specimens of Kírghis handiwork there exhibited, and finally introduced me to his writing-clerk, Mr. Leántief, who, he said, had made a special study of the Kírghis, and could give me any desired information concerning the natives of that tribe.
Mr. Leántief was a good-looking young fellow, apparently about twenty-five years of age, rather below the medium height, with light-brown hair and beard, intelligent gray eyes, a slightly aquiline nose, and a firm, well-rounded chin. His head and face were suggestive of studious and scientific tastes, and if I had met him in Washington and had been asked to guess his profession from his appearance, I should have said that he was probably a young scientist connected with the United States Geological Survey, the Smithsonian Institution, or the National Museum. He was, as I subsequently learned, the son of an army officer who at one time commanded the Cossack garrison in this same city of Semipalátinsk. As a boy he was enrolled in the corps of imperial pages, and began his education in the large school established by the Government for the training of such pages in the Russian capital. At the age of eighteen or nineteen he entered the St. Petersburg University, and in the fourth year of his student life was arrested and exiled by "administrative process" to Western Siberia for five years, upon the charge of having had secret communication with political prisoners in the fortress of Petropávlovsk.
Although Mr. Leántief's bearing was somewhat more formal and reserved than that of Mr. Lobonófski, and his attitude toward me one of cool, observant criticism, rather than of friendly confidence, he impressed me very favorably; and when, after half an hour's conversation, I returned to my hotel, I was forced to admit to myself that if all nihilists were like the two whom I had met in Semipalátinsk, I should have to modify my opinions with regard to them. In point of intelligence and education Mr. Lobonófski and
