"You are not an American?"

"I am a Russian, an anarchist once, and now I am for Root and Lodge,
the stand-pats. I lived in Russia in its darkest days, under several
czars, when your life was the forfeit of a wink. I was a lawyer there,
a politician, an intrigant. I knew Bebel and Jaurès and the men before
them. I lived in Germany many years, in France, in England, anywhere,
everywhere. I first came to New York from Siberia. I was broke. The
Civil War was on. There were agents of Lee and Jeff Davis in New York
seeking sailors. They offered lots of money,--thousands,--and I went
along, smuggled into the South by an underground road."

Stroganoff threw away the shreds of tobacco, now a mere fiery wafer
that threatened his mouth's seine of silver strands. He put his hand
in his Prince Albert and scratched his stomach.

"Mr. Stroganoff," I queried, with a moral tide rising, "how could
you join in a life-and-death issue like that of the Civil War, and
kill men without hatred of their cause in your heart?"

He patted my shoulder.

"My dear young American," he replied, "you join anything, even a
sheriff's posse, into which you are dragged, and have a bullet from
the other side slit your ear, or a round shot bang against your deck,
and you'll soon convince yourself that you are in the right, or,
anyway, that your adversary is a scoundrel. I handled a gun on the
Merrimac in Hampton Roads when that cheese-box of a Monitor rattled
her solid shot on our slippery sides. I was two years in that damned