And it is to this new note that he is indebted for his influence. Gorki, or to give him his real name, Alexei Maximovich Pjeschkov, was born on March 14, 1868, in Nijni Novgorod. His mother Varvara was the daughter of a rich dyer. His father, however, was only a poor upholsterer, and on this account Varvara was disinherited by her father; but she held steadfast to her love. Little Maxim was bereft of his parents at an early age. When he was three he was attacked by the cholera, which at the same time carried off his father. His mother died in his ninth year, after a second marriage, a victim to phthisis. Thus Gorki was left an orphan. His stern grandfather now took charge of him. According to the Russian custom he was early apprenticed to a cobbler. But here misfortune befell him. He scalded himself with boiling water, and the foreman sent him home to his grandfather. Before this he had been to school for a short time; but as he contracted small-pox he had to give up his schooling. And that, to his own satisfaction, was the end of his education. He was no hand at learning. Nor did he find much pleasure in the Psalms in which his grandfather instructed him. As soon as he had recovered from the accident at the shoemaker's, he was placed with a designer and painter of ikons. But "here he could not get on"; his master treated him too harshly, and his pluck failed him. This time he found himself a place, and succeeded in getting on board one of the Volga steamboats as a scullion. And now for the first time he met kindly, good-natured people. The cook Smuriy was delighted with the intelligent lad and tried to impart to him all that he knew himself. He was a great lover of books. And the boy was charmed to find that any one who was good-tempered could have relations with letters. He began to consider a book in a new light, and took pleasure in reading, which he had formerly loathed. The two friends read Gogol and the Legends of the Saints in their leisure hours in a corner of the deck, with the boundless steppes of the Volga before them, lapped by the music of the waves that plashed against the sides of the vessel. In addition, the boy read all that fell into his hands. Along with the true classics he fed his mind upon the works of unknown authors and the play-books hawked about by travelling pedlars.