Lisheen or the Test of the Spirits #231122

Therefore, Bob Maxwell was troubled, and that little drama of Russian life did not smooth matters for him. It told of a peasantry sunk in all kinds of ignorance and superstition and vice; of millions on millions of human beings steeped to the lips in everything that could be physically and morally degrading; of a dense, brutal type of humanity, through which there gleam possibilities of nobleness that might satisfy the aspirations of the most ambitious dreamer of a risen and exalted humanity. The dreadful and poignant remorse that seizes the chief actor in this powerful drama, his magnificent exculpation of others, and self-condemnation, reveal depths of con science and feeling that are generally unassociated with a criminal of such magnitude; and the author clearly wants to prove that, deep down beneath the stagnant and squalid surface of peasant life in Russia, there are hidden springs of nobility, that only need a strong hand to spread abroad and sweeten all the land.