P.S.--Dear actress, write for the sake of all that’s holy, I am so dull and depressed. I might be in prison and I rage and rage.... YALTA, November 1, 1899. I understand your mood, dear actress, I understand it very well; but yet in your place I would not be so desperately upset. Both the part of Anna [Footnote: In Hauptmann’s “Lonely Lives.”] and the play itself are not worth wasting so much feeling and nerves over. It is an old play. It is already out of date, and there are a great many defects in it; if more than half the performers have not fallen into the right tone, then naturally it is the fault of the play. That’s one thing, and the second is, you must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It’s your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite quietly, to be prepared for mistakes which are inevitable, for failures--in short, to do your job as actress and let other people count the calls before the curtain. To write or to act, and to be conscious at the time that one is not doing the right thing--that is so usual, and for beginners so profitable! The third thing is that the director has telegraphed that the second performance went magnificently, that everyone played splendidly, and that he was completely satisfied.... TO GORKY. YALTA, January 2, 1900. PRECIOUS ALEXEY MAXIMOVITCH, I wish you a happy New Year! How are you getting on? How are you feeling? When are you coming to Yalta? Write fully. I have received the photograph, it is very good; many thanks for it. Thank you, too, for the trouble you have taken in regard to our committee for assisting invalids coming here. Send any money there is or will be to me, or to the executive of the Benevolent Society, no matter which. My story (i.e., “In the Ravine”) has already been sent off to _Zhizn_. Did I tell you that I liked your story “An Orphan” extremely, and sent it to Moscow to first-rate readers? There is a certain Professor Foht in the Medical Faculty in Moscow who reads Slyeptsov capitally. I don’t know a better reader. So I have sent your “Orphan” to him. Did I tell you how much I liked a story in your third volume, “My Travelling Companion”? There is the same strength in it as “In the Steppe.” If I were you, I would take the best things out of your three volumes and republish them in one volume at a rouble--and that would be something really remarkable for vigour and harmony. As it is, everything seems shaken up together in the three volumes; there are no weak things, but it leaves an impression as though the three volumes were not the work of one author but of seven. Scribble me a line or two. TO O. L. KNIPPER. YALTA, January 2, 1900. My greetings, dear actress! Are you angry that I haven’t written for so long? I used to write often, but you didn’t get my letters because our common acquaintance intercepted them in the post.