Page:The argonauts Translated from the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin.djvu/14

vi These all have literature in some form, literature which in respect to the world outside is famous, well known, little known, or unknown.

The Slavs have behind them a history dramatic to the utmost, varied, full of suffering, full also of heroism in endurance or valor.

The present time is momentous for all nations, the future is a tangled riddle; for the Slavs this seems true in a double measure. To involved social problems is added race opposition in the breasts of neighbors, a deep, sullen historic hostility. Hence when a writer of power appears among the Slavs, whether he takes up the past or the present, he has that at hand through which he compels the whole world to listen. Sienkiewicz has shown this, so has Tolstoy, so have Dostoyevski and Gogol.

The present volume gives in translation a book which should be widely read with much pleasure. The winning of money on an immense scale to the neglect of all other objects, to the neglect even of the nearest duties, is the sin of one Argonaut; the utter neglect of money and the proper means of living is the ruin of the other.

Darvid by " iron toil " laid the basis of a splendid structure, but went no farther; he had not the time, he had not the power, perhaps, to build thereon himself, and his wife, to whom he left the task, had not .the character to do so. By neglect of duty Darvid is brought to madness; by neglect of money Kranitski is brought to be a parasite, and when he loses even that position he is supported by a servant.

The right use of wealth, the proper direction of labor, these are supreme questions in our time, and beyond all in America.

Friends have advised Madame Orzeszko to visit this coun-