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4 the community in which she, was born. It is true her subjects were a despised race, but the Ghetto or Pale of Settlement in the populous village of Czarovna was the most contented, the happiest, the most flourishing of the Jewish towns of Southern Russia; so much so, indeed, that instead of encouraging the Imperial Government to persevere in a policy of liberality towards both Jew and Gentile, it had more than once excited the suspicion, fear, and duplicity of the reigning powers. At Czarovna both Jew and Christian lived on fairly amicable terms. The Governor, General Ivan Poltava, credited the peace of it to the exceptional liberality of the merchant, Nathan Klosstock, Anna's father; but General Poltava was as great a rarity of honesty in the administration of his office as Nathan Klosstock was of generosity in a Jew merchant. Were there more of such there would be fewer troubles in the land; though neither Russian Imperial policy nor the local Hebrew education tend to develop just and upright governors, or fair-dealing and high-minded Jewish subjects.

Czarovna was an example of how possible it is, even under the grinding laws of Russia, for a community of mixed nationalities and alien races to live, if not in harmony, at least without the miseries of a perpetual feud; but there was an unusual principle of give and take on both sides between the Jews and Christians of this exceptional village in the province of Vilnavitch.

If the Jews in Russia are tainted with the worst characteristics of the race, their grasping and dogmatic idiosyncrasies are the result of a systematic and cruel persecution. The conditions under which they exist are miserable beyond all imagination. They suffer again the persecutions of Egypt, without the hope or prospect of deliverance. The Imperial legislation of St. Petersburg seems to aim at nothing short of their annihilation. They are legislated