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106
Spring Scenes in Samara. 106
Dr. B. on his back, he lay down on a clear space out on the
steppe, to which he had waded through deep snow, and
absolutely refused to stir. At last a Tatar floundered with
much difficulty through the drifts to the spot, and persuaded
him to get up and return home. " Jashka," the other Asian,
was a little white ass, who speedily rivalled " Herr Faltvabel "
in the popular esteem. I give portraits of both, taken with
my Kodak.
The evening of our arrival black clouds began to gather,
and when we retired about midnight a heavy storm was raging;
fierce gusts of wind threatened to tear the roof off the
house, while the hail beat furiously against the windows.
Not only was the storm without, but, in my case at least,
within also. I had received that day a letter from Southern
Russia, and now ojjened it and read, among other things,
" The father of the family is banished" for being a
sectarian. " His wife, who has been forbidden to accompany
him, is hopelessly ill from sorrow and suffering, and her six
children, who surround her, are starving. . . . She
receives no relief from the Government, because she is—
a sectarian. . . . Several families are in the same
predicament."
All sleep is banished. My thoughts roam everywhere.
Back to the childhood when all was bright and joyous ; in the
heart love, hope, and faith; in the world order, justice, and
truth. Forward to the rude awakening, to the grim realities
of life, especially the horrors I had witnessed of late, in the
midst of which I now was; to the holocausts of human
lives, the rivers of blood and tears, shed to gratify the lust
and caprice of tyrants; rivers that have not watered and
fertilised the lands, but in their fierce torrent have washed
away the fruitful soil, leaving whole regions desolate and
bare, both in the past and to-day. Where is that law of progress
of which we boast ? Civilisation after civilisation in the past,
rotten with its own corruption, has been swept away by
barbaric hordes, in their turn to rear anew the fabric of fresh
civilisation, and in their turn also to fall before the avenger.
Here, to-day in Russia, are thirty-five millions of hard-working
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