I had a coward's entry into Russia. There were rumors of riots and disorders, for it was in the year of general strikes and barricades, and as the train moved farther into the interior, the guards who shoveled the snow off the track seemed to me soldiers under arms, standing there to protect us from some infuriated mob. My heart beat with fear at that great and uncouth stranger to me, the Russian people. But as my stay in Russia was prolonged, my kinship with the people grew. The common man appeared to me as a gentle protector and friend. The drivers of the droshkies, the peasants, the workingmen, the conductors on the trains, all became kindly elder brothers, who set one on one's right path or made a friendly remark as one passed along. Every one talked to every one, and although the great interest of the time was the Duma and the political situation, there lurked always a personal understanding and a personal relation behind each discussion. All classes had this attitude, and though the educated had more facts at their resources, for they knew history and the outside world, they had the same outlook and the same manner as the others. I became so much at one with the people around me, that when I left Russia eighteen months later, I felt this time fearful at going away, as if now truly I were going from home into a strange land. As the train came into the Western world, as I found myself in Poland and out again into Austria, I was again alone, a solitary and detached individual who was to stand on guard against the ill-turn which would be given me if I were not watchful. Outside of Russia, the people, "the God-creators," as Gorky calls them, fell apart into millions of various atoms, each struggling for his own life. It was in Russia that I left them still unspoiled, unadventitious, united in a great simplicity of faith and love. It is therefore that the last chapter of this book is distinct and real to me, and I can almost see with my own eyes that vast, surging procession of the people, showing their loving strength and giving of their strength to the weak.
To-day, when all ideals and hopes have gone smash in the hurly-burly of this World War, Gorky has taken his side with his country and is again living in Russia. In the interim, before he can pick up the gauntlet to fight on for a new and better order, he has gone back to his former theme, writing as before of the tramps and "ex-men" and gipsies he knew in his youth, and Russia is pleased with him once more.
ROSE STRUNSKY.
New York, February, 1916.
THE CONFESSION
CHAPTER I
Let me tell you my life; it won't take much of your time—you ought to know it.
I am a weed, a foundling, an illegitimate being. It isn't known to whom I was born, but I was abandoned on the estate of Mr. Loseff in the village of Sokal, in the district of Krasnoglinsk. My mother left me—or perhaps it was some one else—in the landlord's park, on the steps of the little shrine under which the old landlady Loseff lay buried and where I was found by Danil Vialoff, the gardener. He was walking in the park early in the morning, when he saw a child wrapped in rags lie moving on the steps, of the shrine. A smoke-colored cat was walking stealthfully around it.
I lived with Danil until I was four years old, but as he himself had a large family, I fed myself wherever I happened to be, and when I found nothing I whined and whined, then fell asleep hungry.