ith whips in
their hands, with a dozen lashes to each whip, and they began to lash
the crowd and ride over them, while the people covered their faces with
their arms, and run away, afraid of the whips, which cut and wound and
kill, as each lash has little lead bullets fastened to them and a stroke
of the whip is like being shot with buck shot or kicked with a frozen
boot.

[Illustration: a Cossack rode right up to him and lashed him over the
back 258]

Well, sir, dad was going to show the Cossacks that he was pretty near an
American citizen and didn't propose to be whipped like a school boy by
a teacher that looked like a valentine, so he tried to look like George
Washington defying the British, but it didn't work, for a Cossack rode
right up to him and lashed him over the back (and about 15 buck shot in
his whip took dad right where the pants are tight when you bend over to
pick up something) and the Cossack laughed when dad straightened up and
started to run. I never saw such a change in a man as there was in dad.
He started for our hotel, and as good a sprinter as I am I couldn't
keep up with him, but I kept him in sight. Before we got to the hotel
a sledge came along, not an "old sledge," such as you play with cards,
high-low-Jack-game, but a sort of a sleigh, with three horses abreast,
and I yelled to dad to take a hitch on the sledge, and he grabbed on
with his feet on the runners, and a man in the sledge with a uniform
on, who seemed to be a grand duke, 'cause everybody was chasing him
and yelling to head him off, hit dad in the nose with the butt of a
revolver, and dad fell off in the snow and the crowd that was chasing
the grand duke picked dad up and carried him on their shoulders because
they thought he had tried to assassinate the duke, and we were escorted
to our hotel by the strikers.

[Illustration: Hit dad in the nose with the butt of a revolver 255]

We didn't know what they were, but you can tell the laboring men here
because they wear blouses and look hungry, and when they left us the
landlord notified the police that suspicious characters were at the
hotel, and came there escorted by the mob, and the police surrounded the
house and dad went to our room and used witch hazel on himself where
the Cossack hit him with the loaded whip. He says Russia will pay pretty
dear for that stroke of the whip by the Cossack, and I think dad is
going to join the revolution that is going to be pulled off next Sund