stry is by the Russian commingled with the
warm breath of a great human sympathy. Maupassant never tells where
his sympathies lie, and you don't know; you only guess. Chekhov does
not tell you where his sympathies lie, either, but you know all the
same; you don't have to guess. And yet Chekhov is as objective as
Maupassant. In the chronicling of facts, conditions, and situations,
in the reproduction of characters, he is scrupulously true, hard, and
inexorable. But without obtruding his personality, he somehow manages
to let you know that he is always present, always at hand. If you
laugh, he is there to laugh with you; if you cry, he is there to shed
a tear with you; if you are horrified, he is horrified, too. It is a
subtle art by which he contrives to make one feel the nearness of
himself for all his objectiveness, so subtle that it defies analysis.
And yet it constitutes one of the great charms of his tales.

Chekhov's works show an astounding resourcefulness and versatility.
There is no monotony, no repetition. Neither in incident nor in
character are any two stories alike. The range of Chekhov's knowledge
of men and things seems to be unlimited, and he is extravagant in the
use of it. Some great idea which many a writer would consider
sufficient to expand into a whole novel he disposes of in a story of a
few pages. Take, for example, _Vanka_, apparently but a mere episode
in the childhood of a nine-year-old boy; while it is really the
tragedy of a whole life in its tempting glimpses into a past
environment and ominous forebodings of the future--all contracted into
the space of four or five pages. Chekhov is lavish with his
inventiveness. Apparently, it cost him no effort to invent.

I have used the word inventiveness for lack of a better name. It
expresses but lamely the peculiar faculty that distinguishes Chekhov.
Chekhov does not really invent. He reveals. He reveals things that no
author before him has revealed. It is as though he possessed a special
organ which enabled him to see, hear and feel things of which we other
mortals did not even dream the existence. Yet when he lays them bare
we know that they are not fictitious, not invented, but as real as the
ordinary familiar facts of life. This faculty of his playing on all
conceivable objects, all conceivable emotions, no matter how
microscopic, endows them with life and a soul. By virtue of this power
_The Steppe_, an uneventful record of peasants travelling