I could, if necessary,— and without going outside the limits of official documents in my possession,-fill many pages of THE CENTURY with the names of young men and women who were severally subjected to from one to four years of solitary confinement, and who were finally acquitted by a court, or discharged with out trial, because the police, notwithstanding their unlimited power to arrest, imprison, and examine, had not been able to find so much evidence against them as would legally have justified their detention over night. I shall describe in another place the nature of the solitary confinement to which these innocent persons were subjected. I desire at present merely to call attention to the duration of their imprisonment, and to the fact that they were finally pronounced innocent by the Government itself. The above statements are made, it will be observed, not upon the ex-parte testimony of the sufferers, but upon the unimpeachable authority of official documents.

The question naturally arises, "What was the reason for the long delay in bringing these thousand or more prisoners to trial?" The reply of the Government is that the accused were engaged in a revolutionary conspiracy which had very extensive ramifications in all parts of the empire; that they were linked together in such a way as to render it practically impossible to try them separately, and that the prosecuting officers of the Crown could not do justice to the Government's case until all the proofs against all the prisoners had been collected, compared, and digested.* The persons accused in the case, however, deny the truth of these statements, severally and collectively. They say that they were not, as a body, engaged in a revolutionary conspiracy; that their actions at that time were not criminal; that more than three-fourths of them were unknown to one another, and had never had any relations with one another; that their cases, therefore, were easily separable, and that, as a matter of fact, the Government did separate into eighteen distinct groups the 193 who were finally tried.

Without expressing any opinion as to the merits of the prisoners' contention, it seems to me, and will doubtless seem to most unprejudiced persons, that the reply of the Government, regarded as a defense, is insufficient, even if it be true. The preface to the indictment in this case says: "By the autumn of 1874 most of the propagandists had been imprisoned, although a few succeeded in eluding arrest and continued their criminal activity until the beginning of 1875." The trial did

* Sentence of the 193, certified copy, p. 15. Indictment in the trial of the 193, p. 8. Sentence in the same trial, p. 1.

not begin until the 18th of October, 1877,‡ so that "most of the propagandists," including ninety persons admitted by the Court to be innocent, were held in solitary confinement without trial from the autumn of 1874 to October 18th, 1877, a period of three years. A large number of the accused were imprisoned in the gloomy casemates of the Petropavlovski fortress, and, according to the indictment, forty of them were there when the trial began. § To say, as the Government does, that it held ninety innocent persons in prison for three years, and more than eight hundred other innocent persons for shorter periods of one or two years, because it could not try them separately and was unable in a shorter time to review the evidence against the whole thousand, does not seem to be a sufficient answer to a charge of injustice. and cruelty based on more than eight hundred wrecked lives and eighty cases of death, suicide, and insanity in prison.

The case of the " propagandists was of course an exceptional one. I do not know any other instance in which so many prisoners were held so long without trial, and in which the number of persons accused was so overwhelmingly out of proportion to the number actually found to be guilty. Judicial procedure in Russia, however, is always and everywhere slow, and the long interval of solitary confinement between arrest and trial causes great suffering to the prisoners, and creates a feeling of intense exasperation in the hearts of those who are finally declared to be innocent. As one of the 193 who was acquitted by the Court said to me bitterly, "They punish us first with three years of solitary confinement, and then try us to see whether we ought to have been punished."

The course of procedure in the case of a person accused of a political offense is, under average and normal conditions, about as follows: He is arrested without the least warning, generally at night, and thrown into prison. After a week or two of solitary confinement, he is subjected to a preliminary examination before an officer of gendarmes. In order that he may not prepare himself for this examination, he is not, as a rule, informed of the nature of the charge made against him. The theory of the gendarmes is that if the prisoner knows specifically of what he is accused, he can form at least a conjecture as to the direction and scope of the impending inquiry, and can prepare himself to baffle it. If, however, he is ignorant of the charge upon which he is held,— if he does not even know whether he is undergoing examination as a principal or as a witness, he is not so quick to see the drift of quesAppendix to the Indictment in the trial of the 193, pp. 1-3.

received was " Etta nasha diella "
our business."

believe that their sons, daughters, sisters, or
friends are innocent, and who lose them by
death or suicide in prison before trial.

In 1886 there died in St. Petersburg a young girl not yet twenty years of age named Fedoteva, a student in one of the high schools for women in that city. She had been arrested nearly a year before upon some political charge and had been held in solitary confinement in the House of Preliminary Detention until her health had given way, and had then been removed, dangerously ill, to the hospital, where she died in the delirium of brain fever. Upon being apprised of the young girl's death, Mrs. Fedoteva went to the Chief of Police and asked at what time her daughter would be buried, as she desired to attend the funeral. She was told that the funeral would take place from the hospital at a stated hour on the following day.

The authorities do not allow the friends of a dead political prisoner to take charge of the body nor to conduct the funeral if there is any reason to apprehend what is known in the official world as a demonstratsia or public manifestation of sympathy. In this case it was feared that the school associates of the dead girl would follow her body to the grave in a procession, and that the more excitable of them would perhaps attempt to make speeches, or create in some way a scene which would call public attention to the fact that a young girl accused of a political offense had died in prison untried. If a public funeral were permitted, and if a demonstratsia should be attempted by the dead girl's friends, the police would be obliged to interfere, and such interference would not only "excite the public mind," but would necessarily result in the arrest of more young people. Furthermore, interference with a funeral would be disagreeable - it would look too much like striking the dead. Clearly, therefore, this was a case in which the maintenance of public order and tranquillity and the protection of hot-headed young people from the consequences of their possible rashness required, and would justify, the ut

most secrecy.

Acting upon this reasoning, the Chief of Police directed that the young girl be buried quietly at night, without the knowledge of her relatives and friends; and she was so buried. When, at the appointed hour on the following day, Mrs. Fedoteva came to the hospital to pay the last and only possible tribute of love to the lifeless body of her dead child by following it to the grave, she was informed that the funeral had already taken place. When she went to the Chief of Police and asked where her daughter had been buried, the only reply she

This mournful story was first told to me by the managing editor of a well-known St. Petersburg newspaper, who, of course, did not dare to print it. I heard it afterwards from others, and was finally able to verify it completely and circumstantially by conversation with an official in the hospital where the young girl died.

In order to make clear the bearing of such a fact as this on the so-called policy of "terror," I will ask the reader of these pages the question which was put to me: "Imagine that your only daughter, a school-girl, still in her teens, had been arrested upon a vague charge of disloyalty; that she had been thrown into prison and kept there a year in solitary confinement without a trial; that she had died at last of brain fever brought on by grief, anxiety, apprehension, and solitude; that you had not been permitted to stand by her death-bed; that you had been deceived as to the time of her funeral; and that finally, when you went humbly and respectfully to the Chief of Police and asked where your murdered child had been buried, that you might at least wet the fresh earth of her grave with your tears, you had received the contemptuous answer, 'That is our business,' what would you have done?"

The fierce impulse to avenge such wrongs as these is morally unjustifiable; it is unchristian; it is, if you please, criminal; but, after all, it is human. A man is not necessarily a ferocious, blood-thirsty fanatic if, under such provocation, and in the absence of all means of redress, he strikes back with such weapons as lie nearest his hand. It is not my purpose, in setting forth this and other similar facts, to justify the policy of the "terrorists" nor to approve even by implication the resort to murder as a means of tempering despotism; but it is my purpose to explain, so far as I can, certain morbid social phenomena; and in making such explanation, circumstances seem to lay upon me the duty of saying to the world for the Russian revolutionists all that they might fairly say for themselves, if the lips of the dead had not already moldered into dust, and if the voices of the living were not stifled by prison walls. The Russian Government has its own press, and its own representatives abroad; it can explain, if it chooses, its methods and measures; and it can defend itself against charges which are without foundation. The Russian revolutionists, buried alive in remote Siberian solitudes, can only tell their story to an occasional traveler from a freer country, and ask him to lay it before the world for judgment.

George Kennan.

THE GRAYSONS: A STORY OF ILLINOIS.*

BY EDWARD EGGLESTON,

Author of "The Circuit Rider," "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," "Roxy," etc.

IV.

LOCKWOOD'S PLAN.

EORGE LOCKWOOD, being only mildly malicious, felt something akin to compensation at having procured for Tom so severe a loss. But he was before all things a man secretive and calculating: the first thing he did with any circumstance was to take it into his intellectual back-room, where he spent most of his time, and demand what advantage it could give to George Lockwood. When he had let all the boys out of the store at a quarter past twelve, he locked and barred the door. Then he put away the boxes and all other traces of the company, and carried his tallow candle into his rag-carpeted bedroom, which opened from the rear of the store and shared the complicated and characteristic odors of the shop with a dank smell of its own; this last came from a habit Lockwood had when he sprinkled the floor of the store, preparatory to sweeping it, of extending the watering process to the ragcarpet of the bedroom. His mind gave only a passing thought of mild exultation, mingled with an equally mild regret, to poor Tom Grayson's misfortune. He was already inquiring how he might, without his own hand appearing in the matter, use the occurrence for his own benefit. Tom had had presence of mind enough left to beg the whole party in the store to say nothing about the affair; but notwithstanding the obligation which the set felt to protect one another from the old fogies of their families, George Lockwood thought the matter would probably get out. He was not the kind of man to make any bones about letting it out, if he could thereby gain any advantage. The one feeling in his tepid nature that had ever attained sufficient intensity to keep him awake at night was his passion for Rachel Albaugh; and his passion was quite outside of any interest he might have in. Rachel's reversionary certainty of the one-half of John Albaugh's lands. This, too, he had calculated, but as a subordinate consideration.

He reflected that Rachel might come to town next Saturday, which was the general trading-day of the country people. If she should come, she would be sure to buy something of him. But how could he tell her of Tom's unlucky gambling? To do so directly would be in opposition to all the habits of his prudent nature. Nor could he bethink him of a ruse that might excuse an indirect allusion to it; and he went to sleep at length without finding a solution of his question.

But chance favored him, for with the Saturday came rain, and Rachel regretfully gave over a proposed visit to the village. But as some of the things wanted were quite indispensable, Ike Albaugh was sent to Moscow, and he came into Wooden & Snyder's store about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. George Lockwood greeted him cordially, and weighed out at his request three pounds of tenpenny nails to finish the new corn-crib, a half-pound of cut tobacco to replenish the senior Albaugh's pipe from time to time, a dollar's worth of sugar, and a quarter of a pound of Epsom salts, these last two for general use. He also measured off five yards of blue cotton drilling, six feet of halfinch rope for a halter, and two yards of inchwide ribbon to match a sample sent by Rachel. Then he filled one of the Albaugh jugs with molasses and another with whisky, which last was indispensable in the hay harvest. These articles were charged to John Albaugh's account; he was credited at the same time with the ten pounds of fresh butter that Isaac had brought. George Lockwood also wrapped up a paper of "candy kisses," as they were called, which he charged Ike to give to Rachel from him, but which he forgot to enter to his own account on the day-book.

"By the way, Ike," he said, "did you know that Dave Sovine got back last week?"

"Yes," said Ike; "I hear the Sovine folks made a terrible hullabaloo over the returned prodigal,-killed the fatted calf, and all that."

"A tough prodigal he is!" said Lockwood, with a gentle smile of indifference. "You'd better look out for him."

"Me? Why?" asked Ike. "He never had any grudge ag'inst me, as I know of."

"No," said Lockwood, laughing," not that. But he 's cleaned all the money out of all the

* Copyright, 1887, by Edward Eggleston. All rights reserved.