“This is mighty interesting, Rossmore.  What is it you are, going to do?”

“I am going to buy Siberia and start a republic.”

“There,—­bang you go again, without giving any notice!  Going to buy it?”

“Yes, as soon as I get the money.  I don’t care what the price is, I shall take it.  I can afford it, and I will.  Now then, consider this—­ and you’ve never thought of it, I’ll warrant.  Where is the place where there is twenty-five times more manhood, pluck, true heroism, unselfishness, devotion to high and noble ideals, adoration of liberty, wide education, and brains, per thousand of population, than any other domain in the whole world can show?”

“Siberia!”

“Right.”

“It is true; it certainly is true, but I never thought of it before.”

“Nobody ever thinks of it.  But it’s so, just the same.  In those mines and prisons are gathered together the very finest and noblest and capablest multitude of human beings that God is able to create.  Now if you had that kind of a population to sell, would you offer it to a despotism?  No, the despotism has no use for it; you would lose money.  A despotism has no use for anything but human cattle.  But suppose you want to start a republic?”

“Yes, I see.  It’s just the material for it.”

“Well, I should say so!  There’s Siberia with just the very finest and choicest material on the globe for a republic, and more coming—­more coming all the time, don’t you see!  It is being daily, weekly, monthly recruited by the most perfectly devised system that has ever been invented, perhaps.  By this system the whole of the hundred millions of Russia are being constantly and patiently sifted, sifted, sifted, by myriads of trained experts, spies appointed by the Emperor personally; and whenever they catch a man, woman or child that has got any brains or education or character, they ship that person straight to Siberia.  It is admirable, it is wonderful.  It is so searching and so effective that it keeps the general level of Russian intellect and education down to that of the Czar.”

“Come, that sounds like exaggeration.”

“Well, it’s what they say anyway.  But I think, myself, it’s a lie.  And it doesn’t seem right to slander a whole nation that way, anyhow.  Now, then, you see what the material is, there in Siberia, for a republic.”  He paused, and his breast began to heave and his eye to burn, under the impulse of strong emotion.  Then his words began to stream forth, with constantly increasing energy and fire, and he rose to his feet as if to give himself larger freedom.  “The minute I organize that republic, the light of liberty, intelligence, justice, humanity, bursting from it, flooding from it, flaming from it, will concentrate the gaze of the whole astonished world as upon the miracle of a new sun; Russia’s countless multitudes of slaves will rise up and march, march!—­eastward, with that great light transfiguring their faces as they come, and far back of them you will see-what will you see?—­a vacant throne in an empty land!  It can be done, and by God I will do it!”