St. Petersburg 1911.
"My life here is so full in one sense that it seems much more than a few months since I was in America. Life seems very, very short in comparison with the wide conception of possibilities which gives the zest to youth. Everything seems so partial and the total is so hard to realize. To keep tranquility with the increase of perception and understanding means renounciation as far as I can see. It must be a great privilege to work and pursue one's greatest convictions—to act what one feels sure of—this is in many ways adjustment to circumstances. Please God that there may be some good in it."
"The spirit is everything—nothing else matters. I can never leave the ward on their hands (new sisters) and I mean every day from 8 until 9 at night and often part of the night, if it is very serious. I am very well, sleep little, eat little and am flourishing."
So after this additional stage in Russia at the Community, Nelka returned once again to America, but not for very long. Early in 1912 she was again getting ready to go back to Europe. Writing from Ashantee in 1912 she said:
"I know it is unrest—I know it all—yet the true picture is that of going thousands of miles to where I am not needed, and leaving my two best friends. I long for the work and can't wait. Between now and it, just think what bumps and jolts and frights and moans. Oh, what is it all about?"
Nelka spent that winter with her aunt Martha in Washington. It had been a winter entirely filled with social activities—balls, dinners, the White House, the Embassies—and Nelka could not stand it any longer and was seeking some contrast. She certainly achieved the contrast all right, for as soon as she returned to Russia she was sent to the outskirts of the Oural Mountains. In that region a famine had been quite severe and the Government sent out feeding stations and Red Cross units to take care of the stricken people. Sisters were established in different villages, sometimes entirely isolated, where they issued provisions and gave medical care to the peasants. Nelka spent a whole winter in one of these villages, living in a one-room hut with a peasant family and sleeping on a wooden bench. What a contrast after the social life of Washington!
Here is a descriptive letter written from Kalakshinovka, District of
Samara, in 1912:
"I am in a desert of snow, in quiet and peace, and feeding three villages. I lie on my bed which consists of two wooden benches side by side—one a little higher than the other. Only thing is that it is almost inaccessible. Even with the snow it is more roily and bumpy than the worst sea ever dreamed of being, and all one can do is to lie with one's eyes closed on some straw in the kind of low sleigh that bumps along hour after hour over these steppes. I first went to Sapieva, a tartar village in the District of Bougulma. Now I am settled and hope to stay here. I was busy last night late giving out provisions and weighing flour and today I have been trying to straighten out grievances and see that all receive justly—sometimes very complicated. Some brother of the official writer of the village, quarreled with the son of a poor woman when that woman's cow came too near his premises, and he made his son beat her off. My position in the matter is whatever the pro's and con's—how dare anyone hurt a poor famished cow and I am settling it on that line."
"I don't know what I would not do to feed all the poor cows and horses and sheep that are left. A number of friends in Petersburg gave me some money to distribute—a little over a hundred dollars. I gave about 50 in Sapieva and the rest I am going to use to save the animals. Aside from my pity for them, it will be terrible for the peasants not to have a horse to work in the fields as soon as the warm weather comes. Where will they be next year? I can help at least two or three families. One poor woman when I bought some feed for her horse and cow simply fell on her knees on the ground. Poodie, really how far people live from each other and how little one can dream of this life if one has not been in it. Perhaps other people understand things more or realize more, but with all I have seen and heard and read, that is simply being born to something entirely unknown—besides all the feelings one experiences oneself in being thus shut off from everything. I have at last attained my own bowl and spoon. I drink coffee and eat a piece of black bread in the morning. At 12 a bowl of buckwheat or some kind of grain with a wooden spoon—a glass of tea and at night a glass of cocoa and black bread, or as a treat a dish of sour milk. I cook and iron and do everything myself, but it is very simple."
"This is part of 'Little Russia' and is much cleaner than 'Great Russia.' I brought with me a few fleas from Great Russia and have the greatest sympathy for Tibi for the time she was exposed to flea companionship. How they bite and jump."