The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1916-01-27

America is nice but Russia Is clean
erl' SO saith little Anastasia Romich,
newly arrived from Petrograd, Rus
sian-Polish foweret transplanted to
American soil, and not yet decided
whether she is homesick or not.
She is as pretty as an eighteen-year-
old girl could well be. She has wide
open hazel eyes with a half scared ex-
preston in them, pretty pink cheeks
and one Of the marvellously clear, fair
skins which northern countries bestow
upon their daughters.
When the News reporter found her
she was the center of little group Of
men, women and children, in tiny
crowded room in a tenement house, one
Of whom was playing on a mouth organ
while the others talked, laughed and
watched the children dancing about.
Little Child Interprets.
Through an eight year old Russian
child, daughter of the family of Mike
Zawacki, AS Grand avenue, the Russian
girl answered questions asked in Eng
lish of the child
Yes, she likes America, but she
says Petrograd is cleaner the child
said, and one could not wonder that
Anastasia did not find America very
clean. America for her meant that
sloppy, forlorn part of Grand avenue
where she is housed, a boarder in a
family which is one Of several under
the same roof, and each of which is
blessed with a goodly allowance of
children, seeming miraculously to be all
of about the same age.
She said she was not peasant from
the fields, but a. house servant in Petro-
grad, and when the soldiers began COM
ing in broken procession back to Pc
trograd in ambulances, and on cots in
the ambulance trains, from the battle
fields to which they had marched forth
so bravely just a little while before,
she with many another like her was put
to service in the hospitals as assistant
nurse under the trained nurses, to care
Hears from Lover.
Her look of horror when her memory
was probed for recollections Of her
hospital work was more expressive than
would have been her words could she
have spoken them intelligibly.
Then she told how happy she was
when she got word from Mike Latrecki,
her stalwart young lover who came to
America three years ago and whom fate
hadaset to work in Kenosha tannery.
Mike had saved the necessary amount
of money to pay her passage to the
promised land and he enclosed it to her.
With the help of the hospital authori-
ties who were interested in her she
made her arrangements for the trip
which was to consume six weeks. She
was desperately sick on the steamer,
huddled down in the close .steerage
quarters with hundreds of others and
when terrible storm was encountered.
the poor girl who had no one on board
that she had ever seen before the jour
ney began, was abjectly frightened
She was sure she was going to the bot
tom and when the pounding waves
against the ship making it
tremble and plunge with mighty plum
ges she was sure her time had come and
that death was at hand. She said she
prayed God to save her and she knows
it was her prayer that saved the ship
and all the passengers, she says.
Castle Garden Bewilders.
Then there was more bewilderment
and trouble when she arrived at Castle
Garden and went through the ordeal of
being searched and examined and shov-
ed on from one officer to another. And
then came the happy moment when she
was put on train and headed toward
Kenosha where her beloved Mike was
waiting for her.
He was at the train and took her
directly to the house of his friends, Mr..
and Mrs. Zawacki, As Grand avenue,
where she is now waiting for her we'd
ding day which has not been definitely
set but is to be as soon as arrangements
can be made.
When one looks at the bright, happy
face with its beautiful hazel eyes, one