Beech Park turret clock, she was enchanted with the monotonous music of her own cold iron tongue; proclaiming herself the best of wives and mothers, because Sir Robert's rent-roll could afford the services of a firstrate steward and butler and house-keeper, and thus insure a well-ordered household; and because her seven substantial children were duly drilled through a daily portion of rice-pudding and spelling-book, and an annual distribution of mumps and measles. All went well at Beech Park; for Lady Lilfield was the "excellent wife" of "a good sort of man!"-Women as They Are.

G

ORKY, MAXIM, a Russian author, whose real name is ALEXEI MAXIMOVITCH PYESHKOFF; born at Nijni Novgorod in 1868. He served from youth at varied employments from ship's cook to lawyer's clerk. He then traveled over a large part of Russia as a tramp, and the varied scenes and persons he saw in his vagabond life among the lowest of the population, furnished him with a storehouse of rich material for his subsequent literary work. He has written several realistic novels depicting the tragic side of life. These include Foma Gordyeeff (1902); Makar Chudra (1903); Tales (1903); and Dillon (1904).

In February, 1905, during the riots at St. Petersburg, Gorky arrayed himself with the socialists and populace as against the Czar and the military, and was placed under arrest charged with insurrection. He was thrown into prison and put in solitary confinement. Gorky turned his imprisonment to good account, having written during his incarceration a new play entitled The Children of the Sun. The drama VOL. XI.-19

deals with the revolutionary movement and is regarded by the author himself as his masterpiece.

Several of Gorky's short tales have been translated into English by C. Alexandroff, who has also written a biography of the young Russian novelist.

THE FIRST KISS.

I.

Once in the late Fall my situation grew decidedly unpleasant. I arrived in Moscow, where I had neither home nor friends, without a copeck.

After selling all parts of my wardrobe that could possibly be spared without police interference I went to the shipyards, which, in Summer time, are always full of life and people, men and women who work for their living and others. At this time, the beginning of November, the neighborhood was deserted— noť a soul to be seen, not a dog or cat even. I tramped about in all directions looking for remnants of food. Indeed, in spots I dug up the wet ground with my feet, hoping against hope to find perhaps some canned goods or a little barrel of salt fish.

Did you ever reflect how much easier it is to satisfy the soul than the body? You tramp the streets — the buildings are not badly put together and, I dare say, well furnished inside, and they afford one food for much interesting thought on architecture, hygiene, economics, etc. You meet hundreds of well and warmly dressed people, marvels of politeness. They make way for the tramp and perform various other acts to ignore the fact of your sorry existence.

Evening came. It began to rain. The north wind was blowing. Abominable wind; it whistled through the empty boxes and shanties and knocked at the closed shutters at the deserted sailors' taverns; it threw great waves on the strand, one toppling over the other. In their haste to get ashore it looked as if the waves were trying to escape from the icy fetters the wind was forg

ing for them. Unspeakable desolation, unfathomable shadows all around, everything and everybody dead or dying. I alone retaining a glimmer of life. I was eighteen then.

I tramped and tramped over the cold, wet ground, singing an anthem to hunger with my chattering teeth. Suddenly as I bent over a box to make sure that nothing eatable escaped me, I saw a female figure, much the worse for rain and mud. The woman, who turned her back upon me, was digging with her bare hands at the side of the goods case.

"What are you doing there?" I asked, squatting down near her. There was an exclamation of surprise, of fear, and she jumped to her feet. When she stood up regarding me with big gray, anxious eyes, I saw a comely lass of my own age, with a face full of sweetness and poetry, but disfigured by three big black marks, one under each eye, another in the centre of the forehead. “Only an artist could do it so symmetrically," I said to myself with the brutal humor of the tramp used to suffer by his own kind and others.

II.

As the girl studied my face and ragged appearance, the look of alarm gradually faded from her eyes. Next she wiped the dirt from her hands, adjusted her calico headcloth, and said:

So you are hungry, too? Well, go on digging. I believe that box there is full of good things. Some drayman must have dropped it. Hurry up, boy, maybe there is sausage in it."

Sausage!" I dug and dug, and still I dug. After resting a bit, my new acquaintance crouched beside me and helped. We worked in silence. Whether I was thinking of the criminal code at the time, of good morals and the sacred rights of property-things we ought to have always in mind, according to wise and good men's notions of the proprieties - I can't tell now. But I do know that I was determined to get at the box's bottom and expected to find it full of sausage, bread, sweetmeats