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writings of Vladimir Korolenko have been likened to "a fresh breeze blowing through the heavy air of a hospital." The hospital is the pessimistic literature of the modern Russian intellectuals; the fresh breeze is the voice of the simple-hearted children of "Mother Russia." These are for the most part tillers of the soil and conquerors of waste places; peasants, pioneers, and Siberian exiles; they often belong to the great class of "the insulted and the injured": they suffer untold hardships, but their heads are unbowed and their hearts are full of courage and the desire for justice. Among them the great writer's early life was spent.

Vladimir Korolenko was born on June 15th, 1853, in Zhitomir, a small town in Southwestern or Little Russia. On his father's side he came of an old Cossack family, his mother was the daughter of a Polish landowner of Zhitomir. The boy's early life was spent amidst picturesque surroundings; he grew up among the Poles, Jews, and light-hearted, dark-eyed peasants that make up the population of Little Russia, and he never lost the poetic love of nature and the wholesome sense of humour that were