Then he went to Tzaritzyn, where he obtained employment as watchman on a railway, was called back to Nizhni Novgorod for the conscription, but was not accepted as a soldier, such "holy" men not being wanted.

He became a peddler of beer, then secretary to a lawyer, who exercised great influence on his education.

But he felt out of place, and in 1890 went back to Tzaritzyn, then to the Don Province (of the Kazaks), to the Ukraina and Bessarabia, back along the southern shore of the Crimea to the Kuban, and thence to the Caucasus.

The reader of his inimitable short stories can trace these peregrinations and the adventures incident to them.

In Tiflis he worked in the railway shops, and in 1892 printed his first literary effort, "Makar Tchudra," in a local newspaper, the "Kavkaz." In the following year, in Nizhni Novgorod, he made acquaintance with Korolenko, to whom he is indebted for getting into "great literature," and for sympathy and advice.