About the book: year / Now the business of literature is to pursue the remnants of serfdom in public life and finish off the concepts generated by it, raising them to their fundamental beginning. Marko Vovchok, in his simple and truthful stories, is almost the first and very skilled fighter in this field. In his latest stories, he does not even try, as in his previous ones, to expose to us mainly what is usually called “abuse of landowner power.” What can we talk about the abuse of something that is bad in itself - the abuse of drunkenness or theft, for example! What can we say about such phenomena that serfdom gave rise to, but without which it could sometimes do without! No, the author now takes the normal position of a peasant from a landowner who does not abuse his right, and meekly, without anger, without bitterness, depicts this sad, joyless situation for us.