day after
day through flat, monotonous fields, becomes instinct with dramatic
interest, and its 125 pages seem all too short. And by virtue of the
same attribute we follow with breathless suspense the minute
description of the declining days of a great scientist, who feels his
physical and mental faculties gradually ebbing away. _A Tiresome
Story_, Chekhov calls it; and so it would be without the vitality
conjured into it by the magic touch of this strange genius.

Divination is perhaps a better term than invention. Chekhov divines
the most secret impulses of the soul, scents out what is buried in the
subconscious, and brings it up to the surface. Most writers are
specialists. They know certain strata of society, and when they
venture beyond, their step becomes uncertain. Chekhov's material is
only delimited by humanity. He is equally at home everywhere. The
peasant, the labourer, the merchant, the priest, the professional man,
the scholar, the military officer, and the government functionary,
Gentile or Jew, man, woman, or child--Chekhov is intimate with all of
them. His characters are sharply defined individuals, not types. In
almost all his stories, however short, the men and women and children
who play a part in them come out as clear, distinct personalities.
Ariadne is as vivid a character as Lilly, the heroine of Sudermann's
_Song of Songs_; yet _Ariadne_ is but a single story in a volume of
stories. Who that has read _The Darling_ can ever forget her--the
woman who had no separate existence of her own, but thought the
thoughts, felt the feelings, and spoke the words of the men she loved?
And when there was no man to love any more, she was utterly crushed
until she found a child to take care of and to love; and then she sank
her personality in the boy as she had sunk it before in her husbands
and lover, became a mere reflection of him, and was happy again.

In the compilation of this volume I have been guided by the desire to
give the largest possible representation to the prominent authors of
the Russian short story, and to present specimens characteristic of
each. At the same time the element of interest has been kept in mind;
and in a few instances, as in the case of Korolenko, the selection of
the story was made with a view to its intrinsic merit and striking
qualities rather than as typifying the writer's art. It was, of
course, impossible in the space of one book to exhaust all that is
best. But to my know