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and State, and at once reported me to the police. The whole
city was stirred. I had to escape secretly from the place by
night, and fled to another town. There, too, the priests soon
found me out, and wrote to the governor, persuading him to
set the police on my track; besides this they bribed a doctor to
give a false certificate against me, and in other ways tried to
get me exiled to Siberia.
“These plans were, however, frustrated.... Just as I
was leaving the city to escape from my persecutors another
misfortune befell me: all my money was stolen from me, so
that I was altogether destitute of means. But by a remarkable
providence I was helped out of this terrible difficulty.”
So far her own account. This truly pious and quiet-natured
young lady was hounded from place to place by the police, until
at last she had to escape to a foreign country, and there remain
for some time. But she always yearned to return to her native
land. “However,” she says, “I continually longed to comeback
to Russia. The light and liberty that I found in Western
countries, instead of weakening this longing, increased it still more.
My heart was full of deep compassion for my fatherland.”
Finally she succeeded in crossing the frontier in a marvellous
way—she had no passport, but again was hunted about by the
priests and the police. With untiring devotion and courage,
she braved her persecutors, and cheerfully faced cold, hunger,
and pestilence, going from village to village to help and comfort
the poor, downtrodden peasants, both in material and spiritual
things. During the famine she bore her part in the relief
work among the starving until her health broke down.
The day of my arrival in St. Petersburg, another daughter
of the same family set out for Siberia as a volunteer to nurse
the sick in Tiumen, where spotted typhus and other terrible
diseases were making fearful havoc among the prisoners and
others. She had studied medicine in St. Petersburg, until this
was forbidden by the all-wise authorities. Then she applied
herself to the study of natural science, until a wealthy
philanthropist in St. Petersburg enabled her to go to Siberia, there
to use her medical knowledge as a simple nurse.
After a few weeks of zealous work among the patients she
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