Page:Short Story Classics (Foreign, Volume 1, Russian, Collier, 1907).djvu/183

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THE SIGNAL


BY VSEVOLOD MIKAILOVITCH GARSHIN

Garshin, who may be said, for purposes of comparison, to belong to the school of Dostoievski, was all his life subject to attacks of melancholia. Despite the careful nursing of his wife, who was a physician, he threw himself over the stairs of his house in St. Petersburg in 1888, and died from the effects. His first important story, "Four Days," appeared in 1876, and was the outcome of his experiences in the Servian and Turkish Wars. It is a powerful but gruesome Verestchagin-like study of the horrors of war, and reminds one of Stephen Crane's "Red Badge of Courage." In 1883 he was appointed Secretary to the Congress of Russian Railroads, and it was probably at that time that he gained the experience which led to the writing of "The Signal."