RUSSIAN JUSTICE | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 12, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 53.

RUSSIAN JUSTICE.

General Van Wahl, chief constable of the police at St. Petersburg, when he was governor at Kieff, received a visit one day from a poor woman, the widow of a police agent who had fallen a victim to his duty. For a long time she had solicited the pension which was due her. The head of the police, to whom she addressed her demand, sent her brutally away. What was to become of her and her children? She took the resolution to go and see the governor, and told him all her story. "Sit down there and write," replied the general, pointing to a writing table. The trembling woman took her seat and wrote, from the general's dictation, a long supplication. "Now address it and wait for me in the next room."

Two or three minutes afterwards the woman was recalled, and the general gave into her hands a sealed letter, saying to her, "Take this letter to the head constable; take care not to open it, and come back to see me as soon as you have the reply." A week passed, at the end of which the woman went to the palace again, but this time joyfully; her pension had been granted, and she thanked the governor with joy. "It is useless to thank me, I am nothing," said he, "in the affair," and he immediately gave the following order: "The head of the police at Kieff is dismissed from his post and sent into exile. The reason, because he granted a demand after receiving a sum of money for so doing." In the letter which the widow had written to the head of the police, General Wahl had, unknown to her, slipped a banknote for twenty-five roubles, which accounted for her supplication being granted.—Our Dumb Animals.