The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-12-22

II ] and taking stock Of the natural re naun, governor-generaI Of ((Russian)
 Turkestan, resolved in May, 1876, to de- spateh an embassy to Yakub Beg, and ] in selecting the chief of this mission companied by three Russian officers and an escort of fifteen Cossacks, Kur- opatkin set out from Osh, but before he reached Gulcha his little troop was at tackled by a band of Kara-Kirgiliz. Tn
 the hostilities that ensued, Ishem Beg, ! the leader of the Kirghiz, was killed,
 whereupon his followers beat a retreat.
 Kuropatkin, however, received bullet through the right hand, and was obliged to return to Osh to have 1t op-
 erated upon. Thus the hand that now
 directs the Russian legions on the bat ! tie fields of Manehuriaa is but man gled one Kuropatkfn preserves the
 revolver from which the unlueky shot was fired in a glass case set into the
 wall of his house in St. Petersburg.
 On one occasion when Twas calling
 upon him there he showed it to me and
 told me several particulars of the skir-
 mish.
 l The first time personally had the
 honor to meet General KuropatlSin he twas royennig natchalniR, or military
 commander of the new province of
 Transcaspia. That was in October. 1 lSs0, and at Askabad, where he had his
 headquarters, When I called upon him
 my oyercoat was taken charge of by
 Cossack. and I was ushered nto large l hall where I was recesved and my visit
 announced by an aide de camp. The
 walid oi the noble apartment were adorned with Asiatic weapons, ancient
 and modern, and with portraits of the Imperial family. After I had waited a l little, the general entered, dressed in full uniform, for he was about to pre- side at a meeting of some sort. He is a short but strongly built man, with a
 black beard and small but kindly and intelligent eyes. I was then just set
 ting out on my first Journey to Rash
 gar, and Kuropatkin gave me a good
 deal of information about the dngerous
 pass of Terckdavan
 Although I expected to find it buried
 in snow, he did not attempt to dissuade me from the journey; a northerner would not permit hfmself to be deterred l by either snowso or cold. When let fall
 the remark that upon my return home
 kestan, Kuropatkin replied, humorous l ly. that there were no secrets in Aska- bad. I was at perfect liberty to go
 where liked; might freely visit all I the institutions in the town, might
 count the soldiers in the barracks. as lwell as the big guns, the rifles and the Icartridges in the magazines, sketch
 whatever I thought fit, and, he added. l"You may even write articles about 1t laII to the Times if you like. If I met with any difficulty I had only to report
 the matter to him and he would see me lighted.
 It was interesting to observe with what energy and vigor Kuropatkin di- rected the military and even the civil Iacairs Of his province. Everything
 worked like clockworlS, with the great est regularity and punctuaIity. Every Tuesday he directed the nanoeuvres of 1 his troops, not seldom covering a march of twenty-five miles. On the fol lowing day he called his officers togeth- CT and criticised the evolutions of the preceding days march. Tn his Cos sacks, their troubles, their wishes, their needs. he took a direct personal inter. est, and always liked to see happy and contented faces about him. But on the other hand lie maintained rigid mili- tary discipline, and would tolerate neither laxity nor weakness.
 Since then have had several occa- sions of meeting General Kuroptakin, and when Journeying to and from Asia have never failed to call upon him, either at his house in St. Petersburg, or at his datcha, or villa, on one of the islands of the Gulf of Finland; but, on the other hand, although l have been invited to visit him on his estate at Te- riJoki, in Finland, I have never been able to do so His villa, which is only twenty minutes drive outside of St. Petersburg, is severely simple, not a trace of luxury about it; a well to do tchinoynik would hardly be able to ab- stain from turning up his nose at It. And yet the general is a millionaire; but he is too honest and too~proud q man to employ his wealth in minister ing to his own selfish pleasure such a use for 1t he would look upon as ab- surd.
 He has consistently set his face against pomp and ceremony and en- deavored, even while at the summit of honor, and power, to preserve the sim plfcity of the soldier; indeed, it has seemed to him simple matter of duty that the man who has the leading of the army ought, in point of both cerl- duct and manner of life, to set an ex- ample to the men under his charge. Anr even now, when the destinies of Russia are in his hands, when he is leading her armies through showers of shot and shell, when his name is daily upon thousands and thousands of lips all the world over and heads the col umns of all the newspapers in existence
 --even now he is distinguished by the same outer simplicity; no recherche dishes. no choice wines are allowed to appear on his table; he makes no claim for special comforts, but leads the sim pie soldiers life; he shares the difficult ties and troubles of his men, takes an interest in the well-being of each com pany, sees to 1t that no man wants for anUtl1ing visits the sick in the hospital,