Alexander Nevsky

“ Most of his spare money he devoted to the ransoming of the numerous Russian captives detained at the Golden Horde. But the men of Novgorod, in their semi-independent republic, continued (1255–1257) to give the grand-duke trouble, their chief grievance being the imposition of a Tatar tribute, which they only submitted to in 1259 on the rumour of an impending Tatar invasion. ”

“ The nobility have then returned from their summer homes. The czar is at his palace. The Nevsky Prospect is gay with equipages of every description, from the common sledge to the carriages of the aristocracy, while the Neva, frozen to the thickness of three or four feet, rivals the Nevsky, with its crowds of sledges and skates and lookers-on, its colored lights, its bazaars and booths filled with a laughing crowd till long after the coachmen and horses, who have stood for hours in the cold before the Winter Palace, where a ball was in progress, have gone home. ”

“ Petersburg on the Neva, concluded peace with the Swedes and restored the ancient patrimony of Ijora, he brought Nevski’s bones to the capital, where they repose in the monastery of Alexander Nevski, and are honored at present and will be for the ages to come as relics of a saint and a hero. There is no better saint in the whole Russian calendar, and no greater statesman or warrior in its history than Alexander Nevski. ”

“ Besides, I'm interested to see what the tubes disclose."
Instead of Kazanovitch awaiting us at the laboratory, however, we found Miss Nevsky, haggard and worn. She was a tall, striking girl with more of the Gaul than the Slav in her appearance. There was a slightly sensuous curve to her mouth, but on the whole her face was striking and intellectual. I felt that if she chose she could fascinate a man so that he would dare anything. I never before understood why the Russian police feared the women revolutionists so much. It was because they were themselves, plus every man they could influence. ”

“ Just at the corner of the Ekaterina Canal, under an arc-light, a cordon of armed sailors was drawn across the Nevsky, blocking the way to a crowd of people in column of fours. There were about three or four hundred of them, men in frock coats, well-dressed women, officers-all sorts and conditions of people. Among them we recognised many of the delegates from the Congress, leaders of the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries; Avksentiev, the lean, red-bearded president of the Peasants' Soviets, Sarokin, Kerensky's spokesman, Khintchuk, Abramovitch ”

“ The people in Russia do not object to the cold, uninviting houses. Pleasant days bring thousands into the streets below. The Nevsky Prospect is a splendid street that intersects all the rings of the city. It winds its way between the handsome residences, pierces the Chamber of Commerce and touches the poorest parts of the city. Here all types of Russian life are seen, from the proudest nobility, driving in their auto-cars and handsome carriages, to the poorest peasants living in one of those immense, densely crowded apartment buildings. ”

“ Sometimes on holidays I used to stroll along the sunny side of the Nevsky about four o'clock in the afternoon. Though it was hardly a stroll so much as a series of innumerable miseries, humiliations and resentments; but no doubt that was just what I wanted. I used to wriggle along in a most unseemly fashion, like an eel, continually moving aside to make way for generals, for officers of the guards and the hussars, or for ladies. ”

“ The Tartars under Genghis Khan invaded Russia, plundering towns and cities, murdering [Pg 217] the inhabitants, and ravaging the whole country from the frontiers of Asia to the banks of the Vistula. Famine and pestilence accompanied war; in the year 1230 thirty thousand people died of the plague at Smolensk and forty-two thousand at Novgorod. Alexander Nevski defeated the Swedes and Livonians on the banks of the Neva. He was a prince of Novgorod, and one of the most enlightened of his time. ”

“ The men who began their stroke of treachery in the night, who have suppressed the newspapers, will not keep the country in ignorance long. The country will know the truth! It will appreciate you, Messrs. the Bolsheviki! We shall see!...
As we came down the Nevsky a little after midday the whole street before the Duma building was crowded with people. ”

“ Women and children taunted the patrols of Guards and Cossacks as they rode the streets. Ladies threw open their nice clean rooms for workmen to meet in. The students’ restaurants hummed with liberty. The air sounded with the “Marseillaise.”
“In Russia now, everybody thinks,” said a revolutionist to me, “and where people think, liberty must come.” Thought and liberty were to bring him death in a few weeks, but for the moment it seemed impossible that any reaction could bring the old order back. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not restore that ancient tyranny. ”

“ If a working son on the land is called to the army, a mill hand walks away to take his place. If labour is short at harvest, they go. If the village community is re-dividing the land, they go. The father of the house at home can always send for them, and they go. It comes of that touching passion for the land which is the great motive of the Russian people. Mercilessly robbed as they have been, nothing has yet induced them to believe that land can belong to Tsar, or Prince, or idle proprietor. Land, they say, cannot belong to people who do not work it ”

“ Many of the students, with long hair all on end, wore the Russian tunic, and no one stared. Some girl-students—those indomitable “Kursistki,” on whom the soldiers have no mercy—were dressed in the loose black blouse, fitting closely to the throat and buttoned along the top of the shoulder instead of down the front or back. A few gentler spirits had yielded to a tiny edge of white collar above the black. But the blouse of the violent shone red, all gules from throat to waist, and the more revolutionary a girl is by nature, the thicker is her hair, and the lower it hangs over her eyes and ears. ”

“ The story goes that at the beginning of his poetic career Severyanin took his constitutional on the Nevsky Prospekt wearing a yellow shirtwaist, with green roses painted on his cheeks. He enjoys the distinction of having founded the ego-futurist group in Petrograd, which opposed the cubo-futurist group in Moscow. ”

“ Nevison was born at Pontefract in 1639, and began as a boy by stealing his father’s spoons. When chastised by the schoolmaster for this offence, he bolted with his master’s horse, having first robbed his father’s strong box. After spending some time in London thieving, he went to Flanders and served, not without distinction, in a regiment of English volunteers commanded by the Duke of York. He returned presently to England, and took to the road. Stories are told of him similar to those which made Duval famous. Nevison was on the king’s side, and never robbed Royalists. ”

“ The deep and brilliant river ran silent and empty of traffic, while up its course the Tsar was spirited back to the city which had not known him since Bloody Sunday. All the approaches to the Winter Palace were barred from dawn. The two nearest bridges over the Neva were closed. Troops were drawn across the neighbouring streets. Bodies of variegated Cossacks and Guards, their horses bright with scarlet cloths, stood patient for hours upon the vast and stony square before the palace doors. No common eye might gain a glimpse of the glory to be revealed. ”

“ Government might have left the revolutionists alone, and simply issued a proclamation to the citizens of Moscow: “Keep your streets blocked up if you like. We should have thought it inconvenient, but it really makes no difference to us.” Like most other people, I had no experience of street fighting to guide me, and it was with this sense of uncertainty and bewilderment that I made my way from point to point towards the part of the Tverskaya from which the sound of guns came. To get into the main street itself was impossible, for every approach was guarded by sentries, who cried “Halt!” ”

“ Sees, that no being any bliss can know, But touches some above, and some below; Learns, from this union of the rising whole, The first, last purpose of the human soul; And knows, where faith, law, morals, all began, All end, in love of God, and love of man. For Him alone, hope leads from goal to goal, And opens still, and opens on his soul! ”

“ In every Russian camp there is a quantity of simple gymnastic apparatus, on which the men are required to exercise regularly. Near the end of August the emperor reviews the troops, when sham fights and other kinds of mimic warfare [220] are exhibited. Taking the next train, the party reached St. Petersburg in season for dinner.
In the afternoon, omnibuses were again in demand and the students rode to the Monastery of St. Alexander Nevski, on the river at the end of the Nevski Prospect. This establishment is the seat of the Metropolitan, or Patriarch of St. ”

“ When Nephi was old and realized that he would soon die, he anointed a man to be king and ruler over his people as the people had desired.
The people loved Nephi very much, for he had been their great protector, defending them with Laban's sword, and he had worked for their temporal and spiritual welfare all his life. ”

“ Taught power's due use to people and to kings, Taught nor to slack, nor strain its tender strings, The less, or greater, set so justly true, That touching one must strike the other too; Till jarring interests, of themselves create The according music of a well-mixed state. ”

“ The alibi on that count was triumphantly established. Nevison called his York acquaintances, and the Lord Mayor was appealed to. That civic dignitary readily deposed to the fact that this falsely-accused gentleman was on the York bowling-green on the evening of that day: and in the end, Nevison was acquitted on all charges.
But the highwaymen of that age had a good deal of the braggart in their composition. They could not do a clever thing without taking the world into their confidence; and so, heedless of the danger to his career, Nevison told the story of the ride to delighted ears. ”

“ Wenzel was the son of a small innkeeper at Grodno, but after his father's decease, which occurred when he was a child, his mother had married a Russian trader, who, when she died, carried the boy to Moscow. There Wenzel bade fair to be brought up a Russian; but when a stepmother came home, which took place while he was still a youth, he had returned to his native country, built himself a hut in the woods of Lithuania, and lived a lonely hunter till the time of my story, when he was still a robust, though gray-haired man. ”

“ Mariana laughed, looking a little vexed. "If you wouldn't always repeat everything you hear other people say, it would be wiser," she responded, tartly.
"Such is the reward of virtue," sighed Nevins. "All my life I have been held as responsible for other people's speeches as for my own. And all from a conscientious endeavor to let my neighbors see themselves as others see them—"
Algarcife smiled good-humoredly. "Whatever bad qualities Nevins may possess," he said, "he has at least the courage of his convictions—"
Nevins shrugged his shoulders. ”

“ The failure at Moscow fell like a blight upon all Russia, and hope withered. The revolutionists, certainly, protested that much was gained. They admitted that they had allowed their hand to be forced by the Government. The attempt, they knew, was ill-timed and ill-devised. But they had not intended to win this time; the rising was only a dress rehearsal for the great revolution hereafter. They were teaching the proletariat the methods of street fighting, and after all it was something to have held a large part of the ancient capital for ten days against the Government troops. ”

“ English people are constantly marvelling, with some superiority in their tone, why it is that the Russian revolution has brought to light no man or commanding genius—“no Cromwell,” that is their usual phrase—to direct its energies to victory. Let them search the dungeons and the graves. Perhaps they may find a Cromwell there.
Till quite lately the very noblest of the “politicals” would naturally have been sent to the Schlüsselburg—the old fortress-prison standing on an island where the Ladoga Lake pours out the great stream of the Neva some forty miles above the city. ”

“ Paul, stiffly. But Mr. Nevins was not to be suppressed.
"Then don't display your ignorance of such matters. As for this St. Anthony, he thinks every woman who walks the New York streets a bleached pattern of virtue. I don't believe he'd know a painted Jezebel unless she wore a scarlet letter."
Anthony turned upon him resentfully. "Confound it, Nevins," he said, "I am not a born fool!"
"Only an innocent," retorted Mr. Nevins, complacently.
A resounding rap upon the panels of the door interrupted them. Mr. Nevins rose.
"That's Ardly," he said. "He and I are doing New York to-night." ”

“ Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense, In one close system of benevolence: Happier as kinder, in whate'er degree, And height of bliss but height of charity. God loves from whole to parts: but human soul Must rise from individual to the whole. ”

“ But it was a rare thing for Yevsey to be able to speak with his guardian, for he was seldom alone. Yashka, round as a top, often spun about the place, drowning the blows of the hammer and the crackling of the coals in the furnace with his piercing shouts. In his presence Yevsey did not dare even to look at his uncle.
The smithy stood at the edge of the shallow ravine, at the bottom of which among the osier bushes, Yevsey passed all his leisure time in spring, summer, and autumn. Here it was as peaceful as in the church. ”