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PREFACE
THIS little book is composed of fragmentary notes written by me during the period when I lived in Oleise and Leo Nicolayevitch at Gaspra in the Crimea. They cover the period of Tolstoi's serious illness and of his subsequent recovery. The notes were carelessly jotted down on scraps of paper, and I thought I had lost them, but recently I have found some of them. Then I have also included here an unfinished letter written by me under the influence of the "going away" of Leo Nicolayevitch from Yassnaya Polyana, and of his death. I publish the letter just as it was written at the time, and without correcting a single word. And I do not finish it, for somehow or other this is not possible.
M. Gorky.
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