One of the first to write in the style of Dick was M. R. Schaikewitsch,[93] who began his prolific career in 1876, since which time he has brought out more than one hundred books, the most of which are of bulky proportions. At first he was satisfied to tell stories from the life of his immediate surroundings, but soon he aspired to higher things, and began to drag in by the hair scenes and situations of which he did not have the slightest conception. As long as he wrote of what he had himself seen he produced books that, without doing any particular good, were to a certain extent harmless. He certainly has a better talent for telling a story than Dick; his language is also nearer the spoken vernacular, and in the beginning he avoided Germanisms. He might, therefore, have developed into one of the best Jargonists, had he chosen to study, and had he worked less rapidly. In an adaptation of Gogol's 'The Inspector,' he has shown what he might have been had he had any earnest purpose in life. But he lacks entirely Dick's straightforwardness, and writes only to make money. The common people devoured his stories with the same zeal that formerly they showed towards the productions of Dick, and unwittingly they have imbibed a poison which the later authors of a nobler nature, who have the interests of the people at heart, are trying to eradicate. These try to point out directly by accusation, and indirectly by writing better novels, how dangerous and immoral Schaikewitsch is in his books. They go too far in their anxiety to bias the mind of the masses against him when they speak of his proneness to immoral scenes, for in that he is not worse than many of the better class of authors. The deleterious effect is produced not by these, but by his introducing a world to them that does not exist in reality, that gives them a most perverted idea of life, without teaching them any facts worth knowing. In his many historical novels, for example, he uses good sources for the fundamental facts on which he bases his tale, but the men and women are such as could never have existed at the period described and that do not exist now: they are monstrosities of his imagination as they appear to him in his very narrow sphere of experiences. His treatment of these historical themes is not unlike the one given to the stories of Alexander and other ancient works during the Middle Ages. The resemblance is still further increased by his extravagant, romantic conception of love, on which he dwells with special pleasure, to the great joy of his feminine public.