The youth had made his mind up, however, and entered the university as
an unmatriculated student. And that was the beginning of his long
acquaintance with the hardships of poverty.

"For three years," said Nekrassov in after life, "I was hungry all day,
and every day. It was not only that I ate bad food and not enough of
that, but some days I did not eat at all. I often went to a certain
restaurant in the Morskaya, where one is allowed to read the paper
without ordering food. You can hold the paper in front of you and nibble
at a piece of bread behind it...."

While sunk in this state of poverty, however, Nekrassov got into touch
with some of the richest and most aristocratic families in St.
Petersburg; for at that time there existed a complete comradeship and
equality among the students, whether their budget consisted of a few
farthings or unlimited wealth. Thus here again Nekrassov was given the
opportunity of studying the contrasts of life.

For several years after his arrival in St. Petersburg the true gifts of
the poet were denied expression. The young man was confronted with a
terrible uphill fight to conquer the means of bare subsistence. He had
no time to devote to the working out of his poems, and it would not have
"paid" him. He was obliged to accept any literary job that was offered
him, and to execute it with a promptitude necessitated by the
requirements of his daily bill of fare. During the first years of his
literary career he wrote an amazing number of prose reviews, essays,
short stories, novels, comedies and tragedies, alphabets and children's
stories, which, put together, would fill thirty or forty volumes. He
also issued a volume of his early poems, but he was so ashamed of them
that he would not put his name upon the fly-leaf. Soon, however, his