The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1892-10-28


| said respectfully to Russian, when
/ saw him cross himself: "What do you
do that for?' 60" 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
America; that is mixture which seems
to have in it not one grain of susten-
ance. 1t is mixture of pig weed and
chaff and the sweepings of stables.
That is something which, if dropped in
the street, your dog or eat might sniff
at, but would not eat That was the
and women lived. You must look at
that hunger bread of Russia before you
can get proper appreciation of what an
attractive and beautiful thing a good
loaf of bread is. 1t is so common
to US we cannot realize its mean
ing. Stop and look at it in
bakery window or see it on your
family tablet mean an honest loaf of
bread, white as ball of packed snow,
with crust brown as the autumnal
woods, and for a keen appetite more
aromatic than fiowers-a. loaf of bread
as you remember 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 full,
round slice and another and another
just suited TO a boy always ready to eat
and for the most time hungry, even in
well supplied house. remember and
you remember, if you had a healthy
childhood. 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 bed.
Why does not some poet sing a 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
ingredients, but that grandest product
of the earth, that richest yield of the
flour mill, that best benediction of a
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 sacrament
and said of a broken loaf of bread:
''This is my body" Thank God that l
ever saw that transcendent and COM
pact Kindness of the infinite Coda
loaf of bread. And it was our Joy this
to hand over ship load of ma
terial for gladdening many thousands
of Russians with such beatitude.
But have been asked by good peo-
pie in Great Britain and America again
and again, why did not the prosperous
people of Russia stop that suffering
making it useless for other
nations to help? And am always glad
when l hear the question asked, be-
cause it gives me an opportunity to ex-
plain. Have You any idea what it re-
quires to feed 10000, 900 people? There
is only one Being in the universe that
can do it, and that is the Being who,
this morning, breakfasted 1000. 900, 900
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 ghastli-
ness and the horror and the typhus
fever and the smallpox, that they
might administer to the suffering.
sat at the dining table in the house of
one of our American representatives be-
side a baroness. who had not only i'm
poverished her estates by her contribu-
tons to the suffering. but who left her
own home and went down into the
worst of the misery, and until pros
trated with fever, then reviving, and
smallpox. She had come home to get
little strength, and in few days, she
was going down again to the suffering
and she commissioned me to
execute 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 Bobrinskoys
They are of the nobility, not only the
nobility of earth but the nobility of |
Heaven. You know we have in Ameri- |
n certain names which are synonyms
or benevolence - George Peabody,
lanes Lenox, William E. Dodge, Mr.
Slater and SO on. What their names |
mean in America BobrinSlli means in |
Russia The emperor has made larger |
toward this relief fund |
han any monarch ever made for any |
.ause since the world stood and the su- |
,erb kindness written all over the |
aces of emperor and empress and |
rown prince is demonstrated in what |
hey have already done and are doing |
or the sufferers in their own country.
When few days ago read in the pa
,ers that the emperor and empress, |
learing an explosion, stopped the royal /
all train to find out what accident had |
occurred and the empress knelt down
" the side of wounded laborer and |
leld his head until pillows and blankets
ould be brought and the two wounded |
nen were put upon the royal train to
Ne carried to place where they could
Ne better cared for, l said to my wife:
Just like her." When saw few days
go in the papers that the emperor and
IMPRESS had walked through the wards
f the most virulelt cholera, talking
With the patients, stalking hands with
hem and cheering theIr up, it was no
urprise to me; for 1 said to myself:
That is just like them Any one who
las ever seen the royal family will be-
ieve anything in the way of kindness
scribed to them, and will join me in
of that too prevalent opinion
10 :. t--r.nnt iS On the tlnronn Of R,,S- |