Page:Gorky - Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi.djvu/24



SOMEONE sent him an excellent version of the story of Christ's godson. He read it aloud with pleasure to Suler, Tchekhov—he read amazingly well. He was especially amused by the devils torturing the landowners. There was something which I did not like in that. He cannot be insincere, but, if this be sincere, then it makes it worse.

Then he said:

"How well the peasants compose stories. Everything is simple, the words few, and a great deal of feeling. Real wisdom uses few words; for instance, 'God have mercy on us.'"

Yet the story is a cruel one.

IS interest in me is ethnological. In his eyes I belong to a species not familiar to him—only that.

READ my story " The Bull " to him. He laughed much, and praised my knowledge of "the tricks of the language."

"But your treatment of words is not skilful; all your peasants speak cleverly. In actual life what they say is silly and incoherent, and at first you cannot make out what a peasant wants to say. That is done deliberately; under the silliness of