Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1901-07-21

public moneys through their hands and
Their rapacity is one of the prime
factors in the peasants growing dis
taste for the agricultural life. Of course
the peasant hates the soil, chiefly be-
cause his immediate progenitor was
counted as part of it. A nobleman In
the last generation computed the size OF
his estate, not by the number OF acres
he possessed, but by the number OF
hands, meaning slaves Of course. l
have asked Tolstoi, and Tolstoi tells me
that there isn't a peasant in all Russia
who wouldn't start peddling tomorrow
If he could lay hold on a handful OF
roubles all at once. Unfortunately,
however these bad times push the peas
ant off the soil and he has to go with
out the handful of roubles with which
he believes he could make fortune.
He goes in droves, in battalions, to the
cities where there are no public relief
works, nothing but charitable doles
which never commence till his hunger
pinched and debilitated body, filthy with
that kind Of filth, which is the result of
extreme penury, has become trap for
disease germs and perambulating dis
seminator of them, menance alike to
his weakly brethren and to the healthy
and comparatively comfortable citi-
0ens"
20 uncle!" Di broke in. miss Rayne
isn't very we'll, and I'm sure such
gloomy talk"
mo, no." Eva interposed. Il am
deeply interested My head is not so
very bad, Miss Trevor. Prey let me beg
your uncle to continue. You would i'm
ply, professor, that this sort of trouble
has occurred before and is likely to be
intensified this winter"
The professors weak eyes looked
through his glasses over the heads of
his audience, to point on the lawn at
about the same distance from him as
.e back benches of fair-sized lecture
hall from the platform. He fixed his
eyes on that spot and kept them there.
BERTHE nudged his sister and gave
out to a suppressed chuckle. you've
done it, Di, interrupting him. He
thinks it's the rowdy students up to
their iarks again.
Miss Rayne repeated her query: "You
think that there will be overcrowding
in the cities of Russia this winter and
grave danger of infection to the resi-
dents, or-or travellers passing
through"
"Eh? Oh! All! Yes, certainly; very
grave danger.
The professors eyes left the back of
that imaginary hall and settled on the
face of his inteHlocutor.
"You spoke of infection?"
Eth? Oh. yes, of course, infection.
Hunger. typhoid, scurvy, and the like"
Hes quite Debated Got puncture
in his tire" whispered BERTHE, in soft
aside.
!. The professor. however. expanded his
&est; slipped his left hand under his
>N.at-tails, waved the right, and begun
again:
The cities of Russia will see this
winter tremendous influx of pauper-
ism. The thing has happened before.
This is no mere prophecy, it is as GER
tain as the deductions of the .meteorol-
ogist. Hordes of the peasants in the
frontier provinces where the harvest has
failed, will make for the great highroad
to Siberia, tempted by the glowing az
counts of the plenty in some of the
semi-rHnal wheat growing settlements
there. In such cities as Kassan, the old
Tartar capital, the Tobolsk, these free
men, these peasants who have commit
ted no crime either social or political,
will leave disease germs for the oonvicts
en- route. germs of excruciating, tortur-
ing maladies. calculated to save the
Csas Alexander Ill. any further neces-