It is vain for Maximovich Pjeschkov not to term himself _Gorki_, the "Bitter One." He opposes a new Kingdom of Heroes in contrast to the old hero-world, to the great strategists and wholesale butchers. Bluebeard and Toggenburg, Richard Coeur-de-Lion--what are these bloody tyrants for us of to-day? It is impossible to resuscitate them as they were of old. They were,--and have become a form, in which the exuberant and universal Essence of Life no longer embodies itself. But . . . we must have our Heroes still; heroes who master their lives after their own fashion, and who are the conquerors of fate. We cry out for men who are able to transcend the pettiness of every day, who despise it, and calmly live beyond it. And Gorki steps forward with the revelation of the often misrepresented Destitutes--or the homeless and hearthless--who are despised, rejected, and abused. And he makes us know them for heroes, conquerors, adventurers. Not all, indeed, but many of them. The sketch entitled "Creatures that once were Men," which is in a measure introductory to the famous "Doss-house" ("Scenes from the Abysses") is especially illuminating. Here we have the New Romance. Here is no bygone ideal newly decked and dressed out, trimmed up with fresh finery. It is the men of our own time who are described. Whether other nations will accept such heroes in fulfilment of their romantic aspirations may be questioned. It seems very doubtful. The "Doss-house" is for the most part too strong for a provincial public, too agitating, too revolutionary. The Germans, for example, have not the deep religious feeling of the Russian, for whom each individual is a fellow sinner, a brother to be saved. Nor have they as yet attained to that further religious sense which sees in every man a sinless soul, requiring no redemption. To us, therefore, Gorki's "creatures that once were men" appear strange and abnormal types. The principal figure is the ex-captain and present keeper of the shelter, the former owner of a servant's registry and printing works--Aristides Kuvalda. He has failed to regulate his life, and is the leader and boon companion of a strange band. His best friend is a derelict schoolmaster, who earns a very fair income as a newspaper reporter. But what is money to a man of this type? He sallies forth, buys fruit and sweetmeats and good food with half his earnings, collects all the children of the alley in which Kuvalda's refuge is situated, and treats them down by the river with these delicacies. He lends the best part of his remaining funds to his friends, and the rest goes in vodka and his keep at the doss-house. Other wastrels of the same type lodge with Kuvalda. They are all men who have been something. And so Gorki calls them _Bivshiye lyudi_, which may be literally translated "the Men Who Have Been" ("Creatures that once were Men ").