The Popular Idea

There was a popular idea that the wastes of Siberia are peopled with men who have been unjustly exiled from Russia and that the criminal is really as difflcult to find as the traditional needJe in the bunch of hay, says TitBits. Facts, however, do not substantiate this theory any more than they do the large majority of popular impressions. A great sensation was created two or three years ago by the finding of seven Russian exiles or prisoners who liad made their escape from Siberia. They were in an open boat in the Pacific and were taken to San Francisco, where they became the objects of popular commiseration, as well as the text for the denouncing of the Russian methods of dealing with political offenders. The Californians, ever ready with sympathy, gave them clothes and found them work to do. It now appears that during the interval that has elapsed between their arrival in San Francisco and now every one of them has been punished by the law of the land. The last of the party has just been sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment for burglary, while one of his comrades only a short time ago was hanged for two murders which he had committed. Investigations which have been .made show that every one of these men had been sent to Siberia for reasons which would have earned him a corresponding period of exile from the haunts of his fellow-men if not absolute deportation from the country in any other part of the world.