ons to
St. Petersburg to enter them in the government School of Engineers.
But the healthy Mikhail was pronounced consumptive by the doctor,
while the sickly Feodor was given a certificate of perfect health.
Consequently Mikhail was rejected, and went to the Engineers' School
in Revel, while Feodor, always quiet and reserved, was left lonely in
the St. Petersburg school. Here he remained for three years, studying
well, but devoting a great deal of time to his passionately beloved
literary subjects, and developing a precocious and penetrating
critical judgment on such matters. It is even affirmed that he began
or wrote the first draft of his famous book 'Poor People,' by night,
during this period; though in another account he places its
composition later. After graduating well as ensign in 1841, he studied
for another year, and became an officer with the rank of
sub-lieutenant, and entered on active service, attached to the
draughting department of the Engineers' School, in August 1843.

A little more than a year later he resigned from the service, in order
that he might devote himself wholly to literature. His father had died
in the mean time, and had he possessed any practical talent he might
have lived in comfort on the sums which his guardian sent him. But
throughout his life people seemed to fleece him at will; he lost large
sums at billiards with strangers, and otherwise; he was generous and
careless; in short, he was to the end nearly always in debt, anxiety,
and difficulties. Then came the first important crisis in his life. He
wrote (or re-wrote) 'Poor People'; and said of his state of mind, as
he reckoned up the possible pecuniary results, that he could not sleep
for nights together, and "If my undertaking does not succeed, perhaps
I shall hang myself." The history of that success is famous and
stirring. His only acquaintance in literary circles was his old
comrade D.V. Grigorovitch (also well known as a writer), and to him he
committed the manuscript. His friend took it to the poet and editor
Nekrasoff, in the hope that it might appear in the 'Collection' which
the latter was intending to publish. Dostoevsky was especially afraid
of the noted critic Byelinsky's judgment on it: "He will laugh at my
'Poor People,'" said he; "but I wrote it with passion, almost with
tears."

He spent the evening with a friend, reading with him, as was the
fashion of the time, Gogol's 'Dead Souls,' and returned home at four
o'c