riddle for many
persons: I cannot understand clearly how I conceived him. There was--do
not laugh--something more powerful than the author himself, something
independent of him. I know only this,--there was no preconceived idea in
me then, no "novel with a purpose" in my thought: I wrote naively, as if
I myself wondered at what came of it....

Tell me, on your conscience, whether comparison with Bazaroff could be
an affront to any one. Don't you perceive yourself that he is the most
congenial of all my characters? "A certain fine perfume" is an invention
of the reader's; but I am prepared to admit (and have already admitted
in print in my "Recollections") that I had no right to give our
reactionary mob an opportunity to make of a nickname a name. The author
ought to have sacrificed himself to the citizen; and I therefore
recognize as justified the estrangement of our youth from me, and all
possible reproaches. The question of the time was more important than
artistic truth, and I ought to have known this in advance.

I have only to say once more, wait for my novel, and, until then, do not
be indignant that, in order not to grow unaccustomed to the pen, I write
slight insignificant things. Who knows?--perhaps it may yet be given to
me to fire the hearts of men.

An entertaining writer in the sense of G----wa I shall never be. I would
rather be a stupid writer.

But now--_basta_!

I greet you and press your hand most cordially.

IVAN SERGEWITCH TOURGENEFF.

Old Songs and Sweet Singers.

I cannot sing the old songs now:
It is not that I deem them low,
But that I have forgotten how
They go,

wrote Calverley in his delightful drollery about the advances of old
age. Nevertheless he made a mistake, for old songs cling tenaciously to
the consciousness; and memory, are retained when everything else in
heart and mind has been blurred over, and of all the magic mirrors which
reflect back our lives for us the most effective is a melody linked to
words which moved us in our youth. When an orchestra stops playing its
waltzes and mazourkas of the latest fashion and takes up the strains of
"Kathleen Mavourneen," "Oft in the Stilly Night," or "Robin Adair," one
may readily observe a change come over the older part of the crowd who
listen. The familiar air is like a shell murmuring in their ears sweet,
far-off, imperishable memories of youth, and that special epoch