Nijni streets flaunted gay colors, the myriad peoples who thronged the thoroughfares of the fair made up a crowd remarkably different from any I had ever before beheld. Here, I thought, it will not be difficult to forget Russia and her troubles. Alas! the Russian people make no such resolve. Never a day but some stroke against the government is contemplated. Never an event without some effort to turn toward the goal of Russian liberty. Hardly had I reached the fair when a chance acquaintance urged me to buy a ticket for a certain performance to be given that night, ostensibly for the benefit of an orphan asylum in a distant part of the country. But, as my friend explained, this orphan asylum was non-existent and the proceeds really were for the Social Democratic party. Next Tuesday another “charity” performance was advertised, the proceeds to go to the Social Revolutionary party, these being the two most active revolutionary organizations in European Russia at that time. In the midst of the fair-grounds I met an old-time revolutionist whom I had known as an exile on the east side in New York. She was among the amnestied in October, 1905, and had returned, like a released prisoner of war, to the fight. When I met her she was about to start for a revolutionary meeting to be held in the depths of a forest a little way out of Nijni. Meetings of this nature were quite common at that time, despite the fact that they were attended at considerable risk. The place of meeting must be announced by word of mouth, through a small committee, to each and every one of the four or five hundred people who are to attend. Absolutely nothing may be committed to paper. In spite of these precautions the secret police frequently hear of the gatherings, and Cossacks are sent to fire upon the crowd. Twice within a fortnight my friend had been at such meetings which were surprised by soldiers. At one, the volleys from the Cossack rifles had brought down a number of men and several young girls. The Nijni Novgorod fair was inaugurated long before the discovery of America. It owes its origin to the jealousy of the Muscovite princes of the commerce and trade which annually centered at Kazan, the seat of the Tartar khans. The Kazan fairs date from 1257, but the Muscovite fairs soon began to surpass those of the Tartars, and eventually the Kazan fair ceased to exist. Nijni has not always been the location of this fair, for in the early days Czar Michael Feodorovitch, the first Romanoff, and Ivan the Terrible, changed the site to other Volga towns, but so far as history is concerned the associations will remain clustered round the old fortified town, built at the junction of the Oka and the Volga and called Nijni Novgorod.