Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/83

Rh In the poor quarters of Boston, Detroit, Moscow and Marseilles, they still speak of Yanishev as the comrade who gave everything to the cause.

In Tokio a fellow-exile once found an excited coolie trying to drag Yanishev, protesting, into a rickshaw. "I just got in his rickshaw," Yanishev explained, "and he began pulling and sweating like a horse. I may be a fool, but I can't let a man work like a beast for me. So I paid him and got out. I'll never get into a rickshaw again."

Since his return to Russia he had travelled night and day addressing enormous crowds until his voice failed him and he could only whisper and gesture He had come to his home village to recuperate. But even here the Revolution would not let him rest.

"Will Mikhail Petrovich give us a little speech?" the peasants pleaded. "Only a little speech."

Yanishev could not deny them. The committee drew a wagon out upon the village green and when the throng was thick around it, Yanishev mounted this rostrum and began telling the Bolshevik story of the Revolution, the War, and the Land.

They stood listening while evening darkened into night. Then they brought torches, and Yanishev talked on. His voice grew husky. They brought him water, tea and kvass. His voice failed, and they waited patiently till it came back again. These peasants who had labored all day in the fields stood there late into the night, more eager to gather stores for their mind than they had been to gather food for