achieved at the cost of a great effort in self-discipline and
self-refinement. In one letter he says he is going to write a story
about the son of a serf--Tchehov was the son of a serf--who 'squeezed
the slave out of himself.' Whether the story was ever written we do not
know, but the process is one to which Tchehov applied himself all his
life long. He waged a war of extermination against the lie in the soul
in himself, and by necessary implication in others also.

He was, thus, in all things a humanist. He faced the universe, but he
did not deny his own soul. There could be for him no antagonism between
science and literature, or science and humanity. They were all pluses;
it was men who quarrelled among themselves. If men would only develop a
little more loving-kindness, things would be better. The first duty of
the artist was to be a decent man.

'Solidarity among young writers is impossible and unnecessary.... We
cannot feel and think in the same way, our aims are different, or we
have no aims whatever, we know each other little or not at all, and
so there is nothing on to which this solidarity could be securely
hooked.... And is there any need for it? No, in order to help a
colleague, to respect his personality and work, to refrain from
gossiping about him, envying him, telling him lies and being
hypocritical, one does not need so much to be a young writer as
simply a man.... Let us be ordinary people, let us treat everybody
alike, and then we shall not need any artificially worked-up
solidarity.'

It seems a simple discipline, this moral and intellectual honesty of
Tchehov's, yet in these days of conceit and coterie his letters strike
us as more than strange. One predominant impression remains: it is that