Jacob William Wright - "The Long Ago"

Edmund Goldsmid - "Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry"

Clarence Edward Mulford - "Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round Up (BAR 20)"

Maxim Gorky - "Mother"

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




Silence ensued. Then Pavel began to speak again in a voice that
sounded softer:

"You had better drop all this, Andrey. Keep quiet, and don't worry
her. That's the more honest way."

"And do you remember what Alexey Ivanovich said about the necessity
for a man to live a complete life--with all the power of his soul
and body--do you remember?"

"That's not for us! How can you attain completion? It does not
exist for you. If you love the future you must renounce everything
in the present--everything, brother!"

"That's hard for a man!" said the Little Russian in a lowered voice.

"What else can be done? Think!"

The indifferent pendulum of the clock kept chopping off the seconds
of life, calmly and precisely. At last the Little Russian said:

"Half the heart loves, and the other half hates! Is that a heart?"

"I ask you, what else can we do?"

The pages of a book rustled. Apparently Pavel had begun to read
again. The mother lay with closed eyes, and was afraid to stir.
She was ready to weep with pity for the Little Russian; but she
was grieved still more for her son.

"My dear son! My consecrated one!" she thought.

Suddenly the Little Russian asked:

"So I am to keep quiet?"

"That's more honest, Andrey," answered Pavel softly.

"All right! That's the road we will travel." And in a few seconds
he added, in a sad and subdued voice: "It will be hard for you,
Pasha, when you get to that yourself."

"It is hard for me already."

"Yes?"

"Yes."

The wind brushed along the walls of the house, and the pendulum
marked the passing time.

"Um," said the Little Russian leisurely, at last. "That's too bad."

The mother buried her head in the pillow and wept inaudibly.

In the morning Andrey seemed to her to be lower in stature and
all the more winning. But her son towered thin, straight, and
taciturn as ever. She had always called the Little Russian Andrey
Stepanovich, in formal address, but now, all at once, involuntarily
and unconsciously she said to him:

"Say, Andriusha, you had better get your boots mended. You are apt
to catch cold."

"On pay day, mother, I'll buy myself a new pair," he answered,
smiling. Then suddenly placing his long hand on her shoulder, he
added: "You know, you are my real mother. Only you don't want to
acknowledge it to people because I am so ugly."

She patted him on the hand without speaking. She would have liked
to say many endearing things, but her heart was wrung with pity, and
the words would not leave her tongue.


They spoke in the village about the socialists who distributed
broadcast leaflets in blue ink. In these leaflets the conditions
prevailing in the factory were trenchantly and pointedly depicted,
as well as the strikes in St. Petersburg and southern Russia; and
the workingmen were called upon to unite and fight for their interests.

The staid people who earned good pay waxed wroth as they read the
literature, and said abusively: "Breeders of rebellion! For such
business they ought to get their eyes blacked." And they carried
the pamphlets to the office.

The young people read the proclamations eagerly, and said excitedly:
"It's all true!"

The majority, broken down with their work, and indifferent to
everything, said lazily: "Nothing will come of it. It is impossible!"

But the leaflets made a stir among the people, and when a week
passed without their getting any, they said to one another:

"None again to-day! It seems the printing must have stopped."

Then on Monday the leaflets appeared again; and again there was a
dull buzz of talk among the workingmen.

In the taverns and the factory strangers were noticed, men whom
no one knew. They asked questions, scrutinized everything and
everybody; looked around, ferreted about, and at once attracted
universal attention, some by their suspicious watchfulness, others
by their excessive obtrusiveness.

The mother knew that all this commotion was due to the work of her
son Pavel. She saw how all the people were drawn together about
him. He was not alone, and therefore it was not so dangerous. But
pride in her son mingled with her apprehension for his fate; it was
his secret labors that discharged themselves in fresh currents into
the narrow, turbid stream of life.

One evening Marya Korsunova rapped at the window from the street,
and when the mother opened it, she said in a loud whisper:

"Now, take care, Pelagueya; the boys have gotten themselves into
a nice mess! It's been decided to make a search to-night in your
house, and Mazin's and Vyesovshchikov's----"

The mother heard only the beginning of the woman's talk; all the
rest of the words flowed together in one stream of ill-boding,
hoarse sounds.

Marya's thick lips flapped hastily one against the other. Snorts
issued from her fleshy nose, her eyes blinked and turned from side
to side as if on the lookout for somebody in the street.

"And, mark you, I do not know anything, and I did not say anything
to you, mother dear, and did not even see you to-day, you understand?"

Then she disappeared.

The mother closed the window and slowly dropped on a chair, her
strength gone from her, her brain a desolate void. But the
consciousness of the danger threatening her son quickly brought
her to her feet again. She dressed hastily, for some reason wrapped
her shawl tightly around her head, and ran to Fedya Mazin, who,
she knew, was sick and not working. She found him sitting at the
window reading a book, and moving his right hand to and fro with
his left, his thumb spread out. On learning the news he jumped up
nervously, his lips trembled, and his face paled.

"There you are! And I have an abscess on my finger!" he mumbled.

"What are we to do?" asked Vlasova, wiping the perspiration from
her face with a hand that trembled nervously.

"Wait a while! Don't be afraid," answered Fedya, running his sound
hand through his curly hair.

"But you are afraid yourself!"

"I?" He reddened and smiled in embarrassment. "Yes--h-m-- I had
a fit of cowardice, the devil take it! We must let Pavel know.
I'll send my little sister to him. You go home. Never mind!
They're not going to beat us."

On returning home she gathered together all the books, and pressing
them to her bosom walked about the house for a long time, looking
into the oven, under the oven, into the pipe of the samovar, and
even into the water vat. She thought Pavel would at once drop work
and come home; but he did not come. Finally she sat down exhausted
on the bench in the kitchen, putting the books under her; and she
remained in that position, afraid to rise, until Pavel and the
Little Russian returned from the factory.

"Do you know?" she exclaimed without rising.

"We know!" said Pavel with a composed smile. "Are you afraid?"

"Oh, I'm so afraid, so afraid!"

"You needn't be afraid," said the Little Russian. "That won't
help anybody."

"Didn't even prepare the samovar," remarked Pavel.

The mother rose, and pointed to the books with a guilty air.

"You see, it was on account of them--all the time--I was----"

The son and the Little Russian burst into laughter; and this
relieved her. Then Pavel picked out some books and carried them
out into the yard to hide them, while the Little Russian remained
to prepare the samovar.

"There's nothing terrible at all in this, mother. It's only a
shame for people to occupy themselves with such nonsense. Grown-up
men in gray come in with sabers at their sides, with spurs on their
feet, and rummage around, and dig up and search everything. They
look under the bed, and climb up to the garret; if there is a cellar
they crawl down into it. The cobwebs get on their faces, and they
puff and snort. They are bored and ashamed. That's why they put
on the appearance of being very wicked and very mad with us. It's
dirty work, and they understand it, of course they do! Once they
turned everything topsy-turvy in my place, and went away abashed,
that's all. Another time they took me along with them. Well, they
put me in prison, and I stayed there with them for about four months.
You sit and sit, then you're called out, taken to the street under
an escort of soldiers, and you're asked certain questions. They're
stupid people, they talk such incoherent stuff. When they're done
with you, they tell the soldiers to take you back to prison. So
they lead you here, and they lead you there--they've got to justify
their salaries somehow. And then they let you go free. That's all."

"How you always do speak, Andriusha!" exclaimed the mother involuntarily.

Kneeling before the samovar he diligently blew into the pipe; but
presently he turned his face, red with exertion, toward her, and
smoothing his mustache with both hands inquired:

"And how do I speak, pray?"

"As if nobody had ever done you any wrong."

He rose, approached her, and shaking his head, said:

"Is there an unwronged soul anywhere in the wide world? But I have
been wronged so much that I have ceased to feel wronged. What's
to be done if people cannot help acting as they do? The wrongs I
undergo hinder me greatly in my work. It is impossible to avoid
them. But to stop and pay attention to them is useless waste of
time. Such a life! Formerly I would occasionally get angry--but
I thought to myself: all around me I see people broken in heart.
It seemed as if each one were afraid that his neighbor would strike
him, and so he tried to get ahead and strike the other first. Such
a life it is, mother dear."

His speech flowed on serenely. He resolutely distracted her mind
from alarm at the expected police search. His luminous, protuberant
eyes smiled sadly. Though ungainly, he seemed made of stuff that
bends but never breaks.

The mother sighed and uttered the warm wish:

"May God grant you happiness, Andriusha!"

The Little Russian stalked to the samovar with long strides, sat in
front of it again on his heels, and mumbled:

"If he gives me happiness, I will not decline it; ask for it I won't,
to seek it I have no time."

And he began to whistle.

Pavel came in from the yard and said confidently:

"They won't find them!" He started to wash himself. Then carefully
rubbing his hands dry, he added: "If you show them, mother, that
you are frightened, they will think there must be something in this
house because you tremble. And we have done nothing as yet, nothing!
You know that we don't want anything bad; on our side is truth,
and we will work for it all our lives. This is our entire guilt.
Why, then, need we fear?"

"I will pull myself together, Pasha!" she assured him. And the
next moment, unable to repress her anxiety, she exclaimed: "I wish
they'd come soon, and it would all be over!"

But they did not come that night, and in the morning, in anticipation
of the fun that would probably be poked at her for her alarm, the
mother began to joke at herself.



CHAPTER VI


The searchers appeared at the very time they were not expected,
nearly a month after this anxious night. Nikolay Vyesovshchikov was
at Pavel's house talking with him and Andrey about their newspaper.
It was late, about midnight. The mother was already in bed. Half
awake, half asleep, she listened to the low, busy voices. Presently
Andrey got up and carefully picked his way through and out of the
kitchen, quietly shutting the door after him. The noise of the iron
bucket was heard on the porch. Suddenly the door was flung wide
open; the Little Russian entered the kitchen, and announced in a
loud whisper:

"I hear the jingling of spurs in the street!"

The mother jumped out of bed, catching at her dress with a trembling
hand; but Pavel came to the door and said calmly:

"You stay in bed; you're not feeling well."

A cautious, stealthy sound was heard on the porch. Pavel went to
the door and knocking at it with his hand asked:

"Who's there?"

A tall, gray figure tumultuously precipitated itself through the
doorway; after it another; two gendarmes pushed Pavel back, and
stationed themselves on either side of him, and a loud mocking voice
called out:

"No one you expect, eh?"

The words came from a tall, lank officer, with a thin, black mustache.
The village policeman, Fedyakin, appeared at the bedside of the
mother, and, raising one hand to his cap, pointed the other at her
face and, making terrible eyes, said:

"This is his mother, your honor!" Then, waving his hand toward
Pavel: "And this is he himself."

"Pavel Vlasov?" inquired the officer, screwing up his eyes; and when
Pavel silently nodded his head, he announced, twirling his mustache:

"I have to make a search in your house. Get up, old woman!"

"Who is there?" he asked, turning suddenly and making a dash for
the door.

"Your name?" His voice was heard from the other room.

Two other men came in from the porch: the old smelter Tveryakov
and his lodger, the stoker Rybin, a staid, dark-colored peasant.
He said in a thick, loud voice:

"Good evening, Nilovna."

She dressed herself, all the while speaking to herself in a low
voice, so as to give herself courage:

"What sort of a thing is this? They come at night. People are
asleep and they come----"

The room was close, and for some reason smelled strongly of shoe
blacking. Two gendarmes and the village police commissioner,
Ryskin, their heavy tread resounding on the floor, removed the books
from the shelves and put them on the table before the officer. Two
others rapped on the walls with their fists, and looked under the
chairs. One man clumsily clambered up on the stove in the corner.
Nikolay's pockmarked face became covered with red patches, and his
little gray eyes were steadfastly fixed upon the officer. The
Little Russian curled his mustache, and when the mother entered the
room, he smiled and gave her an affectionate nod of the head.

Striving to suppress her fear, she walked, not sideways as always,
but erect, her chest thrown out, which gave her figure a droll,
stilted air of importance. Her shoes made a knocking sound on the
floor, and her brows trembled.

The officer quickly seized the books with the long fingers of his
white hand, turned over the pages, shook them, and with a dexterous
movement of the wrist flung them aside. Sometimes a book fell to
the floor with a light thud. All were silent. The heavy breathing
of the perspiring gendarmes was audible; the spurs clanked, and
sometimes the low question was heard: "Did you look here?"

The mother stood by Pavel's side against the wall. She folded her
arms over her bosom, like her son, and both regarded the officer.
The mother felt her knees trembling, and her eyes became covered
with a dry mist.

Suddenly the piercing voice of Nikolay cut into the silence:

"Why is it necessary to throw the books on the floor?"

The mother trembled. Tveryakov rocked his head as if he had been
struck on the back. Rybin uttered a peculiar cluck, and regarded
Nikolay attentively.

The officer threw up his head, screwed up his eyes, and fixed them
for a second upon the pockmarked, mottled, immobile face. His
fingers began to turn the leaves of the books still more rapidly.
His face was yellow and pale; he twisted his lips continually. At
times he opened his large gray eyes wide, as if he suffered from an
intolerable pain, and was ready to scream out in impotent anguish.

"Soldier!" Vyesovshchikov called out again. "Pick the books up!"

All the gendarmes turned their eyes on him, then looked at the
officer. He again raised his head, and taking in the broad figure
of Nikolay with a searching stare, he drawled:

"Well, well, pick up the books."

One gendarme bent down, and, looking slantwise at Vyesovshchikov,
began to collect the books scattered on the floor.

"Why doesn't Nikolay keep quiet?" the mother whispered to Pavel.
He shrugged his shoulders. The Little Russian drooped his head.

"What's the whispering there? Silence, please! Who reads the Bible?"

"I!" said Pavel.

"Aha! And whose books are all these?"

"Mine!" answered Pavel.

"So!" exclaimed the officer, throwing himself on the back of the
chair. He made the bones of his slender hand crack, stretched his
legs under the table, and adjusting his mustache, asked Nikolay:
"Are you Andrey Nakhodka?"

"Yes!" answered Nikolay, moving forward. The Little Russian put
out his hand, took him by the shoulder, and pulled him back.

"He made a mistake; I am Andrey!"

The officer raised his hand, and threatening Vyesovshchikov with
his little finger, said:

"Take care!"

He began to search among his papers. From the street the bright,
moonlit night looked on through the window with soulless eyes.
Some one was loafing about outside the window, and the snow crunched
under his tread.

"You, Nakhodka, you have been searched for political offenses
before?" asked the officer.

"Yes, I was searched in Rostov and Saratov. Only there the
gendarmes addressed me as 'Mr.'"

The officer winked his right eye, rubbed it, and showing his fine
teeth, said:

"And do you happen to know, MR. Nakhodka--yes, you, MR. Nakhodka--
who those scoundrels are who distribute criminal proclamations and
books in the factory, eh?"

The Little Russian swayed his body, and with a broad smile on his
face was about to say something, when the irritating voice of
Nikolay again rang out:

"This is the first time we have seen scoundrels here!"

Silence ensued. There was a moment of breathless suspense. The
scar on the mother's face whitened, and her right eyebrow traveled
upward. Rybin's black beard quivered strangely. He dropped his
eyes, and slowly scratched one hand with the other.

"Take this dog out of here!" said the officer.

Two gendarmes seized Nikolay under the arm and rudely pulled him
into the kitchen. There he planted his feet firmly on the floor
and shouted:

"Stop! I am going to put my coat on."

The police commissioner came in from the yard and said:

"There is nothing out there. We searched everywhere!"

"Well, of course!" exclaimed the officer, laughing. "I knew it!
There's an experienced man here, it goes without saying."

The mother listened to his thin, dry voice, and looking with terror
into the yellow face, felt an enemy in this man, an enemy without
pity, with a heart full of aristocratic disdain of the people.
Formerly she had but rarely seen such persons, and now she had
almost forgotten they existed.

"Then this is the man whom Pavel and his friends have provoked,"
she thought.

"I place you, MR. Andrey Onisimov Nakhodka, under arrest."

"What for?" asked the Little Russian composedly.

"I will tell you later!" answered the officer with spiteful civility,
and turning to Vlasova, he shouted:

"Say, can you read or write?"

"No!" answered Pavel.

"I didn't ask you!" said the officer sternly, and repeated: "Say,
old woman, can you read or write?"

The mother involuntarily gave way to a feeling of hatred for the
man. She was seized with a sudden fit of trembling, as if she had
jumped into cold water. She straightened herself, her scar turned
purple, and her brow drooped low.

"Don't shout!" she said, flinging out her hand toward him. "You
are a young man still; you don't know misery or sorrow----"

"Calm yourself, mother!" Pavel intervened.

"In this business, mother, you've got to take your heart between
your teeth and hold it there tight," said the Little Russian.

"Wait a moment, Pasha!" cried the mother, rushing to the table and
then addressing the officer: "Why do you snatch people away thus?"

"That does not concern you. Silence!" shouted the officer, rising.

"Bring in the prisoner Vyesovshchikov!" he commanded, and began
to read aloud a document which he raised to his face.

Nikolay was brought into the room.

"Hats off!" shouted the officer, interrupting his reading.

Rybin went up to Vlasova, and patting her on the back, said in an
undertone:

"Don't get excited, mother!"

"How can I take my hat off if they hold my hands?" asked Nikolay,
drowning the reading.

The officer flung the paper on the table.

"Sign!" he said curtly.

The mother saw how everyone signed the document, and her excitement
died down, a softer feeling taking possession of her heart. Her
eyes filled with tears--burning tears of insult and impotence--such
tears she had wept for twenty years of her married life, but lately
she had almost forgotten their acid, heart-corroding taste.

The officer regarded her contemptuously. He scowled and remarked:

"You bawl ahead of time, my lady! Look out, or you won't have tears
left for the future!"

"A mother has enough tears for everything, everything! If you have
a mother, she knows it!"

The officer hastily put the papers into his new portfolio with its
shining lock.

"How independent they all are in your place!" He turned to the
police commissioner.

"An impudent pack!" mumbled the commissioner.

"March!" commanded the officer.

"Good-by, Andrey! Good-by, Nikolay!" said Pavel warmly and softly,
pressing his comrades' hands.

"That's it! Until we meet again!" the officer scoffed.

Vyesovshchikov silently pressed Pavel's hands with his short fingers
and breathed heavily. The blood mounted to his thick neck; his eyes
flashed with rancor. The Little Russian's face beamed with a sunny
smile. He nodded his head, and said something to the mother; she
made the sign of the cross over him.

"God sees the righteous," she murmured.

At length the throng of people in the gray coats tumbled out on
the porch, and their spurs jingled as they disappeared. Rybin went
last. He regarded Pavel with an attentive look of his dark eyes
and said thoughtfully: "Well, well--good-by!" and coughing in his
beard he leisurely walked out on the porch.

Folding his hands behind his back, Pavel slowly paced up and down
the room, stepping over the books and clothes tumbled about on the
floor. At last he said somberly:

"You see how it's done! With insult--disgustingly--yes! They
left me behind."

Looking perplexedly at the disorder in the room, the mother
whispered sadly:

"They will take you, too, be sure they will. Why did Nikolay speak
to them the way he did?"

"He got frightened, I suppose," said Pavel quietly. "Yes--It's
impossible to speak to them, absolutely impossible! They cannot
understand!"

"They came, snatched, and carried off!" mumbled the mother, waving
her hands. As her son remained at home, her heart began to beat
more lightly. Her mind stubbornly halted before one fact and
refused to be moved. "How he scoffs at us, that yellow ruffian!
How he threatens us!"

"All right, mamma!" Pavel suddenly said with resolution. "Let us
pick all this up!"

He called her "mamma," the word he used only when he came nearer to
her. She approached him, looked into his face, and asked softly:

"Did they insult you?"

"Yes," he answered. "That's--hard! I would rather have gone with them."

It seemed to her that she saw tears in his eyes, and wishing to soothe
him, with an indistinct sense of his pain, she said with a sigh:

"Wait a while--they'll take you, too!"

"They will!" he replied.

After a pause the mother remarked sorrowfully:

"How hard you are, Pasha! If you'd only reassure me once in a while!
But you don't. When I say something horrible, you say something worse."

He looked at her, moved closer to her, and said gently:

"I cannot, mamma! I cannot lie! You have to get used to it."



CHAPTER VII


The next day they knew that Bukin, Samoylov, Somov, and five more had
been arrested. In the evening Fedya Mazin came running in upon them.
A search had been made in his house also. He felt himself a hero.

"Were you afraid, Fedya?" asked the mother.

He turned pale, his face sharpened, and his nostrils quivered.

"I was afraid the officer might strike me. He has a black beard,
he's stout, his fingers are hairy, and he wears dark glasses, so
that he looks as if he were without eyes. He shouted and stamped
his feet. He said I'd rot in prison. And I've never been beaten
either by my father or mother; they love me because I'm their only
son. Everyone gets beaten everywhere, but I never!"

He closed his eyes for a moment, compressed his lips, tossed his
hair back with a quick gesture of both hands, and looking at Pavel
with reddening eyes, said:

"If anybody ever strikes me, I will thrust my whole body into him
like a knife--I will bite my teeth into him--I'd rather he'd kill
me at once and be done!"

"To defend yourself is your right," said Pavel. "But take care not
to attack!"

"You are delicate and thin," observed the mother. "What do you
want with fighting?"

"I WILL fight!" answered Fedya in a low voice.

When he left, the mother said to Pavel:

"This young man will go down sooner than all the rest."

Pavel was silent.

A few minutes later the kitchen door opened slowly and Rybin entered.

"Good evening!" he said, smiling. "Here I am again. Yesterday
they brought me here; to-day I come of my own accord. Yes, yes!"
He gave Pavel a vigorous handshake, then put his hand on the mother's
shoulder, and asked: "Will you give me tea?"