Dusk was gathering when we rumbled heavily into Tsaritzin, a village of 1800 inhabitants, fifty-five versts from Saratoff. Our driver pulled up before a square cottage, no better than the average, and to all appearances like the rest in the village. Before we had lifted our cramped and much-shaken limbs from the springless wagon that had brought us all the distance, two young men, strangers to us both, but bursting with cordiality and pleasure at our arrival, rushed out to greet us. They were two medical students from the temporarily closed University of Moscow, come here to direct the distribution of famine relief. We were their first visitors in several months, and, as we soon were able to see, their existence is dreary enough in this remote place. They come to serve the peasants, to administer famine relief, to look after their physical ailments and to teach them, all they can of the rudiments of education. At every turn they are hampered and harassed by the local police. The glamour that was wont to shine round the young men and women who inaugurated the “settlement” movement in England and America, young people of education and culture who took up their living in the midst of the darkest corners of great cities to share the results of their larger opportunities with tenement dwellers, pales before the life and works of intellectual young Russia. The government closed the universities, for they were centers of revolt. But students who have lived, however briefly, in the blaze of active idealism, and who have been touched by the fire of enthusiasm to hasten the coming of Russia’s better day, are not content to return simply to their homes to await the opening of their universities at the will and pleasure of a reactionary, timid government. The free life, the glad life for Russia and all her people, is their goal. The movement tending toward that goal is their cause. We sat down with our delighted hosts to a simple evening meal, and were still lingering over a companionable samovar when a clock in an adjoining room struck ten. The striking had scarcely ceased when a series of heavy blows descended upon the shutters of one of the windows and a voice bawled out: “Open! Open to the police!” One of our hosts groped through the adjoining room to light a small oil-lamp near the door. We in our room heard the crude rear door crack on its rusty hinges as it was swung wide. The tramp of heavy feet crossed the uneven floor, accompanied by the clank of spurs and the rattle of a dangling saber. A young officer of police swaggered into the room where we sat. At the threshold he paused, partly turned and bawled an order to the men behind him. The grounding of arms echoed his words. “Your passports,” demanded the officer without preliminary. “How many soldiers have you with you?” asked my companion. “You may count,” replied the officer. “One, two, three, five, seven, ten! Good. There are two of us.”