cheerfulness, not one of us could forget our real condition; indeed, the very sight of gaiety brought to the minds of many of us remembrance of home, where our dear ones were at this moment celebrating the feast-day, though with many sad thoughts of the absent. Footnote 54: In Russia it is the custom at Easter in every house to spread a large table with cold dishes of all descriptions, and the master of the house invites every visitor to partake of the feast, which they are bound to do, eating and drinking standing. This “Easter table” is kept going throughout the festival time.—_Trans._ For us hard-labour men this was the first chance we had had of getting to know our women fellow-prisoners. The “administratives” met them not only in visiting hours, but in the courtyard, although the latter was supposed to be against rules. Those condemned to hard labour, on the contrary, were not admitted to the visitors’ room. After this Easter festival, however, even we “deprived of all rights” managed to break through the regulations. Under the pretext that we had some business in the office we had ourselves conducted across the big yard, and the warder left us at the door, supposing we should go straight on down the corridor. Instead of that we raced across the courtyard to the door of the women’s quarters. The flustered warder came tearing after us, calling us back; but we had reached our goal, our ladies were at their door, and we could exchange a few friendly words with them. Of course, this was only a defiant frolic; we took pleasure in trampling on the hated prison rules, and the authorities saw nothing very wicked in it. The prohibition of meeting had no sense in it whatever, as in a few weeks’ time all the “politicals” were to travel in company together to Siberia. In this, as in many other cases, we were unnecessarily thwarted, simply because in paragraph so-and-so of the regulations this or that is forbidden.