she laughed again. And as to the Tsar

'Well, what about him?'

'Did he stop to think from how far I had come? I had n't slept nightsthought over each word that I'd say to him thought how to tell him of our trouble. You may think I live well here I do, too; but you just ask those from the village! I began to tell him about it, as I would tell my father. But he yawned, and all of a sudden he said: "Tell me they say you go against a bear all by yourself?" And he did not give me a chance to tell him anything about the business! Afterward they took me to the police.'

'Why?'

"They asked me what the Tsar was talking with me about. I said, "Go and ask him!" Then their highest general began to stamp his feet at me - I thought he 'd burst right there. But he'd what do I care about such a puppet when I was n't scared of the Tsar himself! I spat and went away. They wanted to send me home the way they do with vagabonds and criminals, only my prince saved me, God send him good health.'

She laughed heartily.

'And as to that general, that copplecrowned sparrow, that painted doll I called him fool just the same. Later on, after he had spoken with the prince, he begged my pardon: "Forgive me, my beauty. It's my duty to see that the peasants don't talk freely with the Emperor. That 's what we ministers are here for." It was then that I had my word. "I don't expect anything else of a bird like you," I said to him. "See how many toys you have pinned upon your breast. It won't be the like of you that will see the truth about the peasants. You don't have those thoughts. Our thoughts come from the soil and the river, from the sea and the clouds in the sky. We walk

upon mother-earth; she is fed with our sweat and our care. And all you have comes from paper that 's all you know and that 's nothing. Our language is the one God our Lord spake to Adam and Eve.""

'What did he say?'

'What could he say? You know, it is n't a simple matter to come to an understanding with plain people. Plain people are like these pines - try to uproot one! - they stand fast. You tell a plain man something from a book, and he will think something of his own about it. Books are many, and we don't know what each one is for. Plain people won't even listen to you. They'll stand still and think, and if you ask them what they think about they 'll never tell.'

I looked upon my hostess. Indeed, the Lord had blessed her. The heroines of old folk-tales were of this kind and build. They are glorified in tales of robber bands with whom the warriors of Prince Vladimir, in the tenth century, had their hands full. Later on such female free warriors used to roam about the Urals and in Siberia, besieging and taxing occasional Tatar villages. They were the predecessors of Pugachov and Stenka Rasin upon the Volga. The frozen Murman Coast has seen many such mighty women go upon the sea in their boats. I knew one myself a certain Seraphima who used to sail all the way between the Kola Peninsula and Novaya Zemlya. They told me later that she did not want to stand for the abuses perpetrated by Norwegian fishermen over the Russians upon the Russian coast, and declared regular war upon them. How she ended I do not know.

This part of the Perm district has seen many runaway convicts from Siberia. They go down the Kosva and Chusovaia rivers to the Kama and

Volga. Long travel usually makes them as mild and harmless as could be desired. They live from alms, and the fishermen usually feed them, down to the very Kama; but beyond the Kama people are different. They are no longer forest fishermen. They are hard, pitiless, a product of a police Tsardom. Village sheriffs proved their loyalty by rough handling of all vagabonds. Now Commissar-government has taken the place of the old one, and things are much the same, and, as far as runaways are concerned, perhaps even

worse.

Not all these fugitives were making their way peacefully, however. One such took it into his head to do away with 'Vasili Vasilich,' for he heard that she was wealthy.

No, he did n't have them. “And a wife?" There was a wife, but since they sent him to Siberia she had been living with another man and living happily. Now he would come to disturb her life and to suffer himself. No use for the man in the whole wide world!' She became thoughtful and her face brightened mildly.

'How much is there of that sadness in the world! No one cares about homeless people — as if they did not exist at all. I cried over him, and he cried, too.'

'Did you let him go then?'

'Why let him go? And where? There's enough evil in the world without him.'

'What did you do to him then?'
'I fed him a good dinner. Gave him

'Beat him back, did you?' I asked. 'I 'm strict. I received him as a guest. Heated my bathhouse for him, and made a bed for him in the little room. You know, I used to receive political ones here, too. I never understood them, only I saw they were good people that took our needs to heart. I even used to help them get through to where they wanted to go: I have friends everywhere. However this one was a murderer and a thief. I never asked him a thing about what he had done before. Who is without sin? No use looking backward. But I caught him as he crept toward me with a knife came in through the window. I tied him up; and then I thought, "What's the use of his wandering in the world if he can't take care of himself?" He told me his life a bitter life. Sorry I was for him. He was an orphan, indeed-wandering about all alone, without a soul in the world. He would be caught, sure as you livehungry and cold as he was. "Have you father and mother?" I asked him.

closet so he would n't run away. I have reliable locks - English make. And the house is of logs - you know, logs that three men could n't clasp. In the morning I gave the poor boy milk and fresh bread- just baked. Then I took him to that knoll above the river where that large pine stands. I even gave him a glass of vodka — as a last thing, so he would feel more cheerful. And then I hanged him.'

I thought my ears deceived me and jumped from my seat. But she sat there, like a saint, with a clear look in her huge gray eyes.

'I was so sorry for the poor fellow. Where could he have gone? Water all around. I am a lonely woman. Should I take him to the police? We here are not used to dealing with authorities. Managing things by ourselves. And up there on the knoll-what could be better? You can see far around from there. Beauty.'

When leaving 'Vasili Vasilich' I asked how much I should pay her. She felt hurt.

'A guest is like an angel of God you know, the ones that came to see Abraham. To make a guest pay is the very last thing to do. You may, if you really want to be friendly, send me a newspaper from town. One that is simple. I love to read about those things that happen in the street.'

My rowboat scraped down the sandy bank. A few beats of the oars - and such a majestic stillness surrounded me that I thought I would choose a spot right there and live in it till my last day. As we passed a turn, a bright white cross gleamed on the knoll in the moonlight.

WHEN among Joseph Conrad's twenty volumes one finds three in succession with the scene of one in the Antilles and of the other two on the west coast of South America, there is a temptation to suspect the writer of some special purpose. It is natural to think that these works are the outcome of a visit, recent or long past, to these countries, and that the facts of the writer's life may readily explain the existence of this American phase in his work. Yet a study of Joseph Conrad's life shows that he has scarcely seen the American Continent, and that events more complex than those of a simple sojourn have led him to these powerful presentations so strikingly original and so true to life. Interest is increasing in this strange circumstance. Few though Conrad's American novels may be, in comparison with his numerous other works, one can find in them, if not all the abundance of his genius, at least its variety and its power.

It is long since the name and the work of Joseph Conrad passed beyond the lands where English is spoken. In

Scandinavia, in France, in Germany, in Poland, in Holland, translations of his complete works are in progress. He is one of those rare modern writers whose merits are sufficiently vivid and deeply human enough to exercise their influence through all Europe, and there is no mind which, through the circumstances of its development or the sum of its convictions, represents with a firmer, simpler grasp the mind of the Occident.

Joseph Conrad's introduction to the career of letters has been so remarkable that it is a matter of no small importance to be acquainted with it. Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski, who is universally known to-day as Joseph Conrad, was born in Southern Poland on December 6, 1857, of a Polish family of ancient lineage. Scarcely had his family moved to Warsaw when his father, a man of high education and a devoted patriot, found himself entangled in the Polish revolt of 1862 against the Russian oppression, and after the failure of this insurrection he was banished to Vologda. His wife and son followed

him into exile. The mother of the future writer died there soon afterward in 1865, and the little boy was entrusted to her brother in the Ukraine. In 1868 the Russian Government, having been informed that the health of the exile was in danger, granted him a passport to return. He established himself at Krakow, where his young son joined him. Within less than a year Joseph Conrad was an orphan.

Under the guardianship of an uncle and a young teacher who showed a keen and intelligent affection for him, the boy carried on his studies at Krakow. He was not yet thirteen when a taste began to develop in him which was at first regarded as a mere fancy due to his reading, an idea which no one thought was more than a whimsical boy's notion. This young Pole - born and brought up in a country without seacoasts, widely separated from any familiarity with the sea, belonging to a family that had never had anything to do with maritime affairs-announced to his relatives that he intended to be a sailor. Every influence was brought to bear to cure him of the idea, but before the firmness of an intention which took on the irresistible strength of a true vocation there was nothing to do but yield.

In 1874, after a trip to Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, where at Venice he saw the sea and a ship for the first time, Joseph Conrad went to Marseilles to embark as an apprentice seaman on board a sailing ship plying between Marseilles and the Antilles. Three years later he sailed through the Mediterranean and part of the Atlantic Ocean, in this way accustoming himself to the rough toil of the sea and adapting himself to its demands. Although the sea never lost a particle of its charm for him, he learned to struggle against it, and to hate it, while each day his love grew for ships and their crews because

of their mutual faithfulness to each other in their constant struggle against the pitiless rigor of the elements.

For three years or more he was learning seamanship, sailing in French vessels. It was not until May, 1878, at the age of nearly twenty-one, that he touched the coast of England, at Lowestoft, for the first time, knowing scarcely a single word of the language. In the autumn of that same year he signed as a mariner on an English sailing vessel, making the voyage to Australia. A year later he had not merely acquired the necessary professional skill, but he had also mastered the English language so well that he could pass as second officer, and he secured his captain's certificate in the course of the year 1884.

From 1878 to 1894 he never ceased his voyages, especially to the Far East and through the Malayan Archipelago, constantly undergoing the rough demands of his calling and the responsibilities, often very heavy, of his rank. An expedition to the Congo, in which he took part in 1890, affected his health so seriously that in 1894 he was compelled to give up the sea as a career, a step which he thought at the time would be only temporary.

Traveling as he had, from youth to maturity, amid surroundings far different from those of his childhood, thrown into contact with various civilizations and contemplating their conflicts, opening his eyes each day upon spectacles of calm or magnificent grandeur, or of inevitable horror, many a strong impression had not failed to stamp itself upon his mind. Yet, never taking notes, and, though a great reader, thinking little of books, Captain Conrad had sailed for some twenty years without the least thought of creating literature. Then in 1889, struck by a singular personality he had run across in the course of his voyages,

who had revealed to him a remarkable case of the disintegration of the Western mind in the Far East, he undertook-for his own amusement, expecting only to fill in the time that he had to pass idly ashore between two voyages to transcribe the thoughts and images that this meeting and the distant land where it had taken place had produced in him. In his book, A Personal Record, he has told with a charming verve and irony peculiarly his own how he lugged this manuscript about with him from 1888 to 1894, devoting himself rather indifferently to its revision.

In 1894, when he was busy hunting for employment ashore, resigned with a very bad grace to the prospect of never going to sea again, he had the idea one evening of sending the manuscript of Almayer's Folly to the London publisher, Fisher Unwin. By good luck the work fell into the hands of Edward Garnett, then the young and penetrating reader of this publishing house. From the beginning he was struck by the peculiar quality of the work, by the talent that the writer showed, by an originality which was not merely of the surface, by an evocative capacity, a faculty of making the reader see, which bore testimony to a novelist by nature, a writer born, an artist already aware of the resources and demands of his art and his temperament. His surprise was still greater when a few days later he met the author of the book and found himself before a veteran sea captain of long experience, an author who was not an Englishman by birth and who had only recently been naturalized.

From that day, the second life of Joseph Conrad began. His second vocation had the same certainty, the same force, as the first, drawing from his sea career the material of his creative work, fixing sensations and yet submerging them to such a point that

- as he himself has often said to me, recalling in familiar talks his memories of his life at sea — ‘All that sometimes seems no more than a dream, as if somebody else had lived through it.'

From 1895, with the exception of some time spent in Brittany, in Montpellier, in Corsica, at Geneva, at Capri, and at the moment when the war broke out in Poland, Joseph Conrad settled down in Kent, leading an existence quite as sedentary as his previous life had been wandering, devoting himself passionately to the creation of a work which, to our good fortune, is still going on, and which stands to-day, not only as one of the most remarkable accomplishments in English literature, but also as a creation of universal significance, which in its power, richness, and penetration, its qualities of vision and of style, equals the work of a Flaubert or a Turguenev.

Since his first book, Almayer's Folly, Joseph Conrad has published no less than ten novels and about twenty short stories, bound in six volumes, two volumes of recollections, and two novels in collaboration with Ford Madox Hueffer.

With too much readiness, Joseph Conrad has been regarded, especially in England, as nothing more than a writer of sea stories. It is true that we owe to him that admirable collection called the Mirror of the Sea, a book which has no precedent in literature and in which the thoughts and feelings of the sailor are gathered together in a form which unites a sense of real lyric intensity with unfailing beauty. It is also true that we owe to Conrad's seafaring life and its literary reproduction some of his most admirable works: The Nigger of the Narcissus, that peculiar story of a voyage from Bombay to London - a poignant book, the most profoundly human that has ever been written on the life and the soul of the sailor, of