The tender feelings of love, replete with sorrows and despair, are left almost entirely to women; men are too busy to sing of love, or less romantic in their natures. But they are not entirely devoid of the poetic sentiment, and they join the weaker sex in rhythmic utterance, whenever they are stirred to it by unusual incidents that break in on their favorite attitude of contemplation and peaceful occupations. Such are military service, the _pogroms_, or mob violence, and riots periodically instituted against the Jewish population, expatriation, and the awful days of Atonement. On these occasions they rise to all the height of feeling that we have found in the other productions, and the expression of their attachment to their parents, wives, and children is just as tender and pathetic. The Russian Jew is naturally averse to the profession of war. He is not at all a coward, as was demonstrated in the Russo-Turkish War, in which he performed many a deed of bravery; but what can be his interest to fight for a country which hardly recognizes him as a citizen and in which he cannot rise above the lowest ranks in civil offices or in the army, although he is called to shed his blood on an equal footing with his Christian or Tartar fellow-soldier? Before the reign of Nicholas he was regarded beyond the pale of the country's attention and below contempt as a warrior; he was expected to pay toward the support of the country, but was not allowed to be its defender in times of war. He easily acquiesced in this state of affairs, and learned to regard the payment of taxes as a necessary evil and the exemption from enlistment as a privilege. Things all of a sudden changed with the ukase of Emperor Nicholas, by which not only military service was imposed on all the Jews of the realm, but the most atrocious regime was inaugurated to seize the persons who might elude the vigilance of the authorities. A whole regiment of _Chapers_, or catchers, were busy searching out the whereabouts of men of military age, tearing violently men from wives, fathers from infant children, minors from their parents. The terror was still increased by the order of 'cantonment,' by which young children of tender age were stolen from their mothers to be sent into distant provinces to be farmed out to peasants, where it was hoped they would forget their Hebrew origin and would be easily led into the folds of the Greek-Catholic Church.[42] This sad state of affairs is described in a long poem, a kind of a rhymed chronicle of the event; it lies at the foundation of many later lyrical expressions dealing with the aversion to military service, even at a time when it was divested of the horrors of Nicholas' regime. Under the best conditions, the time spent in the service of the Czar might have been more profitably used for the study of the Bible and commentaries to the same, is the conclusion of several of such poems: