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The Man Who Was Afraid by Maksim Gorky
page 45 of 537 (08%)
and the soul with their beauty, as new pictures constantly unfold
themselves.

Everything surrounding them bears the stamp of some kind of
tardiness: all--nature as well as men--live there clumsily,
lazily; but in that laziness there is an odd gracefulness, and it
seems as though beyond the laziness a colossal power were concealed;
an invincible power, but as yet deprived of consciousness, as yet
without any definite desires and aims. And the absence of consciousness
in this half-slumbering life throws shades of sadness over all the
beautiful slope. Submissive patience, silent hope for something new
and more inspiriting are heard even in the cry of the cuckoo, wafted
to the river by the wind from the shore. The melancholy songs sound
as though imploring someone for help. And at times there is in them a
ring of despair. The river answers the songs with sighs. And the tree-
tops shake, lost in meditation. Silence.

Foma spent all day long on the captain's bridge beside his
father. Without uttering a word, he stared wide-eyed at the
endless panorama of the banks, and it seemed to him he was moving
along a broad silver path in those wonderful kingdoms inhabited
by the sorcerers and giants of his familiar fairy-tales. At times
he would load his father with questions about everything that
passed before them. Ignat answered him willingly and concisely,
but the boy was not pleased with his answers; they contained
nothing interesting and intelligible to him, and he did not hear
what he longed to hear. Once he told his father with a sigh:

"Auntie Anfisa knows better than you."

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