The amateur of sensations, exquisite, morbid, or brutal, must feel after Nachtasyl that the bottomless pit has been almost plumbed. What further exploitation of woe, of crime, of humanity stripped of its adventitious social trappings, can be made? And this question is put by every generation without in the least stopping the fresh shaking up of the dramatic kaleidoscope. The Gorky play, even if it disgusts at times, at least arouses pity and terror, and thus, according to the classical formula, purges the minds of its spectators. Compared to the drama of lubricity manufactured in Paris and annually exported to America, this little study of a group of outcast men and women is a powerful moral lesson. That it is a play I do not assert, nor could it be put on the boards in America without a storm of critical and public censure. Americans go to the theatre to be amused and not to have their nerves assaulted. Thackeray, in a memorable passage of Vanity Fair, refused to stir those depths of humanity where lurk all manners of evil monsters. Perhaps this refusal was for the great writer an artistic renunciation; perhaps he knew the British public. In our own happy, sun-smitten land, where poverty and vice abound not, where the tramp is only a creation of the comic journals--in America, if such a truth-teller as Gorky arose, we should fall upon him, neck and crop, gag him, and without bothering over the formality of a writ _de lunatico inquirendo_, clap the fellow behind the bars of a madhouse cell. It would serve him right. The ugly cancers of the social system should never be exposed, especially by a candid hand! In art, to tell truths of this kind does not alone shame the devil, but outrages the community. No wonder Emperor William does not grace such performances by his presence. No wonder Gorky is a suspect in Russia. He tells the truth, which in the twentieth century is more dangerous than hammering dynamite! One detail I have forgotten. Old Luka the Pilgrim is asked by Wasjka Pepel where he purposes travelling after he leaves their haunt. To Little Russia, he says, adding that he has heard of a new faith being preached out there, and he will see if there is anything in it. There might be--men search and search for better things.... If God will but give them patience, all will be well! Perhaps this new preacher has found the light! It is a touch unmistakably of Russia, where even the irreligious are not without faith. Gorky, with all his moral anarchy, is as superstitious as a _moujik._ He shakes his fists at the eternal stars and then makes the sign of the cross. It may be for that reason he wrote The Night Refuge. _De profundis ad te clamavi!_ VIII HERMANN SUDERMANN