Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/331

Rh and had its far from agreeable characteristics thrown into high contrast by a pair of large, pensive black eyes. He spoke slowly in a deep bass voice and never smiled. This quiet, wise man was never in anyone's way and attracted no attention.

One could only wonder at the incomprehensible provisions of the Russian law, which dealt out prison punishment for such men as Nikoloff, a type which could, alas, be frequently met in Russia, where the immense spaces, the admixture of Mongolian nomad blood and the discontent with the physical conditions of existence combined to develop in the people a form of psychic deviation which found its expression in the love of moving, of wandering about with the nomads' disregard of the stereotyped and the material, of tramping, if you will. As the police never allowed people to travel about too frequently from one place to another without some acceptable reason, these nomads of to-day had frequently to change their names and to appear with new documents at short intervals, often using the papers of some companion of the road who had passed away and naturally being caught in the occasional necessity of having to prove that he was not dead, as the records showed.

In what way did these tramps exist? They lived as the birds, by picking up what they could. The Russian peasants called them "passing men" or "passengers" and never refused them hospitality and food, for which the passing men always paid in some form of work, as practically all of them knew tailoring, boot-making or doctoring. Those of the medical profession undertook the cure of all ills through miraculous means, with whisperings, incantations, magic herbs and sorcerer's formulas, which they acquired from the gipsies as the relics of banished centuries.