Page:Gorky - Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi.djvu/63

 They ought to be taken care of, cherished, not loaded with the wordy dust of worn-out, soulless words.

He used to ask: "You don't like me?" and one had to answer: "No, I don't."

"You don't love me?"—"No, to-day I don't love you."

In his questions he was merciless, in his answers reserved, as becomes a wise man.

He used to speak with amazing beauty of the past, and particularly of Turgeniev; of Fet always with a good-natured smile and always something amusing, of Nekrassov coldly and sceptically; but of all writers exactly as if they were his children and he, the father, knew all their faults, and—there you are!

He would point out their faults before their merits, and every time he blamed someone it seemed to me that he was giving alms to his listeners because of their poverty; to listen to him then made one feel awkward, one's eyes fell before his sharp little smile and—nothing remained in one's memory.

Once he argued fiercely that G. Y. Uspensky wrote in the Tula language, and had no talent at all. And later I heard him say to Anton Pavlovitch Tchekhov: "He (Uspensky) is a writer! In the power of his sincerity he recalls Dostoevsky, only Dostoevsky went in for politics and coquetted, while Uspensky is more simple and sincere. If he