as shown it to be.

In the Autumn of 1886 Dr. Peter Semyonovitch Alexyeeff of Moscow,
accompanied by his wife, sailed for Canada and the United States for the
purpose of inspecting the hospitals, prisons, and elementary schools;
and they came for the Winter because some parts of Canada during that
season possess a climate similar to that of Central Russia, while in
other parts the climates are identical. In fact, Canada is the only
country in the world where the climatic conditions are at all analogous.
The construction of new hospitals, the adaptation of already existing
buildings for hospital use, the internal arrangement, and the perfection
of their internal machinery had long been matters of deep interest to
Dr. Alexyeeff.

Germany and France, with climates so different from that of Russia,
could not furnish him with the information available in North America,
where, in his opinion, the habits and conditions of existence--such
important factors in matters connected with hospitals and invalids--also
differ less from those of Russia than do the general surroundings in the
countries of the Continent. After visiting the principal cities of
Canada and the United States from Quebec to Vancouver, and from Boston
to Washington, (some of them more than once,) Dr. Alexyeeff arrived at
the conclusion that the hospitals of the United States were better built
and much better administered than those of London, Paris, Berlin, and
Vienna.

Naturally, no one could spend nine months in investigating hospitals and
prisons in this country without coming in contact with the liquor
problem. Moreover, Dr. Alexyeeff was a wideawake man, who took an
interest not only in all matters connected with his profession, but in
very many outside of it. He was, also, a man of very lofty character.
His wife once wrote me concerning him somewhat as follows: "He walks,
habitually, on such moral heights, in such a rarefied spiritual
atmosphere, that I, the daughter of an English clergyman, reared
accordingly, and myself (as you know) deeply in sympathy with it, find
difficulty in following him." Obviously, he was precisely the man to
appreciate the temperance movement, and to carry it to its logical
conclusion. In the preface to a volume, "About America," which he
published in Moscow in 1888, he writes:

Neither the wonders of wild nature in the Rocky Mountains nor
the menacing might and grandeur of Niagara produce such an
impression