He was very humorous and loved laughter, but he only laughed his charming infectious laugh when somebody else had made a joke: he himself would say the most amusing things without the slightest smile. He delighted in jokes, in absurd nicknames, and in mystifying people.... Even towards the end when he felt a little better his humor was irrepressible. And with what subtle humor he would make one laugh! He would drop a couple of words and wink his eye above his glasses.... His letters too, though their form is perfect, are full of delightful humor. But Chekhov's reserve was shown in a great many other ways which proved the strength of his character. No one ever heard him complain, though no one had more reason to complain. He was one of a large family, which lived in a state of actual want. He had to work for money under conditions which would have extinguished the most fiery inspiration. He lived in a tiny flat, writing at the edge of a table, in the midst of talk and noise with the whole family and often several visitors sitting round him. For many years he was very poor.... Yet he scarcely ever grumbled at his lot. It was not that he asked little of life: on the contrary, he hated what was mean and meager though he was nobly Spartan in the way he lived. For fifteen years he suffered from an exhausting illness which finally killed him, but his readers never knew it. The same could not be said of most writers. Indeed, the manliness with which he bore his sufferings and met his death was admirable. Even at his worst he almost succeeded in hiding his pain. "You are not feeling well, Antosha?" his mother or sister would say, seeing him sitting all day with his eyes shut. "I?" he would answer, quietly, opening the eyes which looked so clear and mild without his glasses. "Oh, it's nothing. I have a little headache." He loved literature passionately, and to talk of writers and to praise Maupassant, Flaubert, or Tolstoy was a great joy to him. He spoke with particular enthusiasm of those just mentioned and also of Lermontov's "Taman." "I cannot understand," he would say, "how a mere boy could have written Taman! Ah, if one had written that and a good comedy--then one would be content to die!" But his talk about literature was very different from the usual shop talked by writers, with its narrowness, and smallness, and petty personal spite. He would only discuss books with people who loved literature above all other arts and were disinterested and pure in their love of it.