here was one thing the Gentiles might do to me worse than burning or
rending. It was what was done to unprotected Jewish children who fell
into the hands of priests or nuns. They might baptize me. That would
be worse than death by torture. Rather would I drown in the Dvina than
a drop of the baptismal water should touch my forehead. To be forced
to kneel before the hideous images, to kiss the cross,--sooner would I
rush out to the mob that was passing, and let them tear my vitals out.
To forswear the One God, to bow before idols,--rather would I be
seized with the plague, and be eaten up by vermin. I was only a little
girl, and not very brave; little pains made me ill, and I cried. But
there was no pain that I would not bear--no, none--rather than submit
to baptism.

Every Jewish child had that feeling. There were stories by the dozen
of Jewish boys who were kidnapped by the Czar's agents and brought up
in Gentile families, till they were old enough to enter the army,
where they served till forty years of age; and all those years the
priests tried, by bribes and daily tortures, to force them to accept
baptism, but in vain. This was in the time of Nicholas I, but men who
had been through this service were no older than my grandfather, when
I was a little girl; and they told their experiences with their own
lips, and one knew it was true, and it broke one's heart with pain and
pride.

Some of these soldiers of Nicholas, as they were called, were taken as
little boys of seven or eight--snatched from their mothers' laps. They
were carried to distant villages, where their friends could never
trace them, and turned over to some dirty, brutal peasant, who used
them like slaves and kept them with the pigs. No two were ever left
together; and they were given false names, so that they were entirely
cut off from their own world. And then the lonely child was turned
over to the priests, and he was flogged and starved and terrified--a
little helpless boy who cried for his mother; but still he refused to
be baptized. The priests promised him good things to eat, and fine
clothes, and freedom from labor; but the boy turned away, and said his
prayers secretly--the Hebrew prayers.

As he grew older, severer tortures were invented for him; still he
refused baptism. By this time he had forgotten his mother's face, and
of his prayers perhaps only the "Shema" remained in his memory; but
he was a Jew, and nothing would make him change. Aft