FROM LAW TO AGRICULTURE 19 



comment and the practical result was that a certain 

 Maslinikoff of St. Petersburg, who in later years 

 became Minister of Agriculture, asked him to write 

 editorials on farming for an agricultural paper which 

 he was soon to publish. 



The course completed, in the summer of 1885 we re- 

 turned to Odessa, as our friends in America, especially 

 the late Dr. Paul Kaplan, begged us not to consider 

 emigration at this time. All their dreams of coloniza- 

 tion had been shattered. A few farm settlements 

 formed in Oregon and Kansas were a total failure, and 

 the colonists were all back in New York, working in 

 various factories. So we decided on Odessa. 



But even in so simple a venture as a journey back 

 home my husband managed to achieve something. Two 

 of our friends in Zurich, the well-known Pavel Axel- 

 rod and George Plechanov, were eager to smuggle 

 into Russia a pamphlet which they had written, and 

 which they had no way of sending and distributing, as 

 the watch on the German frontier was sharp. Russia 

 had made a secret treaty at this time, by which Ger- 

 many was to arrest and deport any escaped Russian 

 revolutionists, and to confiscate any radical literature 

 that might be sent through her borders from England, 

 France or Switzerland. By the action of this treaty, 

 Leo Deutsch (a refugee well known here, in America, 

 for the past twelve or thirteen years) was arrested on 

 the German frontier when he left Zurich with a large 

 supply of revolutionary literature, and handed over 



