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PREFACE

to him, soon published "Tchelkache" which met with a resounding success. Gorkj henceforth rejects all traditional methods, and free and untrammeled devotes himself to frankly and directly interpreting life as he sees it. As he has, so far, lived only in the society of tramps, himself a tramp, and one of the most refractory, it has been reserved for him to write the poem of vagrancy.

His preference is for the short story. In seven years, he has written thirty, contained in three volumes, which in their expressive brevity sometimes recall Maupassant.

The plot is of the simplest. Sometimes, there are only two personages: an old beggar and his grandson, two workmen, a tramp

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