He refused to march under any political banner--a
thing, let it be remembered, of almost inconceivable courage in his
country; he submitted to savagely hostile attacks for his political
indifference; yet he spent more of his life and energy in doing active
good to his neighbour than all the high-souled professors of liberalism
and social reform. He undertook an almost superhuman journey to Sahalin
in 1890 to investigate the condition of the prisoners there; in 1892 he
spent the best part of a year as a doctor devising preventive measures
against the cholera in the country district where he lived, and,
although he had no time for the writing on which his living depended, he
refused the government pay in order to preserve his own independence of
action; in another year he was the leading spirit in organising
practical measures of famine relief about Nizhni-Novgorod. From his
childhood to his death, moreover, he was the sole support of his family.
Measured by the standards of Christian morality, Tchehov was wholly a
saint.
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