s forward
and one step back; but the boatmen are stubborn, they work the oars
unceasingly, and are not afraid of the high waves. The boat goes
on and on. Now she is out of sight, but in half an hour the boatmen
will see the steamer lights distinctly, and within an hour they
will be by the steamer ladder. So it is in life. . . . In the search
for truth man makes two steps forward and one step back. Suffering,
mistakes, and weariness of life thrust them back, but the thirst
for truth and stubborn will drive them on and on. And who knows?
Perhaps they will reach the real truth at last."

"Go--o--od-by--e," shouted Samoylenko.

"There's no sight or sound of them," said the deacon. "Good luck
on the journey!"

It began to spot with rain.

EXCELLENT PEOPLE

ONCE upon a time there lived in Moscow a man called Vladimir
Semyonitch Liadovsky. He took his degree at the university in the
faculty of law and had a post on the board of management of some
railway; but if you had asked him what his work was, he would look
candidly and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his
gold pincenez, and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone:

"My work is literature."

After completing his course at the university, Vladimir Semyonitch
had had a paragraph of theatrical criticism accepted by a newspaper.
From this paragraph he passed on to reviewing, and a year later he
had advanced to writing a weekly article on literary matters for
the same paper. But it does not follow from these facts that he was
an amateur, that his literary work was of an ephemeral, haphazard
character. Whenever I saw his neat spare figure, his high forehead
and long mane of hair, when I listened to his speeches, it always
seemed to me that his writing, quite apart from what and how he
wrote, was something organically part of him, like the beating of
his heart, and that his whole literary programme must have been an
integral part of his brain while he was a baby in his mother's womb.
Even in his walk, his gestures, his manner of shaking off the ash
from his cigarette, I could read this whole programme from A to Z,
with all its claptrap, dulness, and honourable sentiments. He was
a literary man all over when with an inspired face he laid a wreath
on the coffin of some celebrity, or with a grave and solemn face
collected signatures for some address; his passion for making the
acquaintance of distinguished literary men, his faculty for finding