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By Root 2609 0

they were often able to finish their tasks by three o’clock in the afternoon. Poor and friendless and desperately in need of a little money, they would help out those who fell behind. For this service they were entitled to five cents per jacket. Unfortunately, most of the whites were too poor to pay. I was considered the millionaire; my exchequer was often called upon to extend “loans,” and I gladly complied. But the girls helping me with my work would not accept remuneration. They even felt hurt at the very suggestion of it. I was sharing my food and books with them, they protested; how could they take money from me? They agreed with my little Italian friend, Jennie de Lucia, who had constituted herself my maid. “No take money from you,” she had declared, and the other women all echoed her sentiment. Thanks to those kind souls, I reached Grade A, which entitled me to send out three letters a week—really four, including the extra letter I had been writing regularly to my counsellor.

On the eve of June 27 my coloured friends presented me with a full task of jackets for the following day. They had remembered my birthday. “It would be so nice if Miss Emma could keep out of the shop on that day,” they had said. The next morning my table was covered with letters, telegrams, and flowers from my own kin and comrades, as well as with innumerable packages from friends in different parts of the country. I was proud to have so much love and attention, but nothing touched me so deeply as the gift of my fellow-sufferers in prison. [...]

A three days’ visit from my dear Stella proved a more real holiday for me than the Fourth of July. I was able to hand her my letter for Babushka, several notes my cell neighbours wanted smuggled out, and samples of the fake shop labels. They were three days of freedom from the shop, spent with my beloved child in our own world, a visit long awaited and quickly passed, to be followed by the reaction of the prison routine.

In my letter to Babushka I had begged her not to think that I denied her the right of criticism of Soviet Russia, or that I wished her to gloss over the faults of the Bolsheviki. I pointed out that I differed with them in ideas and that my stand against every form of dictatorship was irrevocable. But that was not important, I insisted, while every government was at the throat of the Bolsheviki. I pleaded with her to bethink herself, not to go back on her glorious past and the high hopes of Russia’s present generation.

Babushka had grown feebler and whiter, Stella told me, but she had remained the old rebel and fighter, her heart aflame for the people as of yore. Still, it was true that she was permitting reactionary elements to make use of her. It was impossible to doubt Babushka’s integrity or to think her capable of conscious betrayal, but I could not approve her attitude towards the Soviets. [...]

CHAPTER XLVIII

[...] The influenza epidemic raging through the country had reached our prison, and thirty-five inmates were stricken down. In the absence of any hospital facilities, the patients were kept in their cells, exposing the other inmates to infection. At the first sign of the disease I had offered my services to the physician. He knew I was a trained nurse and he welcomed my aid. He promised to see Miss Smith about letting me take care of the sick, but days passed without bringing results. Later I learned that the head matron had refused to take me out of the shop. I was already enjoying too many privileges, she had said, and she would not stand for more.

Not being officially permitted to nurse, I sought means to aid the sick unofficially. Since the influenza invasion our cells were being left unlocked at night. The two girls assigned to nursing were so hard-worked that they would sleep all through the night, and the orderlies were my friends. That offered me a chance to make hurried calls from cell to cell and do what little was possible to make the patients more comfortable.

On November 11, at ten in the morning, the electric power in our shop was switched off, the