At four o’clock, conscious of his throbbing heart, Levin stepped out of a hired sledge at the Zoological Gardens, and turned along the path to the frozen mounds and the skating ground, knowing that he would certainly find her there, as he had seen the Shtcherbatskys’ carriage at the entrance. It was a bright, frosty day. Rows of carriages, sledges, drivers, and policemen were standing in the approach. Crowds of well-dressed people, with hats bright in the sun, swarmed about the entrance and along the well-swept little paths between the little houses adorned with carving in the Russian style. The old curly birches of the gardens, all their twigs laden with snow, looked as though freshly decked in sacred vestments. He walked along the path towards the skating-ground, and kept saying to himself—"You mustn’t be excited, you must be calm. What’s the matter with you? What do you want? Be quiet, stupid," he conjured his heart. An...
The events of May 4, 1886 were a major influence on the oratory of Voltairine de Cleyre. Following the execution of the Haymarket Martyrs on November 11, 1887, she gave an annual address to commemorate the date of their sacrifice. The following memorial speech was first delivered in Chicago on November 11, 1901. It was subsequently published in Free Society, a Chicago periodical, November 24, 1901. It is reprinted, along with her other Haymarket Memorial speeches, in The First Mayday: The Haymarket Speeches 1895–1910 (Cienfuegos Press, Over-the-water, Sanday, Orkney, KWI7 2BL, UK), 1980. Let me begin my address with a confession. I make it sorrowfully and with self-disgust; but in the presence of great sacrifice we learn humility, and... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
He possessed everything necessary to render him the scourge of his family. He came into the world healthy and rich-and healthy and rich he remained during the whole of his long life. No offense was ever brought home to him; he committed no fault whatever either in word or in deed. He was of stainless character. And proud in the consciousness of his character, he pressed with it every one to earth--relations, friends, acquaintances. His character was to him capital. And with this capital he dealt at usurious interest. This character gave him the right to be pitiless, and to do nothing beyond the good ordained by law. And pitiless he was, and did no good. For benevolence prescribed by law is not benevolence. He never paid the slightest regard... (From : AnarchyArchives.)
Wild fowls are called pheasants in the Caucasus. There are so many of them that they are cheaper there than tame chickens. Pheasants are hunted with the "hobby," by scaring up, and from under dogs. This is the way they are hunted with the "hobby." They take a piece of canvas and stretch it over a frame, and in the middle of the frame they make a cross piece. They cut a hole in the canvas. This frame with the canvas is called a hobby. With this hobby and with the gun they start out at dawn to the forest. The hobby is carried in front, and through the hole they look out for the pheasants. The pheasants feed at daybreak in the clearings. At times it is a whole brood,—a hen with all her chicks, and at others a cock with his hen, or several cocks together. The pheasants do not see the man, and they are not afraid of the canvas and let the hunter come close to them. Then the hunter puts down the hobby, sticks his gun through the rent, and shoots at whichever bird he please...
The two boys, having rung the door-bell, entered the empty shop, which had shelves along the walls and photographic appliances on them, together with show-cases on the counters. A plain woman, with a kind face, came through the inner door and asked from behind the counter what they required. “A nice frame, if you please, madam.” “At what price?” asked the woman; she wore mittens on her swollen fingers with which she rapidly handled picture-frames of different shapes. “These are fifty kopecks each; and these are a little more expensive. There is rather a pretty one, of quite a new style; one ruble and twenty kopecks.” “All right, I will have this. But could not you make it cheaper? Let us say one ruble.” “We don’t bargain in our shop,” said the shopkeeper with a dignified air. “Well, I will take it,” said Mahin, and put the coupon on the counter. “Wrap...
Posdnicheff’s face had become transformed; his eyes were pitiable; their expression seemed strange, like that of another being than himself; his mustache and beard turned up toward the top of his face; his nose was diminished, and his mouth enlarged, immense, frightful. “Yes,” he resumed “she had grown stouter since ceasing to conceive, and her anxieties about her children began to disappear. Not even to disappear. One would have said that she was waking from a long intoxication, that on coming to herself she had perceived the entire universe with its joys, a whole world in which she had not learned to live, and which she did not understand. “‘If only this world shall not vanish! When time is past, when old age comes, one cannot recover it.’ Thus, I believe, she thought, or rather felt. Moreover, she could neither think nor feel otherwise. She had been brought up in this idea that there is in the world but one thing worthy...
Selected Letters of Bartolomeo Vanzetti from the Charlestown State Prison, 1921-24 July 22, 1921. Charlestown Prison MY DEAR MRS. GLENDOWER EVANS: I was just thinking what I would to do for past the long days jail: I was saying to myself: Do some work. But what? Write. A gentle motherly figure came to my mind and I rehear the voice: Why don't you write something now? It will be useful to you when you will be free. Just at that time I received your letter. Thanks to you from the bottom of my heart for your confidence in my innocence; I am so. I did not spittel a drop of blood, or steal a cent in all my life. A little knowledge of the past; a sorrowful experience of the life itself had gave to me some ideas very different from those of many o... (From : umkc.edu.)
I should be very glad to join you and your associates -- whose work I know and appreciate -- in standing up for the rights of the Literature Committee and opposing the enemies of popular education. But in the sphere in which you are working I see no way to resist them. My only consolation is that I, too, am constantly engaged in struggling against the same enemies of enlightenment, though in another manner. Concerning the special question with which you are preoccupied, I think that in place of the Literature Committee which has been prohibited, a number of other Literature Associations to pursue the same objects should be formed without consulting the Government and without asking permission from any censor. Let Government, if it likes, pr... (From : Anarchy Archives.)