The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1885-12-25
a RUSSIAN LopolNo-HovsE.

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Fhs Pleasures LteA OAssu 10 Dwsllers h
%. Fsesrsbsr6 Apastments.
Let rs try to realize for moment
what life in 81. Petersburg is. not to the
easy-minded traveller. whose home is far
away and who may leave Russia at any
moment, but to the native resident
whose family ties and eralintcrests-
to say nothing Of patriotism-bind him
to the country even more firmly than he
may chance to be attached to It by the
arbitrariness Of the police. The lodg-
ing-house, under circumstances like
these. wears an aspect strikingly sug-
gcstive of the Jail. Exigencies of state
turn the communal dwelling place and
its picturesque survivals into an aggreGa-
tion of cells, watched over by house
porter in the pay of tho police. This
functionary is worry Heimdalin sharp
ness Of senses; he hears the faintest
sounds, and sees without any light
whatever; while his omnipresence when
not wanted is far more complete than
any magic carpet of Arabian tale could
make it. This parsonage it is who
mounts guard at the porte-cochere to
watch entries and exits; it is he who
sees that all nesx dodgers are promptly
numbered and pigeon-hOled at police
headquarters; he who keeps record of
the personal habits, companions and
resorts OF every man, woman and child
under his charge; he, too, who reports
regularly to the authorities any '.sus-
piciOus circumstances" which may come
under his notice. II q christening, y
wedding or funeral is to bring tOgeth-
or few friends, it is the house porter
who facilitates the intrusion of police
spies. ready to snatch at any scrap of
colloquial ''setition" capable Of CONVEX
sion into rOubles or advancement. If a
Students Literary evening" or social
gathering is to be swelled into an assem-
bly, of cOnspirators seeking to under
mine the foundations of law and order,
it is again the horsepower who, flgura-
lively speaking, supplies the gendarmes
with their magnifying-glasses. And if
some unfortunate youth is to pay the
penalty of his liberalism by being drag
ged from his bed at midnight to the
fortress of Peter and Paul, nobody is
more eager to lead the way to the sleep
ing suspect than this trcacherOus janitor
of many households, nightly consum-
mating in the garb of the Watchdog
his unholy compact with the wolves.
To go in constant fear of the paid de-
nunciatOr; never to ''talk politics" save
with relatives, or iRtimates incapable of
treschery; to have your local newspaper
turned by the censor into mere record
Of foreign events. and your foreign jour
nal sub-edited for yoa BY . policeman,
who carefully clips from it or grasses
everything Of dangerous" tendency;
enemy may thrust some seditious publ
cation in your lctter-box, and 50 time
his disclosure to the police as to have
you surprised with the forbidden matter
in your possession; to be kept by o
silent press in state Of complete iGno-
rance as to serious events occurring
around you; and to feel in regard
TO your own personal safety
and that Of your family and
friends, an uncertainty truly Oriental
all this is no moro that . mere sugges-
ton Of what life is to thousands of per-
sons born to Russian citizenship in St.
Petersburg. And whom to the elements
Of the general discomfort, to the bitter
emptiness of existence, to the longing
for life of nobler activities, yon add
the pangs Of poverty and the sense Of
personal wrong, it can not seem strange
that in many Of these lodging houses
sensitive humanity should find its last
and only safeguard against voluntary
extinction in the hopes, the idealism and
the self-sacrifice Of = political religion
Edmund Noble. in Atlantic.