In short, for such a man, the mere process of living is happiness.

But it is quite the reverse with the other sort of man; you may plate him with gold, and he will continue to grumble; nothing satisfies him; success in life affords him no pleasure, even if it be perfectly self-evident.

The man simply is incapable of experiencing satisfaction; he is incapable, and that is the end of the matter." And in view of his personal disabilities, it is not remarkable that all his heroes should have belonged to the latter category, in a greater or less degree, some of the incidents narrated being drawn directly from his own experiences.

Such are "The Red Flower," his best story, which presents the hallucinations of a madman, "The Coward," "Night," "Attalea Princeps," and "That Which Never Happened." On the other hand, the following have no personal element: "The Meeting," "The Orderly and the Officer," "The Diary of Soldier Ivanoff," "The Bears," "Nadezhda Nikolaevna," and "Proud Aggei." Another writer who has won some fame, especially by his charming sketches of Siberian life, written during his exile in Siberia, is Grigory Alexandrovitch Matchtet, born in 1852.

These sketches, such as "The Second Truth," "We Have Conquered," "A Worldly Affair," are both true to nature and artistic, and produce a deep impression.
Much more talented and famous is Vladimir Galaktionovitch Korolenko (1853), also the author of fascinating Siberian sketches, and of a more ambitious work, "The Blind Musician." One point to be noted about Korolenko is that he never joined the pessimists, or the party which professed pseudo-peasant tendencies, and followed Count L.N.