From January 1902, I was published in thick magazines ‘Russkaia Mysl’, ‘Miz Bozhiy’, ‘Sovremennyi Mir’, ‘Obrazovanie’, ‘Novyi Put’, ‘Voprosy Zhizni’, ‘Zhurnal dlya Vsekh’, and others. At that time, I lived in a province, where I worked as a teacher in various towns. During the Russo-Japanese War, I was drafted as a warrant officer of the Army reserve and served in several regiments for almost a year and a half.

I used to send my novels and short stories to the places from where I received offers, and I never met any editors or writers until the end of 1906.

The first writer I saw with my own eyes was Alexander Kuprin, who came in the autumn of 1906 to Alushta, where I had just built my writing studio — a small house on the mountain ˂…˃

Kuprin persuaded me (I had already quit teaching at the time) to come to Saint Petersburg in order to work with the publishing house, organized in his ‘Sovremenny Mir’ magazine, and publish my works, which already amounted to three volumes.

In Saint Petersburg, I got to know some of the editors who had been publishing my works for several years, and some writers, though very few, such as Leonid Andreyev, Mikhail Artsybashev and Fyodor Sologub.

Not growing close with any of the writers, not joining any of the literary movements and showing my face in the capitals every so often for a very short time, I continued to lead quite a lonely and isolated life; you could find me either in my studio or traveling around Russia, visiting the most remote corners of the country.