counted for his extraordinary
success. It was obvious that, as one of a new and aspiring class, a
class that once more cherished ideal aims and was not content with
actual forms of existence, Gorki, the proletaire and railway-hand,
would not disavow Life, but would affirm it, affirm it with all the
force of his heart and lungs.

[Illustration: Tartar day-labourer (_After a sketch by Gorki_)]

And it is to this new note that he is indebted for his influence.

Gorki, or to give him his real name, Alexei Maximovich Pjeschkov, was
born on March 14, 1868, in Nijni Novgorod. His mother Varvara was the
daughter of a rich dyer. His father, however, was only a poor
upholsterer, and on this account Varvara was disinherited by her
father; but she held steadfast to her love. Little Maxim was bereft of
his parents at an early age. When he was three he was attacked by the
cholera, which at the same time carried off his father. His mother
died in his ninth year, after a second marriage, a victim to phthisis.
Thus Gorki was left an orphan. His stern grandfather now took charge
of him. According to the Russian custom he was early apprenticed to a
cobbler. But here misfortune befell him. He scalded himself with
boiling water, and the foreman sent him home to his grandfather.
Before this he had been to school for a short time; but as he
contracted small-pox he had to give up his schooling. And that, to his
own satisfaction, was the end of his education. He was no hand at
learning. Nor did he find much pleasure in the Psalms in which his
grandfather instructed him.

As soon as he had recovered from the accident at the shoemaker's, he
was placed with a designer and painter of ikons. But "here he could
not get on"; his master treated him too harshly, and his pluck failed
him. This time he found himself a place, and succeeded in getting on
board one of the Volga steamboats as a scullion.

And now for the first time he met kindly, good-natured people. The
cook Smuriy was delighted with the intelligent lad and tried to impart
to him all that he knew himself. He was a great lover of books. And
the boy was charmed to find that any one who was good-tempered could
have relations with letters. He began to consider a book in a new
light, and took pleasure in reading, which he had formerly loathed.
The two friends read Gogol and the Legends of the Saints in their
leisure hours in a corner of the deck, with the boundless stepp