Another natural fact you have noticed is also extremely striking: dreamers express their moods in outbursts of an acute kind, with childish genuineness, like Karelin. Everyone knows that people weep and cry out in their sleep much more often than they do in waking life. This is probably due to the lack of inhibition in sleep and of the impulses which make us conceal things. Forgive me, I so like your story that I am ready to write you a dozen sheets, though I know I can tell you nothing new or good.... I restrain myself and am silent, fearing to bore you and to say something silly. I will say once more that your story is magnificent. The public finds it “vague,” but to a writer who gloats over every line such vagueness is more transparent than holy water.... Hard as I tried I could detect only two small blots, even those are rather farfetched! (1) I think that at the beginning of the story the feeling of cold is soon blunted in the reader and becomes habitual, owing to the frequent repetition of the word “cold,” and (2), the word “glossy” is repeated too often. There is nothing else I could find, and I feel that as one is always feeling the need of refreshing models, “Karelin’s Dream” is a splendid event in my existence as an author. This is why I could not contain myself and ventured to put before you some of my thoughts and impressions. There is little good I can say about myself. I write not what I want to be writing, and I have not enough energy or solitude to write as you advised me.... There are many good subjects jostling in my head--and that is all. I am sustained by hopes of the future, and watch the present slip fruitlessly away. Forgive this long letter, and accept the sincere good wishes of your devoted A. CHEKHOV. TO V. G. KOROLENKO. MOSCOW, January 9, 1888. Following your friendly advice I began writing a story [Footnote: “The Steppe”] for the _Syeverny Vyestnik_. To begin with I have attempted to describe the steppe, the people who live there, and what I have experienced in the steppe. It is a good subject, and I enjoy writing about it, but unfortunately from lack of practice in writing long things, and from fear of making it too rambling, I fall into the opposite extreme: each page turns out a compact whole like a short story, the pictures accumulate, are crowded, and, getting in each other’s way, spoil the impression as a whole. As a result one gets, not a picture in which all the details are merged into one whole like stars in the heavens, but a mere diagram, a dry record of impressions. A writer--you, for instance--will understand me, but the reader will be bored and curse.