HOME AND EDUCATION
Follette, Belle Case La
Home and Education Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE Catherine Breshkovsky "My greatest treasure is ray iulinite love for the people." ^r-piHE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION is one of the I great events...
...Some Hat—At That With a wild sweep the wind tore round a sudden corner and removed the hat from the head of a respectable and near-sighted citizen who chanced to be passing...
...When the train arrived at Petrograd, the crowd tried to storm the station, crying "Let us see Grandmother...
...They worked everywhere and* always...
...Petersburg...
...The roof leaked...
...A just solution of the agrarian question, she said, would enable the country to avoid dangerous collisions...
...your running brook will become a quiet lake.' And the time came when I was married, and I was conscious of no change in my spirit...
...And with time came new counsel from friends...
...Fired by such ideas, I saw the poor, degraded 6laves around me, and longed to set them free...
...When troops were quartered in their huts families were starved, old people were beaten by drunkards, daughters were < j ^> REAT BRITAIN, as has been sug-l| gested here so often, without her ^""^ business ruined — indeed, with her business prosperous, after three years of tremendous war—has an 80 per cent, tax on war profits...
...Hiram W. Johnson), we would have raised approximately $3,200,000,000 on this tax alone...
...She found them greatly changed...
...Because they had only the most wretched bits of land...
...Then a woman's angry voice broke on his ears...
...His words thrilled like fire...
...Even so, I could not do it all the time...
...They felt that in this way they could get a better understanding of peasant conditions, since those who wear the shoe know where it pinches...
...When in November, 1916, explosions of indignation followed one another, I had already one foot in the Siberian sleigh, only feeling sorry that the snow road was beginning to i.haw...
...and at the same time to learn what were their popular ideals of a better social life...
...We were thrown into an old prison, where we were lodged in a long, low, grimy hall, with little cells like horse stalls opening off it on either side...
...Among the women in the struggle for Russian freedom there were many who chose to be fighters for Justice rather than mothers of the victims of tyranny...
...The work was slow, Iut she seemed never to have been discouraged...
...He was bewildered...
...Her father and mother were both well educated, they had high moral standards, they lived more simply than the average Russian nobleman's family...
...In 1S96 her term expired...
...But when that spirit grew real, one felt far from weary...
...As for the government, he knew only that in peace he must pay money...
...In that year of 1S74, over two thousand educated men and women traveled among the peasants...
...While it *¦ seemed to come with surprising suddenness, it was really the fruit of the labors and sacrifices of thousands of Russia's noblest men and women...
...The guards could only quiet them by explaining the danger of a crush, and assuring ilowed to take part in inywhere in the world vho received so many Grandmother," pointing rers, given on her way * • • W than all these out-welcome, was the zeal dch this miracle woman o press upon public at-ieople and the necessity leviato and remedy conw Douma, she said: . in my mind...
...raped...
...aud new recruits kept adding to our fund...
...a nation leprived of all teaching, i'ew thousand fortunate ¦ to get an education In schools that did not in "•ds of a population of "he new history must nembers of one family...
...I heard heartrending stories in my little schoolhouse, and many more through my father, the arbiter of our district...
...THE APPEAL for clemency did not avail, and when brought to trial, she was sentenced to exile in Siberia for life—to Kiernsk, a little town on an island, in the Lena River, several thousand miles from Petrograd...
...Thereupon great numbers, including many of the nobility, disguised themselves as peasants, and lived and worked side by side with the poorest of the people, secretly preparing them for revolution...
...For these months we did not use our bunks, but di v;;tftd ourselves to fighting the insects...
...I was thrilled by the glad news...
...iu contrast the years spent at Selenginsk wer« the hardest part of the long term she served in Siberia, because of her almost complete isolation" She says: "My heart burned with a passionate desire to escape, to renew the struggle...
...my obligations towards those to wnom I nave promised my help, and I cannot rest till my waiting comrades are provided for as arranged...
...They were scolded, they were whipped, they were exiled to Siberia, at the whim of their master for the least fault...
...She says after she had placed her babe in her Bister's arms, and they had driven away: — "My heart felt torn into a thousand pieces...
...So the People's Party was established...
...And then, far into the night, the firelight showed a circle of greatv 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...
...She was transferred a number of times during this exile, which lasted eighteen years...
...she demanded shrilly...
...now changed in character...
...She is the embodiment of an ideal, and the inspiration to its achievement...
...Halters just over your head, ami still higher, thatch...
...This inherent feeling was combined with great practical good sense and-a well-trained mind...
...I wore my own clothes...
...He was a man of broad, liberal ideas...
...These people went without any ideal or social reconstruction in their minds, or any thought of revolution...
...Early in March, a teTegram reached her announcing freedom...
...Peering wildly round, the man thought he saw his hat in a yard, behind a high fence...
...She was in good spirits...
...Your young blood will be calmed...
...r-piHE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION is one of the I great events of modern history...
...But the Senator from Idaho (Mr...
...I found the peasant," she goes on to say, "an abject, ignorant creature, who did not understand even the meagre rights he already had...
...in a Siberian winter the thermometer goes down to fiity degrees below zero, and at Kara the winter is eight months long...
...These things tormented Katya's childish mind, and pursued her to her bed, where she would lie awake for hours, unable to sleep for thinking of all the horrors about her...
...Secret printing offices were working in pathy with the revolution...
...Then, finding that she was suspected, she disguised herself as a peasant, and thus kept on with her work for some years more...
...My bed was an iron bracket with mattress and pillow of straw, rough gray blanket, coarse sheet and pillow case...
...The wings you have used for soaring high in the air among the clouds you will now use to shelter your little one.' And I gave birth to a little one...
...The government appointed in every .district an 'arbiter' to persuade the peasants...
...in war, lives...
...It was clean, and a hole above gave plenty of air...
...The world knows that one of the first acts of the Russian revolutionists following the deposition of the Czar was to declare an amnesty to all political prisoners and exiles...
...She says that for three years the pipe was almost always talking...
...On her last trip to Siberia, a political exile who saw her at a place where the convoy stopped to change horses, gives a picture of her...
...But it is'the genius of an artist to recreate out of this rather limited material the story of a great woman's life of sacrifice and devotion to a cause, so that it holds the reader's attention from cover to cover...
...Her reminiscences and letters published at this time would in themselves have great value and interest...
...This cell T never left for over two years...
...We had no personal expenses...
...These people had been gathered by my host, a brave peasant whom I had picked out, and ho in turn had chosen only those whom Siberia could not terrify...
...Katya, as she was called in childhood, was born 11L.184-L The Russian nobility loved luxury and she was brought up in the midst of it...
...From the age of eight, how to find justice was the question that troubled me," she said...
...There were no windows, only two small panes of glass, high up in the wall...
...Then the hut group was left to meet under a peasant who could read aloud those wonderful fables...
...Each of us had also a gray dressing-gown, with a yellow figure on the back, marking her as a convict...
...We could always encourage each other, for all had found the peasants receptive to our doctrine...
...The highest genius of poet or dramatist, in fact no flight of the imagination, could conceive a more triumphant climax than the life of Catherine Breshkovsky today affords...
...Sobbing wives told of husbands killed before their eyes...
...Hers was one those strong natures who need not question, and whose destiny is directed by supreme faith in the Light that is given them, lu 1874, she began her wo^k among the peasants a revolutionary missionary...
...but the thing was impossible...
...Each of us had a stall six feet by five...
...So I gave my child to Vera and my brother, to bo brought up as their own...
...The arbiter failed...
...Among this erewd in gray coats under a gray sky acd in the rain, ber Imposing figure struck every one immediately...
...He explained mildly that he was only trying to retrieve his oat...
...So they dreamed, until a few weeks later another leader in disguise came to them...
...At Moscow she was placed in the Czar state coach, and taken amidst a military escort to the hall where the Moscow Douma was sitting, where she was given an official welcome, with greetings and orations...
...but I was Btill a Liberal and thought only of reform, not ol revolution...
...When we reluctantly lay the book down, we feel we have been in complete communion for a lifetime with a great soul "whose greatest treasure," as she herself puts it, is "infinite love of the people...
...The room was packed with men, women and children...
...to women whose husbands had died under the lash...
...for ( could never let one tiny estato outweigh the vast plains of all Russia...
...This process went oa for five years all over Russia, until at last, bleeding and exhausted, the peasants gave in...
...Volumes could not tell more of the all persuasive and irresistible effect of the '•Little Grandmother's" wonderful spirit of democracy and devotion Jo her people's cause during the thirty-two "idle years" spent in Siberia...
...1 filled my time with work, so as to be able to send my earnings to the dark prisons, the snowbound wastes, the hungry, forgotten comrades...
...In a village near ours, where they refused to leave their plots, they were driven into line on the village street...
...It was the cook's day out...
...Nowhere lu this wonderful woman's life as re-rded here, do we find a suggestion of any sense martyrdom or of doubt or regret...
...For hours he discussed with me the problems that were rushing upon us...
...The long homeward journey was one continuous ovation...
...The peasants grew more wild, and then began the flogging...
...These poor human beings rose before the sun was up...
...THE LAST FOUR YEARS of her long term she was a "free exile," which meant that she was free to travel anywhere in Siberia...
...No longer bound to the land, his landlord ordered him off...
...No revolutionary spirit' had yet been kindled...
...From there on, she says, "began my communion with soldiers, peasants, workmen, railroad employes, students, and multitudes of beloved women, who today are all bearing the burden of the normal and now also of the abnormal life of a great State...
...We read together many books of science and travel...
...This movement was entirely legal, says the author, and was carried on openly...
...In spite of the prison hardships, this was one of the happiest seasons of her life, it was so great a delight to her to associate with so many women of the noblest character, all of them devoted to the cause of Russian freedom...
...She had an extraordinary constitution, which became so hardened and fortified that she could endure hunger and exposure, privation beyond belief...
...The building was old, filthy, and dilapidated, with gaps iu tho walls, through which the snow and ice camo into our cells every night...
...For several years she traveled openly, under-her own name, although she did her organizing in secret...
...By sixteen I had read much of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, and I knew the French Revolution by heart...
...On winter nights the stall doors were left open for warmth, but in summer each woman was locked at night in her own black ! hole...
...From her earliest years, Catherine would run away by herself from these rich and extravagant surroundings to the huts of the serfs...
...Joy give* station and cross road* It is the groan of tha 's, teachers...
...And that ?as not heroic work...
...At the time of her first imprisonment there she had been the only tme...
...In the waiting room, she got into conversation with a party of nuns and their abbess...
...What are you doing there...
...I felt for the people's cause as strongly as ever—even more strongly...
...felt the tremendous economic and political changes must bo made...
...Well, I don't know where it is, but that's our little black hen you're chasing...
...Then most of them became revolutionists...
...The same day she was on her way to the nearest railroad station...
...During the great fetes, which were given several times a year, there were orchestras and troops of actors and singers who furnished amusement...
...The abbess was attracted by her and invited her to visit their convent...
...Her great natural sympathy and sense of common brotherhood was akin to Christ's...
...We shall have the right to agitate among them when we are of them," said Catherine...
...After she was discovered and arrested, she was held in a Petrograd prison for a long time await-iug trial...
...Again I would ask what chance their babies had of living, and In reply some peasant woman would tell how her baby had died the winter before...
...She had many hair-breadth escapes...
...She put on the cook's clothes, and stood in the kitchen cooking the dinner while they searched the house...
...Masters,' he cried, 'how can I nourish my little ones through a Russian winter...
...My spirit and my convictions remained the same...
...A T FIRST," she said, "I believed that freedom *» could be reached without a radical change of government...
...The "Little Grandmother" was chosen a member of the preliminary parliament of Russia...
...Child though she was, she wondered why the peasant who tilled the soil should bear so entirely the burden of the toll and taxes...
...She spent her time in going from town to town talking with the people, preparing them for revolution...
...As a matter of fact, you have never heard of anything heroic done by me, unless it be that all my life I have held my post like a faithful soldier and have done my work quietly...
...Yet even here there wp not a really warm and friendly feeling toward the peasant, except on Katya's part...
...v As reported in the press despatches, she declared that the people ought to be masters of the soil they cultivate...
...ers are prepared for a -ly life, the better they city of their mutual in-¦•¦ know each others' cus-lization, the surer and ueepcr...
...Miss Blackwell has rendered a rare service in giving us this account, which dramatizes the history, the philosophy, the ethics of a great popular movement, and gives us an intimate acquaintance with one of the noblest, most interesting and remarkable women of the world...
...Into our compartment on the train came a handsome young prince returning from official duties in Siberia...
...I languished like a hawk in a cage...
...T was not the only one called upon to make such a sacrifice...
...They were even more wretched than they had been twenty years before...
...Their wives and daughters were taken to serve the masters and sons as mistresses, their children were carried off without their consent to be trained as servants, or to serve in the house...
...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...
...I infer that he was inherently narrow and conservative...
...But they were also much more intelligent and more nearly ripe for revolution...
...He was shown a little strip of the poorest soil, there to be free and starve...
...In one of her notes, she says: "After each interview I write you, for I feel that in the course of it almost nothing has been said...
...There was not a day when I did not think of escaping, ami I was ready to ''U'1 any risk...
...She wanted no special privileges...
...The peasant was free...
...She received a great ovation as temporary chairman...
...For six years the railway compartment was my home...
...At each ut SAID SOME TIME AGO on the I floor, and I was denounced as an anarchist by certain papers for saying it, that during- this war no man ought to have an income of over $100,000...
...The instinct of the mother was no less strong than in every normal mother, but it yielded to a stronger passion—"infinite love of tho people.'' It bad been agreed that her brother and his wife, of whom Catherine was very fond, should undertake the care of her child, and bring him up as if be were their own...
...You desire a picture...
...only eleven years of 'underground' life gave me the opportunity to engage in the active work as dictated by my heart...
...WHETHER in prison or in exile she did not sense hardship or suffering for herself if she could only be helping others...
...She was sent to Siberia in 1S78...
...But they had great estates, a large house, richly furnished, extensive gardens and grounds...
...The analysis of her emotion in parting with her child reveal, it seems to me, that she followed tho overmastering impulse of her soul...
...The experience of Catherine and her friends in this respect was typical...
...It was the first great era of the Liberals...
...The emancipation of the serfs was soon to take place: so too the introduction of trial by jury...
...again the line, and now every man was dragged forward to the flogging...
...For centuries past, an estate had always been described as containing so many 'souls.' It was sold for so much per 'soul.' The 'soul' and the plot had always gone together...
...It is her iptlng all the young men 'ny, as under the old rove every man and woman and write conscripted to % school teacher...
...Preeminent among these stands out the figure of Catherine Breshkovsky, known to millions by the affectionate name of Baboushka, the 'Dear Little Grandmother' of the revolution...
...some died...
...At a great meeting in Moscow recently, Madame Breshkovsky is reported as saying: "You have received me as a heroine...
...A low room with mud floor and walls...
...Wc had no vegetables...
...and stout words of cheer were sent from one group to another...
...Their eagerness rose...
...I now saw how ineffectual were my attempts...
...It was not mere abstract wrong that inspired her to action...
...I was constantly protected...
...He died soou after she was first sent to Siberia...
...They also felt that it would be unworthy to live in ease and comfort themselves while urging the peasants to face the greatest dangers and sacrifices...
...In common with the other Russian gentry, they entertained prodigally...
...Jt was in this prison that the revolutionists worked out a code—a system of tappiug on pipe, by which they communicated with each other quite rapidly and effectively...
...Nothing could be more compelling, more satisfying than the story,—so simply related that it seems to tell itself—of how this daughter of the Russian aristocracy, was impelled by her love for human beings, to render family ties, wealth and social position and give her whole life to the cause of Russian revolution...
...Her picture of the awful wrong perpetrated in the name of freedom by this so-called "emancipation" is so powerful no one can fail to feel its effect in determining her life work...
...She thus described her experience: "[ did my organizing by night,"' she said, ia telling of her experiences...
...end of the hall was a window, and a large stove where we cooked our food...
...I reminded them of their floggings...
...Girls passed teachers' examinations, learned midwifery or nursing, and went by the hundred into the villages, devoting themselves entirely to the poorest part of the population...
...rlendship, the stronger will be the ties that unite them...
...My feet were lame, my arms stiff...
...They covered the walls, the floor, the beds, our clothes...
...Yes, when the peasants were slow and dull, and the spirit of freedom seemed an illusion...
...Then, too, we had occasional grippings of hands with comrades...
...This heartfelt fellowship with folks however dumb or ignorant, was doubtless the secret of her deep hold on the affections of the masses...
...To seek guidance, to find out what older heads were thinking, I went at nineteen with my mother and sister to St...
...I held meetings ou river boats by night, in city tenement rooms, iu peasant huts, and in the forests...
...The meat was blue and smelt badly...
...The women would come weeping, demanding their children of whom 'they had been robbed...
...When it assembled in October, 1917, Premier Kerensky called upon her as the senior member of the parliament to take the chair...
...I read and studied, in order to know how mankind lived, and how far or near was the possibility of transforming it...
...The men would come to the master begging bread for which their families were famishing...
...But it was frowned upon by the government, and the would-be helpers of the peasants were ruthlessly suppressed...
...it was ordinary, everyday work, yet the kind of work the people need...
...She returned to Russia...
...I felt that in that boy my youth was buried, aud that when he was taken from ray body, the fire of my spirit had gone out with him...
...That young prince was Peter Kropot-kin...
...Once the police surrounded a country house where she was visiting friends...
...To own the land had been the dream of their fathers...
...I pointed to those who were crippled for life...
...every tenth man was called out and flogged with the knout...
...The peasants lovert her, aud would no more have betrayed her than the Scotch would have betrayed Prince Charlie...
...SJie promptly plunged anew into her old work of organizing the peasants...
...Borah) on yesterday went me 90 per cent, better and took the position that no man ought to have an income of over $10,000 during these trying times...
...Thosefceight empty years in Seleng-insk have remained as a gray void in my memory...
...She was expecting it, and she herself says in an interview: "The longer the war continued, the more horrible its consequences' grew, the more clearly the rascality of the government manifested itself, the more inevitable appeared the rise in democracy all over the world, the nearer advanced also our revolution...
...For many years Miss Blackwell has been known to the American public as the able editor of the Woman's Journal, the backbone of the suffrage cause...
...But it was not so...
...She left the station iu their company, without suspicion, and spent several days in the convent, while the police scoured the city lor her iu vain...
...So the peasant had thought that his soul and his plot would be freed together...
...In 1900 revolutionary circles existed all through Russia...
...We smeared the wall3 with tallow from our candies, and thcii set tho tallow on fire...
...The chasm of their thinking could not be bridged...
...and these promised reforms sent a social impulse sweeping through Russia...
...The new rumors had kindled his old heart-deep hope of freedom...
...My fellow prisoners were mostly young women of the nobility, excellent and charming, but delicately bred, aud not physically able to bear such hardships...
...She evidently had no conception of the influence of her example and her personnel...
...The twenty peasants in my school, like the millions in Russia, suspected that the proclamation had been hidden, and often went to the landowners demanding their freedom...
...and the icicles formed stalactites and stalagmites...
...They could not go to bed until late at night...
...and when 1 asked if men were to be forever Hogged, they would cry out so fiercely that the three or four cattle in the next room would bellow and have to be quieted...
...While I was still a girl, they said, "Wait: You will get married, and that will tie you down...
...Catherine's father recognized the wrongs of serfdom—as many slave owners did slavery...
...This was in 1861, when Catherine was 17...
...I agree with him,"— Senator W. S. Kenyon...
...This is the opening paragraph of a remarkable book "edited" by Alice Stone Blackwell...
...Her husband was overcome with grier...
...Miss Blackwell calls attention to the way in which the movement "To the people...
...And then friends told me, Must wait, you will have an estate of your own to care for, and that will take up all your time and thoughts.' But my husband aud I bought an estate, and no auch result followed...
...The prison was literally swarming with vermin...
...therefore, if the council of the republic seriously wished to assist the country it should solve this problem in conformity with the exigencies of Russian history, and she urged tho intellectual classes not to oppose Buch solution...
...After the emancipation of the serfs, thousands of young men and young women from the- richer classes asked themselves how they could be most useful to "the masses," and decided that the only way was to go and settle among the poor, and live as they did...
...She would mingle with the peasant children and their mothi ers, studying their lives, reflecting on the contrasts she saw...
...He could think only of his mud hut and his plot of ground...
...If we had levied that, according to 1|he amendment of the Senator from California (Mr...
...Often, betrayed by some spy, I left a village quickly, before completing my work...
...In dull but growing rage, he refused to leave his plot of land for the wretched strip...
...She made ono trip of a thousand miles on foot across Ur» arctic plains...
...Two big fellows sat up on the high brick stove, with their dangling feet knocking occasional applause...
...She made 'sal education...
...Thoae wero not two tasks to which it was possible to give a divided attention...
...With the birth of a child will come the death of your revolutionary ideals...
...Xow they argued: 'Yes, you have remained unchanged by husband and home, but you will succumb to the command of Nature...
...The letters written during this period of exile reveal a philosophy so sound and interesting and universal in its application that I propose to make it the theme of another article for this magazine...
...but, unlike the old times, the way had always been prepared by some one before me...
...Her friends were anxious to pay for more comfortable transportation for her, than was provided for the exiles by the government, but she refused...
...Whereupon the woman said, m wonder: "Your hat...
...At last the manifesto emancipating the serfs arrived...
...Senator W. S. Kenyon...
...Her health which had been greatly impaired by her lonely sojourn at Selengnisk, was greatly improved, and she became quite strong again...
...Hastily climbing over, he started to chase it, but each time he thought he had caught it, it got yet another move on...
...Many were carried in, crippled by the knout...
...I no longer walked, but bad money for the railroads, aud so covered ten itmes the ground...
...From such interviews he came to me worn and haggard...
...Our food was a little black bread and twelve pounds of meat a month, with which to make soup...
...I asked...
...Before she returned, her parents bad also passed away...
...Wo-man's Journal...
...Tho government made every effort to catch her, but without success...
...It seemed to me that since 1005, when I had seen her last, •he had grown young...
...Even now her only wrinkles were the thought of others: "Only the thought of my comrade*' suffering made me forget my own...
...Our excited voices rose steadily higher, until my mother begged me, as my nurse had done before, to speak low...
...Filled with young enthusiasm, I opened a little school near our estate...
...She says: "My cell was nine feet long, five feet wide and seven feet high...
...I could not move from the spot, f thought of tho warning that had been given me when I first spoke of . my wish to work lor the peasants...
...Madame Breshkovsky was sent a special invitation to return...
...My father helped me to think," she says...
...He never had a serf flogged, and in all respects he treated the serfs upon his estate with much more consideration than most Russian landowners...
...From my cloak I would bring a book of fables written to teach our principles aud stir the love of freedom...
...the enormous tables groaned with the weight of food prepared by cooks who had served apprenticeship in the capitals of Europe...
...She quotes Prince Kropot-kin as follows: "Young men went into the villages as doctors, doctors' helpers, teachers, village scribes, even as agricultural laborers, blacksmiths, wood-cutters, and so on, and tried to live there in close contact with the peasants...
...and they held in fact a little court, as it were, in imitation of the Czar...
...Either the one or the other must absorb one's whole being, one's entire devotion...
...Vie was a man of noble character, but h© lacked the iron resolution and perhaps the fervor for the course which possessed his wife's soul, and which made any other cause impossible to her...
...Thirty-two years of prison and of Siberia kept me practically idle...
...Often the poor wretches literally grovelled, clasping my father's knees, begging him to read the manifesto again and find it was a mistake, beseeching him to search for help in that mysterious region, the law court...
...Neither would she accept the money that her friends sent her, except on condition that she might share it with the rest...
...Two weeks later, as they still held out, every fifth man was flogged...
...The meeting of the mother and son, at the interchange of letters, seemed almost more tragic than her parting...
...Social science absorbed me...
...They sickened one by one...
...And yet these are the conditions to which Catherine Breshkovsky returned, as described by herself: "Our clothing was a chemise of coarse cloth, a skirt reaching to the ankles, no drawers, no stockings, and a huge pair of coarse shoes...
...BEFORE ENTERING upon her active revolutionary work, which would take her away from home for good, and which she well understood was almost sure to lead to an exile and death, Catherine must bid goodbye to her husband and parents, and must part with her young baby...
...The poor ignorant creatures still held desperately to what they thought their rights...
...We used pails of scalding water...
...The conflict between my love for the child and my love for the revolution and for tho freedom of Russia robbed me of many a night's sleep...
...There are only two mouths when it does not freeze at uight...
...Miss Blackwell in giving the history of these transfers says: On getting back to Kara, Catherine was overjoyed to find about twenty other women who were political convicts...
...1 waited for the sounds of the bell announcing freedom, and wondered why that sound delayed...
...Such land means death.' This cry rose all over Russia...
...Once she was in a railroad station when the police had guarded all the doors and were watching every out-going train for her...
...To be free the people must own the land...
...Nevertheless the reader feels that joy in working for her cause and in sustaining her fellow workers was the ultimate source of her miraculous strength...
...The peasants thronged to our house day and night...
...I knew that I could not bo a mother and still be a rovolu-tionlat...
...The "Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution," gives her a new place—and a very high place—in literature...
...Weary work, you say...
...After months of incessant warfare, we succeeded In exterminating them...
...i No one can measure the value of a life like Catherine Breshkovsky's—seventy years devoted to the people's cause...
...The book is timely, and Catherine Breshkovsky is one of those exceptional characters who appear only now and then in history...
...he could not imagine himself without his old plot of land...
...Speaking of her experience at this time, she says: "When 1 Legan to travel, I noticed at once a vast difference...
...In this -acy would be wiped out s Blackwell, she says: le world is beginning, • first steps of a march nmising the most deslr-directing our steps to-> task is to make them . . .It is necessary to the minds of a nation, «* knowledge...
...They simply wanted to teach the mass of the peasants to read, to interest them in other things, to give them medical help, and in any way to aid in raising them from their darkness and misery...
Vol. 10 • January 1918 • No. 1
