as school-mistress, for she would be supported by the peasants.
The peasants themselves are not the miserable and resigned creatures
of Veressayev's earlier stories. Certainly, liberty is not yet a
legal thing in Russia, and the Duma is still an unstable
institution, but the end of absolutism is near, for a great event
has taken place in the empire of the Tsar, namely, this awakening of
the feeling of human dignity, and the spirit of revolt among the
lower strata of the Russian people, which in the past, by its
unconsciousness, formed the granite pedestal of autocracy. The
struggle is terrible, but confidence in final victory redoubles the
energy of the strugglers. A certain Russian was right when he said:
"Formerly, life was formidable, but now it is both formidable and
gay."

In reading the works of Veressayev, Tchekoff, and other painters of
modern Russian society, it is easy to note that not one of them
anticipated this sudden change of scenery on the Russian political
stage, a change which, however, was being prepared in the souls of
the peasants. But let us not reproach them! Russia will always
remain an enigma.

There is a very old story about the son of the peasant Ilya
Murometz. After remaining lazily resting in his "isba" for thirty
years, he suddenly arose, and began to walk with such fury that the
earth trembled. How could these writers conceive the time when this
lazy giant would make up his mind to walk? It is enough to have the
assurance that now, no matter what happens, since he _has_ arisen,
he will not lie down again.

V

MAXIM GORKY

Maxim Gorky is the most original and, after Tolstoy, the most
talented of modern Russian writers. He was born in 1868 or 1869--he
does not know exactly when himself--in a dyer's back shop at Nizhny
Novgorod. His mother, Barbara Kashirina, was the daughter of the
aforementioned dyer; and his father, Maxim Pyeshkov, was an
upholsterer. The child was christened Alexis. His real name, then,
is Alexis Pyeshkov, and Maxim Gorky[6] is only his pseudonym. When
he was four, he lost his father, and three years later, his mother.
He was then taken by his grandfather, who had been a soldier under
Nicholas I, a hard, authoritative, pitiless old man, before whom all
trembled. And it was under his rude tutelage that the child first
began to read. When he was nine, he was sent to work for a
shoemaker, an evil sort of man who maltreated him.

[6] In Russian, Gorky means