This is quite a different view from that which obtains generally; and if Miss Kate Marsden should be able to prove her point, and bring before them the pictures of what she may see on her journey to and from Siberia, she will score a result such as has fallen to no one’s endeavour hitherto.

It is only now and then in a lifetime that we meet a woman capable of such a grand work as this which Miss Kate Marsden has taken upon herself; and the reason is that the qualifications necessary are so rarely found in combination in one and the same individual.  Many among us may have one or other of the characteristics, but it is the existence of them all in one person that makes the heroine and gives the power.

You cannot be an hour in Miss Kate Marsden’s company without becoming aware of her enthusiasm, her courage, her self-devotion, her fearlessness, and above all her simple child-like faith.  It avails nothing that you place before her the trials, the horrors, the dangers, the possible failure of such an undertaking as hers.  The necessity of the work to be done she considers imperative, and the certainty in her mind that it is her mission to do it carries all before it.

The bravest among us would hesitate before deciding upon a tour in Russia and Siberia, supposing it were one of pleasure or of scientific research, because even under these favourable conditions we should be subject to ignominious surveillance night and day, and the chances of leaving the country when we pleased would be very small; but what can we say of a young and delicate woman who, voluntarily and without thought of self, deliberately walks into the country where deeds are done daily which make us shrink with fear, and which, for very shame for the century in which we live, we try hard not to believe?  It is as if with eyes open she walked into a den of lions and expected them to give her a loving welcome and a free egress.

Heaven help her, for she is in the midst of it and has begun her work; the result of her fearlessness remains to be seen.  I doubt greatly whether we shall be allowed to receive reports of her daily life out there, even where postal regulations are in force.  We can but follow her on her way from Moscow to Tomsk in thought, and picture to ourselves the thousands of exiles she will find waiting there herded together like brute beasts.  She will not turn from them, even though typhoid be raging amongst them—­one can see her moving in and out among these miserable, debased human beings, who lie tossing on those terrible wooden shelves, helping them according to their needs; for she carries with her remedies for pain and disease of body, and her simple faith will find means of comforting heart and soul.

If any of those twenty thousand exiles who have this year trod the weary way between Petersburg and Tomsk, and on again to the far-off districts of Siberia, should hear of the coming of this gentle woman, strong only in her love for them, I think it would kindle a spark of hope again in their hearts.  They would know that at least they were remembered by someone in the land of the living.