uld shoot. I said yes, but that I didn't care to go
out shooting because I had nothing but a rotten old one-barreled gun.

"I'll give you a gun," he said. "I've got two in Paris, and I have no
earthly need for both. It's not an expensive gun, but it's a good one.
Next time I come to Russia I'll bring it with me."

I was quite taken aback and thanked him heartily. I was tremendously
delighted at the idea that I was to have a real central-fire gun.

Unfortunately, Turgenieff never came to Russia again. I tried afterward
to buy the gun he had spoken of from his legatees not in the quality of
a central-fire gun, but as Turgenieff's gun; but I did not succeed.

That is all that I can remember about this delightful, naively cordial
man, with the childlike eyes and the childlike laugh, and in the picture
my mind preserves of him the memory of his grandeur melts into the charm
of his good nature and simplicity.

In 1883 my father received from Ivan Sergeyevitch his last farewell
letter, written in pencil on his death-bed, and I remember with what
emotion he read it. And when the news of his death came, my father
would talk of nothing else for several days, and inquired everywhere for
details of his illness and last days.

Apropos of this letter of Turgenieff's, I should like to say that my
father was sincerely annoyed, when he heard applied to himself the
epithet "great writer of the land of Russia," which was taken from this
letter.

He always hated cliches, and he regarded this one as quite absurd.

"Why not 'writer of the land'? I never heard before that a man could
be the writer of a land. People get attached to some nonsensical
expression, and go on repeating it in season and out of season."

I have given extracts above from Turgenieff's letters, which show
the invariable consistency with which he lauded my father's literary
talents. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same of my father's attitude
toward Turgenieff.

In this, too, the want of dispassionateness in his nature revealed
itself. Personal relations prevented him from being objective.

In 1867, apropos of Turgenieff's "Smoke," which had just appeared, he
wrote to Fet:

There is hardly any love of anything in "Smoke" and hardly any poetry.
The only thing it shows love for is light and playful adultery, and
for that reason the poetry of the story is repulsive. ... I am timid in
expressing this opinion, because I cannot form a sober judgment about an
aut