Show AN EXILES TALEPCh A Siberian Tells the Story of H Imprisonment TO MANY CANADIAN AiERS lie has the Peculiarly Russian Characteristic I j of BeIng a Martyr ana a Hero The I I Dominion is Lionizing the Bear i I SpecIal THE HERALD Examiner Dispatch OTTAWA Juno 3Mr Felix Ebrant a Siberian exile who some months ago escaped es-caped to Canada is being lionized throughout through-out the Dominion He says that his first arrest resulted from a letter sent t a student stu-dent who himself haa been arrested and Eearched He was twentyone years of age at that time The gens darmes arrived ar-rived at the house at midnight He was told to dress himself and was taken in a sleigh to the secret police department at Moscow and thence to St Petersburg where he was put in a solitary cell He was well fed and could see the court yard from his window but he had no books ando and-o recreation to divert his mind He got hold of a pieco of printed paper and tried to amuse himself by seeing how many words he could make out of each word but when his guard saw he was thus diverting liiinself he took the paper away His mother finally contrived to see him but their Interviews held in presence of gens darmps were naturally very constrained naturaj Tjmd they dare not mention the names of t7 mutual friends for fear of getting them into trouble After eight months solitary confinement he was brought t trial There was no jury he had no lawyer and there was no cnarge explained to him He was simply told to go without learning the why or wherefore of his arrest He had only been free about a year when he was again arrested and placed in a dirty cell where he could not take four steps either way He was charged with inciting stu dents when as a matter of fact at the 1 ect ing held by them he had used all his efforts to show them the uselessness of their proposed pro-posed plans He dared not urge this fact II in self defense however or he would have been called upon to give the names of those I present He was finally taken to St Petersburg and again placed i the solitary cell At the end of two and a half years lie was brought t trial and acquitted In fabe meantime his healtb and nerves I I Become completely shattered and upon his k release he broke down utterly becoming seized with typhoid fever In Odessa he became a member of a secret society for the purpose of bettering the condition of the people For a third time he was arrested and once more sent to Moscow He became deaf in the dirty prisons of that place and when finally transferred to < t Petersburg he finallyc hear the knocks of his fellow prisoners I which before had done so much to wile i away the time He spent a whole year in this way and when he saw his mother it I was with difficulty he could think of words t speak to her Then began the fight for reason and the expedient he adopted was that of composing a poem regarding a Russian Rus-sian historical incident He had to memor ize the lines having nothing to write with and In this way he composed 27S verses He waited three years for his indictment TTinally his cell door was opened one day tind two soldiers seized him beating him with their iron fists almost all the way to a the room where he was tried He was brought to trial with 167 others and as evi dence of the terrible condition they were all in no less than five died during the hearing They had no jury He had been brought up as a lawyer and xSnally entered upon literary works J so that in place of enlightening IN people there was no chance whatever what-ever for him t exercise his talents in these directions He managed by manual labor t make 81 a month and thus he lived for five years until he received permission per-mission to go home At the end of five years he was ordered to leave and he received re-ceived a good place in the bench of Irkutsh The third month of his stay there he was ordered to leave town and then he went to slnuther place and engaged in business with u friend He had only been there a short time when he received orders to get out within three days His record as an exile was sent after him wherever be went and consequently there was BO place wherein he could rest It was ten he determined to escape rest securing a three months passport t go anywhere in Siberia save the places from which he had been expelled he startsd on his journey Finally ne reached Siberian port on the Pacific and found there were lour foreign ships in port including an English steamer He went on board and asked the captain if he would take him as a passenger to Japan He told the captain I he had passport and asked if that would make any difference The captain best I tated and he then told him his whole story I Finally the captain promised to take stry hm telling him t tome aboard next day Al Aogether c he has spent seven years in soli r tary confinement and his exile in Siberia |