| 777 | 778 | 779 | 780 | 781 |
| 1 | 314 | 629 | 943 | 1257 |
|
"timely." Clemens and his family were spending some weeks in the
Catskills when it was written.
*
****
An unpublished letter on the Czar.
ONTEORA, 1890.
TO THE EDITOR OF FREE RUSSIA,--I thank you for the compliment of your
invitation to say something, but when I ponder the bottom paragraph on
your first page, and then study your statement on your third page, of
the objects of the several Russian liberation-parties, I do not quite
know how to proceed. Let me quote here the paragraph referred to:
"But men's hearts are so made that the sight of one voluntary victim for
a noble idea stirs them more deeply than the sight of a crowd submitting
to a dire fate they cannot escape. Besides, foreigners could not see so
clearly as the Russians how much the Government was responsible for the
grinding poverty of the masses; nor could they very well realize the
moral wretchedness imposed by that Government upon the whole of
educated
Russia. But the atrocities committed upon the defenceless prisoners
are there in all their baseness, concrete and palpable, admitting of
no excuse, no doubt or hesitation, crying out to the heart of humanity
779
Page
Quick Jump
|