The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-09-27
NEW HAVEN MORNING JOURNAL AND COURIER FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 2 7

startling news that, only few days before, 'domiciliary perquisition' had been made in my fiat, and heaven only knows how many arms and bombs, and hundredweight of literature they had not found there. He would hard ly be persuaded that was straight from Paris, and not happily escaped the clutches of the police in Moscow. The account he gave me of the work ing in practice of the Constitution and 8 few details about police exploits al over the country showed me where stood pretty plainly It bolted the same night for abroad once more, crossing the frontier in the now GUS tomafy way without troubling the gendarmes with my passport. Oh, yes, it is quite system now, a beaten track at a regular tariff as easy as crossing the street. I put in for extension of leave on the ground of ill-health, and only returned month later, when I thought my alibi safely proved. So it was, for the tine the gendarmes let me alone, but put on their spies. lost my official post, and found it more comfortable to live on the illegal method (that is, without a passport at all, or with somebody else's).
 T was arrested in January 1906 on a charge of complicity in the Mos COW rising of the previous December, hut fl,aro ,,,o- obeo1,,fo1,, ,,o av,fdor co against me, so they did not bother about a trial You remember the trial of the rebels here? A hun 1 dred boys and a few old men, mostly acquitted, none sentenced to death and very few sentenced to long terms of exile and convict labor And you | remember the evidence-all hearsay and flimsy connections by officials without a shred of independent corro- boration. We'll they had not even that much with me and with over 9 thousand others who were seized 'by administrative order when the whole | affair was over, and the real actors ir the rising were dispersed all over Russia.
 "The gendarmes set about proving their utility by arresting every mar they could find who was on their lists and I went with the rest We were six months in the Butirki Convict Gao and I was chosen starosta of thC crowd in our cell. (The starosta is the elder-of a church, of village, O an 'artel,' or of a convict gang. Pris on life, even with real convicts, mur derers, parricides, burglars, etc., is ii Russia very much of a compromis, between the demands of the regula tions for prisons and the actual fact
 of life. he starosta is the representa-
 tive of the prisoners in all deals witt the prison authorlties.) The chief oi the prison soon took a bad hatred tt me-he is the same that the girl DO 1 liticaH the other day shot at in tn, gaol and missed; she has just beer l condemned to be hanged, as vol know. We'll, I was suffering ther from painful internal disease, ant with that and the confinement, th' wretched food and al that, I nearl! went mad. had put in through tht proper channels perfectly legal de mand to be exiled to a spot within I reach of medical aid, which most Q the places selected for political evile are not. The chief of prisons knev this, and had his revenge on me b, 1 sending me off to Siberia before it wa possible for my petition to reach St ] Petersburg. l was awakened in tn dead of night, dragged from my bel protesting, and thrust out of the eel i into the corridor as I was. The othe :! 'politicals in the cell protested also but I myself lost al control and simpl! raved like a madman at the injustice of the thing. Besides, I was ill ant ! in pain, to say nothing of the state 0 my nerves. Outside the cell doc
 were half dozen soldiers fully arm ed, with an officer. The officer
 thanks be, was an old club acquaint ance of mine, and that saved my life The soldiers began their usual meth
 ods of tanning a refractory prisoner but he stopped them. I demanded t see the doctor, but it was all no use
 I went off that night in the rain fo Siberia.
 Have you ever seen the inside 0 those convict trains? Not with the mel
 in it, at any rate. It was a scorchin July, and neither doors nor window
 were opened once all the way Tn
 carriage I was in was full, and vol
 know the authorities have a refine
 ment of cruelty nowadays in puttin
 us 'poIiticals' into the same carriage
 with the scum of the earth, the clas
 of man whom you hang and are don
 with in England The filth, the aif jthe vermin! They are all three incon
 ceivable and indescribable; you mus
 go through it before you can, imagin anything like it. There is never 1 trainload of 'politicals' leaves Moscoy
 without half-a-dozen men or womel
 in it. among the criminal convicts
 suffering from disease; and with these
 too, you have to live for weeks il close and unavoidable contact.