John Lothrop Motley - "History of the United Netherlands, 1586"

Horatio Alger - "Helping Himself"

Lord Dunsany - "If"

Stephen Crane - "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets"

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




"I was wondering what made you so stout. Oh, what a heap of them
you have brought! Did you come on foot?"

"Yes," said Sashenka. She was again her graceful, slender self.
The mother noticed that her cheeks were shrunken, and that dark
rings were under her unnaturally large eyes.

"You are just out of prison. You ought to rest, and there you are
carrying a load like that for seven versts!" said the mother,
sighing and shaking her head.

"It's got to be done!" said the girl. "Tell me, how is Pavel?
Did he stand it all right? He wasn't very much worried, was he?"
Sashenka asked the question without looking at the mother. She
bent her head and her fingers trembled as she arranged her hair.

"All right," replied the mother. "You can rest assured he won't
betray himself."

"How strong he is!" murmured the girl quietly.

"He has never been sick," replied the mother. "Why, you are all
in a shiver! I'll get you some tea, and some raspberry jam."

"That's fine!" exclaimed the girl with a faint smile. "But don't
you trouble! It's too late. Let me do it myself."

"What! Tired as you are?" the mother reproached her, hurrying into
the kitchen, where she busied herself with the samovar. The girl
followed into the kitchen, sat down on the bench, and folded her
hands behind her head before she replied:

"Yes, I'm very tired! After all, the prison makes one weak. The
awful thing about it is the enforced inactivity. There is nothing
more tormenting. We stay a week, five weeks. We know how much
there is to be done. The people are waiting for knowledge. We're
in a position to satisfy their wants, and there we are locked up
in a cage like animals! That's what is so trying, that's what
dries up the heart!"

"Who will reward you for all this?" asked the mother; and with a
sigh she answered the question herself. "No one but God! Of course
you don't believe in Him either?"

"No!" said the girl briefly, shaking her head.

"And I don't believe you!" the mother ejaculated in a sudden burst
of excitement. Quickly wiping her charcoal-blackened hands on her
apron she continued, with deep conviction in her voice:

"You don't understand your own faith! How could you live the kind
of life you are living, without faith in God?"

A loud stamping of feet and a murmur of voices were heard on the
porch. The mother started; the girl quickly rose to her feet, and
whispered hurriedly:

"Don't open the door! If it's the gendarmes, you don't know me.
I walked into the wrong house, came here by accident, fainted away,
you undressed me, and found the books around me. You understand?"

"Why, my dear, what for?" asked the mother tenderly.

"Wait a while!" said Sashenka listening. "I think it's Yegor."

It was Yegor, wet and out of breath.

"Aha! The samovar!" he cried. "That's the best thing in life,
granny! You here already, Sashenka ?"

His hoarse voice filled the little kitchen. He slowly removed his
heavy ulster, talking all the time.

"Here, granny, is a girl who is a thorn in the flesh of the police!
Insulted by the overseer of the prison, she declared that she would
starve herself to death if he did not ask her pardon. And for eight
days she went without eating, and came within a hair's breadth of
dying. It's not bad! She must have a mighty strong little stomach."

"Is it possible you took no food for eight days in succession?"
asked the mother in amazement.

"I had to get him to beg my pardon," answered the girl with a
stoical shrug of her shoulders. Her composure and her stern
persistence seemed almost like a reproach to the mother.

"And suppose you had died?" she asked again.

"Well, what can one do?" the girl said quietly. "He did beg my
pardon after all. One ought never to forgive an insult, never!"

"Ye-es!" responded the mother slowly. "Here are we women who are
insulted all our lives long."

"I have unloaded myself!" announced Yegor from the other room.
"Is the samovar ready? Let me take it in!"

He lifted the samovar and talked as he carried it.

"My own father used to drink not less than twenty glasses of tea a
day, wherefor his days upon earth were long, peaceful, and strong;
for he lived to be seventy-three years old, never having suffered
from any ailment whatsoever. In weight he reached the respectable
figure of three hundred and twenty pounds, and by profession he was
a sexton in the village of Voskesensk."

"Are you Ivan's son?" exclaimed the mother.

"I am that very mortal. How did you know his name?"

"Why, I am a Voskresenskian myself!"

"A fellow countrywoman! Who were your people?"

"Your neighbors. I am a Sereguin."

"Are you a daughter of Nil the Lame? I thought your face was
familiar! Why, I had my ears pulled by him many and many a time!"

They stood face to face plying each other with questions and
laughing. Sashenka looked at them and smiled, and began to prepare
the tea. The clatter of the dishes recalled the mother to the
realities of the present.

"Oh, excuse me! I quite forgot myself, talking about old times. It
is so sweet to recall your youth."

"It's I who ought to beg your pardon for carrying on like this in
your house!" said Sashenka. "But it is eleven o'clock already, and
I have so far to go."

"Go where? To the city?" the mother asked in surprise.

"Yes."

"What are you talking about! It's dark and wet, and you are so
tired. Stay here overnight. Yegor Ivanovich will sleep in the
kitchen, and you and I here."

"No, I must go," said the girl simply.

"Yes, countrywoman, she must go. The young lady must disappear.
It would be bad if she were to be seen on the street to-morrow."

"But how can she go? By herself?"

"By herself," said Yegor, laughing.

The girl poured tea for herself, took a piece of rye bread, salted
it, and started to eat, looking at the mother contemplatively.

"How can you go that way? Both you and Natasha. I wouldn't. I'm afraid!"

"She's afraid, too," said Yegor. "Aren't you afraid, Sasha?"

"Of course!"

The mother looked at her, then at Yegor, and said in a low voice,
"What strange----"

"Give me a glass of tea, granny," Yegor interrupted her.

When Sashenka had drunk her glass of tea, she pressed Yegor's hand
in silence, and walked out into the kitchen. The mother followed
her. In the kitchen Sashenka said:

"When you see Pavel, give him my regards, please." And taking hold
of the latch, she suddenly turned around, and asked in a low voice:
"May I kiss you?"

The mother embraced her in silence, and kissed her warmly.

"Thank you!" said the girl, and nodding her head, walked out.

Returning to the room, the mother peered anxiously through the window.
Wet flakes of snow fluttered through the dense, moist darkness.

"And do you remember Prozorov, the storekeeper?" asked Yegor. "He
used to sit with his feet sprawling, and blow noisily into his glass
of tea. He had a red, satisfied, sweet-covered face."

"I remember, I remember," said the mother, coming back to the table.
She sat down, and looking at Yegor with a mournful expression in her
eyes, she spoke pityingly: "Poor Sashenka! How will she ever get
to the city?"

"She will be very much worn out," Yegor agreed. "The prison has
shaken her health badly. She was stronger before. Besides, she
has had a delicate bringing up. It seems to me she has already
ruined her lungs. There is something in her face that reminds one
of consumption."

"Who is she?"

"The daughter of a landlord. Her father is a rich man and a big
scoundrel, according to what she says. I suppose you know, granny,
that they want to marry?"

"Who?"

"She and Pavel. Yes, indeed! But so far they have not yet been able.
When he is free, she is in prison, and vice versa." Yegor laughed.

"I didn't know it!" the mother replied after a pause. "Pasha never
speaks about himself."

Now she felt a still greater pity for the girl, and looking at her
guest with involuntary hostility, she said:

"You ought to have seen her home."

"Impossible!" Yegor answered calmly. "I have a heap of work to do
here, and the whole day to-morrow, from early morning, I shall have
to walk and walk and walk. No easy job, considering my asthma."

"She's a fine girl!" said the mother, vaguely thinking of what Yegor
had told her. She felt hurt that the news should have come to her,
not from her son, but from a stranger, and she pressed her lips
together tightly, and lowered her eyebrows.

"Yes, a fine girl!" Yegor nodded assent. "There's a bit of the
noblewoman in her yet, but it's growing less and less all the time.
You are sorry for her, I see. What's the use? You won't find heart
enough, if you start to grieve for all of us rebels, granny dear.
Life is not made very easy for us, I admit. There, for instance, is
the case of a friend of mine who returned a short while ago from
exile. When he went through Novgorod, his wife and child awaited
him in Smolensk, and when he arrived in Smolensk, they were already
in prison in Moscow. Now it's the wife's turn to go to Siberia. To
be a revolutionary and to be married is a very inconvenient arrangement
--inconvenient for the husband, inconvenient for the wife and in the
end for the cause also! I, too, had a wife, an excellent woman, but
five years of this kind of life landed her in the grave."

He emptied the glass of tea at one gulp, and continued his narrative.
He enumerated the years and months he had passed in prison and in
exile, told of various accidents and misfortunes, of the slaughters
in prisons, and of hunger in Siberia. The mother looked at him,
listened with wonderment to the simple way in which he spoke of this
life, so full of suffering, of persecution, of wrong, and abuse of men.

"Well, let's get down to business!"

His voice changed, and his face grew more serious. He asked
questions about the way in which the mother intended to smuggle
the literature into the factory, and she marveled at his clear
knowledge of all the details.

Then they returned to reminiscences of their native village. He
joked, and her mind roved thoughtfully through her past. It seemed
to her strangely like a quagmire uniformly strewn with hillocks,
which were covered with poplars trembling in constant fear; with low
firs, and with white birches straying between the hillocks. The
birches grew slowly, and after standing for five years on the unstable,
putrescent soil, they dried up, fell down, and rotted away. She
looked at this picture, and a vague feeling of insufferable sadness
overcame her. The figure of a girl with a sharp, determined face
stood before her. Now the figure walks somewhere in the darkness
amid the snowflakes, solitary, weary. And her son sits in a little
cell, with iron gratings over the window. Perhaps he is not yet
asleep, and is thinking. But he is thinking not of his mother.
He has one nearer to him than herself. Heavy, chaotic thoughts,
like a tangled mass of clouds, crept over her, and encompassed her
and oppressed her bosom.

"You are tired, granny! Let's go to bed!" said Yegor, smiling.

She bade him good night, and sidled carefully into the kitchen,
carrying away a bitter, caustic feeling in her heart.

In the morning, after breakfast, Yegor asked her:

"Suppose they catch you and ask you where you got all these
heretical books from. What will you say?"

"I'll say, 'It's none of your business!'" she answered, smiling.

"You'll never convince them of that!" Yegor replied confidently.
"On the contrary, they are profoundly convinced that this is
precisely their business. They will question you very, very
diligently, and very, very long!"

"I won't tell, though!"

"They'll put you in prison!"

"Well, what of it? Thank God that I am good at least for that,"
she said with a sigh. "Thank God! Who needs me? Nobody!"

"H'm!" said Yegor, fixing his look upon her. "A good person ought
to take care of himself."

"I couldn't learn that from you, even if I were good," the mother
replied, laughing.

Yegor was silent, and paced up and down the room; then he walked
up to her and said: "This is hard, countrywoman! I feel it, it's
very hard for you!"

"It's hard for everybody," she answered, with a wave of her hand.
"Maybe only for those who understand, it's easier. But I understand
a little, too. I understand what it is the good people want."

"If you do understand, granny, then it means that everybody needs
you, everybody!" said Yegor earnestly and solemnly.

She looked at him and laughed without saying anything.



CHAPTER XI


At noon, calmly and in a businesslike way she put the books around
her bosom, and so skillfully and snugly that Yegor announced,
smacking his lips with satisfaction:

"Sehr gut! as the German says when he has drunk a keg of beer.
Literature has not changed you, granny. You still remain the good,
tall, portly, elderly woman. May all the numberless gods grant you
their blessings on your enterprise!"

Within half an hour she stood at the factory gate, bent with the
weight of her burden, calm and assured. Two guards, irritated by
the oaths and raillery of the workingmen, examined all who entered
the gate, handling them roughly and swearing at them. A policeman
and a thin-legged man with a red face and alert eyes stood at one
side. The mother, shifting the rod resting on her shoulders, with a
pail suspended from either end of it, watched the man from the
corner of her eye. She divined that he was a spy.

A tall, curly-headed fellow with his hat thrown back over his neck,
cried to the guardsmen who searched him:

"Search the head and not the pockets, you devils!"

"There is nothing but lice on your head," retorted one of the guardsmen.

"Catching lice is an occupation more suited to you than hunting
human game!" rejoined the workman. The spy scanned him with a
rapid glance.

"Will you let me in?" asked the mother. "See, I'm bent double with
my heavy load. My back is almost breaking."

"Go in! Go in!" cried the guard sullenly. "She comes with
arguments, too."

The mother walked to her place, set her pails on the ground, and
wiping the perspiration from her face looked around her.

The Gusev brothers, the locksmiths, instantly came up to her, and
the older of them, Vasily, asked aloud, knitting his eyebrows:

"Got any pirogs?"

"I'll bring them to-morrow," she answered.

This was the password agreed upon. The faces of the brothers
brightened. Ivan, unable to restrain himself, exclaimed:

"Oh, you jewel of a mother!"

Vasily squatted down on his heels, looked into the pot, and a
bundle of books disappeared into his bosom.

"Ivan!" he said aloud. "Let's not go home, let's get our dinner
here from her!" And he quickly shoved the books into the legs of his
boots. "We must give our new peddler a lift, don't you think so?"

"Yes, indeed!" Ivan assented, and laughed aloud.

The mother looked carefully about her, and called out:

"Sour cabbage soup! Hot vermicelli soup! Roast meat!"

Then deftly and secretly taking out one package of books after the
other, she shoved them into the hands of the brothers. Each time
a bundle disappeared from her hands, the sickly, sneering face of
the officer of gendarmes flashed up before her like a yellow stain,
like the flame of a match in a dark room, and she said to him in
her mind, with a feeling of malicious pleasure:

"Take this, sir!" And when she handed over the last package she
added with an air of satisfaction: "And here is some more, take it!"

Workmen came up to her with cups in their hands, and when they were
near Ivan and Vasily, they began to laugh aloud. The mother calmly
suspended the transfer of the books, and poured sour soup and
vermicelli soup, while the Gusevs joked her.

"How cleverly Nilovna does her work!"

"Necessity drives one even to catching mice," remarked a stoker
somberly. "They have snatched away your breadgiver, the scoundrels!
Well, give us three cents' worth of vermicelli. Never mind, mother!
You'll pull through!"

"Thanks for the good word!" she returned, smiling.

He walked off to one side and mumbled, "It doesn't cost me much to
say a good word!"

"But there's no one to say it to!" observed a blacksmith, with a
smile, and shrugging his shoulders in surprise added: "There's a
life for you, fellows! There's no one to say a good word to; no one
is worth it. Yes, sir!"

Vasily Gusev rose, wrapped his coat tightly around him, and exclaimed:

"What I ate was hot, and yet I feel cold."

Then he walked away. Ivan also rose, and ran off whistling merrily.

Cheerful and smiling, Nilovna kept on calling her wares:

"Hot! Hot! Sour soup! Vermicelli soup! Porridge!"

She thought of how she would tell her son about her first experience;
and the yellow face of the officer was still standing before her,
perplexed and spiteful. His black mustache twitched uneasily, and
his upper lip turned up nervously, showing the gleaming white enamel
of his clenched teeth. A keen joy beat and sang in her heart like
a bird, her eyebrows quivered, and continuing deftly to serve her
customers she muttered to herself:

"There's more! There's more!"

Through the whole day she felt a sensation of delightful newness
which embraced her heart as with a fondling caress. And in the
evening, when she had concluded her work at Marya's house, and was
drinking tea, the splash of horses' hoofs in the mud was heard,
and the call of a familiar voice. She jumped up, hurried into the
kitchen, and made straight for the door. Somebody walked quickly
through the porch; her eyes grew dim, and leaning against the
doorpost, she pushed the door open with her foot.

"Good evening, mother!" a familiar, melodious voice rang out, and a
pair of dry, long hands were laid on her shoulders.

The joy of seeing Andrey was mingled in her bosom with the sadness
of disappointment; and the two contrary feelings blended into one
burning sensation which embraced her like a hot wave. She buried
her face in Andrey's bosom. He pressed her tightly to himself,
his hands trembled. The mother wept quietly without speaking,
while he stroked her hair, and spoke in his musical voice:

"Don't cry, mother. Don't wring my heart. Upon my honest word,
they will let him out soon! They haven't a thing against him;
all the boys will keep quiet as cooked fish."

Putting his long arm around the mother's shoulders he led her into
the room, and nestling up against him with the quick gesture of a
squirrel, she wiped the tears from her face, while her heart
greedily drank in his tender words.

"Pavel sends you his love. He is as well and cheerful as can be.
It's very crowded in the prison. They have thrown in more than a
hundred of our people, both from here and from the city. Three and
four persons have been put into one cell. The prison officials are
rather a good set. They are exhausted with the quantity of work the
gendarmes have been giving them. The prison authorities are not
extremely rigorous, they don't order you about roughly. They simply
say: 'Be quiet as you can, gentlemen. Don't put us in an awkward
position!' So everything goes well. We talk with one another, we
give books to one another, and we share our food. It's a good
prison! Old and dirty, but so soft and so light. The criminals are
also nice people; they help us a good deal. Bukin, four others, and
myself were released. It got too crowded. They'll let Pavel go
soon, too. I'm telling you the truth, believe me. Vyesovshchikov
will be detained the longest. They are very angry at him. He
scolds and swears at everybody all the time. The gendarmes can't
bear to look at him. I guess he'll get himself into court, or
receive a sound thrashing some day. Pavel tries to dissuade him.
'Stop, Nikolay!' he says to him. 'Your swearing won't reform them.'
But he bawls: 'Wipe them off the face of the earth like a pest!'
Pavel conducts himself finely out there; he treats all alike, and
is as firm as a rock! They'll soon let him go."

"Soon?" said the mother, relieved now and smiling. "I know he'll
be let out soon!"

"Well, if you know, it's all right! Give me tea, mother. Tell me
how you've been, how you've passed your time."

He looked at her, smiling all over, and seemed so near to her, such
a splendid fellow. A loving, somewhat melancholy gleam flashed from
the depths of his round, blue eyes.

"I love you dearly, Andriusha!" the mother said, heaving a deep
sigh, as she looked at his thin face grotesquely covered with tufts
of hair.

"People are satisfied with little from me! I know you love me;
you are capable of loving everybody; you have a great heart," said
the Little Russian, rocking in his chair, his eyes straying about
the room.

"No, I love you very differently!" insisted the mother. "If you
had a mother, people would envy her because she had such a son."

The Little Russian swayed his head, and rubbed it vigorously with
both hands.

"I have a mother, somewhere!" he said in a low voice.

"Do you know what I did to-day?" she exclaimed, and reddening a
little, her voice choking with satisfaction, she quickly recounted
how she had smuggled literature into the factory.

For a moment he looked at her in amazement with his eyes wide open;
then he burst out into a loud guffaw, stamped his feet, thumped his
head with his fingers, and cried joyously:

"Oho! That's no joke any more! That's business! Won't Pavel be
glad, though! Oh, you're a trump. That's good, mother! You have
no idea HOW good it is! Both for Pavel and all who were arrested
with him!"

He snapped his fingers in ecstasy, whistled, and fairly doubled
over, all radiant with joy. His delight evoked a vigorous response
from the mother.

"My dear, my Andriusha!" she began, as if her heart had burst open,
and gushed over merrily with a limpid stream of living words full of
serene joy. "I've thought all my life, 'Lord Christ in heaven! what
did I live for?' Beatings, work! I saw nothing except my husband.
I knew nothing but fear! And how Pasha grew I did not see, and I
hardly know whether I loved him when my husband was alive. All my
concerns, all my thoughts were centered upon one thing--to feed my
beast, to propitiate the master of my life with enough food, pleasing
to his palate, and served on time, so as not to incur his displeasure,
so as to escape the terrors of a beating, to get him to spare me
but once! But I do not remember that he ever did spare me. He beat
me so--not as a wife is beaten, but as one whom you hate and detest.
Twenty years I lived like that, and what was up to the time of my
marriage I do not recall. I remember certain things, but I see
nothing! I am as a blind person. Yegor Ivanovich was here--we are
from the same village--and he spoke about this and about that. I
remember the houses, the people, but how they lived, what they spoke
about, what happened to this one and what to that one--I forget,
I do not see! I remember fires--two fires. It seems that everything
has been beaten out of me, that my soul has been locked up and
sealed tight. It's grown blind, it does not hear!"

Her quick-drawn breath was almost a sob. She bent forward, and
continued in a lowered voice: "When my husband died I turned to my
son; but he went into this business, and I was seized with a pity
for him, such a yearning pity--for if he should perish, how was I
to live alone? What dread, what fright I have undergone! My heart
was rent when I thought of his fate.

"Our woman's love is not a pure love! We love that which we need.
And here are you! You are grieving about your mother. What do you
want her for? And all the others go and suffer for the people, they
go to prison, to Siberia, they die for them, many are hung. Young
girls walk alone at night, in the snow, in the mud, in the rain.
They walk seven versts from the city to our place. Who drives them?
Who pursues them? They love! You see, theirs is pure love! They
believe! Yes, indeed, they believe, Andriusha! But here am I--
I can't love like that! I love my own, the near ones!"

"Yes, you can!" said the Little Russian, and turning away his face
from her, he rubbed his head, face, and eyes vigorously as was his
wont. "Everybody loves those who are near," he continued. "To a
large heart, what is far is also near. You, mother, are capable
of a great deal. You have a large capacity of motherliness!"

"God grant it!" she said quietly. "I feel that it is good to live
like that! Here are you, for instance, whom I love. Maybe I love
you better than I do Pasha. He is always so silent. Here he wants
to get married to Sashenka, for example, and he never told me, his
mother, a thing about it."

"That's not true," the Little Russian retorted abruptly. "I know it
isn't true. It's true he loves her, and she loves him. But marry?
No, they are not going to marry! She'd want to, but Pavel--he can't!
He doesn't want to!"

"See how you are!" said the mother quietly, and she fixed her eyes
sadly and musingly on the Little Russian's face. "You see how you
are! You offer up your own selves!"