Seltzer Books

I determined to get baptized. I said to myself, that perhaps they would not then flog me, at any rate it was worth trying my comrades had told me that it would be of no good. But,' I said to myself, 'who knows? perhaps they will pardon me, they will have more compassion on a Christian than on a Mohammedan.' They baptized me, and give me the name of Alexander; but, in spite of that, I had to take my flogging; they did not let me off a single stroke; I was, however, very savage

Tyranny is a habit capable of being developed, and at last becomes a disease. I declare that the best man in the world can become hardened and brutified to such a point, that nothing will distinguish him from a wild beast. Blood and power intoxicate; they aid the development of callousness and debauchery; the mind then becomes capable of the most abnormal cruelty in the form of pleasure; the man and the citizen disappear for ever in the tyrant; and then a return to human dignity, repentance, moral resurrection, becomes almost impossible.

How frightful it was, that voice of the sick man, that broken, dying voice, in the midst of that silence so dead and complete! In a corner there are some sick people not yet asleep, talking in a low voice, stretched on their pallets. One of them is telling the story of his life, all about things infinitely far off; things that have fled for ever; he is talking of his trampings through the world. of his children, his wife, the old ways of his life. And the very accent of the man's voice tells you that all those things are for ever over for him, that he is as a limb cut off from the world of men, cut off, thrown aside; there is another, listening intently to what he is saying.

Bravo! Isaiah Fomitch. We must take care of you. You are the only Jew we have; but they will send you to Siberia all the same."
"I am already in Siberia."
"They will send you farther on."
"Is not the Lord God there?"
"Of course, he is everywhere."
"Well, then! With the Lord God, and money, one has all that is necessary."

to remember that a prophecy had foretold the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, and he was then to manifest overflowing joy, to sing, to laugh, and to recite his prayers with an expression of happiness in his voice and on his countenance. This sudden passage from one phase of feeling to another delighted Isaiah Fomitch, and he explained to me this ingenious prescription of his faith with the greatest satisfaction

Impossible to understand it," the convicts would sometimes say to one another. One day I asked Isaiah Fomitch what these sobs signified, and why he passed so suddenly from despair to triumphant happiness. Isaiah Fomitch was very pleased when I asked him these questions. He explained to me directly that the sobs and tears were provoked by the loss of Jerusalem, and that the law ordered the pious Jew to groan and strike his breast; but at the moment of his most acute grief he was suddenly to

"Even though she was aware of our engagement, we acted as if she were ignorant of it. I wrote a fine letter in which I said to Luisa, 'If you don't come, I will come to your aunt's for you.' She was afraid and came. Then she began to weep, and told me that a German named Schultz, a distant relation of theirs, a clockmaker by trade, and of a certain age, but rich, had shown a wish to marry her—in order to make her happy, as he said, and that he himself might not remain without a wife in his old age. He had loved her a long time, so she told me, and had been nourishing this idea for years, but he had kept it a secret, and had never ventured to speak out. 'You see, Sasha,' she said to me, 'that it is a question of my happiness; for he is rich, and would you prevent my happiness?' I looked her in the face, she wept, embraced me, clasped me in her arms.
"'Well, she is quite right,' I said to myself, what good is there in marrying a soldier—even a noncommissioned officer? 'Come, farewell, Luisa. God protect you. I have no right to prevent your happiness

Aman, aman," he said, with a burst of honest indignation, and shaking his head. "What an offence to Allah!"

This song is often sung; not as a chorus, but always as a solo. When the work is over, a prisoner goes out of the barracks, sits down on the threshold, meditates with his chin resting on his hand, and then drawls out his song in a high falsetto. One listens to him, and the effect is heart-breaking. Some of our convicts had beautiful voices

One of the guitarists knew his instrument thoroughly. It was the gentleman who had killed his father.