Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/203

Rh wind and weather and by the hardships of prison and étape life. She was neatly and becomingly dressed in a Scotch plaid gown of soft dark serge, with little ruffles of white lace at her throat and wrists; and when her face lighted up in animated conversation, she seemed to me to be a very attractive and interesting woman. In her demeanor there was not a suggestion of the boldness, hardness, and eccentricity that I had expected to find in women exiled to Siberia for political crime. She talked rapidly and well; laughed merrily at times over reminiscences of her journey to Siberia; apologized for the unwomanly shortness of her hair, which, she said, had all been cut off in prison; and related with a keen sense of humor her adventures while crossing the Kírghis steppe from Akmolá to Semipalátinsk. That her natural buoyancy of disposition was tempered by deep feeling was evident from the way in which she described some of the incidents of her Siberian experience. She seemed greatly touched, for example, by the kindness shown to her party by the peasants of Kamishlóva, a village through which they passed on their way from Ekaterínburg to Tiumén. They happened to arrive there on Trinity Sunday, and were surprised to find that the villagers, as a manifestation of sympathy with the political exiles, had thoroughly scoured out and freshened up the old village étape, and had decorated its gloomy cells with leafy branches and fresh wild-flowers. It seemed to me that tears came to her eyes as she expressed her deep and grateful appreciation of this act of thoughtfulness and good-will on the part of the Kamishlóva peasants.

About nine o'clock Mr. Lobonófski brought in a steaming sámovar, Madame Dicheskúla made tea, and throughout the remainder of the evening we sat all around the big pine table as if we had been acquainted for months instead of hours, talking about the Russian revolutionary movement, the exile system, literature, art, science, and American politics. The cool, reasonable way in which these exiles