[4] He slaughtered Poland like a hound tears a hare. "But below all (in the Museum of the Kremlin), far beneath the feet of the Emperor, in dust and ignominy and on the floor, is flung the very Constitution of Poland--parchment for parchment, ink for ink, good promise for good promise--which Alexander I. gave with so many smiles, and which Nicholas I. took away with so much bloodshed."--Andrew D. White, "The Development and Overthrow of Serfdom in Russia," Atlantic Monthly November 1862. This sentence which I have quoted is correct, but the reader who is unfamiliar with Russian history had better avoid the article, as the last paragraph alone contains as many lies as there are kalachi in Moscow. SCENES FROM SERFDOM To be sold, three coachmen, well-trained and handsome; and two girls, the one eighteen and the other fifteen years of age, both of them good-looking and well acquainted with various kinds of handiwork. In the same house there are for sale two hairdressers; the one twenty-one years of age can read, write, play on a musical instrument, and act as huntsman; the other can dress ladies' and gentlemen's hair. In the same house are sold pianos and organs. Advertisement in the _Moscow Gazette_, 1801. Peter Kropotkin's father was a general and a prince. His family originated with a grandson of Rostislav Mstislavich the Bold. His ancestors had been Grand Princes of Smolensk. He was a descendant of the house of Rurik, and judged from the standpoint of heredity, had more right to the throne than the Romanoffs. Incidentally he was like most military men--barbarous, pitiless, merciless. He owned twelve hundred male serfs. We do not know how many maids. Neither do we know how many were scarred by the knout, how many were flogged till the breath of life left them, nor how many hanged themselves under his window. If this brave warrior--who received the cross of Saint Anne for gallantry, because his servant Froll rushed into the flames to save a child--became imbued with the notion that there was not sufficient hay in the barn, he would call one of his serfs, strike him in the face, and accuse him of overfeeding the horses. In order to prove he was right he would make another calculation, and come to the conclusion there was too much hay. So he would bang his slave again for not giving the equidae enuf. Suddenly he would sit down and write a note: Take So and So to the police station, and let 100 lashes with the birch rod be administered to him. On such occasions Peter would run out--his rosy cheeks wet with weeping--catch the unhappy soul in a dark passage, and try to kiss his hand. The serf would tear it away, and say bitterly, "Let me alone; you too, when you grow up, will you not be just the same?" "No, no, never!" cried the child, while the hot tears choked him and made him cough for breath.