PREFACE.
Towards the end of 1882, there arrived at the old Pennsylvania Railroad
Depot in Philadelphia, several hundred Russian refugees, driven from
their native land by the inhuman treatment of the Muscovite Government.
Among them were many intelligent people, who had been prosperous in
their native land, but who were now reduced to dire want. One couple, in
particular, attracted the attention of the visitors, by their
intellectual appearance and air of gentility, in marked contrast to the
abject condition of many of their associates. Joseph Kierson was the
name of the man, and the story of his sufferings aroused the sympathy of
his hearers. The man and his wife were assisted by the Relief Committee,
and in a short time were in a condition to provide for themselves.
The writer had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Kierson a few years later,
and elicited from him a complete recital of his trials and an account of
the causes of the terrible persecution which compelled such large
numbers of his countrymen to flee from their once happy homes.
His story forms the nucleus of the novel I now present to my readers.
While adhering as closely as possible to actual names, dates and events,
it does not pretend to be historically accurate. In following the
fortunes of Mendel Winenki, from boyhood to old age, it endeavors to
present a series of pictures portraying the character, life, and
sufferings of the misunderstood and much-maligned Russian Jew.
In the description of Russia's customs and characteristics, the
barbarous cruelty of her criminal code and the nihilistic tendency of
the times, the author has followed such eminent writers as Wallace,
Foulke, Stepniak, Tolstoi and Herzberg-Fraenkel. The accounts of the
riots of 1882 will be found to agree in historic details with the
reports which were published at the time.
With this introduction, I respectfully submit the work to the
consideration of an indulgent public.
MILTON GOLDSMITH.
PHILADELPHIA, April, 1891.
CHAPTER I.
RECRUITS FOR SIBERIA.
We are in Russia.
On the high road from Tscherkask to Togarog, and not far from the latter
village, there stood, in the year 1850, a large and inhospitable-looking
inn. Its shingled walls, whose rough surface no paint-brush had touched
for long generations, seemed decaying from sheer old age. Its tiled roof
was in a most dilapidated state, displaying large gaps imperfectly
stuffed with straw, and serving rather to collect the rain and snow for
the more thorough inundation of the rooms below than to protect them
from the elements. The grounds about the house were in keeping with it
in point of picturesque neglect, and were as innocent of cultivation as
the building was of paint. A roughly paved path led from the highway to
the tavern door. Two old and sickly poplar trees cast a poor and
half-hearted shade upon the parched ground, and mournfully shook their
leaves over the scene of desolation. The herbage grew in isolated
patches on a black and uncultivated soil. Nature might have originally
been friendly to the place, but generations of poverty and neglect had
reduced it to a condition of wretched misery.
As was this particular spot, so was the entire village. Slavery had
wound its chains about the inhabitants, stifling whatever energy they
possessed, entailing upon them constant toil to satisfy the exorbitant
demands of their task-masters. Hence, even with a genial sun and a
southern climate, the fields were barren, the crops poor and the people
sunk in abject poverty.
