saw her first in Russia, she
was the centre of interest on the little community entertainment hall
dance floor. She had the manner of a lady trying to make everyone at
ease. American soldiers and Russian soldiers and civil populace had
gathered at the hall for a long program--a Russian drama, soldier
stunts, a raffle, a dance which consisted of simple ballet and folk
dances. The proceeds of the entertainment were to go toward furnishing
bed linen, etc., for the Red Cross Hospital being organized by the
school superintendent and his friends for the service of many wounded
men who were falling in the defense of their area.

She was trim of figure and animated of countenance. Her hair was dressed
as American women attractively do theirs. Her costume was dainty and her
feet shod in English or American shoes. We could not understand a word
of her Russian tongue but were charmed by its friendly and well-mannered
modulations. We made inquiries about her. She was the wife of a man who,
till the Bolsheviki drove the "intelligenza" out, had been a professor
in an agricultural school of a high order. Now they were far north,
seeking safety in their old peasant city and she was doing stenographer
duty in the county government office.

We often mused upon the transformation. Only a few years before she had
been as one of the countless peasant girls of the dull-faced,
ill-dressed, red-handed, coarse-voiced type which we had seen
everywhere with tools and implements of drudgery, never with things of
refinement, except, perhaps, when we had seen them spinning or weaving.
And here before us was one who had come out from among them, a sight for
weary eyes and a gladness to heavy ears. How had she accomplished the
metamorphosis? The school had done it, or rather helped her to the
opportunity to rise. She had come to the city-village high school and
completed the course and then with her ability to patter the keys of a
Russian typewriter's thirty-six lettered keyboard, had travelled from
Archangel to Moscow, to Petrograd, to Paris, to complete her education.
And she told the writer one time that she regretted she had not gone to
London and New York before she married the young Russian college
professor.

The school,--the common school and the high school--therein lies the
hope of Russia. What that woman has done, has been done by many another
ambitious Russian girl and will be done by many girls of Russia. Russian
boys and girls if give