sketch of the life of political convicts at the mines of Kará between the years 1880 and 1885.
I made my last call at the house of the Armfeldts on the afternoon of November 7th, just twenty-four hours after I first entered it. I was well aware that the return of Major Pótulof that night would put a stop to my visits, and that, in all probability, I should never see these unfortunate people again; while they, knowing that this was their last opportunity to talk with one who was going back to the civilized world and would meet their relatives and friends, clung to me with an eagerness that was almost pathetic. I promised the Armfeldts that I would call upon Count Leo Tolstói and describe to him their life and circumstances,[1] left my address with them so that they might communicate with me should they ever have an opportunity to write, and took letters from them to their relatives in European Russia. It may perhaps seem to the reader that in carrying letters to and from political convicts in Siberia I ran an unnecessary and unjustifiable risk, inasmuch as the act was a penal offense, and if discovered would probably have led to our arrest, to the confiscation of all our papers, and, at the very least, to our immediate expulsion from the Empire under guard. I fully appreciated the danger, but, nevertheless, I could not refuse to take such letters. If you were a political convict at the mines, and had a wife or a mother in European Russia to whom you had not been allowed to write for years, and if I, an American trav-
- ↑ I kept this promise, and told Count Tolstói all that he seemed to care to hear with regard to the Armfeldts' situation. He manifested, however, a disinclination to listen to accounts of suffering among the political convicts in Eastern Siberia; would not read manuscripts that I brought expressly to show him; and said distinctly that while he felt sorry for many of the politicals he could not help them, and was not at all in sympathy with their methods. They had resorted, he said, to violence, and they must expect to suffer from violence. I was told in Moscow that when Madam Uspénskaya, wife of one of the political convicts at Kará, went to Count Tolstói to solicit a contribution of money to be used in ameliorating, as far as possible, the condition of politicals at the mines, she met with a decided refusal. The Count was not willing, apparently, to show even a benevolent and charitable sympathy with men and women whose actions he wholly disapproved.
