The Project Gutenberg EBook of Through Russia, by Maxim Gorky

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Title: Through Russia

Author: Maxim Gorky

Posting Date: March 21, 2009 [EBook #2288]
Release Date: August, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH RUSSIA ***

Produced by Martin Adamson. HTML version by Al Haines.

Through Russia

by

Maxim Gorky

Translated by C. J. Hogarth

CONTENTS

THE BIRTH OF A MAN
THE ICEBREAKER
GUBIN
NILUSHKA
THE CEMETERY
ON A RIVER STEAMER
A WOMAN
IN A MOUNTAIN DEFILE
KALININ
THE DEAD MAN

THE BIRTH OF A MAN

The year was the year '92--the year of leanness--the scene a spot
between Sukhum and Otchenchiri, on the river Kodor, a spot so near to
the sea that amid the joyous babble of a sparkling rivulet the ocean's
deep-voiced thunder was plainly distinguishable.

Also, the season being autumn, leaves of wild laurel were glistening
and gyrating on the white foam of the Kodor like a quantity of
mercurial salmon fry. And as I sat on some rocks overlooking the river
there occurred to me the thought that, as likely as not, the cause of
the gulls' and cormorants' fretful cries where the surf lay moaning
behind a belt of trees to the right was that, like myself, they kept
mistaking the leaves for fish, and as often finding themselves
disappointed.

Over my head hung chestnut trees decked with gold; at my feet lay a
mass of chestnut leaves which resembled the amputated palms of human
hands; on the opposite bank, where there waved, tanglewise, the
stripped branches of a hornbeam, an orange-tinted woodpecker was
darting to and fro, as though caught in the mesh of foliage, and, in
company with a troupe of nimble titmice and blue tree-creepers
(visitors from the far-distant North), tapping the bark of the stem
with a black beak, and hunting for insects.

To the left, the tops of the mountains hung fringed with dense, fleecy
clouds of the kind which presages rain; and these clouds were sending
their shadows gliding over slopes green and overgrown with boxwood and
that peculiar species of hollow beech-stump which once came near to
effec