Morning journal and courier., 1886-12-17
PICTURE OF THE CHAR,
And a Description of the Life VhicI
 He Leads.


 He Leads.
 London Correspondence of the New York Times
 My friend the messenger was on his way to St. Petersburg in the autumn of last year, when his train stopped at a small Russia way station and was shunted off upon side track. The station yard was filled with sol diers, filing off into lines along the main track.
 The messenger let down his window and put out his head to discover the cause of the delay. A soldier said something to him in Russian, then pointed his gun at his head. A travelling companion pulled the messenger back, saying; 'sYou don't understand Rus sian, eh? That man told you that if you didn't shut the window and pull down the curtain he would blow your brains out" Naturally the window came up and the cur tain came down. They sat thus in the dark ened compartment for quarter of an hour. Then, with prodigious rattle and roar, short express train. Twenty minutes more another rushed past in the game direction Then after some minutes the soldier shouted to them that they might lift the blind, and they resumed their journey. Inquiry re- vealed that the Czar had passed them on his way to the Skierniwice meeting, and that these precautions were ordered all along the line. No one knew which of the trains bor him.
 The Czar himself seems to have many flat terers, but no friends. I have talked, I dare say, at one time or another with score of people who have met him and are fairly qualified to judge what manner of man he is. Almost invariably he is described as 8 big, burly, bearish sort of man, strangely unlike any of his more recent ancestors on either side, and with face of curious Teuton- Tartar type, picturesque but unpleas- ant. He has vast physical strength of the blacksmith sort, and has the kind of mind I, ,1ks s,,R- II. of body-slow, honest, obstinate, confding where faith is reposed, suspicious everywhere else. In way George III must have been of the same nature. He was, with Louis XVI, rather contemptuously celebrated by his contemporary critics as one of the two faithful husbands among the sovereigns of Europe. Good husbands seem to make bad kings. The present Czar is said to be 8 most devoted and simple spouse-the first of his race. He is par excellence a family man, to whom the highest happiness would be the home circle if he were allowed to have a home. His tastes are simple; he eats plain ly and heavily; before the burden of empire came upon him he used to be a great sleeper, mighty hunter, bluff friend of the few he liked, hater of formalities, diplomacy and politics generally-in short good, wholesome, rough plebeian prince, stupid and choleric, but honest and true Fate never played on mortal crueler trick than when she suddenly hurled upon this man the load of czsrship. To be absolute master of over one hundred millions of human be- ings is in itself a task of inconceivable mag nitude. When, further, the task is compli- cated by organized robbery among officials and organized murder among subjects, by continual necessity of provoking war by az gression abroad and ceaseless terror of assas- sination at home-it becomes simply impos- sible
 f1l1 than the Czar would have cut his throat long ago under the frightful load imposed upon him. He suffers and sticks to his post. He does no good to himself or anybody else. His wife is pale specter of her former self, looking old enough to be the mother of her elder but marvelously preserved sister, the Princess of Wales, worn and gray haired with her life of fright. Their eldest son, the Czarewitz, boy of eighteen, is in decline from which there is little hope of recovery simply terrified out of his life. But the Czar still manfully tries to be Czar. The task is up of Bismarck, Washington, Richelieu, Bonaparte and Tamerlane put on the Russian throne, perhaps he could hold his place and compel success.
 The present Czar lives in the dazed night mare of terror which paralyzes prisoner under indefinite sentence of death. Any moment the messenger of the may appear. no cAnnot sieeP, "nen ne eats l6 IS as an an- imal, not as the master of the worlds cost Hest cuisine, He tries to work, without un- derstanding the things he does or caring for them. He looks into every mans face for a sign of murderous knowledge He trusts nothing-nobody. The gulf between what he is and what he is supposed to be is so abysmal-the joke of being at once the most powerful man on earth and the poor est hunted slave in existence is so grimly horr1ble-that he becomes @ madman al most in the effort to comprehend the two extremes. The lenging to assert himself, to put te+ the test his autocraey, drives him to wild and foolish measures. His whole course toward his hated cousin, the Bat tenberg, and the Bulga1ians has been that best expect that his brain will give way under the strain long hsfore we have heard the last of the Bulgarian question.