After five months on Sakhalin, I was finally able to change my living situation.

Early in the morning, as I was sitting writing musical notation in our ward, Warden F— — suddenly burst in and urged me to see the director of the meteorological station, Mariia Antonovna Krzhizhevskaia, who was also a midwife/ paramedic in the Tymovsk infirmary.

“Just now,” the warden said, “the district commander received a telegram from Aleksandrovsk requesting you be assigned as an observer at the meteorological station.”

My comrades advised me to remove my gray uniform so as not to frighten the lady with my prisoner's appearance. I dressed myself as I could under those conditions, and put on a not very presentable black shirt with a belt.

M. A. Krzhizhevskaia, to whom I’d been assigned, was well known on Sakhalin as a remarkably kind woman who gave all her earnings to poor exiles. She sacrificed her entire life for her neighbor. Following an unsuccessful marriage, she began searching for a place or circumstances for self-sacrifice. Sakhalin called to her. Having renounced her share of her estate's inheritance and cutting all links with European Russia, Mariia Antonovna came to Rykovsk settlement, “to die with the penal laborers.” Her activity there was amazing. Aside from her daily work in the pharmacy and in the infirmary as a paramedic, she tirelessly went as a midwife from one corner of the settlement to the other to assist with births. She fulfilled her duties punctiliously, like a soldier at war. If she knew people needed her help, nothing could stop her. Where the river overflowed during autumn or spring, preventing the passage of a telega, she would ford the water. When terrible blizzards literally blinded one with snow, she would plow through the drifts with great strength; utterly freezing and exhausted, she didn't retreat from her self-appointed destination. Of course, this sacrifice could not last, and a year after she arrived on Sakhalin, she became quite ill with consumption.

Save for a small group (around 10 persons) of administrators and officers, there were at first no educated people in Rykovsk settlement, and so when an educated person was needed for anything, they turned to Mariia Antonovna.