An elegant alternative history on the topic - what would have happened if the great Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov had not died in 1904, but had lived for another forty years. How would he have accepted the revolution, the Bolsheviks, and Lenin? What influence would he have had on the minds and aspirations of his contemporaries? Note: The first half of the story is edited fragments of Somerset Maugham's essay “The Art of the Story.” Subsequently, “The Second of July...” became the epilogue to the novel “The Ethiopian.”