and as she passed me I saw she was insane. Later, I learned that she had lost her hand in a factory accident and that the pain, coupled with the brooding and starvation, had unbalanced her mind. To see a crazed person wandering the streets in rags did not surprise me, for I had seen them before and I knew this was the Government's method of caring for the insane. She went on down the street, chin up, wailing her far-reaching song. A crowd of boys began to troop after her, and a policeman, dry beneath his waterproof that hung from his head like a tent, had to take notice. He followed after her in his great felt boots incased in rubbers, using his rifle as a balancing pole. There was no hesitation as to how he should handle her; his method was, in spirit, the method in which all the Russian people are treated. He seized her shoulders, shook her, cursed her, kicked her with his great boot. Then he led her, suddenly silent, watching him from her vacant eyes, off down the street; but there was nothing he could do with her, for there was no asylum; and he could not take her to jail, for they were packed to the bars with men who had dared speak publicly of freedom. He could only set her free. And in doing that he was A WOMAN FACTORY WORKER a rag of red calico. Down to her waist she wore nothing but an old blue calico waist, through whose dozen rents gleamed the dripping white of her body. Her outer skirt, which barely fell below her knees, was a score of varicolored rags frailly stitched together, and between every open seam was visible her underskirt-a coarse burlap sack such as is used in America for potatoes. From knees to the icy ground she was bare, save for the last scraps of a pair of shoes and for a single tattered stocking that hung about one ankle. One hand was gone at the wrist; the other clutched a piece of black bread. At first I thought she was drunken upon the Tsar's vodka, the Government's chief source of income. But on that icy footing a drunken person could have only crawled or wallowed, A PAIR OF TARTAR TEAMSTERS Their only wages were their board (chiefly black bread and cabbage soup) and their beds-trusses of straw on boards CONGO SOLDIERS ON DRESS PARADE AT BASSONGO, ON THE KASAI TH THE BELGIAN RULE ON THE CONGO PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF AN AMERICAN RESIDENT BY SAMUEL P. VERNER HE Congo Free State is a river and a man. The river stands first in extent of navigable water, and second in volume, in the world; the man is the foremost in business capacity, in diplomacy, and in executive ability, among the monarchs of Europe. of the renaissance of royal efficiency. In him. have reappeared Ferdinand of Spain, the spirit of Elizabeth, the power of Catherine, the ambition of Charlemagne. In a day when the people are making puppets of their kings, he has been shaping the destiny of his people. How he managed to get little Belgium in posKing Leopold deserves study as an instance session of the vast regions of Central Africa is |