finished two parts and the whole remained a mere skeleton. There are many other stories dealing with the Revolution and the revolutionary movement and Kotsyubinsky tries in each to illustrate the psychology of the various participants, as the _Birthday Present_ where the bureaucratic father decides to give his son the pleasure of seeing a hanging but the boy fails to appreciate the honor which is shown him. He interferes, and at the end, the father fears that he will be put out of the service, that the boy will be excluded from the school, while the young Dorya is thinking for his part that he must somehow punish the people responsible for such an outrageous act. Or _The Horses are not to Blame_ gives us the reactions of a family on the very eve of the time when the peasants demand from them their land. Yet perhaps the best stories of Kotsyubinsky are not those that have this kind of content but those where an ordinary man faces some sharp crisis. Thus in _What is written in the Book of Life_, an old peasant woman feeling herself in the way and wearied that death does not come, persuades her son to take her out into the woods to leave her to die. He does so, but at the very moment when she is determined to leave this world, she shows so much interest in the chatter about her neighbors, that the son finally changes his mind and goes back for her. He thinks of all the rites and customs that surround the average funeral, the drinking, and the entertainment and these things done for the good opinion of the neighbors are almost as potent in making him change his mind as is the actual sorrow for the fate of the poor old woman whom death has forgotten. Or there are such stories as the _Letter_ where a young and idealistic boy is brought face to face on his return home with the killing of a little pig for his dinner. The stain of blood separates the family and without knowing why, he loses all contact with them. He is horrified by the church and its services and he looks perfectly calmly at the fighting and the drunken brawls that go on around him for blood will have blood.