Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/657

Rh most curious relations. I sojourned for a short time at an inn in Tomsk. The host and his wife made an unfavorable, I might say a repulsive, impression upon me. I could not refrain from expressing my suspicions to the chief of police, to whom I had been introduced. To my edification I learned that the host had been condemned to twenty-five years in prison for fraudulent bankruptcy, and his wife to twenty years as his accessory; that the porter was an old house-breaker, and the four butlers had been compelled to take the involuntary tour to the East for thefts; the two maids were child-murderers! Such is the environment in which the people of that district constantly live. On the next day I dined by invitation with a merchant. I met a polite, cultivated company, and learned afterward from my friend the police-officer that the apothecary, who sat next to me, had been transported for poisoning, that three of the guests were fraudulent directors of exploded banks, and two were counterfeiters! The last two had made a bad impression on me from the beginning, and I could not afterward repress the thought that they were continuing in Siberia to increase as much as they could the circulation of cash in the Russian Empire. If one expresses surprise at such social conditions, the answer is, "Oh, please remember that we are in Siberia!" It is, moreover, not considered necessary to avoid speaking of these matters with reference to any one. The party concerned himself will converse on the subject with the greatest ease, and his frankness respecting it is really astonishing. I inquired one day in a matter-of course-way of a Jew named Ephraim, who carried on a small banker's business, a very prepossessing man socially, how he came to settle there. He replied jestingly, and with a wink: "Circumstances are to blame for that; they compelled me to establish my business here some two and-twenty years ago."

Real prisons with locks and walls are comparatively rare in Siberia, and form in all cases, unless the positively evil disposition of the convict prolongs his stay, a transitional abode between the unlimited freedom he enjoyed before his offense and the limited freedom that follows his sentence. Offenders are not cast into narrow cells for the full term of their punishment, but go around free after a short confinement, and are supported by the contributions of their former colleagues, while they are afforded full opportunity to found a new existence. The contrasts between the positions which released prisoners may attain in Siberia and the offense which led to their exile are frequently quite comical. The child-murderer becomes a trusted nurse, the burglar an overseer, the thief a confidential servant! But a practical Christianity is exercised toward the fallen one. The Government and private persons rival one another in pointing out and clearing the way of reform for the wanderer. In Kazmetak, we visited the local prison, which is unique in its way. It was of immense capacity, and was so arranged as to permit a complete