o were either
descended from Russian colonists or deported Tartars. But in the
morning and evening a cold grey mist covered everything so thickly
that one could not see a foot ahead.

"My little hut was like a lost island in a boundless ocean. Not a
sound about me.... The minutes, the hours passed, and insensibly the
fatal moment approached when the 'cursed land' pierced me with the
hostility of its freezing cold and its terrible shadows, when the
high mountains covered with black forests rose menacingly before me,
the endless steppes, all lying between me and my country and all
that was dear to me.... Then came the terrible sadness ... which, in
the depths of your heart, suddenly lifts up its sinister head, and
in the terrible silence among the shadows murmurs these words: 'This
is the end of you ... the very end ... you will remain in this tomb
till you die....'

"A low and caressing whine brought me out of my heavy stupor: it was
my friend, Cerberus, my intelligent and faithful dog, who had been
placed as a sentinel near the door. Chilled through and through, he
was asking me what was the matter and why, in such terribly cold
weather, I did not have a fire.

"Whenever I felt that I was going to be beaten in my struggle with
silence and the shadows, I turned to this wholesome expedient,--a
large fire."

In 1885, Korolenko, having returned from Siberia, went to
Nizhny-Novgorod, and in a relatively short space of time wrote a
series of stories which, two years later, were collected in book
form. Afterward, he became the editor of the celebrated St.
Petersburg review, the "Russkoe Bogatsvo,"--a position which he
still holds.

* * * * *

In all of Korolenko's works we distinctly feel the living breath
that inspires the artist, and the ardor of a fervent ideal. His god
is man; his ideal, humanity; his "leitmotiv," the poetry of human
suffering. This intimate connection with all that is human is to
be found in his psychological analysis as well as in his
descriptions of natural phenomena. Both God and nature are in turn
spiritualized and humanized. Korolenko looks at life from a human
standpoint; the world which he describes is made up wholly of men
and exists for them only. He has a very clear philosophy, and a
conscience aware of the duties it has to perform. If he has not
opened up hitherto unknown paths, nor made new roads, he has
himself nevertheless passed through terrible expe