The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1911-06-25

PRISE. are you personally acquainted
with the ministcr?'
''Certainly. =" said Mr.. Aldrich.
'And does his excellency, the min
ister, know madame?'
'N Not yet, but he will when l present
her to him.
Chief Thaws Out
why, that simphfics the whole
matter said the chief of police, with
a forced smile of seeming friendHness
and cordiality. "His e1cellency, the
minister, can issue n passport to ma
dame ut once. and then her position in
ST. Petersburg will be quite legal. This
is evidently an unfortunate mlsunder-
standing. due TO maGame's sick head
ache and to the incxcusable careless
ness of our frontier police. They
should not have allowed you to proceed
until they had explained to you that
passport for husband does not cover
n wife unless she is specifically men
toned and described in il. But IL was
an accident chance combination of
eircumstances-for which monsieur and
madame are not at all TO blame. Will
it be convenient for you to go TO the
legation now'
1.-THE sooner the better, - replied Mr..
AIdrich.
The relieved suspect then went to
tho hotel for his wife, and, accom-
panied by the same officer who had
first visited them they drove to the
American legation, where they sur
prised Minister Hunt by informing him
that they were under arrest for lack
of documents Would he not be
good enough to legalize Mrs. Aldrich IS
position, by providing her body and
soul with a passport? The minister
welcomed them cordially; gave Mrs.
AIdrich certificate of nationality and
personal identity. duly authenticated
pressed the hope that, as soon as they
should have the freedom of the city,
they would do him the honor of dining
with him.
As soon as the matter had been sat
isfactorily arranged, the police Off
Ger released Mr.. and Mrs. Aldrich from
custody, and they drove back to the
Hotel d'Angleterre, congratulating
| themselves upon their escape FROM the
widespread net of Russian passport
laws and police regulations. They were
not arrested OF questioned again, but
they had good reason to believe that,
throughout their subsequent stay in the
empire, they were constantly under Sc
cret police surveillance, and they did
not feel wholly free from anxiety and
apprehension until they recrossed the
German frontier.
In every large Russian prison there
I is a row of gloomy kameras (cells
holding from ten to fifty prisoners), =,
intended for vagrants, tramps and un-
identified wanderers over the face of
the earth. In capital letters, above
the door of each of these kameras, is
the single word "ezpassportni (pass-
portlcss). If the editor of the Atlantic
Monthly and Mrs. Aldrich had hap
pened to go directly from the German
frontier to Novgorod, Kiev, Tver or
any provincial town where the United
States had no diplomatic representa-
tive, their bodies and souls would prob.
ably have spent the night in one Of
these cells, while their single passport
awaited further investigation in the
suspect file Of the local police.
F., 'He wrote this poem after his return
| from Russia. Its nature was such that
| IL would have made another visit to the
| empire incXpedient. If not impracticable.
| He also began Russian story. to be en-
titled 1.-The Little Blue Coupe" but
! whether he ever finished il OF not, I do
not know. II does not appear in his
published works. The subject was sug-
geSted by the bullet pierced coupe in
| which the czar was riding when an at
| tempt was made to assasslnate him.
it is worse thar useless to take any
medicines internally for muscular or