suffers from
infirmities.

At this fair no one is to be persecuted to buy. If you offer a
twenty-dollar bill in payment for a purchase of $1 you will receive
$19 in change. There is to be no robbery here. There is to be no creed
here--no religion except charity. We want to raise $250,000--and that is
a great task to attempt.

The President has set the fair in motion by pressing the button in
Washington. Now your good wishes are to be transmuted into cash.

By virtue of the authority in me vested I declare the fair open. I call
the ball game. Let the transmuting begin!

RUSSIAN REPUBLIC

The American auxiliary movement to aid the cause of freedom in Russia
was launched on the evening of April 11, 1906, at the Club A house,
3 Fifth Avenue, with Mr. Clemens and Maxim Gorky as the principal
spokesmen. Mr. Clemens made an introductory address, presenting Mr.
Gorky.

If we can build a Russian republic to give to the persecuted people of
the Tsar's domain the same measure of freedom that we enjoy, let us go
ahead and do it. We need not discuss the methods by which that purpose
is to be attained. Let us hope that fighting will be postponed or
averted for a while, but if it must come--

I am most emphatically in sympathy with the movement, now on foot
in Russia, to make that country free. I am certain that it will be
successful, as it deserves to be. Any such movement should have and
deserves our earnest and unanimous co-operation, and such a petition for
funds as has been explained by Mr. Hunter, with its just and powerful
meaning, should have the utmost support of each and every one of us.
Anybody whose ancestors were in this country when we were trying to free
ourselves from oppression, must sympathize with those who now are trying
to do the same thing in Russia.

The parallel I have just drawn only goes to show that it makes no
difference whether the oppression is bitter or not; men with red, warm
blood in their veins will not endure it, but will seek to cast it off.
If we keep our hearts in this matter Russia will be free.

RUSSIAN SUFFERERS

On December 18, 1905, an entertainment was given at the Casino
for the benefit of the Russian sufferers. After the
performance Mr. Clemens spoke.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a sort of cruelty to inflict upon an
audience like this our rude English tongue, after we have heard that
divine speech flowing in that lucid G