Russia has always been a prison for literature. Oppression had
reached its height during Tchekoff's life. This period was the
moment of suffocation before the storm. If Tchekoff were alive
to-day, now that the tempest has burst forth, his sadness would be
lessened, or it would at least have before it the screen which,
according to Pascal, people wear before their eyes that they may not
see the abyss, on the edge of which they pass their lives. Up to the
present time, the Russians have lacked these screens.

III

VLADIMIR KOROLENKO

"A long time ago, on a dark autumn evening, I was being rowed down a
rather uninteresting Siberian stream. Suddenly, at a bend in the
river, I saw a bright fire burning ahead of us at the foot of some
black mountains. It did not seem far away.

"'Thank Heaven,' I cried with joy, 'we have nearly reached our
stopping-place!'

"The boatsman turned, looked at the fire over his shoulder, and
again grasped the oars with an apathetic gesture:

"'That is still a long way off,' he murmured.

"I did not believe him, for the fire seemed to stand out very clear
against the infinite shadows. However, he was right; we were still
far away.

"Just so those fires, the conquerors of darkness, deceive us into
thinking that they are near, while they only cast their distant,
illusive rays into the night...."

It is with this sober description in "Little Fires" that one of the
last volumes of Korolenko's "Sketches and Stories" opens. This
simple picture makes a warm and clear impression on one's very soul.
It is itself a precious and welcome light.

At times when life is sombre, and when shadows fill the heart, when,
under the blows of despair and anguish, courage finally fails, the
mere existence of some brave spirit suffices to give a new birth to
hope and to rekindle the flame so that the distance is again lighted
up, and we again put our shoulders to the wheel.

Thus for more than thirty years in Russian literature Korolenko has
played the part of one of these clear, alluring lights. He has not
written a single book in which we do not find a fire that warms us
with its caresses even from afar, not one in which we do not feel
the vibration of a loving heart, which dreams of giving light and
joy to all unfortunates, and is confident that if they have not yet
had their equal share, they will surely have it some day.

Korolenko was born in 1853 in Zhitomir, in Little Russia. On his
fathe