Tolstoi wrote: "Maupassant possessed genius, that gift of attention
revealing in the objects and facts of life properties not perceived by
others; he possessed a beautiful form of expression, uttering clearly,
simply, and with charm what he wished to say; and he possessed also
the merit of sincerity, without which a work of art produces no
effect; that is he did not merely pretend to love or hate, but did
indeed love or hate what he described."

GENERAL REFERENCES

_Inquiries and Opinions_, Brander Matthews.

"A Criticism," _Outlook_, 88:973-976.

"Greatest Short Story Writer that Ever Lived," _Current Literature_,
42:636-638.

COLLATERAL READINGS

_Happiness_ (Odd Number), Guy de Maupassant.

_The Wolf_, Guy de Maupassant.

_La Mere Sauvage_, Guy de Maupassant.

_The Confession_, Guy de Maupassant.

_On the Journey_, Guy de Maupassant.

_The Beggar_, Guy de Maupassant.

_A Ghost_, Guy de Maupassant.

_Little Soldier_, Guy de Maupassant.

_The Wreck_, Guy de Maupassant.

_The Necklace_, Guy de Maupassant.

_A Note of Scarlet_, Ruth Stuart.

_Expiation_, Octave Thanet.

_Fagan_, Rowland Thomas.

_La Grande Breteche_ ("Jessup and Canby"), Honore de Balzac.

THE MAN WHO WAS[1]

_By Rudyard Kipling (1865- )_

Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
till he tucks his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only
when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of Western
peoples, instead of the most westerly of Easterns, that he becomes a
racial anomaly[2] extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows
which side of his nature is going to turn up next.

Dirkovitch was a Russian--a Russian of the Russians, as he said--who
appeared to get his bread by serving the czar as an officer in a
Cossack regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a
name that was never twice the same. He was a handsome young Oriental,
with a taste for wandering through unexplored portions of the earth,
and he arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At least no living
man could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Budukhshan,
Chitral, Beloochistan, Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian
government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he
was to be civilly treated, and shown everything that was to be seen;
so he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from one city to
another till he forgathered with her Majesty's White