A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines Part 24

Here in this h.e.l.l hole Father Damien was left to his own devices and surrounded by the misshapen and hideous creatures for whose lives he had sacrificed his own. Bishop Maigret accompanied him to Molokai, and told the lepers he had brought them a new Father, who loved them so much that he was willing to live with them and become one of them. Then the good bishop went back to Honolulu, and Father Damien set himself about the task that he had made his entire life work.

As he could not sleep in the huts of the lepers, the brave priest made his lodging on the ground beneath a panda.n.u.s tree, and calling his new parishioners together he preached to them with brave and comforting words, telling them that they must not despair, but make the most of their lives as they were, and that he would help them to build better houses and bring to them the comforts that they needed. And at once he busied himself getting building materials from the Government, with which trim cottages were built, and water pipes, through which he had fresh water piped down to the settlement from a cold spring above the cliff. He built a chapel and a dispensary, and not content with this he bandaged the sores of the lepers with his own hands, and washed their wounds. Through his efforts a hospital was finally provided and a doctor came to Molokai, and following his example sisters of mercy and brave missionaries came there to work, but for a long time Father Damien was alone with his charges, performing rough tasks with none to aid him, except the aid that he obtained from the lepers themselves.

It cannot be thought that a man who performed such services could forever escape contracting the disease, and after Father Damien had been ten years on Molokai he found himself a victim of the scourge against which he had so bravely and successfully contended. A visit to the resident doctor confirmed the worst of his fears, and after that when speaking to his congregation he used the words "we lepers,"

telling them that he himself had received the cross from which they suffered, and henceforth was one of them in something more than name.

Although he was now an invalid, he did not fail to perform his priestly duties until the end, but he never told his family in Belgium of the misfortune that had befallen him. They learned it eventually from others, and the shock of the discovery hastened his mother's death.

After fifteen years' service among the lepers Father Damien died of the disease, leaving behind him a name for pure self-sacrifice that has not been surpa.s.sed since the beginning of the Christian era. He had lived to see the leper colony grow from a ribald, obscene settlement to an orderly hospital where as much as was possible was done for the sufferers that were compelled to remain there. And he had the satisfaction of knowing that others would carry on efficiently the work that he had begun.

But in spite of all his bravery and his self-sacrifice this heroic priest was not without his traducers. A short time after his death a certain missionary named Dr. Hyde made scurrilous charges against him which were answered by that great writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, in a letter that has become one of the cla.s.sics of English literature, and in which it was predicted that Father Damien would be made a saint by the Church of Rome, as he is indeed a saint in the bravery and purity of his life and his deeds.

CHAPTER XXVII

CATHERINE BRESHKOVSKY

In the year 1844 in Russia was born one of the most remarkable women of modern times. Her full name is Ekaterina Constantinovna Breshko-Breshkovskaya, but in America she is called Catherine Breshkovsky, and as such she will be known in these pages. Both her father and her mother were of n.o.ble birth, and when she was a little girl her father had a large estate on which hundreds of serfs were held in bondage.

While the negroes in the United States were kept in slavery, the peasants in Russia were in almost as bad a plight. They lived on the estates of the great n.o.bles and formed a part of the n.o.bles' property.

Toiling from dawn until far into the night with frequent floggings and browbeatings from their masters they bore the burdens of the Russian government that gave them nothing in return. While the n.o.blemen feasted on the fruits of the peasants' toil, the peasants themselves starved to death. When war came it was the peasants who furnished the armies while the n.o.bles themselves seldom went to the front but remained behind the lines in safety.

When Catherine was a little girl she saw many instances of injustice and oppression, although the serfs on her father's estate were treated far better than many others. She did not know why she herself had fine clothes and delicate food, when the children of her father's servants were ragged and dirty, and often had just enough to eat to keep them from starving. She used to ask her parents what was the reason that they had no work to perform, while others had to get up when the stars were still shining and labor until long after the sun had set at night.

And why the ones who did not work were so much better off than the others who did. And before she was eight years old, she had formed the habit of giving away her own possessions to the children of the serfs, who never had the pretty things with which she was surfeited.

Before she was nine, Catherine, we are told, had read a long history of Russia in nine large volumes, and when she was a girl of sixteen she had made an especial study of the French Revolution and the causes that led up to it.

The Crimean war came, and soldiers went to the front in large numbers.

They were all taken from the families of the serfs, and while a certain number of the n.o.blemen went to the war as officers of the Russian army, many others stayed at home safely, not being compelled to fight for their country as the peasants were. And the injustice of the system was very evident to the young girl, who even then was forming the idea of devoting her life to aiding the suffering and oppressed people who surrounded her.

About the time that the Civil War began in the United States a great change came over the peasantry in Russia, but it was a change that seemed to do them little good. The Russian Czar issued a proclamation in 1861 in which he declared that all serfs in his dominions were at liberty, and if they chose could leave the estates of their former masters and seek work where they wished.

But the serfs were worse off than ever before, because in the proclamation nothing was said about the land on which they had been living and which belonged to the n.o.bles. They knew no trade except that of tilling the soil, and now that they were no longer the property of the n.o.bles, their land was taken away from them and they had no means by which they could earn a living. Then terrible scenes commenced to be enacted. The serfs were ruthlessly driven from their homes and when they sought to remain were beaten in great numbers, being flogged so severely with the knout that many of them died as a result. Most of them were densely ignorant, and reading and writing were far beyond their knowledge. They could not understand why the land on which they had always lived and worked was taken from them, and why they were now denied even the bitter bread that they had formerly been able to earn.

Among the Russian n.o.bility, however, were many high minded young men and women, who like Catherine felt the injustice of the serfs' hard lot and desired to help them. These young people formed into philanthropic bands, and went into the villages to teach the serfs, help them with their labor, minister to them in sickness and to make their condition better in every way possible. Thousands of boys and girls of gentle birth flocked to the Russian Universities and from there went to befriend the serfs. Throughout the younger generation a different feeling existed toward the common people than ever before in Russian history.

Catherine's father himself was liberal in his views and had already done what he could to alleviate the sufferings of his former bondsmen.

When Catherine came to him and told him that she did not think that she could endure living in idleness any longer, but desired to support herself, he consented, and the girl who all her life had been used to the greatest luxuries went away to become a governess in the house of a n.o.bleman, where she could live honestly by the fruits of her own labor.

Her father did not long consent to this, however, and helped her to open a boarding house for girls, where she taught school until she was twenty-five years old when she was married. Her husband was a young n.o.bleman who sympathized with her liberal ideas, and himself had done a great deal to better the condition of the Russian people. He helped his wife work for the peasants and began a cooperative banking scheme by which they might benefit.

But Catherine grew more and more discontented with the terrible conditions that surrounded her on every side. She happened to go to the city of Kiev to visit her sister and she took her meals at a student's boarding house. She heard a great deal of discussion of the condition of Russia there and saw a great many young students who were interested in public affairs. And one day she held a secret meeting of students in her room to talk over what more could be done to make Russia a better place to live in.

While the younger generation had been striving in every way possible to help the serfs, the Russian Government did all in its power to hinder them. This government was then an absolute autocracy, which means that it was under the complete control of one ruler and a few advisors. The Czar of Russia knew that when his people grew better educated and more enlightened his own power would grow less, so he did all that he could to keep them in the state of darkness and ignorance in which they had languished for centuries. When young n.o.blemen and girls sought to teach or help the peasants, they met with obstacles on every side, and many of them were treated with great severity by the officers of the Czar.

This naturally angered them, and they began to form plans to overthrow the Czar's power, since they saw that any real progress would be impossible so long as the regime that then existed remained in force.

In short they became revolutionists; and Catherine herself was well on the road to becoming one.

When Catherine came home from Kiev she and her husband conducted a series of meetings in which they made speeches to the peasants and labored harder than ever to improve their condition, but this soon brought them under the eye of the Czar's spies, and they were warned that they had better discontinue their efforts and let the peasants take care of themselves. And this was the final event that determined Catherine to become a revolutionist and bend all her energies to overthrowing the Czar's government.

She talked it over with her husband and asked him if he were ready to throw in his lot with those who sought to change the government, saying that she herself had resolved to do so. It meant suffering, poverty, hardships and very probably prison or death. Her husband was unwilling to take the risk and they parted forever. Soon after this Catherine had a son, and on account of the life that she had chosen was obliged to leave him with friends. It was a bitter moment for her when she gave him up, but it only strengthened her in her purpose.

Many revolutionists were at work in Russia at that time, and were scattered all through the country in various disguises. They were sent from various revolutionary centers to preach revolution to the peasants and to kindle the flames of revolt against the Czar. Others did social work, and sought to educate the peasants to the point where they would have sufficient knowledge to understand the revolutionary doctrines when they heard them--and it was in this form of work that Catherine first engaged.

At last, however, she entered into the more active work of the revolutionists, and in person commenced to spread revolutionary ideas among the common people. With two companions disguised as peasants, and in peasant garb herself, carrying a pack crammed with revolutionary pamphlets and literature, Catherine made her way to a little village, where she took a small hut and pretended to be a woman who dyed clothes. As soon as she grew to know the peasants she commenced to preach to them and to incite them to revolution. She told them that the Czar was an evil ruler, and that he and his n.o.bles had always fattened themselves at the peasants' expense; that the Russian people would always be poor and miserable so long as the Czar remained in power; that they had a right to the land that was taken from them, and were no better than slaves who dared not call their souls their own--and furthermore that their only salvation lay in rising throughout Russia, overthrowing the Czar and establishing a government where all men should be free and equal, and where every man would have a right to earn his daily bread.

When the peasants in one village failed to respond Catherine and her comrades moved on to another town, and little by little they brought the doctrines of revolution to the ma.s.s of ignorant people, who were looking for some means to better themselves and realize a little of the happiness of life.

The life of a traveling preacher of this sort was filled with hardship.

Catherine, who had been used to every luxury, was forced to eat the coa.r.s.est food and often to go hungry. She had to sleep in houses that were filled with dirt and vermin. Her audiences were stupid in the extreme, and were often as afraid of the revolutionists as they were of the Cossacks and the Czar's officials. Moreover there was always the danger of arrest and imprisonment, followed by exile to Siberia, or death on the gallows.

One day in the town of Zlatopol, where Catherine was carrying on her revolutionary work, a police officer stopped her and demanded her pa.s.sport. This pa.s.sport was forged and when she showed it he suspected her. Then, when he commenced to treat her with the indignities to which the peasants were accustomed she resented it, disclosing the fact that she was from the upper cla.s.ses. Her pack was torn open and the revolutionary pamphlets were found. The case against her was complete.

She was hurried to prison and thrown into a foul dungeon, where the filth and suffering forced on her were indescribable. And here she was kept for long, weary months until her case should come to trial.

It was in this prison that she first learned the secret code that prisoners in Russia used to communicate with one another. One day, as she lay on the bundle of rags that formed her couch, she heard a faint tapping on an iron pipe that ran through her cell. She responded, and on the pipe tapped out the alphabet, one tap standing for "a", two for "b" and so on. From this laborous method she learned another code which was the one generally in use among the imprisoned revolutionists; and she spent long hours communicating with friends in different parts of the prison who were in solitary confinement like herself, and whom she had never seen.

At last Catherine was brought up for trial and was sentenced to exile in Siberia. Because she told her judges that she refused to acknowledge the authority of the Czar she was given an extra sentence of five years at hard labor in the mines. She had already been in prison several years awaiting trial--and out of three hundred who had been imprisoned in the same jail more than one hundred had died or become insane.

Catherine then commenced a weary two months journey into Siberia, where she was first to go to prison and later remain as an exile. The prisoners traveled in covered wagons, that jolted and b.u.mped endlessly over the rough roads, and at night they were thrown into roadside jails, filthy beyond description. For eight long weeks this journey continued until Catherine reached the prison at Kara.

Here she was not compelled to work after all, but was forced to eat the vilest food and wear out her soul in idleness, with no occupation except to witness the sufferings of her companions. When her prison term was ended she was taken to a little town called Barguzon near the Arctic Circle, where the thermometer often dropped to fifty below zero, and here she was kept under close guard for many years.

Words cannot describe the misery of the Siberian exiles as Catherine saw them--men, women and children, sick and forlorn, compelled to march for miles over the bleak countryside, surrounded by brutal guards who prodded them on with their bayonets. After she had been for some time at Barguzon she tried to escape with three men who were also political exiles, and sought to gain the Pacific coast a thousand miles away, where she hoped she might take ship for America. She was pursued and recaptured, and given another term in the prison at Kara on account of her attempt to escape.

Catherine was a young woman when she went into exile; she remained until she was old and her hairs were gray before her term of punishment ended. She had been in exile more than twenty years and in all that time she had not seen one of her relatives or heard the voice of a friend. At last she was set free.

When she arrived at her former home she spent several months in making visits to relatives, and once again entered the work of the revolutionists. She was now famous in their circles and known to great numbers of peasants who loved her dearly and called her "Grandmother."

She had many narrow escapes from the police, but her friends always succeeded in concealing her.

On one occasion she was hiding in a house, while the police officers searched for her. It was the cook's day off, and Catherine, in the cook's dress, was stirring the soup at the stove while the police officers ranged the house to discover her.

In 1904 she came to the United States to do what she could to spread the work of the revolution by gaining money from Russians in America.

She received a cordial reception and made many friends among the Americans, some of them being the most prominent men and women in the country. The Russians themselves received her most enthusiastically wherever she went, and she returned with $10,000 for the Cause.

Through the double dealing of one of her supposed friends, Catherine was arrested again in 1908 and sent once more to Siberia. She remained there until after the outbreak of the World War, while the Germans overran Belgium and Russia in turn. She remained, in fact, until the revolution for which she had labored for so many years at last took place, and the Czar was overthrown. Then she was invited to return by the Government of Kerensky, who came into power when the Czar fell.

Her return from Siberia with the other political exiles was like a triumphal ovation. At every stop the train made crowds thronged about her carriage, cheering and shouting for "the little grandmother of the Russian Revolution," as she was called on account of her many years of labor for the cause. On her arrival in Moscow she was placed in the Czar's former coach of state, and was driven in triumph through the city to the a.s.sembly of the people called the Douma, which was then sitting. At Petrograd she was given a sumptuous apartment in the Czar's former palace. Everywhere her name was on the lips of thousands, and everywhere she received cheers, kisses and handclasps. It may almost have been worth the suffering she went through to receive a triumph so generous as that afforded her by the Russian people, who realized that she had been one of the chief leaders of the revolutionary movement and that her heart was bound up in its ultimate triumph.

But the revolution did not succeed, and it was not long before Russia was once more in the grip of a force even more deadly than that of the former Czar. The Bolshevists soon organized and drove Kerensky from power, and anarchy ruled throughout Russia. Catherine Breshkovsky was declared a public enemy by the Government of Lenine and Trotsky. She was in danger of her life if captured, as the Bolshevists were talking of putting her to death. After an unsuccessful attempt to organize resistance to the new government, Catherine was hidden by friends while the Bolshevists sought her, and after traveling for six hundred miles on horseback reached Vladivostok, where she found a steamer ready to take her to America. Here she was again welcomed cordially and made much of on every side, and here too she made many speeches against the Bolshevist government. Although she is over seventy-five years old she declares that she will still aid Russia to gain the freedom and peace it craves and if given an opportunity she will no doubt take part in the future development of her country.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THEODORE ROOSEVELT