More than half an hour passed before the girl arrived. When she came in I was greatly surprised by her appearance. She did not look more than twenty, and she was gowned as any woman might be of a morning in any fashionable resort in the season. Her manner and bearing suggested Mayfair drawing-rooms. My first thought was that she must be the daughter of an aristocratic family, who had been exiled, but I remembered that the remark had been passed that she was not a prisoner. She was graciously glad to see us and told us we were most fortunate in having come to Tobolsk just at that time, because there were many political exiles in town from all over the province, even from Berezov, a thousand versts to the north. It appeared that every autumn, just before the rivers closed in for the winter, delegates of one or two “free” exiles from each settlement were appointed to go to Tobolsk to purchase the winter’s supply of matches, candles, pins, and other little things; for once the winter sets in it is often many months before a courier can get through, even with mail. The girl told us to come to a certain house in a neighboring street that evening and she would have there to meet us a number of the delegates from different parts of the province. The house she designated was one belonging to a physician who had been exiled from an eastern Russian city for twelve years, by order of the local governor. He had never been able to learn what charge there was against him, and as he was a Constitutional Democrat, and opposed to revolutionary activity, he found his exile particularly exasperating. However, he had brought his wife and children with him and he was striving to make the best of his situation. He welcomed us with the utmost cordiality, when, at the appointed hour, we repaired to his house. It was seldom that exiles have such direct communication with the outside world as we afforded. One of the greatest hardships of exile life to educated men and women is the life of enforced idleness that they must lead. Hard labor, indeed, for politicals, is usually interpreted enforced idleness. For an educated and disciplined mind emptiness and absolute lack of occupation is the most cruel strain. The result is that politicals often beg local authorities to permit them to go to work in the mines, merely that they may have occupation. This physician told me that previous to my coming some poor people had come to him to give them relief from pain they were suffering from a certain curable cause. The doctor gave them some simple remedy and sent them away. A day or two after he received a reprimand from a police authority--he was there as an exile, not as a professional man, and he was not expected to use his professional knowledge! The man protested that he had done very little, yet it had relieved the poor peasants, and inasmuch as the government made no provision for healing the sick he could not understand why he should not do what he could.