Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-12-26
eANlsHED TO SIBERIA FOR LIFE.
Something About Felix volklhofslxi and
 His Devoted, Heroic Wife.

Something About Felix volklnofslxi and
 His Devoted. Heroic Wife.
 To me, perhaps, the most attractive and sympathetic of the Tomsk exiles was the Russian author, Felix Volkhofski, who was banished to Siberia for life in 1878 upon the charge of Belonging to society that in- tends, at a more or less remote time in the future, to overthrow the existing form of government" writes George Kennan in The Century.
 He was about 3S years of age at the time made his acquaintance, and was a man of cultivated mind, warm heart and high aspi- rations. He knew English we'll, was familiar with American history and literature and had, 1 believe translated into Russian many of the poems of Longfellow.
 He spoke to me with great admiration, l remember, of Longfellow's "Arsenal at Springfield" j." and recited it to me aloud. He was one of the most winning and lovable men that it has ever been my good fortune to know; but his life had been terrible tragedy.
 His health had been shattered by long inn prisonment in the fortress of Petropavlovsk; his hair was prematurely white; and when his face was in repose there seemed to be an expression of profound melancholy in his dark brown eyes.
 became intimately acquainted with him and very warmly attached to him; and when I bade him good-by for the last time on my return from Eastern Siberia in 1SS6 he put his arms around me and kissed me and said: George 1vanovitch, please don't forget us! In bidding you good-by, fec as if something were going out of my life | that would never again como into it."
 Since my return to America l have heard from MT. Volkhofski only once He wrote l o aft ir which he informs me of the death of his wife by suicide He himself had been thrown ou of employment by the suppression of th' liberal Tomsk newspaper, The Siberian Ga zette, and his wife, whom 1remember as { pale, delicate, sad faced woman, 25 or 3l years of age, had tried to help him supper their family of young children by giving private lessons and by taking ill sewing.
 Anxiety and overwork had finally broker down her health; she had become an invalid and in morbid state of mind, brought on b, unhappiness and disease, she reasoned her self into the belief that she was an incum brance rather than help, to her husbant and her children, and that they would ulti mately be better off if she were dead.
 A little more than year ago she put al end to her unhappy life by shooting hersel through the head with a pistol. Her hus band was devotedly attached to her, and he death, under such circumstances and in suc a way, was 0 terrible blow to him.
 He sent me with his letter 0 small, worn leather matchbox which had been given b Prince Pierre Krapotkin to his exiled brothe Alexander, which the latter had left to VolE hofsl1i, and which Volkhofski had in tur presented to his wife short time before he death.
 The czar may whiten the hair of such me l. casenates of the fortress, and he may sen them in gray convict overcoats to Siberia but time will come, in the providence C God, when their names will stand highe than his on the roll of history, and when th record of their lives and sufferings will be source of heroic inspiration to all Russian .. who love liberty and their country.