Page:Tales from Gorky (1902).djvu/13



should not give very much for the chances of a poor friendless lad of feeble constitution, vagrant disposition, and an overpowering taste for excitement, who should be turned adrift to shift for himself at an age when most young lads are still safe at school. The fortunes of such a one, if adequately recorded, might, and no doubt would, be infinitely more engrossing, if less edifying, than the humdrum chronicle of the steady clerk or patient mechanic; but a prison, or workhouse infirmary, might safely be predicted as the ultimate and inevitable receptacle of such a piece of human flotsam.

But now let us suppose—a handy supposition, I admit—that our imaginary little nomad were endowed with that illuminating spark we call genius; let us suppose, too, that in late boyhood, or early manhood, he learnt to love letters, and deliberately set about describing his extraordinary experiences, as well as the strange bedfellows whom misery from time to time threw in his way—what piquant, what grotesque pen-and-ink sketches we might expect from such an inspired ragamuffin! It would be Oliver Twist or