you see we were thinking of our dream, and did not notice so much the life outside. Did any die? Yes, one by typhoid. Our officer rushed the sufferer on at full gallop, until his delirious cries from the jolting vehicle so roused our protests that he was left in the Irkutsk prison, where he died. Were there any children? Yes, one little wife had a baby ten months old, but the rest of us did all we could to help her, and the child survived the journey. Friends to say good-by? Ah, let me think! Yes; as we passed through Krasnoyarsk, a student's old mother had come from a distance to see him. Our officer refused to allow the boy to kiss her. She caught but a glimpse, the gendarmes jerked him back into the vehicle, and they galloped on. As I came by I saw her white, haggard old face. Then she fell by the roadside.

"On reaching the Kara mines I found that the hard-labor year was but eight months, and that my forty months in prison had been taken from my fortyeight month sentence. So, having stayed ten months, I left Kara—as I then hoped -forever. I was taken to Barguzin, a bleak little group of huts near the Arctic Circle. We arrived in February forty-five degrees below zero. I began to look for work. Seeing a few forlorn little children, I proposed a school. The police agent forbade me, and showed his police rules from St. Petersburg, which forbid an exiled doctor to heal the sick or an exiled minister to comfort the dying. No educated person may use his

powers to improve his hamlet. (Many politicals have hired out to the Cossacks at five cents a day.) Here were three young students, 'administrative' exiles, exiled for life without a trial because suspected by some gendarme or spy. We decided to escape, and searched two years for a guide to lead us a thousand miles to the Pacific. We found a bent old peasant who had made the journey years before. With him we set out one night, leading four pack-horses. We soon found the old man useless. We had maps and a compass, but these did little good in the Taiga, that region of forest crags and steep ravines, where we walked now toward heaven and now to the region below. Often I watched my poor stupid beast go rolling and snorting down a ravine, hoping as he passed each tree that the next would stop his fall. Then for hours we would use all our arts and energies to drag him up. It was beautiful weather by day, but bitterly cold by night. We had hardtack to eat, also pressed tea and a little tobacco. So we walked about six hundred miles; in a straight line, perhaps two hundred.

"Meanwhile the police had searched in vain. in vain. The Governor had telegraphed to St. Petersburg, and from there the command had come that we be found at any cost. The plan adopted was characteristic of the System. Fifty neighboring farmers were seized (in harvest time), and were exiled from farms and families until they brought us back. After weeks of search they found us in the Apple Mountains. Their leader shouted across the ravine that unless we gave in they must keep on our trail, and escape was impossible. As we went back, around each of us rode ten armed

Petersburg-were sent, each alone, and spent years without a word from civilized people. In such places even men have gone insane. But I leave my story. Of the three students one is dead, another is dying of consumption, and the third escaped, returned to the old struggle in Russia, was caught, and given eight years as a hard-labor convict, and, having again escaped, is to-day renewing the struggle.

"As punishment for my attempt I was sentenced to four years' hard labor in Kara and to forty blows of the lash. Into my cell a physician came to see if I were strong enough to live through the agony. I saw at once that, afraid to flog a woman political without precedent, by this trick of declaring me too sick to be punished they wished to establish the precedent of the sentence, in order that others might be flogged in the future. I insisted that I was strong enough, and that the court had no right to record such a sentence unless they flogged me at once. The sentence was not carried out.

"Back in Kara I rejoiced to meet seventeen women politicals, with whom I lived in four low cells. Here we had books and writing materials, and were quite comfortable, discussing plans for the future struggle.

"A few weeks later eight of the men politicals escaped in pairs, leaving dummies in their places. As the guards never took more than a hasty look into that noisome cell, they did not discover the ruse for weeks. Then mounted Cossacks rode out. The man hunt spread. Some of the fugitives struggled through jungles, over mountains and through swamps a thousand miles to Vladivostok, saw the longed-for American vessels, and there on the docks were recaptured. All were brought back to Kara.

"For this we were all punished. One morning the Cossack guards entered our cells, seized us, tore off our clothes, and dressed us in convict suits alive with vermin. That scene cannot be described. One of us attempted suicide. Taken to an old prison, we were thrown into the 'black holes '-foul little stalls off a low, grimy hall which contained two

big stoves and two little windows. Each of us had a stall six feet by five. On winter nights the stall doors were left open for heat, but in summer each was locked at night in her own black hole. For three months we did not use our bunks, but fought with candles and pails of scalding water, until at last the vermin were all killed. We had been put on the 'black hole diet' of black bread and water. For three years we never breathed the outside air. We struggled constantly against the outrages inflicted on us. After one outrage we lay like a row of dead women for nine days without touching food, until certain promises were finally exacted from the warden.. This hunger strike' was used repeatedly. To thwart it we were often bound hand and foot while Cossacks tried to force food down our throats.

"Kara grew worse after I left. To hint at what happened, I tell briefly the story of my dear friend Maria, a woman of education and deep refinement. Shortly after my going Maria saw Madame Sigida strike an official who had repeatedly. insulted the women. Two days later she watched Sigida die, bleeding from the lash; that night she saw three women commit suicide as a protest to the world; she knew that twenty men attempted suicide on the night following, and she determined to double the protest by assassinating the Governor of TransBaikal, who had ordered Sigida's flogging. At this time Maria was pregnant. Her prison term over, she left her husband and walked hundreds of miles to the Governor's house and shot him. She spent three months in a cold, dirty 'secret cell,' not long enough to lie down in or high enough to stand up in, wearing the cast-off suit of a convict, sleeping on the bare floor and tormented by vermin; she was then sentenced to be hanged. She hesitated now whether to save the life of her unborn child. She knew that if she revealed her condition her sentence would be changed to imprisonment. She decided to keep silent and sacrifice her child, that when the execution was over and her condition was discovered the effect on Russia might be still greater. Her condition, however, became apparent, and she was

started off to the Irkutsk prison. It was midwinter, forty degrees below zero. She walked. She was given no overcoat and no boots, until some common criminals in the column gave her theirs. Her child was born dead in prison, and soon after she too died.

"Meanwhile I had been taken to Selenzensk, a little Buriat hamlet on the frontier of China, where Mr. Kennan met me."

Kennan speaks of her in these words: "Her face bore traces of much suffering, and her thick, dark, wavy hair, cut short in prison at the mines, was streaked here and there with gray. But not hardship nor exile nor penal servitude had been able to break her brave, finely tempered spirit, or to shake her convictions of honor or duty. . . . There was not another educated woman within a hundred miles; she was separated for life from family and friends, and she had, it seemed to me, nothing to look forward to except a few years more or less of hardship and privation, and at last burial in a lonely graveyard beside the Selenga River.

...

The unshaken courage with which this unfortunate woman contemplated her dreary future, and the faith she manifested in the ultimate triumph of liberty in her native country, were as touching as they were heroic. Almost the last words she said to me were: 'Mr. Kennan, we may die in exile, and our children may die in exile, and our children's children may die in exile, but something must come of it at last !'"

"The seven years that followed," she continued, were the hardest of the twenty-three, for I spoke to but three Russian politicals, who stopped three weeks. In winter-from twenty to fifty below zero-I used to put my chair up on the brick stove and sit with my head close to the thatch." Hence the severe rheumatism that now affects her. "The Government had allowed me six dollars a month. My hut rent was fifty cents, wood a dollar and a half, food four dollars. My friends at home? Yes, they sent money, too, but of course I sent this to my Kara friends. At long intervals one of their many letters reached me-sometimes sewed in the lining of a Buriat cap. I grew almost frantic with

loneliness, and to keep my sanity I would run out on the snow shouting passionate orations, or even playing the prima donna and singing grand opera arias to the bleak landscape, which never applauded.

"The seven years over, I was allowed to travel all through Siberia. I lived three years in Irkutsk, the main Siberian city, and many years besides in Tobolsk, Tiumen, and other smaller towns. Here, as my hardships ended, I saw the sufferings of others begin. By the increasing procession from Russia I knew that our work was spreading. With hundreds of comrades, I planned future work. In September, 1896, thoroughly reformed, I secured permission to return to Russia, and three hours later I was on the train.

"Our old 'People's Party' had become the Party of the Will of the People' and had died as thousands of its leaders were sent to exile or prison. Jn 1887 the Social Democratic party was formed, working mainly in the factories and mills. Here they found ready listeners, for the laborers, who had formed unions to mitigate their wretched existence, were often lashed to death. It was against the law to strike. Once when a labor leader had been arrested and a committee from the workers came to the prison to ask his release, they were shot down by the prison officials. Several times men were shot for parading on the first of May. Among the workers the new party gained strength until about 1900. Then all its Jewish members seceded and formed the 'Bund'-which favors immediate revolution. Others too seceded, and its power has slowly declined.

"The Social Revolutionist party, of which I am a member, began only five years ago, but it is now the most promising in the growing struggle for freedom. Like the Social Democrats, we strive for the Socialist commonwealth. But, unlike them, we believe that to secure our freedom the first step is to throw off the System of the Czar. To this standard— Freedom by Revolution-members from all parties rally. The Liberalist Miloshevski served for years on the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Education in his city, striving to lift the people out

of the dense ignorance which made them slaves. For years he struggled to make the school education of real value. Constantly thwarted by the Government, as I myself had been, he was at last driven to our party, became a valuable worker, was captured, and is to-night at the silver mines of Nertchinsk, to which the Kara prisoners have been transferred. Through our secret reports we know that Akatooy is far more loathsome. Like Miloshevski, men of middle age, Liberals for twenty years, have seen their newspapers and magazines garbled to death by the censors, their friends exiled without trial, on the most absurd suspicions, and so at last they see that, whatever be their creed, first of all they must sweep away the System.

"To the peasant we teach the old lesson. To reach freedom-first, the land must be owned by the people; second, the System of the Czar must be swept away. There is not a province in Russia where our literature does not go. The underground mails run smoothly now. Scores of presses work ceaselessly in Switzerland, safe from capture. Not to take useless risks, our central committee is scattered all through Russia; it rarely meets, but it constantly plans through cipher letters and directs the local committees, which in turn guide the small local committees, and so down to the little peasant and laborer groups that meet to-night by thousands in huts and city tenements.

"These thousands of groups draw swiftly closer. Proclamations, open letters, and announcements pour through the underground mail. Our leaders constantly travel from group to group. As a leader, my story is typical. When, on reaching Russia eight years ago, I began again to travel, I noticed at once a vast difference. I no longer walked, but had money for the railroads, and so covered ten times the ground; for six years the railway compartment was my home. I had meetings on river boats by night, in city tenement rooms, in peasant huts, and in the forests, but now, unlike the old days, the way had always been prepared by some one before me. I was constantly protected. Once, in Odessa, the police came into the house

where I was staying. Their suspicions had been aroused, and they made a search. I at once became an old peasant woman."

In a twinkling she had changed. Her shawl had, come up over her head, her hands were clasped in her lap, her head nodded. A bent, decrepit old peasant looked from under the shawl with a vacant grin.

"My ruse succeeded. The next month, far down in the south, I was living as a Frenchwoman, On some rumor the police came along, examining passports in every house on the block. I slipped out while they searched the next house, and entered it just as they came to the house where I had stayed. Again, only eighteen months ago, I was in Kief with a young girl of seventeen, an active worker, who had been suspected and was under police surveillance. We slept together in her tiny tenement room. I had been there a week when the spies watching her window observed me with her. The next night suddenly a gendarme knocked and said, 'There is some one sleeping with you; why have you not reported to the police?' Fortunately, I was out at the time. She, being so young, was very frightened, but managed to reply, Only my grandmother, who has come to see me.' The moment he had gone she slipped out into the rain and found me at a secret meeting. There they dressed me in silks as a grand lady, and I drove to the railway station in style. I doubt if the police can ever arrest me again.

"Besides these constant communications from group to group by leaders and by printed words, we believe at times in demonstrations; for the excitement that comes with the sudden burst of speeches and enthusiasm, the arrests that follow, and the new victims started to Siberia-these help further to rouse the dull peasants.

"Some believe in the effectuality of 'terror.' In 1901 the Fighting League was organized. Its only business is so-called 'terror.' It has few active members, all strictly secret; none of us know their names. A long list of candidates eagerly wait to carry on the work. They have killed a dozen officials in the

I

rise for freedom. Arms? There are plenty. Why in recent riots have soldiers refused to fire on the crowd? Because all through the army are soldiers and even officers working secretly for the cause. Arms-yes, and brains--for in the universities and in every profession are wise, resolute men to guide the wild passions of revolt. In the zemstvos are hundreds of officials straining to hasten our struggle. So in this last year the movement has suddenly swelled. Already four hundred thousand strong l Day and night they work. In place of sleep and food and drink-the dream of freedom. Freedom to think and speak! Freedom to work! Justice to all! For this cause I shall travel three months in

your free country. For this cause I have the honor of making to free Americans our appeal."

F you have ever been in Bruges, you have doubtless seen the convent of St. Julien. You may have walked down the long passage with its ancient tapestries of Arras; you may have brooded over its hoard of enamel and crystal and gold, of vellum and carved oak and embroidered stuffs; you may have said a prayer at the shrine of that ancient saint incorrupt whose body floated on the sea among roses, and shed light to be a beacon to fishermen until at length it was found and drawn to land, here within to work miracles forever more. All these things you may have seen, and others, but I donbt-I very strongly doubt-whether you have seen there the finest cook in the world; and as it was my good fortune to know her, I will tell you the most strange story of her life as I have pieced it together, partly from her own words and partly from the account of one of the dear Sisters who is my friend.

I first saw Marie Ten Back sitting in the great hall among the lace-makers, whom the nuns foster for sweet St. Julien's sake. There are perhaps a

hundred old women in gay knitted shawls and black caps and white, their withered fingers clicking and pointing the bobbins with the speed and skill of lifelong practice, their pale, bleared eyes bent upon the array of brass pins marching across the dark pillow as valenciennes or torchon is evolved. There is little speech among the workers. You may walk all the way down the great hall and hear no sound but the cluck-ycluck-y-cluck-y-cluck of the tiny spindles. Through the glass doors at the far end you may see those that are bedridden with illness or sheer age, among them one that looks older than human creature should ever grow to be, dead you would say, but for the flicker of her eyelids. In a sunny vestibule between the dormitory and the hall of the lacemakers sit the idle few who cannot work; and among these I noted the sturdy figure of Marie. Ah," says the good Sister, "she will not make lace ; she will not do anything but cook," and adds with a sigh: "I suppose she is the finest cook in the world !"

Well, that you would scarcely have