level of apathy which lasted until life was again quickened by the high
interests of the Revolution. During these grey years the lonely country
and stagnant provincial towns of Russia buried a peasantry which
was enslaved by want and toil, and an educated upper class which was
enslaved by idleness and tedium. Most of the "Intellectuals," with no
outlet for their energies, were content to forget their ennui in
vodka and card-playing; only the more idealistic gasped for air in the
stifling atmosphere, crying out in despair against life as they saw it,
and looking forward with a pathetic hope to happiness for humanity in
"two or three hundred years." It is the inevitable tragedy of their
existence, and the pitiful humour of their surroundings, that are
portrayed with such insight and sympathy by Anton Tchekoff who is,
perhaps, of modern writers, the dearest to the Russian people.

Anton Tchekoff was born in the old Black Sea port of Taganrog on
January 17, 1860. His grandfather had been a serf; his father married
a merchant's daughter and settled in Taganrog, where, during Anton's
boyhood, he carried on a small and unsuccessful trade in provisions.
The young Tchekoff was soon impressed into the services of the large,
poverty-stricken family, and he spoke regretfully in after years of his
hard-worked childhood. But he was obedient and good-natured, and worked
cheerfully in his father's shop, closely observing the idlers that
assembled there, and gathering the drollest stories, which he would
afterward whisper in class to his laughing schoolfellows. Many were the
punishments which he incurred by this habit, which was incorrigible.

His grandfather had now become manager of an estate near Taganrog, in
the wild steppe country of the Don Cossacks, and here the boy spent his
summers, fishing in the river, and roving about the countryside as brown
as a gipsy, sowing the seeds of that love for nature which he retained