FOOTNOTES:
[73] See "The Laborer and the Man with the White Hand" in Turgenev's "Poems in Prose."
[74] Since they are not permitted to work for freedom from the house-tops, they must do it in their secret chambers.
[75] For a Russian revolutionary drama powerfully depicting such a scene, see "On the Eve," by Dr. Leopold Kampf. It has no connection with Turgenev's great novel of the same name. For a tragedy whose interest centers around a beautiful young man who has become insane in a Russian prison, see "To the Stars," by Leonid Andreyev, (Translated by Dr. A. Goudiss, Poet Lore, Winter 1907). Called by Helen A. Clarke, "a play in which there is no villain except the far-off Russian Government."
"Since the world's first wail went up from lands and seas
Ears have heard not, tongues have told not things like these.
Dante, led by love's and hate's accordant spell
Down the deepest and the loathiest ways of hell,
Where beyond the brook of blood the rain was fire,
Where the scalps were masked with dung more deep than mire,
Saw not, where filth was foulest, and the night
Darkest, depths whose fiends could match the Muscovite.
Set beside this truth, his deadliest vision seems
Pale and pure and painless as a virgin's dreams.
Maidens dead beneath the clasping lash, and wives
Rent with deadlier pangs than death—for shame survives,
Naked, mad, starved, scourged, spurned, frozen, fallen, deflowered,
Souls and bodies as by fangs of beasts devoured.
Sounds that hell would hear not, sights no thoughts could shape,
Limbs that feel as flame the ravenous grasp of rape," etc.
Swinburne: "Russia: An Ode."
[77] "Marie Spiridonova was only twenty-one when she killed Lujenovsky; and in St. Petersburg I knew a girl, a medical student—sweet, quiet, all soul—who was barely eighteen when she said to me, simply "I shall live but a year or two—no more." In this expectancy of death there is no mawkishness, no pose. They have seen their comrades go after a few days or years of service; their fate will be the same." LeRoy Scott, "The Terrorists," in Everybody's Magazine.
Announcements
Lives of Great Altrurians
BY VICTOR ROBINSON
This is to be a series of biographies of men and women whose life-work was the liberation of humanity from bondage. Not of bishops and warriors will Victor Robinson write, but of the Great Companions whose lances struck the shields of despotism. These lives are to be of no standard size and will not be written on contract-time. A great deal of inclination and a little bit of opportunity will be the determining factors.
Out of this series, two numbers have already been published:
William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft
Peter Kropotkin
The rest of the subjects are still lodged within the cerebral cells of the author. The following are in preparation for precious print:
Maxim Gorky
Walt Whitman
Robert Ingersoll
Elisee Reclus
Thomas Paine
Ferdinand Lassalle
Karl Marx
Victor Hugo
Alexander Herzen
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Herbert Spencer
Henrik Ibsen
Thomas Huxley
Leo Tolstoy
Charles Darwin
Ernest Haeckel
Louise Michel
Emile Zola
August Comte
Baruch Spinoza
Ivan Turgenev
Harriet Martineau
Giordano Bruno
Grant Allen
Wendell Phillips
Henry George
Henry Thoreau
Mrs. Stanton
William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft
BY VICTOR ROBINSON
Written in the Author's Eighteenth Year
William Godwin was the father of philosophic radicalism in England. His wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, was the pioneer of the woman suffrage movement. Yet the present generation of reformers knows little about these glorious Liberals. This booklet tells briefly of Godwin's early life, of his development from orthodoxy to rationalism, of his epoch-making "Political Justice," of his narrow escape from imprisonment on the charge of high treason, of his first meeting and dislike of Mary Wollstonecraft, of his later love and marriage with her, of her former marriage and attempt at suicide, of their views on the marriage relation, of the storm which Mary Wollstonecraft caused by writing "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," of her lamented death, of her talented daughter who eloped with Shelley, of Godwin's subsequent love affairs, of his philosophy, of his old age, etc.
Pierre Ramus: in "Die Freie Generation:"
Selten wohl, dass uns eine kleine Broschurenschrift in die Hände fiel, die mit ähnlicher Glut des edelsten Idealismus verfasst ist, wie jene unseres amerikanischen Genossen Victor Robinson.
Eugene V. Debs, in "Appeal to Reason:"
The story of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft is now in pamphlet form, fresh from the gifted pen of Victor Robinson. It is a story of two great souls charmingly told by another.
Elbert Hubbard, editor of "The Philistine:"
At the Roycroft Chapel, Victor gave us a most admirable address on Godwin—quite the best thing he ever did.
John Sherwin Crosby, author of "Government:" I shall prize your very graphic sketch because of its intrinsic worth.
William Lloyd Garrison, the son of the great Abolitionist:
I have read with pleasure your estimate of these brave thinkers. What surviving qualities have truth and courage!
Clinton P. Farrell, brother-in-law and publisher of Ingersoll: Many many thanks for this beautiful booklet—a gem. May you live long and continue in the making of good books.
Voltairine de Cleyre, the most radical woman in Philadelphia:
I am glad that some one has taken up the work I began some fifteen years ago,—that of compelling the deserved recognition due to Mary Wollstonecraft from the English-speaking radical world.
Champe S. Andrews, counsel of the Medical Society of New York:
I am indebted to you for the very delightful monograph on the lives of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. I value this book on account of its excellent literary and biographical value.
Henry J. Weeks, lover of our furred and feathered brothers:
As soon as I received your book, my wife read it to me from beginning to end, starting with loving interest and ending with sympathetic tears. Then I read it again myself. Then I called upon my friend Fred Heath, editor of "The Social Democratic Herald," and talked to him about my "William and Mary," and together we hied to the public library and made a search for all we could find about the lives of these interesting friends.
Artistically printed Illustrated with portraits
25 cents, postpaid
THE ALTRURIANS
12 Mt. Morris Park, West, New York City
A Symposium on Humanitarians
CONDUCTED BY
VICTOR ROBINSON
"Name your 10 favorite humanitarians of the 19th century." To this interesting question, replies have been received from 100 men and women, many of them of national and some of international fame. Among the contributors are:
Alfred Russel Wallace
Ernest Crosby
Alexis Aladin
Paul Carus
Abraham Jacobi
Eugene Debs
Rose Hartwick Thorpe
Benjamin R. Tucker
John Spargo
William Marion Reedy
Edward Bliss Foote
Hubert Howe Bancroft
Emma Goldman
Harriot Stanton Blatch
Hypatia Bradlaugh
Luther Burbank
Herbert N. Casson
Voltairine de Cleyre
Ina Coolbrith
Havelock Ellis
Harrison Grey Fiske
B.O. Flower
Hamlin Garland
Wm. Lloyd Garrison
Jacob Gordin
Moses Harman
Morris Rosenfeld
Sadakichi Hartman
Henry Holt
Geo. Wharton James
Alexander Berkman
Joseph Jastrow
Bolton Hall
Andrew D. White
Jacques Loeb
Rose Pastor Stokes
Edwin Markham
N.O. Nelson
Simon Newcomb
Louis F. Post
Finely printed. Paper 25c. Cloth 50c.
THE ALTRURIANS
12 Mt. Morris Park, West, New York City
NEVER-TOLD TALES
Graphic Stories of the Evils of Sexual Ignorance
BY DR. WILLIAM J. ROBINSON
It is time that these tales should no longer remain "Never Told Tales." It is time that the ignorance which costs so much health, so much happiness, so many lives, should no longer be permitted to hold its blighting sway in our midst; it is time that life-destroying prudery should give way to vitalizing knowledge; it is time that sanctimonious hypocracy should give way to common-sense. It is time in short, that darkness should give way to light, and misery to happiness—it is time, therefore, that the "Never-Told Tales" should at last be told!
The author is convinced that if these tales were put into the hands of every man and woman about to marry, and into the hands of every father and mother who have adolescent children, much misery would be prevented and much good would be accomplished. Hence does he send them forth into the world....
From the Author's Preface.
Artistically bound and printed. Cloth $1, postpaid
PUBLISHED BY
THE ALTRURIANS
12 Mount Morris Park West
New York City