activity." What is there left for an educated man to do? All the pursuits for which his life and previous training have qualified him are absolutely closed to him. He has not the manual skill necessary to fit him for the work of a carpenter, a shoemaker, a wheelwright, or a blacksmith; he cannot turn merchant or trader, for lack of the requisite capital; and he cannot become a driver or a teamster, on account of his inability to leave the village to which he has been assigned. The only occupation, therefore, that seems to be open to him is the cultivation of the soil. The "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance" do not forbid him to raise potatoes, turnips, and cabbages, — there is no danger that he will infect the soil with his "seditious" ideas, — and in agricultural labor he determines to seek a solution of the hard problem of life. He soon learns, however, that all of the arable land in the neighborhood of the village belongs to the village commune, and has already been allotted to its members. He cannot find a single acre of unappropriated soil without going four or five versts away, and if he steps outside the narrow limits of the settlement he renders himself liable to arrest and imprisonment. In this disheartening situation — banished to Siberia and tied hand and foot by the "Rules Relating to Police Surveillance" — he can do absolutely nothing except make an appeal to the governor, the governor- general, or the Minister of the Interior, and beg, as a favor, for a recognition of his right to labor for his daily bread.
In 1883 the political exiles in the town of Akmolínsk applied to General Kolpakófski, the governor-general of the steppe territories, for permission to give music lessons. They found it almost impossible, they said, either to live on the Government allowance, or to support themselves by any of the means that the "Rules" left open to them. They could, however, teach music, and they begged to be allowed to do so. This seemed — or would seem to an American — a very modest, natural, and reasonable request. There is
