Availability: Usually ships within 48 hours. Ships from and sold by Babblebooks.com.Running time: 6 hr 53 min
The unabridged classic on MP3 audio, narrated by Anais 9000. Three playback speeds on one disk; etext edition included. Running time: 6.9 hours (slow), 6.3 hours (medium), 5.7 hours (fast).
Sample reading:
Chapter I
"Hold the high way and let thy spirit thee lead
And Truth shal thee deliver, it is no drede."
Slow (1:03:14),
Medium (57:29),
Fast (52:18).
Chapter I
My name is Rudolph Schnaubelt. I threw the bomb which killed
eight policemen and wounded sixty in Chicago in 1886. Now I
lie here in Reichholz, Bavaria, dying of consumption under a false
name, in peace at last.
But it is not about myself I want to write: I am finished. I got chilled
to the heart last winter, and grew steadily worse in those hateful,
broad, white Muenchener streets which are baked by the sun and
swept by the icy air from the Alps. Nature or man will soon deal with
my refuse as they please.
But there is one thing I must do before I go out, one thing I have
promised to do. I must tell the story of the man who spread terror
through America, the greatest man that ever lived, I think; a born
rebel,
murderer and
martyr. If I can give a fair portrait of Louis Lingg,
the Chicago Anarchist, as I knew him, show the body and soul and
mighty purpose of him, I shall have done more for men than when I
threw the bomb. . . .
How am I to tell the story? Is it possible to paint a great man of
action in words; show his cool calculation of forces, his unerring judgment,
and the tiger spring? The best thing I can do is to begin at the
beginning, and tell the tale quite simply and sincerely. "Truth," Lingg
said to me once, "is the skeleton, so to speak, of all great works of art."
Besides, memory is in itself an artist. It all happened long ago, and in
time one forgets the trivial and remembers the important.
It should be easy enough for me to paint this one man's portrait. I
don't mean that I am much of a writer; but I have read some of the
great writers, and know how they picture a man, and any weakness of
mine is more than made up for by the best model a writer ever had.
God! if he could come in here now and look at me with those eyes of
his, and hold out his hands, I'd rise from this bed and be well again;
shake off the cough and sweat and deadly weakness, shake off anything.
He had vitality enough in him to bring the dead to life, passion
enough for a hundred men. . . .
I learned so much from him, so much; even more, strange to say,
since I lost him than when I was with him. In these lonely latter
months I have read a good deal, thought a good deal; and all my reading
has been illumined by sayings of his which suddenly come back to
my mind, and make the dark ways plain. I have often wondered why I
did not appreciate this phrase or that when he used it. But memory
treasured it up, and when the time was ripe, or rather, when I was ripe
for it, I recalled it, and realized its significance; he is the spring of all
my growth.
The worst of it is that I shall have to talk about [...]
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