Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/12

viii petition asking for the release of a noted anarchist who was said to be dying in a French prison. This man, said the letter, had thrown everything away for the "cause,"—his entire fortune, his title, and his birthright as a subject of Russia, to which he could never return; while comparatively young in years, he presented the appearance of an old man, with hair prematurely white and his health broken by confinement in a damp, unsanitary prison. My husband's name was to head the list. "Poor devil," he said, as he dipped his pen in the ink. But he laid it down again thoughtfully, and, instead of signing the petition, wrote a letter stating that he had read the trial, and asking why the Russian gentleman had refused to say whether he had had a hand in the blowing up of a workingman's café in Lyons, in which catastrophe many persons, mostly peasants with their families, had been killed or shockingly injured. He could not, he said, withhold his admiration for a man who had given so much, but he could and would withhold his signature until he was satisfied on this point. No such assurance being forthcoming, the petition was returned with the remark "I think Monsieur had better complete his sacrifice by dying in prison." For street musicians and wandering performers—acrobats, jugglers, etc.—my husband showed