To our taste the story is too discursive and long-winded. The prolonged introductory descriptions, the too exact and minute particularities of external detail, especially in regard to persons, destroy the sharp edge of the impression, and obliterate its characteristics. It would have been clearer with fewer words. Honesty bids us recognise a certain incapacity for self-restraint in Gorki. This, however, is a trifle compared with the vivid, impersonal descriptions of the conduct of the derelicts--illuminated by the heroic deed of Kuvalda, as by an unquenchable star. Kuvalda loses his mainstay when his comrade, the schoolmaster, dies. He is enraged at the brutal treatment meted out to him and to the other inhabitants of the slum by the Officials of the City and the Government. He embroils himself with ill-concealed purpose with his deadly enemy the merchant Petunikov and insults the police. His object is gained. He is beaten, and led away to prison. Unfortunately Gorki endows his characters with too elevated a philosophy. He pours his own wine into their bottles. Vagabonds and tramps do often indeed possess a profound knowledge of life peculiar to themselves, and a store of worldly wisdom. But they express it more unconsciously, more instinctively, less sentimentally, than Gorki. From the artistic point of view this ground-note of pathos is an abiding defect in Gorki. He is lacking in the limpid clarity of sheer light-heartedness. Humour he has indeed. But his humour is bitter as gall, and corrosive as sulphuric acid. "Kain and Artem" may be cited as an instance. Kain is a poor little Jewish pedlar. Artem, the handsome, strong, but corrupt lover of the huckstress, is tended by him when he has been half-killed by envious and revengeful rivals. In return for this nursing, and for his rescue from need and misery, Artem protects the despised and persecuted Kain. But he has grown weary of gratitude--gratitude to the weak being ever a burden to strong men. And the lion drives away the imploring mouse, that saved him once from the nets that held him captive--and falls asleep smiling. [Illustration: The bare-footed brigade on the Volga-quay, and Nijni Novgorod (_After a sketch by Gorki_)] This sombre temperament determines the catastrophe of the other stories. They almost invariably close in the sullen gloom of a wet March evening, when we wonder afresh if the Spring is really coming. In "Creatures that once were Men," Gorki's sinister experience and pathos are essential factors in the accusing symbolism. He relates in the unpretending style of a chronicler how the corpulent citizens reside on the hill-tops, amid well-tended gardens. When it rains the whole refuse of the upper town streams into the slums.