It did not seem to me possible that they could be regarded in any country, or under any circumstances, as a dangerous menace to social order or to the stability of the Government. As I shook hands with them and noticed their shy, embarrassed behavior, and the quick flushes of color which came to their cheeks when I spoke to them, I experienced for the first time something like a feeling of contempt for the Russian Government. "If I were the Tsar," I said to Mr. Frost, "and had an army of soldiers and police at my back, and if, nevertheless, I felt so afraid of timid, half-grown school-girls that I could n't sleep in peaceful security until I had banished them to Siberia, I think I should abdicate in favor of some stronger and more courageous man." The idea that a powerful Government like that of Russia could not protect itself against seminary girls and Sunday-school teachers without tearing them from their families, and isolating them in the middle of a great Asiatic desert, seemed to me not only ludicrous, but absolutely preposterous.
We spent in the pleasant shady camp of these political exiles nearly the whole of the long, hot summer day. Mr. Frost made sketches of the picturesquely grouped tents, while I talked with the young men, read Irving aloud to one of them who was studying English, answered questions about America, and asked questions in turn about Siberia and Russia. Before the day ended we were upon as cordial and friendly a footing with the whole party as if we had known them for a month.
Late in the afternoon we returned to the city, and in the evening went to the house of Mr. Leántief, where most of the political exiles whom we had not yet seen had been invited to meet us. The room into which we were ushered was much larger and better furnished than that in which Mr. Lobonófski lived; but nothing in it particularly attracted my attention except a portrait of Herbert Spencer, which hung on the wall over Mr. Leántief's desk. There
