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decked out with his orders and medals — 

 flocked to the cathedral to attend the 

 solemn service in honor of the day. The 

 service was long, as those of the Ortho- 

 dox Church always are, and only the 

 sweet voices of the choirs relieved its 

 tedium. 



We knew that all over the Russian 

 dominions, from the Baltic to the Pacific, 

 every official and every priest and bishop 

 was imploring the blessing of God upon 

 the boy whose life was so precious. 



As the worshipers bowed and knelt, 

 as the voices sank and rose, what a won- 

 derful thing, we thought, is this Russian 

 Caesarism, what a hold it has on the 

 obedience, if not the affection, of its sub- 

 jects, buttressed as it is by the Orthodox 

 Church, with an omnipresent army of 

 officials to execute its will ! But within 

 five years the innocent boy was, with his 

 parents and his sisters, murdered in a 

 cellar at Ekaterinburg, in the Urals, and 

 not a Russian voice throughout what had 

 been the Empire of the Tsars was raised 

 in anger or in sorrow. 



the: legend of tsar Alexander as a 

 hermit 



Tomsk is a large, irregularly built town, 

 straggling from a hill on which stand the 

 cathedral, with its three bulbous domes, 

 and the huge barrack-like university, 

 where law and medicine were being 

 taught to a thousand students, down to 

 the river Tom, navigable for small steam- 

 ers and carrying a considerable trade. 



From the other side of the stream the 

 place looks quite picturesque, brightened 

 by the colors of the church domes and 

 roofs, painted blue or light green, and the 

 house roofs also often red or green; so 

 the general aspect has, from without, a 

 gaiety which the interior belies. 



Of the inhabitants, all Russians, for the 

 thinly scattered native tribes live far off 

 to the north, about one-third are exiles or 

 the descendants of exiles. Depressing as 

 Europeans think life must be on a fea- 

 tureless plain, where snow lies more than 

 half the year, they seem as cheerful as 

 men are in Berlin or Rotterdam or Lon- 

 don. 



One strange tale is told, and univer- 

 sally believed, that the Tsar Alexander 

 the First did not expire at Taganrog, on 



