the first to
inculcate in him a love of reading and of good literature. Next he
became gardener's boy; then tried to get an education at Kazan
University, under the mistaken impression that education was free. To
keep from starving he became assistant in a bakery at three rubles a
month; "the hardest work I ever tried," he says; sawed wood, carried
heavy burdens, peddled apples on the wharf, and tried to commit suicide
out of sheer want and misery.[50] "Konovaloff" and "Men with Pasts"[51]
would seem to represent some of the experiences of this period,
"Konovaloff" being regarded as one of his best stories. Then he went to
Tzaritzyn, where he obtained employment as watchman on a railway, was
called back to Nizhni Novgorod for the conscription, but was not
accepted as a soldier, such "holy" men not being wanted. He became a
peddler of beer, then secretary to a lawyer, who exercised great
influence on his education. But he felt out of place, and in 1890 went
back to Tzaritzyn, then to the Don Province (of the Kazaks), to the
Ukraina and Bessarabia, back along the southern shore of the Crimea to
the Kuban, and thence to the Caucasus. The reader of his inimitable
short stories can trace these peregrinations and the adventures incident
to them. In Tiflis he worked in the railway shops, and in 1892 printed
his first literary effort, "Makar Tchudra," in a local newspaper, the
"Kavkaz." In the following year, in Nizhni Novgorod, he made
acquaintance with Korolenko, to whom he is indebted for getting into
"great literature," and for sympathy and advice. When he published
"Tchelkash," in 1893, his fate was settled. It is regarded as one of the
purest gems of Russian literature. He immediately rose to honor, and all
his writings since that time have appeared in the leading publications.
Moreover, he is the most "fashionable" writer in the country. But he
enjoys something more than mere popularity; he is deeply loved. This is
the result of the young artist's remarkable talent for painting
absolutely living pictures of both persons and things. The
many-sidedness of his genius--for he has more than talent--is shown,
among other things, by the fact that he depicts with equal success
landscapes, _genre_ scenes, portraits of women. His episode of the
singers in "Foma Gordyeeff" (pp. 217-227) is regarded by Russian critics
as fully worthy of being compared with the scenes for which Turgeneff is
renowned. His landscape pictures are so beau