telegrams arrived daily from every corner of the immense empire, and the
dying poet, profoundly touched by these tokens of love and sympathy,
said to the literary friends who visited him:

"You see! We wonder all our lives what our readers think of us, whether
they love us and are our friends. We learn in moments like this...."

It was a bright, frosty December day when Nekrassov's coffin was carried
to the grave on the shoulders of friends who had loved and admired him.
The orations delivered above it were full of passionate emotion called
forth by the knowledge that the speakers were expressing not only their
own sentiments, but those of a whole nation.

Nekrassov is dead. But all over Russia young and old repeat and love his
poetry, so full of tenderness and grief and pity for the Russian people
and their endless woe. Quotations from the works of Nekrassov are as
abundant and widely known in Russia as those from Shakespeare in
England, and no work of his is so familiar and so widely quoted as the
national epic, now presented to the English public, _Who can be Happy
in Russia?_

DAVID SOSKICE.




PROLOGUE

The year doesn't matter,
The land's not important,