The Evening Statesman

THE RUSSIAN TERROR.
Grim and terrible is the wraith that rises before the Russian autocrat. One by one the ruthless bureaucrats that surround him are stricken down by the mysterious, inscrutable and inexorable hand of the terror. Futile are all the precautions taken by these doomed men to protect their miserable lives. Locks, guards, secrecy-all the devices that ingenuity and fear can assemble are vain. Soon or late the emissary of the terror penetrates to the presence of the victim and delivers the message of death. Usually the messenger who bears the summons sacrifices his own life. That is at once the strength and the mystery of the terror. It never lacks for agents to execute its will at the cost of their own lives. Its sentences, pronounced openly on officials who have oppressed and robbed and killed the people, are executed with unerring precision. Min, Trepoff, Ignatieff, Von der Launitz and now Pavloff have in less than five months fallen, while Doubasoff escaped by a miracle and will doubtless yet pay the forfeit of his life.
Closer and still closer to the trembling Romanoff comes the terror. In his palace of Tsarskoe Selo he hears its footfalls and sees its threatening forefinger. Long ago the terror could have taken his life. But what would that have availed, with a new Romanoff to rule the men who shape his reactionary policy and carry it into effect? When at last the revolver's cold muzzle is against his brow, when the bomb's fuse sputters at his feet, then perhaps the Russian Pharaoh will let the people go. So the terror pursues its bloody way toward the steps of the throne itself.
A horror more impressive was never conceived by Balzac or Poe.