Duty--the duty of a man who had learned strange facts and knew that a
defenseless woman was a victim--called me to Finland. Therefore, with my
passport properly vised and my papers all in order, I one night left
Hull for Stockholm by the weekly Wilson service. Four days of rough
weather in the North Sea and the Baltic brought me to the Swedish
capital, whence on the following day I took the small steamer which
plies three times a week around the Aland Islands, and then across the
Gulf of Bothnia to Korpo, and through the intricate channels and among
those low-lying islands to the gray lethargic town of Abo.
It was not the first occasion on which I had trod Russian soil, and I
knew too well the annoyances of the bureaucracy. Finland, however, is
perhaps the most severely governed of any of the Czar's dominions, and I
had my first taste of its stern, relentless officialdom at the moment of
landing on the half-deserted quay.
In the wooden passport office the uniformed official, on examining my
passport, discovered that at the Russian Consulate-General they had
forgotten to date the vise which had been impressed with a rubber stamp.
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