The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1892-10-21
that, according TO tho estimate of the
Russian famine relief committee. we
saved the lives of 1o5 0O0 naopla


saved the lives Of 10000 people.
RELIGIOUS PEAsANTRY.
AS at the hunger relief stations the
bread was handed out--for ii was made
into loaves and distributed-many peo-
pie would halt before taking it and re-
hgiously 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
u.s." And when told it came from
America 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 a
prayer is going up, warrant you, day
by day, for those who sent flour 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 warrant when those people
who received the bread which saved
their lives ''said grace" it meant some
thing, Our religion may not demand
that we ''cross ourselves" but l 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 CAL
vary, have mercy on me and accept my
gratitude" Prefer your own form of
religion by all means. but do not depre-
ciate the religious forms of others. From
all l can learn there were several good
people before we were born, and rather
expect there will be several left after we
are dead. ! have travelled in many
lands, but l tell you plainly, as | told
Emperor Alexander III in the palace at
Peterhoff, that had never been so i'm
pressed with the fidelity to their religion
of any people as by what | had seen in
Russia, and especially among her public
men.
said respectfully to Russian when
saw him cross himself, What do You
do that for?" "Oh," he said, "when |
do that | always say, "'God have mercy
on mer" hold in my hand something
very suggestive. What does that black
and uncomely thing look like? That is
what is called hunger bread from Rus
STA; that is what millions of people lived
on for months before help came from
England, Scotland, Ireland and Amer
lea; that is mixture which seems to
have in it not one grain of sustenance. It
is mixture of pig weed and chaff and
the sweepings of stables That is some
thing which if dropped in the street
your dog or cat might sniff at, but would
not eat. That was the only food on
which millions Of men and women lived.
You must look at that hunger bread of
Russia before you can get proper appre-
citation of what an attractive and beau
tiful thing good loaf of bread is. It is
so common to us we cannot realize its
meaning. Stop and look at it in bak-
cry window or see it on your family ia
ble-I mean an honest loaf of bread,
white as ball of packed snow, with a
crust brown as the autumnal woods, and
for keen appetite more aromatic than
f1owers-a loaf of bread as you remem-
Der it in childhood, when the knife in
the hand of your father or mother cut
clean through from crust to crust and
put before you, not 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 childhood,
just how it tasted. Myl My! Plum
pudding does not taste as good now as
fhof 1oif
bread at the table and bread between
meals, and bread before breakfast and
bread before going to bed.
THE POETRY OF BREAD.
Why does not some poet ring canto
on loaf of bread, or some modern Ra-
phael paint it, or some historian tell its
history? Not like many articles of food,
pretentious, and iced all over like we'd
ding cake, or dotted with fantastic in
gradients, but that grandest product of
the earth, that richest yield of the flour
mill, that best benediction of hot oven,
God given loaf of bread. But the
rhythm of it, the luxury of it, the mean
ing of it, the benediction of it, the divine
mercy of it, only those know who have
seen famine. No wonder Christ put
this food into the sacrament and said of
a broken loaf of bread, "This is my
body" Thank God that ever saw that
transcendent and compact kindness of
the infinite Coda loaf of bread. And
1t was our JOY this summer to hand over
shipload of material for gladdening
many thousands of Russians with such
beatitude. But have been asked
by good people in Great Britain and
America again and again, Why did not
the prosperous people of Russia stop that
suffering themselves, making 1t useless
for other nations to help? And l am
| always glad when l hear the question
asked. because it gives me an opportu-
nifty OF explaining. Have you any idea
what it requires 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
sixteen hundred million of the human
race. The nobility of Russia have not
only contributed most lavishly, but
many of them went down and staid for
months amid the ghastliness and the
horror and the typhus fever and the
smallpox that they might administer to
the suffering. sat at the dinner table
| in the house of one of our American rep
resentatives beside baroness who had
not only impoverished her estates by her
contributions to the suffering, but who
! left her own home and went down in
to the worst of the misery until pros
trated with fever, then reviving and
toiling on until Frustrated by the small
| pox. She had come home to get little
strength, and in few days she was
going down again to the suffering dis
tricts, and she commissioned me to exc
cute in America literary enterprise by
which she expects with her pen more
money, all of which is to go for bread
to those who lack it. Then there are
the Bobrinskies. They are of the nobil
ity-not only the nobility of earth. but
the nobility Of heaven.
| THE NOBILITY OF KINDNESS.
| You know we have in America GER
tain names which are synonyms fol
observation-disclosures Peabody, Jane:
Lenox, William e. Dodge. Mr.. Slater