y I walk in the street,
When behind me I hear the rush of feet.
Woes have come and sought me,
Alas, had I bethought me.

"Your passport," they ask. Alas, it is lost!
"Then serve the White Czar!" that is the cost.
Woe has come and sought me,
Alas, had I bethought me.

There are many rooms, they take me to one,
And strip from my body the poor homespun.
Woe has come and sought me,
Alas, had I bethought me.

They take me to another room,
The uniform,--that is my doom.
Woe has come and sought me,
Alas, had I bethought me.

Rather than wear the cap of the czar,
To study the Torah were better by far.
Woe has come and sought me,
Alas, had I bethought me.

Rather than eat of the czar's black bread,
I'd study the Scriptures head by head.
Woes have come and sought me,
Alas, had I bethought me.

Yet this was not all. Knowing that it is easier to convert the children
than their elders, the Government of Nicholas I, out-Heroding Herod,
inaugurated a system so cruel as to fill with terror and pity the heart
of the most ferocious barbarian. Infants were torn from their mothers,
boys of the age of twelve, sometimes of ten and eight, were herded like
cattle, sent to distant parts of Russia, and there distributed as
chattels among the officers of the army. Many of these Cantonists, as
they were called, either died on the way, or were killed off when they
resisted conversion. Those who survived sometimes returned to Judaism,
and formed the nucleus of Jewish settlements in the interior of Russia.
These "soldiers of Nicholas" (Nikolayevskiye soldati), with their
uncouth demeanor and devoted, though ignorant, adherence to the faith of
their fathers, furnished much material for the folk-songs of the time
and the novelists of the somewhat happier reigns of Nicholas's
successors.[36]

One of these Cantonists, the first to give a description of the life of
his fellow-sufferers, was Wolf Nachlass, or Alexander Alekseyev. For
many years he remained faithful to the religion of his forefathers,
though he had been pressed into the service at the age of ten. About
1845 he changed his views, became an ardent Greek Catholic, and
converted five hundred Cantonists, to the great delight of Nicholas I,
who thanked him in person for his zeal. He lost his leg, and during the
long illness that followed Nachlass settled in Novgorod, and wrote
several works on Jewish customs and on missionary topics.