before the Russian student ceases to be hungry. No skating, no croquet, can
keep the student cheerful and confident on an empty stomach.




MELIHOVO,
March 23, 1895.


I told you that Potapenko was a man very full of life, but you did not
believe me. In the entrails of every Little Russian lie hidden many
treasures. I fancy when our generation grows old, Potapenko will be the
gayest and jolliest old man of us all.

By all means I will be married if you wish it. But on these conditions:
everything must be as it has been hitherto--that is, she must live in
Moscow while I live in the country, and I will come and see her. Happiness
continued from day to day, from morning to morning, I cannot stand. When
every day I am told of the same thing, in the same tone of voice, I become
furious. I am furious, for instance, in the society of S., because he is
very much like a woman ("a clever and responsive woman") and because in his
presence the idea occurs to me that my wife might be like him. I promise
you to be a splendid husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, won't
appear in my sky every day; I shan't write any better for being married....

Mamin-Sibiryak is a very nice fellow and an excellent writer. His last
novel "Bread" is praised; Lyeskov was particularly enthusiastic about it.
There are undoubtedly fine things in his work, and in his more successful
stories the peasants are depicted every bit as well as in "Master and Man."