tasy.

In order to employ his energies effectively, the young proselyte,
who has embraced the new religion only that he may follow progress,
tries to get a position as a school-teacher. But the apostleship of
learning cannot satisfy his versatile mind: he continues to flit
from one thing to another, like a gypsophilia, driven by the wind
across the entire stretch of the steppes of southern Russia.

Then Tchekoff takes us to a postal station to show us another type
of the "Windswept Grain." This man, like the young convert, is a
dreamer, who puts heart and soul into any new idea that comes along.
He also has spent his life in searching for an activity
corresponding to his ideal. At present, being a widower, he is
obliged to support both himself and his daughter, who, while loving
him devotedly, never ceases to reproach him for the many
inconveniences of their uncertain existence. In the evening, a young
widow from a neighboring province gets off at the place where he and
his daughter are living. When she sees the young girl pouting, she
consoles her by caressing her with the tact peculiar to women. Then,
at tea time, she starts talking to the father. The idealist tells of
his life, and reveals to the young woman the plans that he has made.
The true sympathy with which she listens, and the respectful and
tender feeling that he has for her, inevitably makes the reader
think that fate has not brought these two people together in vain,
and that their lives will be united. This impression persists when
on the next day we find the young woman entering her carriage
assisted by her companion of the evening before. We wait for the
word that will unite this couple. But neither of them pronounces the
all-important phrase. The carriage leaves; the man remains for a
long time motionless as a statue, watching with a mingled feeling of
joy and suffering the distant road and his disappearing happiness,
which, but a moment ago, he seemed to hold in his hand.

After those who insist on always realizing their temporary ideals,
let us take up characters of a new type, those whom destiny has
irredeemably conquered, and who have finally resigned themselves to
their fate.

An example of this type is Sofia Lvovna in "Volodia the Great and
Volodia the Small." Married to a rich colonel, she has no other end
in life. The days pass, tiresome, monotonous, filled only with
visits and driving; the nights are interminable and sad near this
husban