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Arriving at Nijni-Novogrod he occupied himself with a trade, and afterwards married the daughter of a rich merchant, who was the grandfather of Gorky on his mother’s side.
Gorky’s maternal grandfather was formerly a common “burlak” (a workman drawing the vessels on the river Volga). By wit and a strong will he became possessed of a fortune, which facts Gorky records in his novel “Tom Gordiejev.” But soon afterwards his grandfather lost the whole of his fortune; while Gorky’s parents themselves remained without a roof. They took their son away from the school, where he had passed only five months, and subsequently apprenticed him to a shoemaker, with whom, he did not however, long remain, and finally the instinct of rambling and the pains of poverty drove him to the Volga, which river, from this time, exerted an influence
