ls like the sun piercing the clouds. He is, in the true
acceptation of the term, a realist.

The introduction of tramps in literature is the great innovation of
Gorky. The Russian writers first interested themselves in the
cultivated classes of society; then they went as far as the moujik.
The "literature of the moujik," assumed a social importance. It had a
political influence and was not foreign to the abolition of serfdom.

In the story "Malva," Gorky offers us two characteristic types of
peasants who become tramps by insensible degrees; almost without
suspecting it, through the force of circumstances. One of them is
Vassili. When he left the village, he fully intended to return. He
went away to earn a little money for his wife and children. He found
employment in a fishery. Life was easy and joyous. For a while he
sent small sums of money home, but gradually the village and the old
life faded away and became less and less real. He ceased to think of
them. His son Iakov came to seek him and to procure work for himself
for a season. He had the true soul of a peasant.

Later he falls, like the others, under the spell of this easy, free
life, and one feels that Iakov will never more return to the village.

In Gorky's eyes, his work is tainted by a capital vice. It is unsuited
to producing the joy that quickens. Humanity has forgotten joy; what
has he done beyond pitying or rallying suffering? . . . These
reflections haunt him, and this doubt of his beneficent efficacy
imparts extreme sadness to his genius.

IVAN STRANNIK.

CONTENTS

Preface
Twenty-Six and One
Tchelkache
Malva

Twenty-Six and One

BY MAXIME GORKY

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. Our proprietor stopped up
our windows with iron that we might not give his bread to the poor or
to those of our companions who, being out of work, were starving; our
proprietor called us cheats and gave us for our dinner tainted
garbage instead of meat.

It was stifling and narrow in our box of stone under the low, heavy