Excerpt from Tales From Gorky: Translated From the Russian With a Biographical Notice of the Author Smurny we are not told but we do know that when he left the steamer to become a gardener's assistant, he pursued his studies whenever and wherever he had the chance. At the age of fifteen, indeed, his thirst for learning induced him to present himself at the gates of the University of Kazan, the great Volgan seminary, where Tolstoi had been educated forty years earlier, in the naive belief that instruction of all sorts was to be had there by anyone for the simple asking. I was mistaken, it appeared, he observes with pathetic sarcasm, so I entered a biscuit factory at three roubles (es) a month. He has related his experiences of this grinding slavery in a subterranean stone cage in that powerful story, twenty-six of Us and one Other. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.