child could receive instruction
gratuitously," but he soon perceived that "it was contrary to custom."
Discouraged, he became a baker's boy with the wages of three rubles
(about $1.50) a month. In the midst of worse fatigue and ruder
privations, he always recalls the bakery of Kazan with peculiar
bitterness; later, in his story, "Twenty-Six and One," he utilized this
painful remembrance: "There were twenty-six of us--twenty-six living
machines, locked up in a damp cellar, where we patted dough from
morning till night, making biscuits and cakes. The windows of our
cellar looked out into a ditch, which was covered with bricks grown
green from dampness, the window frames were obstructed from the outside
by a dense iron netting, and the light of the sun could not peep in
through the panes, which were covered with flour dust. . . ."

Gorky dreamed of the free air. He abandoned the bakery. Always
reading, studying feverishly, drinking with vagrants, expending his
strength in every possible manner, he is one day at work in a saw-mill,
another, 'longshoreman on the quays. . . . In 1888, seized with
despair, he attempted to kill himself. "I was," said he, "as ill as I
could be, and I continued to live to sell apples. . . ." He afterward
became a gate-keeper and later retailed _kvass_ in the streets. A
happy chance brought him to the notice of a lawyer, who interested
himself in him, directed his reading and organized his instruction.
But his restless disposition drew him back to his wandering life; he
traveled over Russia in every direction and tried his hand at every
trade, including, henceforth, that of man of letters.

He began by writing a short story, "Makar Tchoudra," which was
published by a provincial newspaper. It is a rather interesting work,
but its interest lies more, frankly speaking, in what it promises than
in what it actually gives. The subject is rather too suggestive of
certain pieces of fiction dear to the romantic school.

Gorky's appearance in the world of literature dates from 1893. He had
at this time, the acquaintance of the writer Korolenko, and, thanks to
him, soon published "Tchelkache," which met with a resounding success.
Gorky henceforth rejects all traditional methods, and free and
untrammeled devotes himself to frankly and directly interpreting life
as he sees it. As he has, so far, lived only in the society of tramps,
himself a tramp, and one of the most refractory, it has been res