SQUIRE NEWCOME. "HANNAH!" The speaker was a tall, pompous-looking man, whose age appeared to verge close upon fifty. He was sitting bolt upright in a high-backed chair, and looked as if it would be quite impossible to deviate from his position of unbending rigidity. Squire Benjamin Newcome, as he was called, in the right of his position as Justice of the Peace, Chairman of the Selectmen, and... more...

BEGINNINGSOne look back—as we hurry o'er the plain,Man's years speeding us along—One look back! From the hollow past again,Youth, come flooding into song!Tell how once, in the breath of summer air,Winds blew fresher than they blow;Times long hid, with their triumph and their care,Yesterday—many years ago!E. E. Bowen.The wayfarer who crosses Lincoln's Inn Fields perceives in the... more...

At the urgent request of our worthy and most active President, I have been induced to follow the example of several other friends of this Institution, and bring before you some account of a short visit to St. Petersburg and Moscow. I may premise that about fourteen years ago, on our return from Egypt, vià Constantinople, I and my companion, Mr. Charles Darbishire, were placed in quarantine at a... more...

I. A SLOW JOURNEY Again two carriages stood at the front door of the house at Petrovskoe. In one of them sat Mimi, the two girls, and their maid, with the bailiff, Jakoff, on the box, while in the other—a britchka—sat Woloda, myself, and our servant Vassili. Papa, who was to follow us to Moscow in a few days, was standing bareheaded on the entrance-steps. He made the sign of the cross at the... more...

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. OUT of the darkest depths of life, where vice and crime and misery abound, comes the Byron of the twentieth century, the poet of the vagabond and the proletariat, Maxim Gorky. Not like the beggar, humbly imploring for a crust in the name of the Lord, nor like the jeweller displaying his precious stones to dazzle and tempt the eye, he comes to the world,—nay, in accents of Tyrtaeus... more...

Chapter I A bright spring day was fading into evening. High overhead in the clear heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be sinking into its depths of blue. In a handsome house in one of the outlying streets of the government town of O—— (it was in the year 1842) two women were sitting at an open window; one was about fifty, the other an old lady of seventy. The name... more...

I. THE SERGEANT OF THE GUARDS. My father, Andrew Peter Grineff, having served in his youth under Count Munich, left the army in 17—, with the grade of First Major. From that time he lived on his estate in the Principality of Simbirsk, where he married Avoditia, daughter of a poor noble in the neighborhood. Of nine children, the issue of this marriage, I was the only survivor. My brothers and sisters... more...

INTRODUCTION This exquisite novel, first published in 1859, like so many great works of art, holds depths of meaning which at first sight lie veiled under the simplicity and harmony of the technique. To the English reader On the Eve is a charmingly drawn picture of a quiet Russian household, with a delicate analysis of a young girl's soul; but to Russians it is also a deep and penetrating... more...

Chapter I All is quiet in Moscow. The squeak of wheels is seldom heard in the snow-covered street. There are no lights left in the windows and the street lamps have been extinguished. Only the sound of bells, borne over the city from the church towers, suggests the approach of morning. The streets are deserted. At rare intervals a night-cabman's sledge kneads up the snow and sand in the street as... more...

COUNTESS NATALIE DOLGORUCKI "No, Natalie, weep no more! Quick, dry your tears. Let not my executioner see that we can feel pain or weep for sorrow!" Drying her tears, she attempted a smile, but it was an unnatural, painful smile. "Ivan," said she, "we will forget, forget all, excepting that we love each other, and thus only can I become cheerful. And tell me, Ivan, have I not always... more...