hers who did. And before she was eight years old, she had formed the
habit of giving away her own possessions to the children of the serfs,
who never had the pretty things with which she was surfeited.

Before she was nine, Catherine, we are told, had read a long history of
Russia in nine large volumes, and when she was a girl of sixteen she
had made an especial study of the French Revolution and the causes that
led up to it.

The Crimean war came, and soldiers went to the front in large numbers.
They were all taken from the families of the serfs, and while a certain
number of the noblemen went to the war as officers of the Russian army,
many others stayed at home safely, not being compelled to fight for
their country as the peasants were. And the injustice of the system was
very evident to the young girl, who even then was forming the idea of
devoting her life to aiding the suffering and oppressed people who
surrounded her.

About the time that the Civil War began in the United States a great
change came over the peasantry in Russia, but it was a change that
seemed to do them little good. The Russian Czar issued a proclamation
in 1861 in which he declared that all serfs in his dominions were at
liberty, and if they chose could leave the estates of their former
masters and seek work where they wished.

But the serfs were worse off than ever before, because in the
proclamation nothing was said about the land on which they had been
living and which belonged to the nobles. They knew no trade except that
of tilling the soil, and now that they were no longer the property of
the nobles, their land was taken away from them and they had no means
by which they could earn a living. Then terrible scenes commenced to be
enacted. The serfs were ruthlessly driven from their homes and when
they sought to remain were beaten in great numbers, being flogged so
severely with the knout that many of them died as a result. Most of
them were densely ignorant, and reading and writing were far beyond
their knowledge. They could not understand why the land on which they
had always lived and worked was taken from them, and why they were now
denied even the bitter bread that they had formerly been able to earn.

Among the Russian nobility, however, were many high minded young men
and women, who like Catherine felt the injustice of the serfs' hard lot
and desired to help them. These young people formed into philanthropic
bands, and went into t