“Bad,” he said, almost sternly, in his low, deep voice. “One must work … without sparing oneself … all one's life.”
And, after a pause, without any visible connection, he added:
“When one has written a story I believe that one ought to strike out both the beginning and the end. That is where we novelists are most inclined to lie. And one must write shortly—as shortly as possible.”
Then we spoke of poetry, and he suddenly became excited. “Tell me, do you care for Alexey Tolstoy's poems? To me he is an actor. When he was a boy he put on evening dress and he has never taken it off.”
After these stray meetings in which we touched upon some of Chekhov's favorite topics—as that one must work “without sparing oneself” and must write simply and without the shadow of falsehood—we did not meet till the spring of '99. I came to Yalta for a few days, and one evening I met Chekhov on the quay.
“Why don't you come to see me?” were his first words. “Be sure to come to-morrow.”
“At what time?” I asked.
“In the morning about eight.”
And seeing perhaps that I looked surprised he added:
“We get up early. Don't you?”