Leonid Andreev is at this moment regarded by many Russians as the foremost literary artist among the younger school of writers. He was born at Orel, the birthplace of Turgenev, in 1871, and is thus only two years younger than Gorki. He began life as a lawyer at Moscow, but according to his own statement, he had only one case, and lost that. He very soon abandoned law for literature, as so many writers have done, and his rise has been exceedingly rapid. He was appointed police-court reporter on the Moscow "Courier," where he went through the daily drudgery without attracting any attention. But when he published in this newspaper a short story, Gorki sent a telegram to the office, demanding to know the real name of the writer who signed himself Leonid Andreev. He was informed that the signature was no pseudonym. This notice from Gorki gave the young man immediate prominence. Not long after, he published another story in the Russian periodical "Life;" into the editor's rooms dashed the famous critic Merezhkovski, who enquired whether it was Chekhov or Gorki that had selected this assumed name. Andreev himself says that he has learned much from Tolstoi, the great Tolstoi of the sixties and seventies, also from Nietzsche, whom he reads with enthusiasm, and whose most characteristic book, "Also Sprach Zarathustra," he translated into Russian. He has read Poe with profit, but he testifies that his greatest teacher in composition is the Bible. In a letter to a young admirer, he wrote: "I thank you for your kind dedication. . . . I note that in one place you write about the Bible. Yes, that is the best teacher of all--the Bible."* *Most of the biographical information in this paragraph I have taken from an interesting article in "The Independent" for 29 July 1909, by Ivan Lavretski. Andreev has the gift of admiration, and loves to render homage where homage is due, having dedicated his first book to Gorki, and his story of "The Seven Who Were Hanged" to Tolstoi. His style, while marked by the typical yet always startling Russian simplicity, is nevertheless entirely his own, and all his tales and plays are stamped by powerful individuality. He is fast becoming an international celebrity. His terrible picture of war, "The Red Laugh," has been translated into German, French, and English, two of his dramas, "Anathema" and "To the Stars," have been published in America, and other of his short stories are known everywhere in Germany.