Charles Darwin - "The Power Of Movement In Plants"

Lucian of Samosata - "Works, V2"

Stephen Leacock - "The Hohenzollerns in America"

John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1567"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Mother

M >> Maxim Gorky >> Mother




Through the door standing ajar the hollow sound of disputing voices
reached her ear.

"Well, do you admire yourself for having tortured her?"

"You have no right to speak like that!" shouted Pavel.

"A fine comrade I'd be to you if I kept quiet when I see you making
a fool of yourself. Why did you say all that to your mother?"

"A man must always speak firmly and without equivocation. He must
be clear and definite when he says 'Yes.' He must be clear and
definite when he says 'No.'"

"To her--to her must you speak that way?"

"To everybody! I want no love, I want no friendship which gets
between my feet and holds me back."

"Bravo! You're a hero! Go say all this to Sashenka. You should
have said that to her."

"I have!"

"You have! The way you spoke to your mother? You have not! To her
you spoke softly; you spoke gently and tenderly to her. I did not
hear you, but I know it! But you trot out your heroism before your
mother. Of course! Your heroism is not worth a cent."

Vlasova began to wipe the tears from her face in haste. For fear
a serious quarrel should break out between the Little Russian and
Pavel, she quickly opened the door and entered the kitchen, shivering,
terrified, and distressed.

"Ugh! How cold! And it's spring, too!"

She aimlessly removed various things in the kitchen from one place
to another, and in order to drown the subdued voices in the room,
she continued in a louder voice:

"Everything's changed. People have grown hotter and the weather
colder. At this time of the year it used to get warm; the sky would
clear, and the sun would be out."

Silence ensued in the room. The mother stood waiting in the middle
of the floor.

"Did you hear?" came the low sound of the Little Russian's voice.
"You must understand it, the devil take it! That's richer than yours."

"Will you have some tea?" the mother called with a trembling voice,
and without waiting for an answer she exclaimed, in order to excuse
the tremor in her voice:

"How cold I am!"

Pavel came up slowly to her, looking at her from the corners of his
eyes, a guilty smile quivering on his lips.

"Forgive me, mother!" he said softly. "I am still a boy, a fool."

"You mustn't hurt me!" she cried in a sorrowful voice, pressing his
head to her bosom. "Say nothing! God be with you. Your life is
your own! But don't wound my heart. How can a mother help sorrowing
for her son? Impossible! I am sorry for all of you. You are all
dear to me as my own flesh and blood; you are all such good people!
And who will be sorry for you if I am not? You go and others follow
you. They have all left everything behind them, Pasha, and gone
into this thing. It's just like a sacred procession."

A great ardent thought burned in her bosom, animating her heart with
an exalted feeling of sad, tormenting joy; but she could find no
words, and she waved her hands with the pang of muteness. She
looked into her son's face with eyes in which a bright, sharp pain
had lit its fires.

"Very well, mother! Forgive me. I see all now!" he muttered,
lowering his head. Glancing at her with a light smile, he added,
embarrassed but happy: "I will not forget this, mother, upon my word."

She pushed him from her, and looking into the room she said to
Andrey in a good-natured tone of entreaty:

"Andriusha, please don't you shout at him so! Of course, you are
older than he, and so you----"

The Little Russian was standing with his back toward her. He sang
out drolly without turning around to face her:

"Oh, oh, oh! I'll bawl at him, be sure! And I'll beat him some day, too."

She walked up slowly to him, with outstretched hand, and said:

"My dear, dear man!"

The Little Russian turned around, bent his head like an ox, and
folding his hands behind his back walked past her into the kitchen.
Thence his voice issued in a tone of mock sullenness:

"You had better go away, Pavel, so I shan't bite your head off!
I am only joking, mother; don't believe it! I want to prepare
the samovar. What coals these are! Wet, the devil take them!"

He became silent, and when the mother walked into the kitchen he was
sitting on the floor, blowing the coals in the samovar. Without
looking at her the Little Russian began again:

"Yes, mother, don't be afraid. I won't touch him. You know, I'm a
good-natured chap, soft as a stewed turnip. And then--you hero out
there, don't listen--I love him! But I don't like the waistcoat he
wears. You see, he has put on a new waistcoat, and he likes it very
much, so he goes strutting about, and pushes everybody, crying:
'See, see what a waistcoat I have on!' It's true, it's a fine
waistcoat. But what's the use of pushing people? It's hot enough
for us without it."

Pavel smiled and asked:

"How long do you mean to keep up your jabbering? You gave me one
thrashing with your tongue. That's enough!"

Sitting on the floor, the Little Russian spread his legs around the
samovar, and regarded Pavel. The mother stood at the door, and fixed
a sad, affectionate gaze at Andrey's long, bent neck and the round
back of his head. He threw his body back, supporting himself with
his hands on the floor, looked at the mother and at the son with his
slightly reddened and blinking eyes, and said in a low, hearty voice:

"You are good people, yes, you are!"

Pavel bent down and grasped his hand.

"Don't pull my hand," said the Little Russian gruffly. "You'll let
go and I'll fall. Go away!"

"Why are you so shy?" the mother said pensively. "You'd better
embrace and kiss. Press hard, hard!"

"Do you want to?" asked Pavel softly.

"We--ell, why not?" answered the Little Russian, rising.

Pavel dropped on his knees, and grasping each other firmly, they
sank for a moment into each other's embrace--two bodies and one soul
passionately and evenly burning with a profound feeling of friendship.

Tears ran down the mother's face, but this time they were easy tears.
Drying them she said in embarrassment:

"A woman likes to cry. She cries when she is in sorrow,; she cries
when she is in joy!"

The Little Russian pushed Pavel away, and with a light movement,
also wiping his eyes with his fingers, he said:

"Enough! When the calves have had their frolic, they must go to
the shambles. What beastly coal this is! I blew and blew on it,
and got some of the dust in my eyes."

Pavel sat at the window with bent head, and said mildly:

"You needn't be ashamed of such tears."

The mother walked up to him, and sat down beside him. Her heart
was wrapped in a soft, warm, daring feeling. She felt sad, but
pleasant and at ease.

"It's all the same!" she thought, stroking her son's hand. "It
can't be helped; it must be so!"

She recalled other such commonplace words, to which she had been
accustomed for a long time; but they did not give adequate expression
to all she had lived through that moment.

"I'll put the dishes on the table; you stay where you are, mother,"
said the Little Russian, rising from the floor, and going into the
room. "Rest a while. Your heart has been worn out with such blows!"

And from the room his singing voice, raised to a higher pitch, was heard.

"It's not a nice thing to boast of, yet I must say we tasted the
right life just now, real, human, loving life. It does us good."

"Yes," said Pavel, looking at the mother.

"It's all different now," she returned. "The sorrow is different,
and the joy is different. I do not know anything, of course! I
do not understand what it is I live by--and I can't express my
feelings in words!"

"This is the way it ought to be!" said the Little Russian, returning.
"Because, mark you, mother dear, a new heart is coming into existence,
a new heart is growing up in life. All hearts are smitten in the
conflict of interests, all are consumed with a blind greed, eaten up
with envy, stricken, wounded, and dripping with filth, falsehood,
and cowardice. All people are sick; they are afraid to live; they
wander about as in a mist. Everyone feels only his own toothache.
But lo, and behold! Here is a Man coming and illuminating life with
the light of reason, and he shouts: 'Oh, ho! you straying roaches!
It's time, high time, for you to understand that all your interests
are one, that everyone has the need to live, everyone has the desire
to grow!' The Man who shouts this is alone, and therefore he cries
aloud; he needs comrades, he feels dreary in his loneliness, dreary
and cold. And at his call the stanch hearts unite into one great,
strong heart, deep and sensitive as a silver bell not yet cast.
And hark! This bell rings forth the message: 'Men of all countries,
unite into one family! Love is the mother of life, not hate!' My
brothers! I hear this message sounding through the world!"

"And I do, too!" cried Pavel.

The mother compressed her lips to keep them from trembling, and shut
her eyes tight so as not to cry.

"When I lie in bed at night or am out walking alone--everywhere I
hear this sound, and my heart rejoices. And the earth, too--I know
it--weary of injustice and sorrow, rings out like a bell, responding
to the call, and trembles benignly, greeting the new sun arising in
the breast of Man."

Pavel rose, lifted his hand, and was about to say something, but the
mother took his other hand, and pulling him down whispered in his ear:

"Don't disturb him!"

"Do you know?" said the Little Russian, standing in the doorway,
his eyes aglow with a bright flame, "there is still much suffering
in store for the people, much of their blood will yet flow, squeezed
out by the hands of greed; but all that--all my suffering, all my
blood, is a small price for that which is already stirring in my
breast, in my mind, in the marrow of my bones! I am already rich,
as a star is rich in golden rays. And I will bear all, I will
suffer all, because there is within me a joy which no one, which
nothing can ever stifle! In this joy there is a world of strength!"

They drank tea and sat around the table until midnight, and
conversed heart to heart and harmoniously about life, about people,
and about the future.



CHAPTER XVI


Whenever a thought was clear to the mother, she would find confirmation
of the idea by drawing upon some of her rude, coarse experiences.
She now felt as on that day when her father said to her roughly:

"What are you making a wry face about? A fool has been found who
wants to marry you. Marry him! All girls must get husbands; all
women must bear children, and all children become a burden to their
parents!"

After these words she saw before her an unavoidable path running for
some inexplicable reason through a dark, dreary waste. Thus it was
at the present moment. In anticipation of a new approaching misfortune,
she uttered speechless words, addressing some imaginary person.

This lightened her mute pain, which reverberated in her heart like
a tight chord.

The next day, early in the morning, very soon after Pavel and Andrey
had left, Korsunova knocked at the door alarmingly, and called out hastily:

"Isay is killed! Come, quick!"

The mother trembled; the name of the assassin flashed through her mind.

"Who did it?" she asked curtly, throwing a shawl over her shoulders.

"The man's not sitting out there mourning over Isay. He knocked
him down and fled!"

On the street Marya said:

"Now they'll begin to rummage about again and look for the murderer.
It's a good thing your folks were at home last night. I can bear
witness to that. I walked past here after midnight and glanced into
the window, and saw all of you sitting around the table."

"What are you talking about, Marya? Why, who could dream of such
a thing about them?" the other ejaculated in fright.

"Well, who killed him? Some one from among your people, of course!"
said Korsunova, regarding the idea as a matter to be taken for
granted. "Everybody knows he spied on them."

The mother stopped to fetch breath, and put her hand to her bosom.

"What are you going on that way for? Don't be afraid! Whoever it
is will reap the harvest of his own rashness. Let's go quick, or
else they'll take him away!"

The mother walked on without asking herself why she went, and shaken
by the thought of Vyesovshchikov.

"There--he's done it!" Her mind was held fast by the one idea.

Not far from the factory walls, on the grounds of a building
recently burned down, a crowd was gathered, tramping down the coal
and stirring up ash dust. It hummed and buzzed like a swarm of
bees. There were many women in the crowd, even more children, and
storekeepers, tavern waiters, policemen, and the gendarme Petlin, a
tall old man with a woolly, silvery beard, and decorations on his breast.

Isay half reclined on the ground, his back resting against a
burned joist, his bare head hanging over his right shoulder, his
right hand in his trousers' pocket, and the fingers of his left
hand clutching the soil.

The mother looked at Isay's face. One eye, wide open, had its dim
glance fixed upon his hat lying between his lazily outstretched legs.
His mouth was half open in astonishment, his little shriveled body,
with its pointed head and bony face, seemed to be resting. The
mother crossed herself and heaved a sigh. He had been repulsive
to her when alive, but now she felt a mild pity for him.

"No blood!" some one remarked in an undertone. "He was evidently
knocked down with a fist blow."

A stout woman, tugging at the gendarme's hand, asked:

"Maybe he is still alive?"

"Go away!" the gendarme shouted not very loudly, withdrawing his hand.

"The doctor was here and said it was all over," somebody said to
the woman.

A sarcastic, malicious voice cried aloud:

"They've choked up a denouncer's mouth. Serves him right!"

The gendarme pushed aside the women, who were crowded close about
him, and asked in a threatening tone:

"Who was that? Who made that remark?"

The people scattered before him as he thrust them aside. A number
took quickly to their heels, and some one in the crowd broke into
a mocking laugh.

The mother went home.

"No one is sorry," she thought. The broad figure of Nikolay stood
before her like a shadow, his narrow eyes had a cold, cruel look,
and he wrung his right hand as if it had been hurt.

When Pavel and Andrey came to dinner, her first question was:

"Well? Did they arrest anybody for Isay's murder?"

"We haven't heard anything about it," answered the Little Russian.

She saw that they were both downhearted and sullen. "Nothing is
said about Nikolay?" the mother questioned again in a low voice.

Pavel fixed his stern eyes on the mother, and said distinctly:

"No, there is no talk of him. He is not even thought of in connection
with this affair. He is away. He went off on the river yesterday,
and hasn't returned yet. I inquired for him."

"Thank God!" said the mother with a sigh of relief. "Thank God!"

The Little Russian looked at her, and drooped his head.

"He lies there," the mother recounted pensively. "and looks as
though he were surprised; that's the way his face looks. And no one
pities him; no one bestows a good word on him. He is such a tiny
bit of a fellow, such a wretched-looking thing, like a bit of broken
china. It seems as if he had slipped on something and fallen, and
there he lies!"

At dinner Pavel suddenly dropped his spoon and exclaimed:

"That's what I don't understand!"

"What?" asked the Little Russian, who had been sitting at the table
dismal and silent.

"To kill anything living because one wants to eat, that's ugly
enough. To kill a beast--a beast of prey--that I can understand.
I think I myself could kill a man who had turned into a beast preying
upon mankind. But to kill such a disgusting, pitiful creature--I
don't understand how anyone could lift his hand for an act like that!"

The Little Russian raised his shoulders and dropped them again;
then said:

"He was no less noxious than a beast."

"I know."

"We kill a mosquito for sucking just a tiny bit of our blood," the
Little Russian added in a low voice.

"Well, yes, I am not saying anything about that. I only mean to
say it's so disgusting."

"What can you do?" returned Andrey with another shrug of his shoulders.

After a long pause Pavel asked:

"Could you kill a fellow like that?"

The Little Russian regarded him with his round eyes, threw a glance
at the mother, and said sadly, but firmly:

"For myself, I wouldn't touch a living thing. But for comrades,
for the cause, I am capable of everything. I'd even kill. I'd
kill my own son."

"Oh, Andriusha!" the mother exclaimed under her breath.

He smiled and said:

"It can't be helped! Such is our life!"

"Ye-es," Pavel drawled. "Such is our life."

With sudden excitation, as if obeying some impulse from within,
Andrey arose, waved his hands, and said:

"How can a man help it? It so happens that we sometimes must abhor
a certain person in order to hasten the time when it will be possible
only to take delight in one another. You must destroy those who
hinder the progress of life, who sell human beings for money in order
to buy quiet or esteem for themselves. If a Judas stands in the way
of honest people, lying in wait to betray them, I should be a Judas
myself if I did not destroy him. It's sinful, you say? And do they,
these masters of life, do they have the right to keep soldiers and
executioners, public houses and prisons, places of penal servitude,
and all that vile abomination by which they hold themselves in quiet
security and in comfort? If it happens sometimes that I am compelled
to take their stick into my own hands, what am I to do then? Why,
I am going to take it, of course. I will not decline. They kill
us out by the tens and hundreds. That gives me the right to raise
my hand and level it against one of the enemy, against that one of
their number who comes closest to me, and makes himself more directly
noxious to the work of my life than the others. This is logic; but
I go against logic for once. I do not need your logic now. I know
that their blood can bring no results, I know that their blood is
barren, fruitless! Truth grows well only on the soil irrigated with
the copious rain of our own blood, and their putrid blood goes to
waste, without a trace left. I know it! But I take the sin upon
myself. I'll kill, if I see a need for it! I speak only for myself,
mind you. My crime dies with me. It will not remain a blot upon
the future. It will sully no one but myself--no one but myself."

He walked to and fro in the room, waving his hands in front of him,
as if he were cutting something in the air out of his way. The
mother looked at him with an expression of melancholy and alarm.
She felt as though something had hit him; and that he was pained.
The dangerous thoughts about murder left her. If Vyesovshchikov
had not killed Isay, none of Pavel's comrades could have done the
deed. Pavel listened to the Little Russian with drooping head, and
Andrey stubbornly continued in a forceful tone:

"In your forward march it sometimes chances that you must go against
your very own self. You must be able to give up everything--your
heart and all. To give your life, to die for the cause--that's
simple. Give more! Give that which is dearer to you than your
life! Then you will see that grow with a vigorous growth which
is dearest to you--your truth!"

He stopped in the middle of the room, his face grown pale and his
eyes half closed. Raising his hand and shaking it, he began slowly
in a solemn tone of assurance with faith and with strength:

"There will come a time, I know, when people will take delight in
one another, when each will be like a star to the other, and when
each will listen to his fellow as to music. The free men will walk
upon the earth, men great in their freedom. They will walk with
open hearts, and the heart of each will be pure of envy and greed,
and therefore all mankind will be without malice, and there will be
nothing to divorce the heart from reason. Then life will be one
great service to man! His figure will be raised to lofty heights--
for to free men all heights are attainable. Then we shall live in
truth and freedom and in beauty, and those will be accounted the
best who will the more widely embrace the world with their hearts,
and whose love of it will be the profoundest; those will be the best
who will be the freest; for in them is the greatest beauty. Then
will life be great, and the people will be great who live that life."

He ceased and straightened himself. Then swinging to and fro like
the tongue of a bell, he added in a resonant voice that seemed to
issue from the depths of his breast:

"So for the sake of this life I am prepared for everything! I will
tear my heart out, if necessary, and will trample it with my own feet!"

His face quivered and stiffened with excitement, and great, heavy
tears rolled down one after the other.

Pavel raised his head and looked at him with a pale face and
wide-open eyes. The mother raised herself a little over the table
with a feeling that something great was growing and impending.

"What is the matter with you, Andrey?" Pavel asked softly.

The Little Russian shook his head, stretched himself like a violin
string, and said, looking at the mother:

"I struck Isay."

She rose, and quickly walked up to him, all in a tremble, and seized
his hands. He tried to free his right hand, but she held it firmly
in her grasp and whispered hotly:

"My dear, my own, hush! It's nothing--it's nothing--nothing, Pasha!
Andriushenka--oh, what a calamity! You sufferer! My darling heart!"

"Wait, mother," the Little Russian muttered hoarsely. "I'll tell
you how it happened."

"Don't!" she whispered, looking at him with tears in her eyes.
"Don't, Andriusha! It isn't our business. It's God's affair!"

Pavel came up to him slowly, looking at his comrade with moist eyes.
He was pale, and his lips trembled. With a strange smile he said
softly and slowly:

"Come, give me your hand, Andrey. I want to shake hands with you.
Upon my word, I understand how hard it is for you!"

"Wait!" said the Little Russian without looking at them, shaking
his head, and tearing himself away from their grasp. When he
succeeded in freeing his right hand from the mother's, Pavel caught
it, pressing it vigorously and wringing it.

"And you mean to tell me you killed that man?" said the mother.
"No, YOU didn't do it! If I saw it with my own eyes I wouldn't
believe it."

"Stop, Andrey! Mother is right. This thing is beyond our judgment."

With one hand pressing Andrey's, Pavel laid the other on his
shoulder, as if wishing to stop the tremor in his tall body.
The Little Russian bent his head down toward him, and said in
a broken, mournful voice:

"I didn't want to do it, you know, Pavel. It happened when you
walked ahead, and I remained behind with Ivan Gusev. Isay came
from around a corner and stopped to look at us, and smiled at us.
Ivan walked off home, and I went on toward the factory--Isay at
my side!" Andrey stopped, heaved a deep sigh, and continued:
"No one ever insulted me in such an ugly way as that dog!"

The mother pulled the Little Russian by the hand toward the table,
gave him a shove, and finally succeeded in seating him on a chair.
She sat down at his side close to him, shoulder to shoulder. Pavel
stood in front of them, holding Andrey's hand in his and pressing it.

"I understand how hard it is for you," he said.

"He told me that they know us all, that we are all on the gendarme's
record, and that we are going to be dragged in before the first of
May. I didn't answer, I laughed, but my blood boiled. He began to
tell me that I was a clever fellow, and that I oughtn't to go on the
way I was going, but that I should rather----"

The Little Russian stopped, wiped his face with his right hand,
shook his head, and a dry gleam flashed in his eyes.

"I understand!" said Pavel.

"Yes," he said, "I should rather enter the service of the law."
The Little Russian waved his hand, and swung his clenched fist.
"The law!--curse his soul!" he hissed between his teeth. "It would
have been better if he had struck me in the face. It would have
been easier for me, and better for him, perhaps, too! But when he
spit his dirty thought into my heart that way, I could not bear it."

Andrey pulled his hand convulsively from Pavel's, and said more
hoarsely with disgust in his face:

"I dealt him a back-hand blow like that, downward and aslant, and
walked away. I didn't even stop to look at him; I heard him fall.
He dropped and was silent. I didn't dream of anything serious. I
walked on peacefully, just as if I had done no more than kick a frog
with my foot. And then--what's all this? I started to work, and I
heard them shouting: 'Isay is killed!' I didn't even believe it,
but my hand grew numb--and I felt awkward in working with it. It
didn't hurt me, but it seemed to have grown shorter."

He looked at his hand obliquely and said: