to be wholly unlike the rational, cultivated men and women whom one meets in civilized society; but I cannot, by any exercise of will, bring back the unreal, fantastic conception of them that I had when I crossed the Siberian frontier. As nearly as I can now remember, I regarded the people whom I called nihilists as sullen, and more or less incomprehensible "cranks," with some education, a great deal of fanatical courage, and a limitless capacity for self-sacrifice, but with the most visionary ideas of government and social organization, and with only the faintest trace of what an American would call "hard common-sense." I did not expect to have any more ideas in common with them than I should have in common with an anarchist like Louis Lingg; and although I intended to give their case against the Government a fair hearing, I believed that the result would be a confirmation of the judgment I had already formed. Even after all that Mr. Pávlovski had said to me, I think I more than half expected to find in the drop-curtain artist a long-haired, wild-eyed being who would pour forth an incoherent recital of wrongs and outrages, denounce all governmental restraint as brutal tyranny, and expect me to approve of the assassination of Alexander II.
The log house occupied by Mr. Lobonófski as a work-shop was not otherwise tenanted, and we entered it without announcement. As Mr. Pávlovski threw open the door, I saw, standing before a large square sheet of canvas which covered one whole side of the room, a blond young man, apparently about thirty years of age, dressed from head to foot in a suit of cool brown linen, holding in one hand an artist's brush, and in the other a plate or palette covered with freshly mixed colors. His strongly built figure was erect and well-proportioned; his bearing was that of a cultivated gentleman; and he made upon me, from the first, a pleasant and favorable impression. He seemed, in fact, to be an excellent specimen of the blond type of Russian
