ime I come out
of the theatre more conservative than I go in.

The sentimental and confiding public may be persuaded that the stage,
even in its present form, is a school; but any one who is familiar with
a school in its true sense will not be caught with that bait. I cannot
say what will happen in fifty or a hundred years, but in its actual
condition the theatre can serve only as an entertainment. But this
entertainment is too costly to be frequently enjoyed. It robs the state
of thousands of healthy and talented young men and women, who, if they
had not devoted themselves to the theatre, might have been good doctors,
farmers, schoolmistresses, officers; it robs the public of the evening
hours--the best time for intellectual work and social intercourse. I say
nothing of the waste of money and the moral damage to the spectator when
he sees murder, fornication, or false witness unsuitably treated on the
stage.

Katya was of an entirely different opinion. She assured me that
the theatre, even in its present condition, was superior to the
lecture-hall, to books, or to anything in the world. The stage was a
power that united in itself all the arts, and actors were missionaries.
No art nor science was capable of producing so strong and so certain an
effect on the soul of man as the stage, and it was with good reason that
an actor of medium quality enjoys greater popularity than the greatest
savant or artist. And no sort of public service could provide such
enjoyment and gratification as the theatre.

And one fine day Katya joined a troupe of actors, and went off, I
believe to Ufa, taking away with her a good supply of money, a store of
rainbow hopes, and the most aristocratic views of her work.

Her first letters on the journey were marvellous. I read them, and was
simply amazed that those small sheets of paper could contain so much
youth, purity of spirit, holy innocence, and at the same time subtle
and apt judgments which would have done credit to a fine mas culine
intellect. It was more like a rapturous paean of praise she sent me than
a mere description of the Volga, the country, the towns she visited, her
companions, her failures and successes; every sentence was fragrant with
that confiding trustfulness I was accustomed to read in her face--and
at the same time there were a great many grammatical mistakes, and there
was scarcely any punctuation at all.

Before six months had passed I received a highly poetical and