Mr. White to Mr.
Gresham.
[Extract.]
Legation of
the United States,
St.
Petersburg, November 7, 1893.
(Received November 22.)
No. 153.]
Sir: I have this day received from the nobility of
St. Petersburg, through their marshal, Count Alexis Bobrinskoy, an address
to the people of the United States.
This address, which is in the English language, embodies in terms fitly
chosen the thanks of the Russian people to the American for the aid sent to
this country from our own during the famine periods of the last two years.
It is beautifully engrossed and its illumination embraces water-color
drawings which render it a most attractive work of art. It is superbly
bound, and inclosed in a case.
In my formal answer to the nobility of St. Petersburg I have thanked them in
the name of the American people, and have promised to transmit this evidence
of kind feeling to the State Department, not doubting that it will be placed
where visitors to the national capital can see it.
It is certainly a monument not only of an international transaction, but of
an epoch in human history which can not but appear more and more creditable
to our country as time goes on.
I am, etc.,
[Inclosure in No. 153.]
Address of the nobility of St.
Petersburg.
In the annals of Russia for 1892, painful though the memory he, history
will point out many a bright and joyful page scattered throughout the
Empire, on which will be written in letters of gold the beautiful story
of brotherly love as exemplified’ by the good people of the United
States of America.
Hardly had human voices been heard calling for bread in certain
governments of Russia that had suffered from drought, hail, and untimely
frost, ere that friendly people across the Atlantic, moved by an earnest
desire to help the afflicted and to feed the hungry, collected from
every State in the Union, as if by one accord, shipload after shipload
of corn and dispatched them, one after the other, on their errand of
mercy and relief.
Deeply grateful for such evident signs of evangelical feeling and
interest, the assembly of nobles of the Government of St. Petersburg, as
representatives of the intellectual class in Russia, has resolved to
express their warm and heartfelt gratitude to those friendly people who
form the great nation of the United States of America.
May the Lord bless and keep all those kind-hearted Americans, men, women,
and children, who took part in that great and good work of charity, and
may the Hand that giveth unto us all reward them bountifully and ever
keep them from a like misfortune.
The marshal of the nobility of St. Petersburg,
Count Alexis
Bobrinskoy.
[
seal.]
