Explore "Verbitzsky's Stratagem" by Edward William Thomson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
What had Alexander Verbitzsky and I done that the secret service of our father, the Czar, should dog us for five months, and in the end drive us to Siberia, whence we have, by the goodness of God, escaped from Holy Russia, our mother? They called us Nihilists -- as if all Nihilists were of one way of thinking!
We did not belong to the Terrorists, -- the section that believes in killing the tyrant or his agents in hope that the hearts of the mighty may be shaken as Pharaoh's was in Egypt long ago. No; we were two students of nineteen years old, belonging to the section of "peasantists," or of Peaceful Education. Its members solemnly devote all their lives to teaching the poor people to read, think, save, avoid _vodka_, and seek quietly for such liberty with order as here in America all enjoy. Was that work a crime in Verbitzsky and me?