and
ingenuity--at least some of them. In those stories the reader will
meet frequent thoughts about general problems, deep observations of
life--and notwithstanding his idealism, very truthful about spiritual
moods, expressed with an easy and sincere hand. Speaking about
Sienkiewicz's works, no matter how small it may be, one has always the
feeling that one speaks about a known, living in general memory work.
Almost every one of his stories is like a stone thrown in the midst
of a flock of sparrows gathering in the winter time around barns: one
throw arouses at once a flock of winged reminiscences.

The other characteristics of his stories are uncommonness of his
conceptions, masterly compositions, ofttimes artificial. It happens
also that a story has no plot ("From the Diary of a Tutor in Pozman,"
"Bartek the Victor"), no action, almost no matter ("Yamyol"), but the
reader is rewarded by simplicity, rural theme, humoristic pictures
("Comedy of Errors: A Sketch of American Life"), pity for the little
and poor ("Yanko the Musician"), and those qualities make the reader
remember his stories well. It is almost impossible to forget--under
the general impressions--about his striking and standing-out figures
("The Lighthouse Keeper of Aspinwall"), about the individual
impression they leave on our minds. Apparently they are commonplace,
every-day people, but the author's talent puts on them an original
individuality, a particular stamp, which makes one remember them
forever and afterward apply them to the individuals which one meets
in life. No matter how insignificant socially is the figure chosen by
Sienkiewicz for his story, the great talent of the author magnifies
its striking features, not seen by common people, and makes of it a
masterpiece of literary art.

Although we have a popular saying: _Comparaison n'est pas raison_,
one cannot refrain from stating here that this love for the poor, the
little, and the oppressed, brought out so powerfully in Sienkiewicz's
short stories, constitutes a link between him and Francois Coppee, who
is so great a friend of the friendless and the oppressed, those who,
without noise, bear the heaviest chains, the pariahs of our happy and
smiling society. The only difference between the short stories of
these two writers is this, that notwithstanding all the mastercraft of
Coppee's work, one forgets the impressions produced by the reading
of his work--while it is almost impossible to forget