Wilkie Collins - "Antonina"

Oscar Wilde - "Intentions"

Anon. - "The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois"

Immanuel Kant - "The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics"

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




"Pavel is a rare man!" the Little Russian uttered in a low voice.
"He is a man of iron!"

"Now he sits in prison," continued the mother reflectively. "It's
awful, it's terrible! It's not as it used to be before! Life
altogether is not as it used to be, and the terror is different from
the old terror. You feel a pity for everybody, and you are alarmed
for everybody! And the heart is different. The soul has opened its
eyes, it looks on, and is sad and glad at the same time. There's
much I do not understand, and I feel so bitter and hurt that you do
not believe in the Lord God. Well, I guess I can't help that! But
I see and know that you are good people. And you have consecrated
yourselves to a stern life for the sake of the people, to a life of
hardship for the sake of truth. The truth you stand for, I comprehend:
as long as there will be the rich, the people will get nothing,
neither truth nor happiness, nothing! Indeed, that's so, Andriusha!
Here am I living among you, while all this is going on. Sometimes
at night my thoughts wander off to my past. I think of my youthful
strength trampled under foot, of my young heart torn and beaten,
and I feel sorry for myself and embittered. But for all that I
live better now, I see myself more and more, I feel myself more."

The Little Russian arose, and trying not to scrape with his feet,
began to walk carefully up and down the room, tall, lean, absorbed
in thought.

"Well said!" he exclaimed in a low voice. "Very well! There was
a young Jew in Kerch who wrote verses, and once he wrote:

"And the innocently slain,
Truth will raise to life again."

"He himself was killed by the police in Kerch, but that's not the
point. He knew the truth and did a great deal to spread it among
the people. So here you are one of the innocently slain. He spoke
the truth!"

"There, I am talking now," the mother continued. "I talk and do not
hear myself, don't believe my own ears! All my life I was silent, I
always thought of one thing--how to live through the day apart, how
to pass it without being noticed, so that nobody should touch me!
And now I think about everything. Maybe I don't understand your
affairs so very well; but all are near me, I feel sorry for all, and
I wish well to all. And to you, Andriusha, more than all the rest."

He took her hand in his, pressed it tightly, and quickly turned
aside. Fatigued with emotion and agitation, the mother leisurely
and silently washed the cups; and her breast gently glowed with a
bold feeling that warmed her heart.

Walking up and down the room the Little Russian said:

"Mother, why don't you sometimes try to befriend Vyesovshchikov and
be kind to him? He is a fellow that needs it. His father sits in
prison--a nasty little old man. Nikolay sometimes catches sight of
him through the window and he begins to swear at him. That's bad,
you know. He is a good fellow, Nikolay is. He is fond of dogs,
mice, and all sorts of animals, but he does not like people. That's
the pass to which a man can be brought."

"His mother disappeared without a trace, his father is a thief and
a drunkard," said Nilovna pensively.

When Andrey left to go to bed, the mother, without being noticed,
made the sign of the cross over him, and after about half an hour,
she asked quietly, "Are you asleep, Andriusha?"

"No. Why?"

"Nothing! Good night!"

"Thank you, mother, thank you!" he answered gently.



CHAPTER XII


The next day when Nilovna came up to the gates of the factory with
her load, the guides stopped her roughly, and ordering her to put
the pails down on the ground, made a careful examination.

"My eatables will get cold," she observed calmly, as they felt
around her dress.

"Shut up!" said a guard sullenly.

Another one, tapping her lightly on the shoulder, said with
assurance:

"Those books are thrown across the fence, I say!"

Old man Sizov came up to her and looking around said in an undertone:

"Did you hear, mother?"

"What?"

"About the pamphlets. They've appeared again. They've just
scattered them all over like salt over bread. Much good those
arrests and searches have done! My nephew Mazin has been hauled
away to prison, your son's been taken. Now it's plain it isn't he!"
And stroking his beard Sizov concluded, "It's not people, but
thoughts, and thoughts are not fleas; you can't catch them!"

He gathered his beard in his hand, looked at her, and said as he
walked away:

"Why don't you come to see me some time? I guess you are lonely
all by yourself."

She thanked him, and calling her wares, she sharply observed the
unusual animation in the factory. The workmen were all elated, they
formed little circles, then parted, and ran from one group to
another. Animated voices and happy, satisfied faces all around!
The soot-filled atmosphere was astir and palpitating with something
bold and daring. Now here, now there, approving ejaculations were
heard, mockery, and sometimes threats.

"Aha! It seems truth doesn't agree with them," she heard one say.

The younger men were in especially good spirits, while the elder
workmen had cautious smiles on their faces. The authorities walked
about with a troubled expression, and the police ran from place to
place. When the workingmen saw them, they dispersed, and walked
away slowly, or if they remained standing, they stopped their
conversation, looking silently at the agitated, angry faces.

The workingmen seemed for some reason to be all washed and clean.
The figure of Gusev loomed high, and his brother stalked about like
a drake, and roared with laughter. The joiner's foreman, Vavilov,
and the record clerk, Isay, walked slowly past the mother. The
little, wizened clerk, throwing up his head and turning his neck to
the left, looked at the frowning face of the foreman, and said
quickly, shaking his reddish beard:

"They laugh, Ivan Ivanovich. It's fun to them. They are pleased,
although it's no less a matter than the destruction of the
government, as the manager said. What must be done here, Ivan
Ivanovich, is not merely to weed but to plow!"

Vavilov walked with his hands folded behind his back, and his
fingers tightly clasped.

"You print there what you please, you blackguards!" he cried aloud.
"But don't you dare say a word about me!"

Vasily Gusev came up to Nilovna and declared:

"I am going to eat with you again. Is it good today?" And lowering
his head and screwing up his eyes, he added in an undertone: "You
see? It hit exactly! Good! Oh, mother, very good!"

She nodded her head affably to him, flattered that Gusev, the
sauciest fellow in the village, addressed her with a respectful
plural "you," as he talked to her in secret. The general stir and
animation in the factory also pleased her, and she thought to
herself: "What would they do without me?"

Three common laborers stopped at a short distance from her, and
one of them said with disappointment in his voice: "I couldn't
find any anywhere!"

Another remarked: "I'd like to hear it, though. I can't read
myself, but I understand it hits them just in the right place."

The third man looked around him, and said: "Let's go into the
boiler room. I'll read it for you there!"

"It works!" Gusev whispered, a wink lurking in his eye.

Nilovna came home in gay spirits. She had now seen for herself how
people are moved by books.

"The people down there are sorry they can't read," she said to Andrey,
"and here am I who could when I was young, but have forgotten."

"Learn over again, then," suggested the Little Russian.

"At my age? What do you want to make fun of me for?"

Andrey, however, took a book from the shelf and pointing with the
tip of a knife at a letter on the cover, asked: "What's this?"

"R," she answered, laughing.

"And this?"

"A."

She felt awkward, hurt, and offended. It seemed to her that Andrey's
eyes were laughing at her, and she avoided their look. But his
voice sounded soft and calm in her ears. She looked askance at
his face, once, and a second time. It was earnest and serious.

"Do you really wish to teach me to read?" she asked with an
involuntary smile.

"Why not?" he responded. "Try! If you once knew how to read, it
will come back to you easily. 'If no miracle it's no ill, and if
a miracle better still!'"

"But they say that one does not become a saint by looking at a
sacred image!"

"Eh," said the Little Russian, nodding his head. "There are
proverbs galore! For example: 'The less you know, the better you
sleep'--isn't that it? Proverbs are the material the stomach thinks
with; it makes bridles for the soul, to be able to control it
better. What the stomach needs is a rest, and the soul needs
freedom. What letter is this?"

"M."

"Yes, see how it sprawls. And this?"

Straining her eyes and moving her eyebrows heavily, she recalled
with an effort the forgotten letters, and unconsciously yielding to
the force of her exertions, she was carried away by them, and forgot
herself. But soon her eyes grew tired. At first they became moist
with tears of fatigue; and then tears of sorrow rapidly dropped down
on the page.

"I'm learning to read," she said, sobbing. "It's time for me to
die, and I'm just learning to read!"

"You mustn't cry," said the Little Russian gently. "It wasn't your
fault you lived the way you did; and yet you understand that you
lived badly. There are thousands of people who could live better
than you, but who live like cattle and then boast of how well they
live. But what is good in their lives? To-day, their day's work
over, they eat, and to-morrow, their day's work over, they eat, and
so on through all their years--work and eat, work and eat! Along
with this they bring forth children, and at first amuse themselves
with them, but when they, too, begin to eat much, they grow surly
and scold: 'Come on, you gluttons! Hurry along! Grow up quick!
It's time you get to work!' and they would like to make beasts of
burden of their children. But the children begin to work for their
own stomachs, and drag their lives along as a thief drags a worthless
stolen mop. Their souls are never stirred with joy, never quickened
with a thought that melts the heart. Some live like mendicants--
always begging; some like thieves--always snatching out of the hands
of others. They've made thieves' laws, placed men with sticks over
the people, and said to them: 'Guard our laws; they are very convenient
laws; they permit us to suck the blood out of the people!' They
try to squeeze the people from the outside, but the people resist,
and so they drive the rules inside so as to crush the reason, too."

Leaning his elbows on the table and looking into the mother's face
with pensive eyes, he continued in an even, flowing voice:

"Only those are men who strike the chains from off man's body and
from off his reason. And now you, too, are going into this work
according to the best of your ability."

"I? Now, now! How can I?"

"Why not? It's just like rain. Every drop goes to nourish the
seed! And when you are able to read, then--" He stopped and began
to laugh; then rose and paced up and down the room.

"Yes, you must learn to read! And when Pavel gets back, won't you
surprise him, eh?"

"Oh, Andriusha! For a young man everything is simple and easy!
But when you have lived to my age, you have lots of trouble, little
strength, and no mind at all left."

In the evening the Little Russian went out. The mother lit a lamp
and sat down at a table to knit stockings. But soon she rose again,
walked irresolutely into the kitchen, bolted the outer door, and
straining her eyebrows walked back into the living room. She pulled
down the window curtains, and taking a book from the shelf, sat down
at the table again, looked around, bent down over the book, and
began to move her lips. When she heard a noise on the street, she
started, clapped the book shut with the palm of her hand, and
listened intently. And again, now closing, now opening her eyes,
she whispered:

"E--z--a."

With even precision and stern regularity the dull tick of the
pendulum marked the dying seconds.

A knock at the door was heard; the mother jumped quickly to her feet,
thrust the book on the shelf, and walking up to the door asked anxiously:

"Who's there?"



CHAPTER XIII


Rybin came in, greeted her, and stroking his beard in a dignified
manner and peeping into the room with his dark eyes, remarked:

"You used to let people into your house before, without inquiring
who they were. Are you alone?"

"Yes."

"You are? I thought the Little Russian was here. I saw him to-day.
The prison doesn't spoil a man. Stupidity, that's what spoils most
of all."

He walked into the room, sat down and said to the mother:

"Let's have a talk together. I have something to tell you. I have
a theory!" There was a significant and mysterious expression in his
face as he said this. It filled the mother with a sense of foreboding.
She sat down opposite him and waited in mute anxiety for him to speak.

"Everything costs money!" he began in his gruff, heavy voice. "It
takes money to be born; it takes money to die. Books and leaflets
cost money, too. Now, then, do you know where all this money for
the books comes from?"

"No, I don't know," replied the mother in a low voice, anticipating danger.

"Nor do I! Another question I've got to ask is: Who writes those
books? The educated folks. The masters!" Rybin spoke curtly and
decisively, his voice grew gruffer and gruffer, and his bearded face
reddened as with the strain of exertion. "Now, then, the masters
write the books and distribute them. But the writings in the books
are against these very masters. Now, tell me, why do they spend their
money and their time to stir up the people against themselves? Eh?"

Nilovna blinked, then opened her eyes wide and exclaimed in fright:

"What do you think? Tell me."

"Aha!" exclaimed Rybin, turning in his chair like a bear. "There you
are! When I reached that thought I was seized with a cold shiver, too."

"Now what is it? Tell me! Did you find out anything?"

"Deception! Fraud! I feel it. It's deception. I know nothing,
but I feel sure there's deception in it. Yes! The masters are up
to some clever trick, and I want nothing of it. I want the truth.
I understand what it is; I understand it. But I will not go hand
in hand with the masters. They'll push me to the front when it
suits them, and then walk over my bones as over a bridge to get
where they want to."

At the sound of his morose words, uttered in a stubborn, thick,
and forceful voice, the mother's heart contracted in pain.

"Good Lord!" she exclaimed in anguish. "Where is the truth? Can
it be that Pavel does not understand? And all those who come here
from the city--is it possible that they don't understand?" The
serious, honest faces of Yegor, Nikolay Ivanovich, and Sashenka
passed before her mind, and her heart fluttered.

"No, no!" she said, shaking her head as if to dismiss the thought.
"I can't believe it. They are for truth and honor and conscience;
they have no evil designs; oh, no!"

"Whom are you talking about?" asked Rybin thoughtfully.

"About all of them! Every single one I met. They are not the
people who will traffic in human blood, oh, no!" Perspiration
burst out on her face, and her fingers trembled.

"You are not looking in the right place, mother; look farther back,"
said Rybin, drooping his head. "Those who are directly working in
the movement may not know anything about it themselves. They think
it must be so; they have the truth at heart. But there may be
people behind them who are looking out only for their own selfish
interests. Men won't go against themselves." And with the firm
conviction of a peasant fed on centuries of distrust, he added: "No
good will ever come from the masters! Take my word for it!"

"What concoction has your brain put together?" the mother asked,
again seized with anxious misgiving.

"I?" Rybin looked at her, was silent for a while, then repeated:
"Keep away from the masters! That's what!" He grew morosely silent
again, and seemed to shrink within himself.

"I'll go away, mother," he said after a pause. "I wanted to join the
fellows, to work along with them. I'm fit for the work. I can read
and write. I'm persevering and not a fool. And the main thing is, I
know what to say to people. But now I will go. I can't believe, and
therefore I must go. I know, mother, that the people's souls are
foul and besmirched. All live on envy, all want to gorge themselves;
and since there's little to eat, each seeks to eat the other up."

He let his head droop, and remained absorbed in thought for a while.
Finally he said:

"I'll go all by myself through village and hamlet and stir the
people up. It's necessary that the people should take the matter
in their own hands and get to work themselves. Let them but
understand--they'll find a way themselves. And so, I'm going to
try to make them understand. There is no hope for them except in
themselves; there's no understanding for them except in their own
understanding! And that's the truth!"

"They will seize you!" said the mother in a low voice.

"They will seize me, and let me out again. And then I'll go ahead again!"

"The peasants themselves will bind you, and you will be thrown into jail."

"Well, I'll stay in jail for a time, then be released, and I'll go
on again. As for the peasants, they'll bind me once, twice, and
then they will understand that they ought not to bind me, but listen
to me. I'll tell them: 'I don't ask you to believe me; I want you
just to listen to me!' And if they listen, they will believe."

Both the mother and Rybin spoke slowly, as if testing every word
before uttering it.

"There's little joy for me in this, mother," said Rybin. "I have
lived here of late, and gobbled up a deal of stuff. Yes; I understand
some, too! And now I feel as if I were burying a child."

"You'll perish, Mikhail Ivanych!" said the mother, shaking her head sadly.

His dark, deep eyes looked at her with a questioning, expectant
look. His powerful body bent forward, propped by his hands resting
on the seat of the chair, and his swarthy face seemed pale in the
black frame of his beard.

"Did you hear what Christ said about the seed? 'Thou shalt not die,
but rise to life again in the new ear.' I don't regard myself as
near death at all. I am shrewd. I follow a straighter course than
the others. You can get further that way. Only, you see, I feel
sorry--I don't know why." He fidgeted on his chair, then slowly
rose. "I'll go to the tavern and be with the people a while. The
Little Russian is not coming. Has he gotten busy already?"

"Yes!" The mother smiled. "No sooner out of prison than they rush
to their work."

"That's the way it should be. Tell him about me."

They walked together slowly into the kitchen, and without looking
at each other exchanged brief remarks:

"I'll tell him," she promised.

"Well, good-by!"

"Good-by! When do you quit your job?"

"I have already."

"When are you going?"

"To-morrow, early in the morning. Good-by!"

He bent his head and crawled off the porch reluctantly, it seemed,
and clumsily. The mother stood for a moment at the door listening
to the heavy departing footsteps and to the doubts that stirred in
her heart. Then she noiselessly turned away into the room, and
drawing the curtain peered through the window. Black darkness stood
behind, motionless, waiting, gaping, with its flat, abysmal mouth.

"I live in the night!" she thought. "In the night forever!" She
felt a pity for the black-bearded, sedate peasant. He was so broad
and strong--and yet there was a certain helplessness about him,
as about all the people.

Presently Andrey came in gay and vivacious. When the mother told
him about Rybin, he exclaimed:

"Going, is he? Well, let him go through the villages. Let him
ring forth the word of truth. Let him arouse the people. It's
hard for him here with us."

"He was talking about the masters. Is there anything in it?"
she inquired circumspectly. "Isn't it possible that they want
to deceive you?"

"It bothers you, mother, doesn't it?" The Little Russian laughed.
"Oh, mother dear--money! If we only had money! We are still
living on charity. Take, for instance, Nikolay Ivanych. He earns
seventy-five rubles a month, and gives us fifty! And others do
the same. And the hungry students send us money sometimes, which
they collect penny by penny. And as to the masters, of course
there are different kinds among them. Some of them will deceive us,
and some will leave us; but the best will stay with us and march
with us up to our holiday." He clapped his hands, and rubbing them
vigorously against each other continued: "But not even the flight
of an eagle's wings will enable anyone to reach that holiday, so
we'll make a little one for the first of May. It will be jolly."

His words and his vivacity dispelled the alarm excited in the
mother's heart by Rybin. The Little Russian walked up and down the
room, his feet sounding on the floor. He rubbed his head with one
hand and his chest with the other, and spoke looking at the floor:

"You know, sometimes you have a wonderful feeling living in your
heart. It seems to you that wherever you go, all men are comrades;
all burn with one and the same fire; all are merry; all are good.
Without words they all understand one another; and no one wants to
hinder or insult the other. No one feels the need of it. All live
in unison, but each heart sings its own song. And the songs flow
like brooks into one stream, swelling into a huge river of bright
joys, rolling free and wide down its course. And when you think
that this will be--that it cannot help being if we so wish it--then
the wonderstruck heart melts with joy. You feel like weeping--you
feel so happy."

He spoke and looked as if he were searching something within
himself. The mother listened and tried not to stir, so as not to
disturb him and interrupt his speech. She always listened to him
with more attention than to anybody else. He spoke more simply
than all the rest, and his words gripped her heart more powerfully.
Pavel, too, was probably looking to the future. How could it be
otherwise, when one is following such a course of life? But when
he looked into the remote future it was always by himself; he never
spoke of what he saw. This Little Russian, however, it seemed to
her, was always there with a part of his heart; the legend of the
future holiday for all upon earth, always sounded in his speech.
This legend rendered the meaning of her son's life, of his work,
and that of all of his comrades, clear to the mother.

"And when you wake up," continued the Little Russian, tossing his
head and letting his hands drop alongside his body, "and look around,
you see it's all filthy and cold. All are tired and angry; human
life is all churned up like mud on a busy highway, and trodden underfoot!"

He stopped in front of the mother, and with deep sorrow in his eyes,
and shaking his head, added in a low, sad voice:

"Yes, it hurts, but you must--you must distrust man; you must fear
him, and even hate him! Man is divided, he is cut in two by life.
You'd like only to love him; but how is it possible? How can you
forgive a man if he goes against you like a wild beast, does not
recognize that there is a living soul in you, and kicks your face--
a human face! You must not forgive. It's not for yourself that
you mustn't. I'd stand all the insults as far as I myself am
concerned; but I don't want to show indulgence for insults. I don't
want to let them learn on my back how to beat others!"

His eyes now sparkled with a cold gleam; he inclined his head
doggedly, and continued in a more resolute tone:

"I must not forgive anything that is noxious, even though it does
not hurt! I'm not alone in the world. If I allow myself to be
insulted to-day--maybe I can afford to laugh at the insult, maybe
it doesn't sting me at all--but, having tested his strength on me,
the offender will proceed to flay some one else the next day! That's
why one is compelled to discriminate between people, to keep a firm
grip on one's heart, and to classify mankind--these belong to me,
those are strangers."

The mother thought of the officer and Sashenka, and said with a sigh:

"What sort of bread can you expect from unbolted meal?"

"That's it; that's the trouble!" the Little Russian exclaimed.
"You must look with two kinds of eyes; two hearts throb in your
bosom. The one loves all; the other says: 'Halt! You mustn't!'"

The figure of her husband, somber and ponderous, like a huge
moss-covered stone, now rose in her memory. She made a mental
image for herself of the Little Russian as married to Natasha,
and her son as the husband of Sashenka.

"And why?" asked the Little Russian, warming up. "It's so plainly
evident that it's downright ridiculous--simply because men don't
stand on an equal footing. Then let's equalize them, put them all
in one row! Let's divide equally all that's produced by the brains
and all that's made by the hands. Let's not keep one another in the
slavery of fear and envy, in the thraldom of greed and stupidity!"