ast to this impossible fellow.
Rumours and legends were current in the steerages about his antecedents.
Some said he was a Nihilist escaping; others set him down for a harmless
spendthrift, who had squandered fifty thousand roubles, and whose father
had now despatched him to America by way of penance. Either tale might
flourish in security; there was no contradiction to be feared, for the
hero spoke not one word of English. I got on with him lumberingly enough
in broken German, and learned from his own lips that he had been an
apothecary. He carried the photograph of his betrothed in a pocket-book,
and remarked that it did not do her justice. The cut of his head stood
out from among the passengers with an air of startling strangeness. The
first natural instinct was to take him for a desperado; but although the
features, to our Western eyes, had a barbaric and unhomely cast, the eye
both reassured and touched. It was large and very dark and soft, with an
expression of dumb endurance, as if it had often looked on desperate
circumstances and never looked on them without resolution.

He cried out when I used the word. "No, no," he said, "not resolution."

"The resolution to endure," I explained.

And then he shrugged his shoulders, and said, "_Ach, ja_," with gusto,
like a man who has been flattered in his favourite pretensions. Indeed,
he was always hinting at some secret sorrow; and his life, he said, had
been one of unusual trouble and anxiety; so the legends of the steerage
may have represented at least some shadow of the truth. Once, and once
only, he sang a song at our concerts, standing forth without
embarrassment, his great stature somewhat humped, his long arms
frequently extended, his Kalmuck head thrown backward. It was a suitable
piece of music, as deep as a cow's bellow and wild like the White Sea.
He was struck and charmed by the freedom and sociality of our manners.
At home, he said, no one on a journey would speak to him, but those with
whom he would not care to speak; thus unconsciously involving himself in
the condemnation of his countrymen. But Russia was soon to be changed;
the ice of the Neva was softening under the sun of civilisation; the new
ideas, "_wie eine feine Violine_," were audible among the big, empty
drum-notes of Imperial diplomacy; and he looked to see a great revival,
though with a somewhat indistinct and childish hope.

We had a father and son who made a pair of Jacks-of-all-trades. It