Patric Park died before he was fifty, and when, to all appearance, there were many happy and prosperous years before him, when having surmounted his early difficulties, he might have looked forward to the design and completion of the many noble works to which he pined to devote his mature energies, after emancipation from the slavery of what he called “busting” the effigies of “cheesemongers.” He had been for some months in Manchester, plying his vocation among the rich notabilities of that prosperous city, when one day, emerging from a carriage at the railway station, he observed a porter with a huge basket of ice upon his head, staggering under the load and ready to fall. Park rushed forward to the man’s assistance, prevented him from falling, steadied the load upon his head by a great muscular exertion, and suddenly found his mouth full of blood. He had broken a blood-vessel; and stretching forth his hand, took a lump of ice from the basket, and held it in his mouth to stop the bleeding. He proceeded to the nearest chemist’s shop for advice and relief, and was forthwith conveyed to his hotel delirious. A neighboring doctor was called in, Park beseeching him for brandy. The brandy was refused. A telegram was sent to his own physician in London. He came down by the next train, and expressed a strong opinion on seeing the body and learning all the facts, that the brandy ought to have been given. But he arrived too late. The noble, the generous, the gifted Park was no more, and an attached young wife and hundreds of friends, amongst whom the writer of these words was one of the most attached, were “left lamenting.”—Gentleman’s Magazine.
(To be concluded.)
A FEMALE NIHILIST
BY STEPNIAK.
I.
On the 27th of July, in the year 1878, the little town of Talutorovsk, in Western Siberia, was profoundly excited by a painful event. A political prisoner, named Olga Liubatovitch, it was said had miserably put an end to her days. She was universally loved and esteemed, and her violent death therefore produced a most mournful impression throughout the town, and the Ispravnik or chief of the police, was secretly accused of having driven the poor young girl, by his unjust persecutions, to take away her life.
Olga was sent to Talutorovsk, some months after the trial known as that of the “fifty” of Moscow, in which she was condemned to nine years’ hard labor for Socialist propagandism, a punishment afterwards commuted into banishment for life. Unprovided with any means whatever of existence, for her father, a poor engineer with a large family, could send her nothing, Olga succeeded, by indefatigable industry, in establishing herself in a certain position. Although but little skilled in female labor, she endeavored to live by her needle, and became the milliner of the semi-civilized ladies of the town, who went into raptures over her work. These fair dames were firmly convinced—it is impossible to know why—that the elegance of a dress depends above all things upon the number of its pockets. The more pockets there were, the more fashionable the dress. Olga never displayed the slightest disinclination to satisfy this singular taste. She put pockets upon pockets, upon the body, upon the skirts, upon the underskirts; before, behind, everywhere. The married ladies and the young girls were as proud as peacocks, and were convinced that they were dressed like the most fashionable Parisian, and, though they were less profuse with their money than with their praises, yet in that country, where living costs so little, it was easy to make two ends meet. Later on, Olga had an occupation more congenial to her habits. Before entering the manufactories and workshops as a sempstress in order to carry on the Socialist propaganda, she had studied medicine for some years at Zurich, and she could not now do less than lend her assistance in certain cases of illness. This soon gave her a reputation, and at the request of the citizens, the police accorded to her the permission to fill the post of apothecary and phlebotomist, as the former occupant of that post, owing to habitual drunkenness, was fit for nothing. Not unfrequently she even took the place of the district doctor, a worthy man who, owing to old age and a partiality for brandy, was in such a state that he could not venture upon delicate operations, because his hands shook. She acted for him also in many serious cases baffling his antediluvian knowledge. Some of her cures were considered miraculous; among others, that of the district judge, whom, by determined treatment, she had saved after a violent attack of delirium tremens, a malady common to almost all men in that wild country.
In a word, Olga was in great favor with the peaceful citizens of Talutorovsk. The hatred of the police towards her was all the greater for that reason. Her proud and independent disposition would not permit her to submit to the stupid and humiliating exigencies of the representatives of the Government. Those representatives, barbarous and overbearing as they were, considered every attempt to defend personal dignity a want of respect toward themselves—nay, a provocation, and neglected no occasion of taking their revenge. There was always a latent war between Olga and her guardians, a war of the weak, bound hand and foot, against the strong, armed at all points; for the police have almost arbitrary power over the political prisoners who are under their surveillance. In this very unequal struggle, however, Olga did not always come off the worst, as often happens in the case of those who, proud, daring, and fearing nothing, are always ready to risk everything for the merest trifle. One of these conflicts, which lasted four days and kept the whole of the little town in a state of excitement by its dramatic incidents, was so singular that it deserves to be related.