PREFACE
It has been said that to know the literature of a country is to know its people, and to know a people is to appreciate them. The wealth of the Russian language, its nuance of expression, its bewildering detail and plentiful use of diminutives, makes its translation into equivalent English especially difficult. But I trust, nevertheless, that this volume of short stories, translations from the Russian, may assist in promoting knowledge in England of Russia and Russians.
Nowhere is there more genuine hospitality than in Russia, and in no other country is there greater or more general kindliness of feeling.
TRANSLATOR.
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