The Banner-Democrat., 1892-12-10

handed Out-for 1t was made into l0avea
and distributed-many people would
halt before taking it and relfgiously
cross themselves and utter a prayer for
the donors. Some of them would come
staggering back, and say: please
tell Us who sent this bread to us. !"
And when told it come from Ameri-
ca, they would say: "What part
Of America? Please give us the names
of those who sent It.. All, God only
knows the names of those who sent it,
but He certainly does know, and many
prayer is going up, 1 warrant you.
day by day, for those who sent -four by
the ship Leo. Perhaps, some of us at
our tables rattle off . prayer that may
mean nothing, although we call it
Saying grace" but l warrant when
those people who received the bread
which saved their lives ''said grace, Z"
it meant something. Our religion may
not demand that we ''cross ourselves, !"
but I have learned that while crossing
ones self in some cases may mean
nothing but mere form, believe in
most cases it means: "Oh, Thou of the
suffering cross of Calvary, have mercy
upon me and accept my graft
tude." Prefer your own form Of
religion by all means, but do not do
preciate the religious forms of others.
From all 1 can learn. there were sew
eral good people before we were born,
and rather expect there will be sew
eral left after we are dead. l have
travelled in many lands, but tell you
plainly, as l told Emperor Alexander
III. in the palace at Peterhoff, that I
had never been so impressed with the
fidelity to their religion of any people
as by what I had seen in Russia, and
especially among her public men. l
said respectfully to a Russian when
saw him bless himself: what do You
do that for?' ''Oh," he said, "when /
do that L always say: God have
mercy on me-" / hold in my hand
something very suggestive. What
does that black and uncomely thing
look like? That is what is called hun
ger-bread from Russia; that is
what millions Of people lived on for
months before hclp came from En-
gland, Scotland, Ireland and America;
that is mixture which seems to have
in it not one grain of sustenancc. 1t is
a mixture of pig-weed and chaff and
the sweepings of stables. That is
something which, if dropped in the
street, your dog or cat might sniff at,
but would not eat That was the only
food in which millions of men and
women lived. You must look at that
Of Russia before you can
get proper appreciation of what an at
tractive and beautiful thing good loaf
of bread is. tits so common to use we
can not realize its meaning. Stop and
look at it in bakery window, or see it
on your family table, mean \ hon.
est loaf of bread, white as a ball of
packed snow, with crust brown as the
autumnal woods, and for keen appe-
tite more aromatic than flowers-a loaf
of bread as you remember it in child
hood, when the knife in the hand of
YOUR father or mother cut clean
through, from crust to crust, and put
before you, not a quarter of slice or
half slice, but a full, round slice and
another and another just suited to
boy always ready to eat and for the
most time hungry, even in well-sup-
piled house. / remember and you re-
member, if you had a healthy child
hood, just how it tasted. } My! My!
Plum pudding does not taste as good
now as that plain bread then. 1t was
then bread at the table and bread be
tween meals, and bread before break
fast and bread before going to bod.
Why does not some poet ring canto
on loaf of bread. or some modern
Raphael paint it. or some historian tell
its history? Not like many articles of
food, pretentious, and iced all over like
wedding cake, or dotted with fantastic
but that grandest product
of the earth, that richest yield of the
-four mill, that best benediction of
hot oven-a God-given loaf of bread.
But the rhythm of it, the luxury of it,
the meaning Of it, the benediction of
it, the Divine mercy of it. only those
know who have seen a famine. No
wonder Christ put this food into the
and said of broken loaf of
bread: This is Ny body Thank
God that ever saw that
and compact kindness
of the Infinite God "a loaf
of broad. And it was our joy this sum-
mer to hand over shipload of material
for gladdening many thousands of Rus
slams with such a beatitude. But,
have been. asked by good people in
Great Britain and America again and
again, why did not the prosperous peo-
pie of Russia stop that suffering them
selves, making it useless for other peo-
pie to help? And l am always glad
when hear the question asked because
it gives me an opportunity of explain
ing. Have you any idea what it re-
quires to feed twenty million people?
There is only one Being in the universe
who can do it, and that is the Being
who, this morning, breakfasted one
billion six hundred million of the
human race. The nobility of Rus
sia have not only contributed most Law
ishly, but many of them went down
and staid for months amid the ghastli-
ness and horror of typhus fever and the
that they might administer
to the suffering. sat at the dining
table in the house of one of our Amer
lean representatives beside baroness,
who had not only impoverished her es-
tatcs by her contributi tions to the su fer