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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales, by Leo Tolstoy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales
+
+Author: Leo Tolstoy
+
+Translator: Leo Wiener
+
+Release Date: November 15, 2011 [eBook #38025]
+[Most recently updated: October 28, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Anna Hall, Albert László, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FABLES FOR CHILDREN, STORIES FOR CHILDREN, NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES, POPULAR EDUCATION, DECEMBRISTS, MORAL TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Tanscriber's note:
+
+      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+      A letter with a breve is indicated by [)<letter>].
+
+
+
+
+
+The Complete Works of Count Tolstóy
+Volume XII.
+
+
+[Illustration: "The clerk beat Sidor's face until the blood came"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko_]
+
+
+FABLES FOR CHILDREN
+STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES
+POPULAR EDUCATION
+DECEMBRISTS
+MORAL TALES
+
+by
+
+COUNT LEV N. TOLSTÓY
+
+Translated from the Original Russian and Edited by
+
+LEO WIENER
+
+Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Boston
+Dana Estes & Company
+Publishers
+
+Edition De Luxe
+Limited to One Thousand Copies,
+of which this is
+No. 411
+
+_Copyright, 1904_
+By Dana Estes & Company
+
+_Entered at Stationers' Hall_
+
+Colonial Press: Electrotyped and Printed by
+C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                PAGE
+  FABLES FOR CHILDREN
+  Æsop's Fables                                    3
+  Adaptations and Imitations of Hindoo Fables     19
+
+  STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+  The Foundling                                   39
+  The Peasant and the Cucumbers                   40
+  The Fire                                        41
+  The Old Horse                                   43
+  How I Learned to Ride                           46
+  The Willow                                      49
+  Búlka                                           51
+  Búlka and the Wild Boar                         53
+  Pheasants                                       56
+  Milton and Búlka                                58
+  The Turtle                                      60
+  Búlka and the Wolf                              62
+  What Happened to Búlka in Pyatigórsk            65
+  Búlka's and Milton's End                        68
+  The Gray Hare                                   70
+  God Sees the Truth, but Does Not Tell at Once   72
+  Hunting Worse than Slavery                      82
+  A Prisoner of the Caucasus                      92
+  Ermák                                          124
+
+  NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES
+  Stories From Physics:
+    The Magnet                                   137
+    Moisture                                     140
+    The Different Connection of Particles        142
+    Crystals                                     143
+    Injurious Air                                146
+    How Balloons Are Made                        150
+    Galvanism                                    152
+    The Sun's Heat                               156
+  Stories From Zoology:
+    The Owl and the Hare                         159
+    How the Wolves Teach Their Whelps            160
+    Hares and Wolves                             161
+    The Scent                                    162
+    Touch and Sight                              164
+    The Silkworm                                 165
+  Stories From Botany:
+    The Apple-Tree                               170
+    The Old Poplar                               172
+    The Bird-Cherry                              174
+    How Trees Walk                               176
+
+  The Decembrists                                181
+  On Popular Education                           251
+  What Men Live By                               327
+  The Three Hermits                              363
+  Neglect the Fire                               375
+  The Candle                                     395
+  The Two Old Men                                409
+  Where Love Is, There God Is Also               445
+
+  TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK ILLUSTRATIONS
+  The Fiend Persists, but God Resists            463
+  Little Girls Wiser than Old People             466
+  The Two Brothers and the Gold                  469
+  Ilyás                                          472
+
+  A Fairy-Tale about Iván the Fool               481
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                PAGE
+  "The clerk beat Sídor's face until the blood
+  came" (_The Candle, see page 397_)           _Frontispiece_
+  "'Whose knife is this?'"                        73
+  "'God will forgive you'"                        81
+  "They rode off to the mountains"                96
+  "'Whither are you bound?'"                     332
+  "But the candle was still burning"             403
+
+
+
+
+FABLES FOR CHILDREN
+
+1869-1872
+
+
+
+
+FABLES FOR CHILDREN
+
+
+
+
+I. ÆSOP'S FABLES
+
+
+THE ANT AND THE DOVE
+
+An Ant came down to the brook: he wanted to drink. A wave washed him
+down and almost drowned him. A Dove was carrying a branch; she saw the
+Ant was drowning, so she cast the branch down to him in the brook. The
+Ant got up on the branch and was saved. Then a hunter placed a snare for
+the Dove, and was on the point of drawing it in. The Ant crawled up to
+the hunter and bit him on the leg; the hunter groaned and dropped the
+snare. The Dove fluttered upwards and flew away.
+
+
+THE TURTLE AND THE EAGLE
+
+A Turtle asked an Eagle to teach her how to fly. The Eagle advised her
+not to try, as she was not fit for it; but she insisted. The Eagle took
+her in his claws, raised her up, and dropped her: she fell on stones and
+broke to pieces.
+
+
+THE POLECAT
+
+A Polecat entered a smithy and began to lick the filings. Blood began to
+flow from the Polecat's mouth, but he was glad and continued to lick; he
+thought that the blood was coming from the iron, and lost his whole
+tongue.
+
+
+THE LION AND THE MOUSE
+
+A Lion was sleeping. A Mouse ran over his body. He awoke and caught her.
+The Mouse besought him; she said:
+
+"Let me go, and I will do you a favour!"
+
+The Lion laughed at the Mouse for promising him a favour, and let her
+go.
+
+Then the hunters caught the Lion and tied him with a rope to a tree. The
+Mouse heard the Lion's roar, ran up, gnawed the rope through, and said:
+
+"Do you remember? You laughed, not thinking that I could repay, but now
+you see that a favour may come also from a Mouse."
+
+
+THE LIAR
+
+A Boy was watching the sheep and, pretending that he saw a wolf, he
+began to cry:
+
+"Help! A wolf! A wolf!"
+
+The peasants came running up and saw that it was not so. After doing
+this for a second and a third time, it happened that a wolf came indeed.
+The Boy began to cry:
+
+"Come, come, quickly, a wolf!"
+
+The peasants thought that he was deceiving them as usual, and paid no
+attention to him. The wolf saw there was no reason to be afraid: he
+leisurely killed the whole flock.
+
+
+THE ASS AND THE HORSE
+
+A man had an Ass and a Horse. They were walking on the road; the Ass
+said to the Horse:
+
+"It is heavy for me.--I shall not be able to carry it all; take at least
+a part of my load."
+
+The Horse paid no attention to him. The Ass fell down from overstraining
+himself, and died. When the master transferred the Ass's load on the
+Horse, and added the Ass's hide, the Horse began to complain:
+
+"Oh, woe to me, poor one, woe to me, unfortunate Horse! I did not want
+to help him even a little, and now I have to carry everything, and his
+hide, too."
+
+
+THE JACKDAW AND THE DOVES
+
+A Jackdaw saw that the Doves were well fed,--so she painted herself
+white and flew into the dove-cot. The Doves thought at first that she
+was a dove like them, and let her in. But the Jackdaw forgot herself and
+croaked in jackdaw fashion. Then the Doves began to pick at her and
+drove her away. The Jackdaw flew back to her friends, but the jackdaws
+were frightened at her, seeing her white, and themselves drove her away.
+
+
+THE WOMAN AND THE HEN
+
+A Hen laid an egg each day. The Mistress thought that if she gave her
+more to eat, she would lay twice as much. So she did. The Hen grew fat
+and stopped laying.
+
+
+THE LION, THE BEAR, AND THE FOX
+
+A Lion and a Bear procured some meat and began to fight for it. The Bear
+did not want to give in, nor did the Lion yield. They fought for so long
+a time that they both grew feeble and lay down. A Fox saw the meat
+between them; she grabbed it and ran away with it.
+
+
+THE DOG, THE COCK, AND THE FOX
+
+A Dog and a Cock went to travel together. At night the Cock fell asleep
+in a tree, and the Dog fixed a place for himself between the roots of
+that tree. When the time came, the Cock began to crow. A Fox heard the
+Cock, ran up to the tree, and began to beg the Cock to come down, as she
+wanted to give him her respects for such a fine voice.
+
+The Cock said:
+
+"You must first wake up the janitor,--he is sleeping between the roots.
+Let him open up, and I will come down."
+
+The Fox began to look for the janitor, and started yelping. The Dog
+sprang out at once and killed the Fox.
+
+
+THE HORSE AND THE GROOM
+
+A Groom stole the Horse's oats, and sold them, but he cleaned the Horse
+each day. Said the Horse:
+
+"If you really wish me to be in good condition, do not sell my oats."
+
+
+THE FROG AND THE LION
+
+A Lion heard a Frog croaking, and thought it was a large beast that was
+calling so loud. He walked up, and saw a Frog coming out of the swamp.
+The Lion crushed her with his paw and said:
+
+"There is nothing to look at, and yet I was frightened."
+
+
+THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE ANTS
+
+In the fall the wheat of the Ants got wet; they were drying it. A hungry
+Grasshopper asked them for something to eat. The Ants said:
+
+"Why did you not gather food during the summer?"
+
+She said:
+
+"I had no time: I sang songs."
+
+They laughed, and said:
+
+"If you sang in the summer, dance in the winter!"
+
+
+THE HEN AND THE GOLDEN EGGS
+
+A master had a Hen which laid golden eggs. He wanted more gold at once,
+and so killed the Hen (he thought that inside of her there was a large
+lump of gold), but she was just like any other hen.
+
+
+THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN
+
+An Ass put on a lion's skin, and all thought it was a lion. Men and
+animals ran away from him. A wind sprang up, and the skin was blown
+aside, and the Ass could be seen. People ran up and beat the Ass.
+
+
+THE HEN AND THE SWALLOW
+
+A Hen found some snake's eggs and began to sit on them. A Swallow saw it
+and said:
+
+"Stupid one! You will hatch them out, and, when they grow up, you will
+be the first one to suffer from them."
+
+
+THE STAG AND THE FAWN
+
+A Fawn once said to a Stag:
+
+"Father, you are larger and fleeter than the dogs, and, besides, you
+have huge antlers for defence; why, then, are you so afraid of the
+dogs?"
+
+The Stag laughed, and said:
+
+"You speak the truth, my child. The trouble is,--the moment I hear the
+dogs bark, I run before I have time to think."
+
+
+THE FOX AND THE GRAPES
+
+A Fox saw some ripe bunches of grapes hanging high, and tried to get at
+them, in order to eat them.
+
+She tried hard, but could not get them. To drown her annoyance she said:
+
+"They are still sour."
+
+
+THE MAIDS AND THE COCK
+
+A mistress used to wake the Maids at night and, as soon as the cocks
+crowed, put them to work. The Maids found that hard, and decided to kill
+the Cock, so that the mistress should not be wakened. They killed him,
+but now they suffered more than ever: the mistress was afraid that she
+would sleep past the time and so began to wake the Maids earlier.
+
+
+THE FISHERMAN AND THE FISH
+
+A Fisherman caught a Fish. Said the Fish:
+
+"Fisherman, let me go into the water; you see I am small: you will have
+little profit of me. If you let me go, I shall grow up, and then you
+will catch me when it will be worth while."
+
+But the Fisherman said:
+
+"A fool would be he who should wait for greater profit, and let the
+lesser slip out of his hands."
+
+
+THE FOX AND THE GOAT
+
+A Goat wanted to drink. He went down the incline to the well, drank his
+fill, and gained in weight. He started to get out, but could not do so.
+He began to bleat. A Fox saw him and said:
+
+"That's it, stupid one! If you had as much sense in your head as there
+are hairs in your beard, you would have thought of how to get out before
+you climbed down."
+
+
+THE DOG AND HER SHADOW
+
+A Dog was crossing the river over a plank, carrying a piece of meat in
+her teeth. She saw herself in the water and thought that another dog
+was carrying a piece of meat. She dropped her piece and dashed forward
+to take away what the other dog had: the other meat was gone, and her
+own was carried away by the stream.
+
+And thus the Dog was left without anything.
+
+
+THE CRANE AND THE STORK
+
+A peasant put out his nets to catch the Cranes for tramping down his
+field. In the nets were caught the Cranes, and with them one Stork.
+
+The Stork said to the peasant:
+
+"Let me go! I am not a Crane, but a Stork; we are most honoured birds; I
+live on your father's house. You can see by my feathers that I am not a
+Crane."
+
+The peasant said:
+
+"With the Cranes I have caught you, and with them will I kill you."
+
+
+THE GARDENER AND HIS SONS
+
+A Gardener wanted his Sons to get used to gardening. As he was dying, he
+called them up and said to them:
+
+"Children, when I am dead, look for what is hidden in the vineyard."
+
+The Sons thought that it was a treasure, and when their father died,
+they began to dig there, and dug up the whole ground. They did not find
+the treasure, but they ploughed the vineyard up so well that it brought
+forth more fruit than ever.
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE CRANE
+
+A Wolf had a bone stuck in his throat, and could not cough it up. He
+called the Crane, and said to him:
+
+"Crane, you have a long neck. Thrust your head into my throat and draw
+out the bone! I will reward you."
+
+The Crane stuck his head in, pulled out the bone, and said:
+
+"Give me my reward!"
+
+The Wolf gnashed his teeth and said:
+
+"Is it not enough reward for you that I did not bite off your head when
+it was between my teeth?"
+
+
+THE HARES AND THE FROGS
+
+The Hares once got together, and began to complain about their life:
+
+"We perish from men, and from dogs, and from eagles, and from all the
+other beasts. It would be better to die at once than to live in fright
+and suffer. Come, let us drown ourselves!"
+
+And the Hares raced away to drown themselves in a lake. The Frogs heard
+the Hares and plumped into the water. So one of the Hares said:
+
+"Wait, boys! Let us put off the drowning! Evidently the Frogs are having
+a harder life than we: they are afraid even of us."
+
+
+THE FATHER AND HIS SONS
+
+A Father told his Sons to live in peace: they paid no attention to him.
+So he told them to bring the bath broom, and said:
+
+"Break it!"
+
+No matter how much they tried, they could not break it. Then the Father
+unclosed the broom, and told them to break the rods singly. They broke
+it.
+
+The Father said:
+
+"So it is with you: if you live in peace, no one will overcome you; but
+if you quarrel, and are divided, any one will easily ruin you."
+
+
+THE FOX
+
+A Fox got caught in a trap. She tore off her tail, and got away. She
+began to contrive how to cover up her shame. She called together the
+Foxes, and begged them to cut off their tails.
+
+"A tail," she said, "is a useless thing. In vain do we drag along a dead
+weight."
+
+One of the Foxes said:
+
+"You would not be speaking thus, if you were not tailless!"
+
+The tailless Fox grew silent and went away.
+
+
+THE WILD ASS AND THE TAME ASS
+
+A Wild Ass saw a Tame Ass. The Wild Ass went up to him and began to
+praise his life, saying how smooth his body was, and what sweet feed he
+received. Later, when the Tame Ass was loaded down, and a driver began
+to goad him with a stick, the Wild Ass said:
+
+"No, brother, I do not envy you: I see that your life is going hard with
+you."
+
+
+THE STAG
+
+A Stag went to the brook to quench his thirst. He saw himself in the
+water, and began to admire his horns, seeing how large and branching
+they were; and he looked at his feet, and said: "But my feet are
+unseemly and thin."
+
+Suddenly a Lion sprang out and made for the Stag. The Stag started to
+run over the open plain. He was getting away, but there came a forest,
+and his horns caught in the branches, and the lion caught him. As the
+Stag was dying, he said:
+
+"How foolish I am! That which I thought to be unseemly and thin was
+saving me, and what I gloried in has been my ruin."
+
+
+THE DOG AND THE WOLF
+
+A Dog fell asleep back of the yard. A Wolf ran up and wanted to eat him.
+
+Said the Dog:
+
+"Wolf, don't eat me yet: now I am lean and bony. Wait a little,--my
+master is going to celebrate a wedding; then I shall have plenty to eat;
+I shall grow fat. It will be better to eat me then."
+
+The Wolf believed her, and went away. Then he came a second time, and
+saw the Dog lying on the roof. The Wolf said to her:
+
+"Well, have they had the wedding?"
+
+The Dog replied:
+
+"Listen, Wolf! If you catch me again asleep in front of the yard, do not
+wait for the wedding."
+
+
+THE GNAT AND THE LION
+
+A Gnat came to a Lion, and said:
+
+"Do you think that you have more strength than I? You are mistaken! What
+does your strength consist in? Is it that you scratch with your claws,
+and gnaw with your teeth? That is the way the women quarrel with their
+husbands. I am stronger than you: if you wish let us fight!"
+
+And the Gnat sounded his horn, and began to bite the Lion on his bare
+cheeks and his nose. The Lion struck his face with his paws and
+scratched it with his claws. He tore his face until the blood came, and
+gave up.
+
+The Gnat trumpeted for joy, and flew away. Then he became entangled in a
+spider's web, and the spider began to suck him up. The Gnat said:
+
+"I have vanquished the strong beast, the Lion, and now I perish from
+this nasty spider."
+
+
+THE HORSE AND HIS MASTERS
+
+A gardener had a Horse. She had much to do, but little to eat; so she
+began to pray to God to get another master. And so it happened. The
+gardener sold the Horse to a potter. The Horse was glad, but the potter
+had even more work for her to do. And again the Horse complained of her
+lot, and began to pray that she might get a better master. And this
+prayer, too, was fulfilled. The potter sold the Horse to a tanner. When
+the Horse saw the skins of horses in the tanner's yard, she began to
+cry:
+
+"Woe to me, wretched one! It would be better if I could stay with my old
+masters. It is evident they have sold me now not for work, but for my
+skin's sake."
+
+
+THE OLD MAN AND DEATH
+
+An Old Man cut some wood, which he carried away. He had to carry it far.
+He grew tired, so he put down his bundle, and said:
+
+"Oh, if Death would only come!"
+
+Death came, and said:
+
+"Here I am, what do you want?"
+
+The Old Man was frightened, and said:
+
+"Lift up my bundle!"
+
+
+THE LION AND THE FOX
+
+A Lion, growing old, was unable to catch the animals, and so intended to
+live by cunning. He went into a den, lay down there, and pretended that
+he was sick. The animals came to see him, and he ate up those that went
+into his den. The Fox guessed the trick. She stood at the entrance of
+the den, and said:
+
+"Well, Lion, how are you feeling?"
+
+The Lion answered:
+
+"Poorly. Why don't you come in?"
+
+The Fox replied:
+
+"I do not come in because I see by the tracks that many have entered,
+but none have come out."
+
+
+THE STAG AND THE VINEYARD
+
+A Stag hid himself from the hunters in a vineyard. When the hunters
+missed him, the Stag began to nibble at the grape-vine leaves.
+
+The hunters noticed that the leaves were moving, and so they thought,
+"There must be an animal under those leaves," and fired their guns, and
+wounded the Stag.
+
+The Stag said, dying:
+
+"It serves me right for wanting to eat the leaves that saved me."
+
+
+THE CAT AND THE MICE
+
+A house was overrun with Mice. A Cat found his way into the house, and
+began to catch them. The Mice saw that matters were bad, and said:
+
+"Mice, let us not come down from the ceiling! The Cat cannot get up
+there."
+
+When the Mice stopped coming down, the Cat decided that he must catch
+them by a trick. He grasped the ceiling with one leg, hung down from it,
+and made believe that he was dead.
+
+A Mouse looked out at him, but said:
+
+"No, my friend! Even if you should turn into a bag, I would not go up to
+you."
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE GOAT
+
+A Wolf saw a Goat browsing on a rocky mountain, and he could not get at
+her; so he said to her:
+
+"Come down lower! The place is more even, and the grass is much sweeter
+to feed on."
+
+But the Goat answered:
+
+"You are not calling me down for that, Wolf: you are troubling yourself
+not about my food, but about yours."
+
+
+THE REEDS AND THE OLIVE-TREE
+
+The Olive-tree and the Reeds quarrelled about who was stronger and
+sounder. The Olive-tree laughed at the Reeds because they bent in every
+wind. The Reeds kept silence. A storm came: the Reeds swayed, tossed,
+bowed to the ground,--and remained unharmed. The Olive-tree strained her
+branches against the wind,--and broke.
+
+
+THE TWO COMPANIONS
+
+Two Companions were walking through the forest when a Bear jumped out on
+them. One started to run, climbed a tree, and hid himself, but the other
+remained in the road. He had nothing to do, so he fell down on the
+ground and pretended that he was dead.
+
+The Bear went up to him, and sniffed at him; but he had stopped
+breathing.
+
+The Bear sniffed at his face; he thought that he was dead, and so went
+away.
+
+When the Bear was gone, the Companion climbed down from the tree and
+laughing, said: "What did the Bear whisper in your ear?"
+
+"He told me that those who in danger run away from their companions are
+bad people."
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
+
+A Wolf saw a Lamb drinking at a river. The Wolf wanted to eat the Lamb,
+and so he began to annoy him. He said:
+
+"You are muddling my water and do not let me drink."
+
+The Lamb said:
+
+"How can I muddle your water? I am standing downstream from you;
+besides, I drink with the tips of my lips."
+
+And the Wolf said:
+
+"Well, why did you call my father names last summer?"
+
+The Lamb said:
+
+"But, Wolf, I was not yet born last summer."
+
+The Wolf got angry, and said:
+
+"It is hard to get the best of you. Besides, my stomach is empty, so I
+will devour you."
+
+
+THE LION, THE WOLF, AND THE FOX
+
+An old, sick Lion was lying in his den. All the animals came to see the
+king, but the Fox kept away. So the Wolf was glad of the chance, and
+began to slander the Fox before the Lion.
+
+"She does not esteem you in the least," he said, "she has not come once
+to see the king."
+
+The Fox happened to run by as he was saying these words. She heard what
+the Wolf had said, and thought:
+
+"Wait, Wolf, I will get my revenge on you."
+
+So the Lion began to roar at the Fox, but she said:
+
+"Do not have me killed, but let me say a word! I did not come to see you
+because I had no time. And I had no time because I ran over the whole
+world to ask the doctors for a remedy for you. I have just got it, and
+so I have come to see you."
+
+The Lion said:
+
+"What is the remedy?"
+
+"It is this: if you flay a live Wolf, and put his warm hide on you--"
+
+When the Lion stretched out the Wolf, the Fox laughed, and said:
+
+"That's it, my friend: masters ought to be led to do good, not evil."
+
+
+THE LION, THE ASS, AND THE FOX
+
+The Lion, the Ass, and the Fox went out to hunt. They caught a large
+number of animals, and the Lion told the Ass to divide them up. The Ass
+divided them into three equal parts and said: "Now, take them!"
+
+The Lion grew angry, ate up the Ass, and told the Fox to divide them up
+anew. The Fox collected them all into one heap, and left a small bit for
+herself. The Lion looked at it and said:
+
+"Clever Fox! Who taught you to divide so well?"
+
+She said:
+
+"What about that Ass?"
+
+
+THE PEASANT AND THE WATER-SPRITE
+
+A Peasant lost his axe in the river; he sat down on the bank in grief,
+and began to weep.
+
+The Water-sprite heard the Peasant and took pity on him. He brought a
+gold axe out of the river, and said: "Is this your axe?"
+
+The Peasant said: "No, it is not mine."
+
+The Water-sprite brought another, a silver axe.
+
+Again the Peasant said: "It is not my axe."
+
+Then the Water-sprite brought out the real axe.
+
+The Peasant said: "Now this is my axe."
+
+The Water-sprite made the Peasant a present of all three axes, for
+having told the truth.
+
+At home the Peasant showed his axes to his friends, and told them what
+had happened to him.
+
+One of the peasants made up his mind to do the same: he went to the
+river, purposely threw his axe into the water, sat down on the bank, and
+began to weep.
+
+The Water-sprite brought out a gold axe, and asked: "Is this your axe?"
+
+The Peasant was glad, and called out: "It is mine, mine!"
+
+The Water-sprite did not give him the gold axe, and did not bring him
+back his own either, because he had told an untruth.
+
+
+THE RAVEN AND THE FOX
+
+A Raven got himself a piece of meat, and sat down on a tree. The Fox
+wanted to get it from him. She went up to him, and said:
+
+"Oh, Raven, as I look at you,--from your size and beauty,--you ought to
+be a king! And you would certainly be a king, if you had a good voice."
+
+The Raven opened his mouth wide, and began to croak with all his might
+and main. The meat fell down. The Fox caught it and said:
+
+"Oh, Raven! If you had also sense, you would certainly be a king."
+
+
+
+
+II. ADAPTATIONS AND IMITATIONS OF HINDOO FABLES
+
+
+THE SNAKE'S HEAD AND TAIL
+
+The Snake's Tail had a quarrel with the Snake's Head about who was to
+walk in front. The Head said:
+
+"You cannot walk in front, because you have no eyes and no ears."
+
+The Tail said:
+
+"Yes, but I have strength, I move you; if I want to, I can wind myself
+around a tree, and you cannot get off the spot."
+
+The Head said:
+
+"Let us separate!"
+
+And the Tail tore himself loose from the Head, and crept on; but the
+moment he got away from the Head, he fell into a hole and was lost.
+
+
+FINE THREAD
+
+A Man ordered some fine thread from a Spinner. The Spinner spun it for
+him, but the Man said that the thread was not good, and that he wanted
+the finest thread he could get. The Spinner said:
+
+"If this is not fine enough, take this!" and she pointed to an empty
+space.
+
+He said that he did not see any. The Spinner said:
+
+"You do not see it, because it is so fine. I do not see it myself."
+
+The Fool was glad, and ordered some more thread of this kind, and paid
+her for what he got.
+
+
+THE PARTITION OF THE INHERITANCE
+
+A Father had two Sons. He said to them: "When I die, divide everything
+into two equal parts."
+
+When the Father died, the Sons could not divide without quarrelling.
+They went to a Neighbour to have him settle the matter. The Neighbour
+asked them how their Father had told them to divide. They said:
+
+"He ordered us to divide everything into two equal parts."
+
+The Neighbour said:
+
+"If so, tear all your garments into two halves, break your dishes into
+two halves, and cut all your cattle into two halves!"
+
+The Brothers obeyed their Neighbour, and lost everything.
+
+
+THE MONKEY
+
+A Man went into the woods, cut down a tree, and began to saw it. He
+raised the end of the tree on a stump, sat astride over it, and began to
+saw. Then he drove a wedge into the split that he had sawed, and went on
+sawing; then he took out the wedge and drove it in farther down.
+
+A Monkey was sitting on a tree and watching him. When the Man lay down
+to sleep, the Monkey seated herself astride the tree, and wanted to do
+the same; but when she took out the wedge, the tree sprang back and
+caught her tail. She began to tug and to cry. The Man woke up, beat the
+Monkey, and tied a rope to her.
+
+
+THE MONKEY AND THE PEASE
+
+A Monkey was carrying both her hands full of pease. A pea dropped on the
+ground; the Monkey wanted to pick it up, and dropped twenty peas. She
+rushed to pick them up and lost all the rest. Then she flew into a
+rage, swept away all the pease and ran off.
+
+
+THE MILCH COW
+
+A Man had a Cow; she gave each day a pot full of milk. The Man invited a
+number of guests. To have as much milk as possible, he did not milk the
+Cow for ten days. He thought that on the tenth day the Cow would give
+him ten pitchers of milk.
+
+But the Cow's milk went back, and she gave less milk than before.
+
+
+THE DUCK AND THE MOON
+
+A Duck was swimming in the pond, trying to find some fish, but she did
+not find one in a whole day. When night came, she saw the Moon in the
+water; she thought that it was a fish, and plunged in to catch the Moon.
+The other ducks saw her do it and laughed at her.
+
+That made the Duck feel so ashamed and bashful that when she saw a fish
+under the Water, she did not try to catch it, and so died of hunger.
+
+
+THE WOLF IN THE DUST
+
+A Wolf wanted to pick a sheep out of a flock, and stepped into the wind,
+so that the dust of the flock might blow on him.
+
+The Sheep Dog saw him, and said:
+
+"There is no sense, Wolf, in your walking in the dust: it will make your
+eyes ache."
+
+But the Wolf said:
+
+"The trouble is, Doggy, that my eyes have been aching for quite awhile,
+and I have been told that the dust from a flock of sheep will cure the
+eyes."
+
+
+THE MOUSE UNDER THE GRANARY
+
+A Mouse was living under the granary. In the floor of the granary there
+was a little hole, and the grain fell down through it. The Mouse had an
+easy life of it, but she wanted to brag of her ease: she gnawed a larger
+hole in the floor, and invited other mice.
+
+"Come to a feast with me," said she; "there will be plenty to eat for
+everybody."
+
+When she brought the mice, she saw there was no hole. The peasant had
+noticed the big hole in the floor, and had stopped it up.
+
+
+THE BEST PEARS
+
+A master sent his Servant to buy the best-tasting pears. The Servant
+came to the shop and asked for pears. The dealer gave him some; but the
+Servant said:
+
+"No, give me the best!"
+
+The dealer said:
+
+"Try one; you will see that they taste good."
+
+"How shall I know," said the Servant, "that they all taste good, if I
+try one only?"
+
+He bit off a piece from each pear, and brought them to his master. Then
+his master sent him away.
+
+
+THE FALCON AND THE COCK
+
+The Falcon was used to the master, and came to his hand when he was
+called; the Cock ran away from his master and cried when people went up
+to him. So the Falcon said to the Cock:
+
+"In you Cocks there is no gratitude; one can see that you are of a
+common breed. You go to your masters only when you are hungry. It is
+different with us wild birds. We have much strength, and we can fly
+faster than anybody; still we do not fly away from people, but of our
+own accord go to their hands when we are called. We remember that they
+feed us."
+
+Then the Cock said:
+
+"You do not run away from people because you have never seen a roast
+Falcon, but we, you know, see roast Cocks."
+
+
+THE JACKALS AND THE ELEPHANT
+
+The Jackals had eaten up all the carrion in the woods, and had nothing
+to eat. So an old Jackal was thinking how to find something to feed on.
+He went to an Elephant, and said:
+
+"We had a king, but he became overweening: he told us to do things that
+nobody could do; we want to choose another king, and my people have sent
+me to ask you to be our king. You will have an easy life with us.
+Whatever you will order us to do, we will do, and we will honour you in
+everything. Come to our kingdom!"
+
+The Elephant consented, and followed the Jackal. The Jackal brought him
+to a swamp. When the Elephant stuck fast in it, the Jackal said:
+
+"Now command! Whatever you command, we will do."
+
+The Elephant said:
+
+"I command you to pull me out from here."
+
+The Jackal began to laugh, and said:
+
+"Take hold of my tail with your trunk, and I will pull you out at once."
+
+The Elephant said:
+
+"Can I be pulled out by a tail?"
+
+But the Jackal said to him:
+
+"Why, then, do you command us to do what is impossible? Did we not drive
+away our first king for telling us to do what could not be done?"
+
+When the Elephant died in the swamp the Jackals came and ate him up.
+
+
+THE HERON, THE FISHES, AND THE CRAB
+
+A Heron was living near a pond. She grew old, and had no strength left
+with which to catch the fish. She began to contrive how to live by
+cunning. So she said to the Fishes:
+
+"You Fishes do not know that a calamity is in store for you: I have
+heard the people say that they are going to let off the pond, and catch
+every one of you. I know of a nice little pond back of the mountain. I
+should like to help you, but I am old, and it is hard for me to fly."
+
+The Fishes begged the Heron to help them. So the Heron said:
+
+"All right, I will do what I can for you, and will carry you over: only
+I cannot do it at once,--I will take you there one after another."
+
+And the Fishes were happy; they kept begging her: "Carry me over! Carry
+me over!"
+
+And the Heron started carrying them. She would take one up, would carry
+her into the field, and would eat her up. And thus she ate a large
+number of Fishes.
+
+In the pond there lived an old Crab. When the Heron began to take out
+the Fishes, he saw what was up, and said:
+
+"Now, Heron, take me to the new abode!"
+
+The Heron took the Crab and carried him off. When she flew out on the
+field, she wanted to throw the Crab down. But the Crab saw the
+fish-bones on the ground, and so squeezed the Heron's neck with his
+claws, and choked her to death. Then he crawled back to the pond, and
+told the Fishes.
+
+
+THE WATER-SPRITE AND THE PEARL
+
+A Man was rowing in a boat, and dropped a costly pearl into the sea. The
+Man returned to the shore, took a pail, and began to draw up the water
+and to pour it out on the land. He drew the water and poured it out for
+three days without stopping.
+
+On the fourth day the Water-sprite came out of the sea, and asked:
+
+"Why are you drawing the water?"
+
+The Man said:
+
+"I am drawing it because I have dropped a pearl into it."
+
+The Water-sprite asked him:
+
+"Will you stop soon?"
+
+The Man said:
+
+"I will stop when I dry up the sea."
+
+Then the Water-sprite returned to the sea, brought back that pearl, and
+gave it to the Man.
+
+
+THE BLIND MAN AND THE MILK
+
+A Man born blind asked a Seeing Man:
+
+"Of what colour is milk?"
+
+The Seeing Man said: "The colour of milk is the same as that of white
+paper."
+
+The Blind Man asked: "Well, does that colour rustle in your hands like
+paper?"
+
+The Seeing Man said: "No, it is as white as white flour."
+
+The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as soft and as powdery as flour?"
+
+The Seeing Man said: "No, it is simply as white as a white hare."
+
+The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as fluffy and soft as a hare?"
+
+The Seeing Man said: "No, it is as white as snow."
+
+The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as cold as snow?"
+
+And no matter how many examples the Seeing Man gave, the Blind Man was
+unable to understand what the white colour of milk was like.
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE BOW
+
+A hunter went out to hunt with bow and arrows. He killed a goat. He
+threw her on his shoulders and carried her along. On his way he saw a
+boar. He threw down the goat, and shot at the boar and wounded him. The
+boar rushed against the hunter and butted him to death, and himself died
+on the spot. A Wolf scented the blood, and came to the place where lay
+the goat, the boar, the man, and his bow. The Wolf was glad, and said:
+
+"Now I shall have enough to eat for a long time; only I will not eat
+everything at once, but little by little, so that nothing may be lost:
+first I will eat the tougher things, and then I will lunch on what is
+soft and sweet."
+
+The Wolf sniffed at the goat, the boar, and the man, and said:
+
+"This is all soft food, so I will eat it later; let me first start on
+these sinews of the bow."
+
+And he began to gnaw the sinews of the bow. When he bit through the
+string, the bow sprang back and hit him on his belly. He died on the
+spot, and other wolves ate up the man, the goat, the boar, and the Wolf.
+
+
+THE BIRDS IN THE NET
+
+A Hunter set out a net near a lake and caught a number of birds. The
+birds were large, and they raised the net and flew away with it. The
+Hunter ran after them. A Peasant saw the Hunter running, and said:
+
+"Where are you running? How can you catch up with the birds, while you
+are on foot?"
+
+The Hunter said:
+
+"If it were one bird, I should not catch it, but now I shall."
+
+And so it happened. When evening came, the birds began to pull for the
+night each in a different direction: one to the woods, another to the
+swamp, a third to the field; and all fell with the net to the ground,
+and the Hunter caught them.
+
+
+THE KING AND THE FALCON
+
+A certain King let his favourite Falcon loose on a hare, and galloped
+after him.
+
+The Falcon caught the hare. The King took him away, and began to look
+for some water to drink. The King found it on a knoll, but it came only
+drop by drop. The King fetched his cup from the saddle, and placed it
+under the water. The Water flowed in drops, and when the cup was filled,
+the King raised it to his mouth and wanted to drink it. Suddenly the
+Falcon fluttered on the King's arm and spilled the water. The King
+placed the cup once more under the drops. He waited for a long time for
+the cup to be filled even with the brim, and again, as he carried it to
+his mouth, the Falcon flapped his wings and spilled the water.
+
+When the King filled his cup for the third time and began to carry it to
+his mouth, the Falcon again spilled it. The King flew into a rage and
+killed him by flinging him against a stone with all his force. Just then
+the King's servants rode up, and one of them ran up-hill to the spring,
+to find as much water as possible, and to fill the cup. But the servant
+did not bring the water; he returned with the empty cup, and said:
+
+"You cannot drink that water; there is a snake in the spring, and she
+has let her venom into the water. It is fortunate that the Falcon has
+spilled the water. If you had drunk it, you would have died."
+
+The King said:
+
+"How badly I have repaid the Falcon! He has saved my life, and I killed
+him."
+
+
+THE KING AND THE ELEPHANTS
+
+An Indian King ordered all the Blind People to be assembled, and when
+they came, he ordered that all the Elephants be shown to them. The Blind
+Men went to the stable and began to feel the Elephants. One felt a leg,
+another a tail, a third the stump of a tail, a fourth a belly, a fifth a
+back, a sixth the ears, a seventh the tusks, and an eighth a trunk.
+
+Then the King called the Blind Men, and asked them: "What are my
+Elephants like?"
+
+One Blind Man said: "Your Elephants are like posts." He had felt the
+legs.
+
+Another Blind Man said: "They are like bath brooms." He had felt the end
+of the tail.
+
+A third said: "They are like branches." He had felt the tail stump.
+
+The one who had touched a belly said: "The Elephants are like a clod of
+earth."
+
+The one who had touched the sides said: "They are like a wall."
+
+The one who had touched a back said: "They are like a mound."
+
+The one who had touched the ears said: "They are like a mortar."
+
+The one who had touched the tusks said: "They are like horns."
+
+The one who had touched the trunk said that they were like a stout rope.
+
+And all the Blind Men began to dispute and to quarrel.
+
+
+WHY THERE IS EVIL IN THE WORLD
+
+A Hermit was living in the forest, and the animals were not afraid of
+him. He and the animals talked together and understood each other.
+
+Once the Hermit lay down under a tree, and a Raven a Dove, a Stag, and
+a Snake gathered in the same place, to pass the night. The animals began
+to discuss why there was evil in the world.
+
+The Raven said:
+
+"All the evil in the world comes from hunger. When I eat my fill, I sit
+down on a branch and croak a little, and it is all jolly and good, and
+everything gives me pleasure; but let me just go without eating a day or
+two, and everything palls on me so that I do not feel like looking at
+God's world. And something draws me on, and I fly from place to place,
+and have no rest. When I catch a glimpse of some meat, it makes me only
+feel sicker than ever, and I make for it without much thinking. At times
+they throw sticks and stones at me, and the wolves and dogs grab me, but
+I do not give in. Oh, how many of my brothers are perishing through
+hunger! All evil comes from hunger."
+
+The Dove said:
+
+"According to my opinion, the evil does not come from hunger, but from
+love. If we lived singly, the trouble would not be so bad. One head is
+not poor, and if it is, it is only one. But here we live in pairs. And
+you come to like your mate so much that you have no rest: you keep
+thinking of her all the time, wondering whether she has had enough to
+eat, and whether she is warm. And when your mate flies away from you,
+you feel entirely lost, and you keep thinking that a hawk may have
+carried her off, or men may have caught her; and you start out to find
+her, and fly to your ruin,--either into the hawk's claws, or into a
+snare. And when your mate is lost, nothing gives you any joy. You do not
+eat or drink, and all the time search and weep. Oh, so many of us perish
+in this way! All the evil is not from hunger, but from love."
+
+The Snake said:
+
+"No, the evil is not from hunger, nor from love, but from rage. If we
+lived peacefully, without getting into a rage, everything would be nice
+for us. But, as it is, whenever a thing does not go exactly right, we
+get angry, and then nothing pleases us. All we think about is how to
+revenge ourselves on some one. Then we forget ourselves, and only hiss,
+and creep, and try to find some one to bite. And we do not spare a
+soul,--we even bite our own father and mother. We feel as though we
+could eat ourselves up. And we rage until we perish. All the evil in the
+World comes from rage."
+
+The Stag said:
+
+"No, not from rage, or from love, or from hunger does all the evil in
+the world come, but from terror. If it were possible not to be afraid,
+everything would be well. We have swift feet and much strength: against
+a small animal we defend ourselves with our horns, and from a large one
+we flee. But how can I help becoming frightened? Let a branch crackle in
+the forest, or a leaf rustle, and I am all atremble with fear, and my
+heart flutters as though it wanted to jump out, and I fly as fast as I
+can. Again, let a hare run by, or a bird flap its wings, or a dry twig
+break off, and you think that it is a beast, and you run straight up
+against him. Or you run away from a dog and run into the hands of a man.
+Frequently you get frightened and run, not knowing whither, and at full
+speed rush down a steep hill, and get killed. We have no rest. All the
+evil comes from terror."
+
+Then the Hermit said:
+
+"Not from hunger, not from love, not from rage, not from terror are all
+our sufferings, but from our bodies comes all the evil in the world.
+From them come hunger, and love, and rage, and terror."
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE HUNTERS
+
+A Wolf devoured a sheep. The Hunters caught the Wolf and began to beat
+him. The Wolf said:
+
+"In vain do you beat me: it is not my fault that I am gray,--God has
+made me so."
+
+But the Hunters said:
+
+"We do not beat the Wolf for being gray, but for eating the sheep."
+
+
+THE TWO PEASANTS
+
+Once upon a time two Peasants drove toward each other and caught in each
+other's sleighs. One cried:
+
+"Get out of my way,--I am hurrying to town."
+
+But the other said:
+
+"Get out of my way, I am hurrying home."
+
+They quarrelled for some time. A third Peasant saw them and said:
+
+"If you are in a hurry, back up!"
+
+
+THE PEASANT AND THE HORSE
+
+A Peasant went to town to fetch some oats for his Horse. He had barely
+left the village, when the Horse began to turn around, toward the house.
+The Peasant struck the Horse with his whip. She went on, and kept
+thinking about the Peasant:
+
+"Whither is that fool driving me? He had better go home."
+
+Before reaching town, the Peasant saw that the Horse trudged along
+through the mud with difficulty, so he turned her on the pavement; but
+the Horse began to turn back from the street. The Peasant gave the Horse
+the whip, and jerked at the reins; she went on the pavement, and
+thought:
+
+"Why has he turned me on the pavement? It will only break my hoofs. It
+is rough underfoot."
+
+The Peasant went to the shop, bought the oats, and drove home. When he
+came home, he gave the Horse some oats. The Horse ate them and thought:
+
+"How stupid men are! They are fond of exercising their wits on us, but
+they have less sense than we. What did he trouble himself about? He
+drove me somewhere. No matter how far we went, we came home in the end.
+So it would have been better if we had remained at home from the start:
+he could have been sitting on the oven, and I eating oats."
+
+
+THE TWO HORSES
+
+Two Horses were drawing their carts. The Front Horse pulled well, but
+the Hind Horse kept stopping all the time. The load of the Hind Horse
+was transferred to the front cart; when all was transferred, the Hind
+Horse went along with ease, and said to the Front Horse:
+
+"Work hard and sweat! The more you try, the harder they will make you
+work."
+
+When they arrived at the tavern, their master said:
+
+"Why should I feed two Horses, and haul with one only? I shall do better
+to give one plenty to eat, and to kill the other: I shall at least have
+her hide."
+
+So he did.
+
+
+THE AXE AND THE SAW
+
+Two Peasants went to the forest to cut wood. One of them had an axe, and
+the other a saw. They picked out a tree, and began to dispute. One said
+that the tree had to be chopped, while the other said that it had to be
+sawed down.
+
+A third Peasant said:
+
+"I will easily make peace between you: if the axe is sharp, you had
+better chop it; but if the saw is sharp you had better saw it."
+
+He took the axe, and began to chop it; but the axe was so dull that it
+was not possible to cut with it. Then he took the saw; the saw was
+worthless, and did not saw. So he said:
+
+"Stop quarrelling awhile; the axe does not chop, and the saw does not
+saw. First grind your axe and file your saw, and then quarrel."
+
+But the Peasants grew angrier still at one another, because one had a
+dull axe, and the other a dull saw. And they came to blows.
+
+
+THE DOGS AND THE COOK
+
+A Cook was preparing a dinner. The Dogs were lying at the kitchen door.
+The Cook killed a calf and threw the guts out into the yard. The Dogs
+picked them up and ate them, and said:
+
+"He is a good Cook: he cooks well."
+
+After awhile the Cook began to clean pease, turnips, and onions, and
+threw out the refuse. The Dogs made for it; but they turned their noses
+up, and said:
+
+"Our Cook has grown worse: he used to cook well, but now he is no longer
+any good."
+
+But the Cook paid no attention to the Dogs, and continued to fix the
+dinner in his own way. The family, and not the Dogs, ate the dinner, and
+praised it.
+
+
+THE HARE AND THE HARRIER
+
+A Hare once said to a Harrier:
+
+"Why do you bark when you run after us? You would catch us easier, if
+you ran after us in silence. With your bark you only drive us against
+the hunter: he hears where we are running; and he rushes out with his
+gun and kills us, and does not give you anything."
+
+The Harrier said:
+
+"That is not the reason why I bark. I bark because, when I scent your
+odour, I am angry, and happy because I am about to catch you; I do not
+know why, but I cannot keep from barking."
+
+
+THE OAK AND THE HAZELBUSH
+
+An old Oak dropped an acorn under a Hazelbush. The Hazelbush said to the
+Oak:
+
+"Have you not enough space under your own branches? Drop your acorns in
+an open space. Here I am myself crowded by my shoots, and I do not drop
+my nuts to the ground, but give them to men."
+
+"I have lived for two hundred years," said the Oak, "and the Oakling
+which will sprout from that acorn will live just as long."
+
+Then the Hazelbush flew into a rage, and said:
+
+"If so, I will choke your Oakling, and he will not live for three days."
+
+The Oak made no reply, but told his son to sprout out of that acorn. The
+acorn got wet and burst, and clung to the ground with his crooked
+rootlet, and sent up a sprout.
+
+The Hazelbush tried to choke him, and gave him no sun. But the Oakling
+spread upwards and grew stronger in the shade of the Hazelbush. A
+hundred years passed. The Hazelbush had long ago dried up, but the Oak
+from that acorn towered to the sky and spread his tent in all
+directions.
+
+
+THE HEN AND THE CHICKS
+
+A Hen hatched some Chicks, but did not know how to take care of them. So
+she said to them:
+
+"Creep back into your shells! When you are inside your shells, I will
+sit on you as before, and will take care of you."
+
+The Chicks did as they were ordered and tried to creep into their
+shells, but were unable to do so, and only crushed their wings. Then one
+of the Chicks said to his mother:
+
+"If we are to stay all the time in our shells, you ought never to have
+hatched us."
+
+
+THE CORN-CRAKE AND HIS MATE
+
+A Corn-crake had made a nest in the meadow late in the year, and at
+mowing time his Mate was still sitting on her eggs. Early in the morning
+the peasants came to the meadow, took off the coats, whetted their
+scythes, and started one after another to mow down the grass and to put
+it down in rows. The Corn-crake flew up to see what the mowers were
+doing. When he saw a peasant swing his scythe and cut a snake in two, he
+rejoiced and flew back to his Mate and said:
+
+"Don't fear the peasants! They have come to cut the snakes to pieces;
+they have given us no rest for quite awhile."
+
+But his Mate said:
+
+"The peasants are cutting the grass, and with the grass they are cutting
+everything which is in their way,--the snakes, and the Corn-crake's
+nest, and the Corn-crake's head. My heart forebodes nothing good: but I
+cannot carry away the eggs, nor fly from the nest, for fear of chilling
+them."
+
+When the mowers came to the nest of the Corn-crake, one of the peasants
+swung his scythe and cut off the head of the Corn-crake's Mate, and put
+the eggs in his bosom and gave them to his children to play with.
+
+
+THE COW AND THE BILLY GOAT
+
+An old woman had a Cow and a Billy Goat. The two pastured together. At
+milking the Cow was restless. The old woman brought out some bread and
+salt, and gave it to the Cow, and said:
+
+"Stand still, motherkin; take it, take it! I will bring you some more,
+only stand still."
+
+On the next evening the Goat came home from the field before the Cow,
+and spread his legs, and stood in front of the old woman. The old woman
+wanted to strike him with the towel, but he stood still, and did not
+stir. He remembered that the woman had promised the Cow some bread if
+she would stand still. When the woman saw that he would not budge, she
+picked up a stick, and beat him with it.
+
+When the Goat went away, the woman began once more to feed the Cow with
+bread, and to talk to her.
+
+"There is no honesty in men," thought the Goat. "I stood still better
+than the Cow, and was beaten for it."
+
+He stepped aside, took a run, hit against the milk-pail, spilled the
+milk, and hurt the old woman.
+
+
+THE FOX'S TAIL
+
+A Man caught a Fox, and asked her:
+
+"Who has taught you Foxes to cheat the dogs with your tails?"
+
+The Fox asked: "How do you mean, to cheat? We do not cheat the dogs, but
+simply run from them as fast as we can."
+
+The Man said:
+
+"Yes, you do cheat them with your tails. When the dogs catch up with you
+and are about to clutch you, you turn your tails to one side; the dogs
+turn sharply after the tail, and then you run in the opposite
+direction."
+
+The Fox laughed, and said:
+
+"We do not do so in order to cheat the dogs, but in order to turn
+around; when a dog is after us, and we see that we cannot get away
+straight ahead, we turn to one side, and in order to do that suddenly,
+we have to swing the tail to the other side, just as you do with your
+arms, when you have to turn around. That is not our invention; God
+himself invented it when He created us, so that the dogs might not be
+able to catch all the Foxes."
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+
+1869-1872
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+
+
+
+
+THE FOUNDLING
+
+
+A poor woman had a daughter by the name of Másha. Másha went in the
+morning to fetch water, and saw at the door something wrapped in rags.
+When she touched the rags, there came from it the sound of "Ooah, ooah,
+ooah!" Másha bent down and saw that it was a tiny, red-skinned baby. It
+was crying aloud: "Ooah, ooah!"
+
+Másha took it into her arms and carried it into the house, and gave it
+milk with a spoon. Her mother said:
+
+"What have you brought?"
+
+"A baby. I found it at our door."
+
+The mother said:
+
+"We are poor as it is; we have nothing to feed the baby with; I will go
+to the chief and tell him to take the baby."
+
+Másha began to cry, and said:
+
+"Mother, the child will not eat much; leave it here! See what red,
+wrinkled little hands and fingers it has!"
+
+Her mother looked at them, and she felt pity for the child. She did not
+take the baby away. Másha fed and swathed the child, and sang songs to
+it, when it went to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+THE PEASANT AND THE CUCUMBERS
+
+
+A peasant once went to the gardener's, to steal cucumbers. He crept up
+to the cucumbers, and thought:
+
+"I will carry off a bag of cucumbers, which I will sell; with the money
+I will buy a hen. The hen will lay eggs, hatch them, and raise a lot of
+chicks. I will feed the chicks and sell them; then I will buy me a young
+sow, and she will bear a lot of pigs. I will sell the pigs, and buy me a
+mare; the mare will foal me some colts. I will raise the colts, and sell
+them. I will buy me a house, and start a garden. In the garden I will
+sow cucumbers, and will not let them be stolen, but will keep a sharp
+watch on them. I will hire watchmen, and put them in the cucumber patch,
+while I myself will come on them, unawares, and shout: 'Oh, there, keep
+a sharp lookout!'"
+
+And this he shouted as loud as he could. The watchmen heard it, and they
+rushed out and beat the peasant.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRE
+
+
+During harvest-time the men and women went out to work. In the village
+were left only the old and the very young. In one hut there remained a
+grandmother with her three grandchildren.
+
+The grandmother made a fire in the oven, and lay down to rest herself.
+Flies kept alighting on her and biting her. She covered her head with a
+towel and fell asleep. One of the grandchildren, Másha (she was three
+years old), opened the oven, scraped some coals into a potsherd, and
+went into the vestibule. In the vestibule lay sheaves: the women were
+getting them bound.
+
+Másha brought the coals, put them under the sheaves, and began to blow.
+When the straw caught fire, she was glad; she went into the hut and took
+her brother Kiryúsha by the arm (he was a year and a half old, and had
+just learned to walk), and brought him out, and said to him:
+
+"See, Kiryúsha, what a fire I have kindled."
+
+The sheaves were already burning and crackling. When the vestibule was
+filled with smoke, Másha became frightened and ran back into the house.
+Kiryúsha fell over the threshold, hurt his nose, and began to cry; Másha
+pulled him into the house, and both hid under a bench.
+
+The grandmother heard nothing, and did not wake. The elder boy, Ványa
+(he was eight years old), was in the street. When he saw the smoke
+rolling out of the vestibule, he ran to the door, made his way through
+the smoke into the house, and began to waken his grandmother; but she
+was dazed from her sleep, and, forgetting the children, rushed out and
+ran to the farmyards to call the people.
+
+In the meantime Másha was sitting under the bench and keeping quiet; but
+the little boy cried, because he had hurt his nose badly. Ványa heard
+his cry, looked under the bench, and called out to Másha:
+
+"Run, you will burn!"
+
+Másha ran to the vestibule, but could not pass for the smoke and fire.
+She turned back. Then Ványa raised a window and told her to climb
+through it. When she got through, Ványa picked up his brother and
+dragged him along. But the child was heavy and did not let his brother
+take him. He cried and pushed Ványa. Ványa fell down twice, and when he
+dragged him up to the window, the door of the hut was already burning.
+Ványa thrust the child's head through the window and wanted to push him
+through; but the child took hold of him with both his hands (he was very
+much frightened) and would not let them take him out. Then Ványa cried
+to Másha:
+
+"Pull him by the head!" while he himself pushed him behind.
+
+And thus they pulled him through the window and into the street.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD HORSE
+
+
+In our village there was an old, old man, Pímen Timoféich. He was ninety
+years old. He was living at the house of his grandson, doing no work.
+His back was bent: he walked with a cane and moved his feet slowly.
+
+He had no teeth at all, and his face was wrinkled. His nether lip
+trembled; when he walked and when he talked, his lips smacked, and one
+could not understand what he was saying.
+
+We were four brothers, and we were fond of riding. But we had no gentle
+riding-horses. We were allowed to ride only on one horse,--the name of
+that horse was Raven.
+
+One day mamma allowed us to ride, and all of us went with the valet to
+the stable. The coachman saddled Raven for us, and my eldest brother was
+the first to take a ride. He rode for a long time; he rode to the
+threshing-floor and around the garden, and when he came back, we
+shouted:
+
+"Now gallop past us!"
+
+My elder brother began to strike Raven with his feet and with the whip,
+and Raven galloped past us.
+
+After him, my second brother mounted the horse. He, too, rode for quite
+awhile, and he, too, urged Raven on with the whip and galloped up the
+hill. He wanted to ride longer, but my third brother begged him to let
+him ride at once.
+
+My third brother rode to the threshing-floor, and around the garden, and
+down the village, and raced up-hill to the stable. When he rode up to
+us Raven was panting, and his neck and shoulders were dark from sweat.
+
+When my turn came, I wanted to surprise my brothers and to show them how
+well I could ride, so I began to drive Raven with all my might, but he
+did not want to get away from the stable. And no matter how much I beat
+him, he would not run, but only shied and turned back. I grew angry at
+the horse, and struck him as hard as I could with my feet and with the
+whip. I tried to strike him in places where it would hurt most; I broke
+the whip and began to strike his head with what was left of the whip.
+But Raven would not run. Then I turned back, rode up to the valet, and
+asked him for a stout switch. But the valet said to me:
+
+"Don't ride any more, sir! Get down! What use is there in torturing the
+horse?"
+
+I felt offended, and said:
+
+"But I have not had a ride yet. Just watch me gallop! Please, give me a
+good-sized switch! I will heat him up."
+
+Then the valet shook his head, and said:
+
+"Oh, sir, you have no pity; why should you heat him up? He is twenty
+years old. The horse is worn out; he can barely breathe, and is old. He
+is so very old! Just like Pímen Timoféich. You might just as well sit
+down on Timoféich's back and urge him on with a switch. Well, would you
+not pity him?"
+
+I thought of Pímen, and listened to the valet's words. I climbed down
+from the horse and, when I saw how his sweaty sides hung down, how he
+breathed heavily through his nostrils, and how he switched his bald
+tail, I understood that it was hard for the horse. Before that I used to
+think that it was as much fun for him as for me. I felt so sorry for
+Raven that I began to kiss his sweaty neck and to beg his forgiveness
+for having beaten him.
+
+Since then I have grown to be a big man, and I always am careful with
+the horses, and always think of Raven and of Pímen Timoféitch whenever I
+see anybody torture a horse.
+
+
+
+
+HOW I LEARNED TO RIDE
+
+
+When I was a little fellow, we used to study every day, and only on
+Sundays and holidays went out and played with our brothers. Once my
+father said:
+
+"The children must learn to ride. Send them to the riding-school!"
+
+I was the youngest of the brothers, and I asked:
+
+"May I, too, learn to ride?"
+
+My father said:
+
+"You will fall down."
+
+I began to beg him to let me learn, and almost cried. My father said:
+
+"All right, you may go, too. Only look out! Don't cry when you fall off.
+He who does not once fall down from a horse will not learn to ride."
+
+When Wednesday came, all three of us were taken to the riding-school. We
+entered by a large porch, and from the large porch went to a smaller
+one. Beyond the porch was a very large room: instead of a floor it had
+sand. And in this room were gentlemen and ladies and just such boys as
+we. That was the riding-school. The riding-school was not very light,
+and there was a smell of horses, and you could hear them snap whips and
+call to the horses, and the horses strike their hoofs against the wooden
+walls. At first I was frightened and could not see things well. Then our
+valet called the riding-master, and said:
+
+"Give these boys some horses: they are going to learn how to ride."
+
+The master said:
+
+"All right!"
+
+Then he looked at me, and said:
+
+"He is very small, yet."
+
+But the valet said:
+
+"He promised not to cry when he falls down."
+
+The master laughed and went away.
+
+Then they brought three saddled horses, and we took off our cloaks and
+walked down a staircase to the riding-school. The master was holding a
+horse by a cord, and my brothers rode around him. At first they rode at
+a slow pace, and later at a trot. Then they brought a pony. It was a red
+horse, and his tail was cut off. He was called Ruddy. The master
+laughed, and said to me:
+
+"Well, young gentleman, get on your horse!"
+
+I was both happy and afraid, and tried to act in such a manner as not to
+be noticed by anybody. For a long time I tried to get my foot into the
+stirrup, but could not do it because I was too small. Then the master
+raised me up in his hands and put me on the saddle. He said:
+
+"The young master is not heavy,--about two pounds in weight, that is
+all."
+
+At first he held me by my hand, but I saw that my brothers were not
+held, and so I begged him to let go of me. He said:
+
+"Are you not afraid?"
+
+I was very much afraid, but I said that I was not. I was so much afraid
+because Ruddy kept dropping his ears. I thought he was angry at me. The
+master said:
+
+"Look out, don't fall down!" and let go of me. At first Ruddy went at a
+slow pace, and I sat up straight. But the saddle was sleek, and I was
+afraid I would slip off. The master asked me:
+
+"Well, are you fast in the saddle?"
+
+I said:
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"If so, go at a slow trot!" and the master clicked his tongue.
+
+Ruddy started at a slow trot, and began to jog me. But I kept silent,
+and tried not to slip to one side. The master praised me:
+
+"Oh, a fine young gentleman, indeed!"
+
+I was very glad to hear it.
+
+Just then the master's friend went up to him and began to talk with him,
+and the master stopped looking at me.
+
+Suddenly I felt that I had slipped a little to one side on my saddle. I
+wanted to straighten myself up, but was unable to do so. I wanted to
+call out to the master to stop the horse, but I thought it would be a
+disgrace if I did it, and so kept silence. The master was not looking at
+me and Ruddy ran at a trot, and I slipped still more to one side. I
+looked at the master and thought that he would help me, but he was still
+talking with his friend, and without looking at me kept repeating:
+
+"Well done, young gentleman!"
+
+I was now altogether to one side, and was very much frightened. I
+thought that I was lost; but I felt ashamed to cry. Ruddy shook me up
+once more, and I slipped off entirely and fell to the ground. Then Ruddy
+stopped, and the master looked at the horse and saw that I was not on
+him. He said:
+
+"I declare, my young gentleman has dropped off!" and walked over to me.
+
+When I told him that I was not hurt, he laughed and said:
+
+"A child's body is soft."
+
+I felt like crying. I asked him to put me again on the horse, and I was
+lifted on the horse. After that I did not fall down again.
+
+Thus we rode twice a week in the riding-school, and I soon learned to
+ride well, and was not afraid of anything.
+
+
+
+
+THE WILLOW
+
+
+During Easter week a peasant went out to see whether the ground was all
+thawed out.
+
+He went into the garden and touched the soil with a stick. The earth was
+soft. The peasant went into the woods; here the catkins were already
+swelling on the willows. The peasant thought:
+
+"I will fence my garden with willows; they will grow up and will make a
+good hedge!"
+
+He took his axe, cut down a dozen willows, sharpened them at the end,
+and stuck them in the ground.
+
+All the willows sent up sprouts with leaves, and underground let out
+just such sprouts for roots; and some of them took hold of the ground
+and grew, and others did not hold well to the ground with their roots,
+and died and fell down.
+
+In the fall the peasant was glad at the sight of his willows: six of
+them had taken root. The following spring the sheep killed two willows
+by gnawing at them, and only two were left. Next spring the sheep
+nibbled at these also. One of them was completely ruined, and the other
+came to, took root, and grew to be a tree. In the spring the bees just
+buzzed in the willow. In swarming time the swarms were often put out on
+the willow, and the peasants brushed them in. The men and women
+frequently ate and slept under the willow, and the children climbed on
+it and broke off rods from it.
+
+The peasant that had set out the willow was long dead, and still it
+grew. His eldest son twice cut down its branches and used them for
+fire-wood. The willow kept growing. They trimmed it all around, and cut
+it down to a stump, but in the spring it again sent out twigs, thinner
+ones than before, but twice as many as ever, as is the case with a
+colt's forelock.
+
+And the eldest son quit farming, and the village was given up, but the
+willow grew in the open field. Other peasants came there, and chopped
+the willow, but still it grew. The lightning struck it; but it sent
+forth side branches, and it grew and blossomed. A peasant wanted to cut
+it down for a block, but he gave it up, it was too rotten. It leaned
+sidewise, and held on with one side only; and still it grew, and every
+year the bees came there to gather the pollen.
+
+One day, early in the spring, the boys gathered under the willow, to
+watch the horses. They felt cold, so they started a fire. They gathered
+stubbles, wormwood, and sticks. One of them climbed on the willow and
+broke off a lot of twigs. They put it all in the hollow of the willow
+and set fire to it. The tree began to hiss and its sap to boil, and the
+smoke rose and the tree burned; its whole inside was smudged. The young
+shoots dried up, the blossoms withered.
+
+The children drove the horses home. The scorched willow was left all
+alone in the field. A black raven flew by, and he sat down on it, and
+cried:
+
+"So you are dead, old smudge! You ought to have died long ago!"
+
+
+
+
+BÚLKA
+
+
+I had a small bulldog. He was called Búlka. He was black; only the tips
+of his front feet were white. All bulldogs have their lower jaws longer
+than the upper, and the upper teeth come down behind the nether teeth,
+but Búlka's lower jaw protruded so much that I could put my finger
+between the two rows of teeth. His face was broad, his eyes large,
+black, and sparkling; and his teeth and incisors stood out prominently.
+He was as black as a negro. He was gentle and did not bite, but he was
+strong and stubborn. If he took hold of a thing, he clenched his teeth
+and clung to it like a rag, and it was not possible to tear him off, any
+more than as though he were a lobster.
+
+Once he was let loose on a bear, and he got hold of the bear's ear and
+stuck to him like a leech. The bear struck him with his paws and
+squeezed him, and shook him from side to side, but could not tear
+himself loose from him, and so he fell down on his head, in order to
+crush Búlka; but Búlka held on to him until they poured cold water over
+him.
+
+I got him as a puppy, and raised him myself. When I went to the
+Caucasus, I did not want to take him along, and so went away from him
+quietly, ordering him to be shut up. At the first station I was about to
+change the relay, when suddenly I saw something black and shining coming
+down the road. It was Búlka in his brass collar. He was flying at full
+speed toward the station. He rushed up to me, licked my hand, and
+stretched himself out in the shade under the cart. His tongue stuck out
+a whole hand's length. He now drew it in to swallow the spittle, and
+now stuck it out again a whole hand's length. He tried to breathe fast,
+but could not do so, and his sides just shook. He turned from one side
+to the other, and struck his tail against the ground.
+
+I learned later that after I had left he had broken a pane, jumped out
+of the window, and followed my track along the road, and thus raced
+twenty versts through the greatest heat.
+
+
+
+
+BÚLKA AND THE WILD BOAR
+
+
+Once we went into the Caucasus to hunt the wild boar, and Búlka went
+with me. The moment the hounds started, Búlka rushed after them,
+following their sound, and disappeared in the forest. That was in the
+month of November; the boars and sows are then very fat.
+
+In the Caucasus there are many edible fruits in the forests where the
+boars live: wild grapes, cones, apples, pears, blackberries, acorns,
+wild plums. And when all these fruits get ripe and are touched by the
+frost, the boars eat them and grow fat.
+
+At that time a boar gets so fat that he cannot run from the dogs. When
+they chase him for about two hours, he makes for the thicket and there
+stops. Then the hunters run up to the place where he stands, and shoot
+him. They can tell by the bark of the hounds whether the boar has
+stopped, or is running. If he is running, the hounds yelp, as though
+they were beaten; but when he stops, they bark as though at a man, with
+a howling sound.
+
+During that chase I ran for a long time through the forest, but not once
+did I cross a boar track. Finally I heard the long-drawn bark and howl
+of the hounds, and ran up to that place. I was already near the boar. I
+could hear the crashing in the thicket. The boar was turning around on
+the dogs, but I could not tell by the bark that they were not catching
+him, but only circling around him. Suddenly I heard something rustle
+behind me, and I saw that it was Búlka. He had evidently strayed from
+the hounds in the forest and had lost his way, and now was hearing their
+barking and making for them, like me, as fast as he could. He ran
+across a clearing through the high grass, and all I could see of him was
+his black head and his tongue clinched between his white teeth. I called
+him back, but he did not look around, and ran past me and disappeared in
+the thicket. I ran after him, but the farther I went, the more and more
+dense did the forest grow. The branches kept knocking off my cap and
+struck me in the face, and the thorns caught in my garments. I was near
+to the barking, but could not see anything.
+
+Suddenly I heard the dogs bark louder, and something crashed loudly, and
+the boar began to puff and snort. I immediately made up my mind that
+Búlka had got up to him and was busy with him. I ran with all my might
+through the thicket to that place. In the densest part of the thicket I
+saw a dappled hound. She was barking and howling in one spot, and within
+three steps from her something black could be seen moving around.
+
+When I came nearer, I could make out the boar, and I heard Búlka whining
+shrilly. The boar grunted and made for the hound; the hound took her
+tail between her legs and leaped away. I could see the boar's side and
+head. I aimed at his side and fired. I saw that I had hit him. The boar
+grunted and crashed through the thicket away from me. The dogs whimpered
+and barked in his track; I tried to follow them through the undergrowth.
+Suddenly I saw and heard something almost under my feet. It was Búlka.
+He was lying on his side and whining. Under him there was a puddle of
+blood. I thought the dog was lost; but I had no time to look after him,
+I continued to make my way through the thicket. Soon I saw the boar. The
+dogs were trying to catch him from behind, and he kept turning, now to
+one side, and now to another. When the boar saw me, he moved toward me.
+I fired a second time, almost resting the barrel against him, so that
+his bristles caught fire, and the boar groaned and tottered, and with
+his whole cadaver dropped heavily on the ground.
+
+When I came up, the boar was dead, and only here and there did his body
+jerk and twitch. Some of the dogs, with bristling hair, were tearing his
+belly and legs, while the others were lapping the blood from his wound.
+
+Then I thought of Búlka, and went back to find him. He was crawling
+toward me and groaning. I went up to him and looked at his wound. His
+belly was ripped open, and a whole piece of his guts was sticking out of
+his body and dragging on the dry leaves. When my companions came up to
+me, we put the guts back and sewed up his belly. While we were sewing
+him up and sticking the needle through his skin, he kept licking my
+hand.
+
+The boar was tied up to the horse's tail, to pull him out of the forest,
+and Búlka was put on the horse, and thus taken home. Búlka was sick for
+about six weeks, and got well again.
+
+
+
+
+PHEASANTS
+
+
+Wild fowls are called pheasants in the Caucasus. There are so many of
+them that they are cheaper there than tame chickens. Pheasants are
+hunted with the "hobby," by scaring up, and from under dogs. This is the
+way they are hunted with the "hobby." They take a piece of canvas and
+stretch it over a frame, and in the middle of the frame they make a
+cross piece. They cut a hole in the canvas. This frame with the canvas
+is called a hobby. With this hobby and with the gun they start out at
+dawn to the forest. The hobby is carried in front, and through the hole
+they look out for the pheasants. The pheasants feed at daybreak in the
+clearings. At times it is a whole brood,--a hen with all her chicks, and
+at others a cock with his hen, or several cocks together.
+
+The pheasants do not see the man, and they are not afraid of the canvas
+and let the hunter come close to them. Then the hunter puts down the
+hobby, sticks his gun through the rent, and shoots at whichever bird he
+pleases.
+
+This is the way they hunt by scaring up. They let a watch-dog into the
+forest and follow him. When the dog finds a pheasant, he rushes for it.
+The pheasant flies on a tree, and then the dog begins to bark at it. The
+hunter follows up the barking and shoots the pheasant in the tree. This
+chase would be easy, if the pheasant alighted on a tree in an open
+place, or if it sat still, so that it might be seen. But they always
+alight on dense trees, in the thicket, and when they see the hunter they
+hide themselves in the branches. And it is hard to make one's way
+through the thicket to the tree on which a pheasant is sitting, and hard
+to see it. So long as the dog alone barks at it, it is not afraid: it
+sits on a branch and preens and flaps its wings at the dog. But the
+moment it sees a man, it immediately stretches itself out along a bough,
+so that only an experienced hunter can tell it, while an inexperienced
+one will stand near by and see nothing.
+
+When the Cossacks steal up to the pheasants, they pull their caps over
+their faces and do not look up, because a pheasant is afraid of a man
+with his gun, but more still of his eyes.
+
+This is the way they hunt from under dogs. They take a setter and follow
+him to the forest. The dog scents the place where the pheasants have
+been feeding at daybreak, and begins to make out their tracks. No matter
+how the pheasants may have mixed them up, a good dog will always find
+the last track, that takes them out from the spot where they have been
+feeding. The farther the dog follows the track, the stronger will the
+scent be, and thus he will reach the place where the pheasant sits or
+walks about in the grass in the daytime. When he comes near to where the
+bird is, he thinks that it is right before him, and starts walking more
+cautiously so as not to frighten it, and will stop now and then, ready
+to jump and catch it. When the dog comes up very near to the pheasant,
+it flies up, and the hunter shoots it.
+
+
+
+
+MILTON AND BÚLKA
+
+
+I bought me a setter to hunt pheasants with. The name of the dog was
+Milton. He was a big, thin, gray, spotted dog, with long lips and ears,
+and he was very strong and intelligent. He did not fight with Búlka. No
+dog ever tried to get into a fight with Búlka. He needed only to show
+his teeth, and the dogs would take their tails between their legs and
+slink away.
+
+Once I went with Milton to hunt pheasants. Suddenly Búlka ran after me
+to the forest. I wanted to drive him back, but could not do so; and it
+was too far for me to take him home. I thought he would not be in my
+way, and so walked on; but the moment Milton scented a pheasant in the
+grass and began to search for it, Búlka rushed forward and tossed from
+side to side. He tried to scare up the pheasant before Milton. He heard
+something in the grass, and jumped and whirled around; but he had a poor
+scent and could not find the track himself, but watched Milton, to see
+where he was running. The moment Milton started on the trail, Búlka ran
+ahead of him. I called Búlka back and beat him, but could not do a thing
+with him. The moment Milton began to search, he darted forward and
+interfered with him.
+
+I was already on the point of going home, because I thought that the
+chase was spoiled; but Milton found a better way of cheating Búlka. This
+is what he did: the moment Búlka rushed ahead of him, he gave up the
+trail and turned in another direction, pretending that he was searching
+there. Búlka rushed there where Milton was, and Milton looked at me and
+wagged his tail and went back to the right trail. Búlka again ran up to
+Milton and rushed past him, and again Milton took some ten steps to one
+side and cheated Búlka, and again led me straight; and so he cheated
+Búlka all the way and did not let him spoil the chase.
+
+
+
+
+THE TURTLE
+
+
+Once I went with Milton to the chase. Near the forest he began to
+search. He straightened out his tail, pricked his ears, and began to
+sniff. I fixed the gun and followed him. I thought that he was looking
+for a partridge, hare, or pheasant. But Milton did not make for the
+forest, but for the field. I followed him and looked ahead of me.
+Suddenly I saw what he was searching for. In front of him was running a
+small turtle, of the size of a cap. Its bare, dark gray head on a long
+neck was stretched out like a pestle; the turtle in walking stretched
+its bare legs far out, and its back was all covered with bark.
+
+When it saw the dog, it hid its legs and head and let itself down on the
+grass so that only its shell could be seen. Milton grabbed it and began
+to bite at it, but could not bite through it, because the turtle has
+just such a shell on its belly as it has on its back, and has only
+openings in front, at the back, and at the sides, where it puts forth
+its head, its legs, and its tail.
+
+I took the turtle away from Milton, and tried to see how its back was
+painted, and what kind of a shell it had, and how it hid itself. When
+you hold it in your hands and look between the shell, you can see
+something black and alive inside, as though in a cellar. I threw away
+the turtle, and walked on, but Milton would not leave it, and carried it
+in his teeth behind me. Suddenly Milton whimpered and dropped it. The
+turtle had put forth its foot inside of his mouth, and had scratched it.
+That made him so angry that he began to bark; he grasped it once more
+and carried it behind me. I ordered Milton to throw it away, but he
+paid no attention to me. Then I took the turtle from him and threw it
+away. But he did not leave it. He hurriedly dug a hole near it; when the
+hole was dug, he threw the turtle into it and covered it up with dirt.
+
+The turtles live on land and in the water, like snakes and frogs. They
+breed their young from eggs. These eggs they lay on the ground, and they
+do not hatch them, but the eggs burst themselves, like fish spawn, and
+the turtles crawl out of them. There are small turtles, not larger than
+a saucer, and large ones, seven feet in length and weighing seven
+hundredweights. The large turtles live in the sea.
+
+One turtle lays in the spring hundreds of eggs. The turtle's shells are
+its ribs. Men and other animals have each rib separate, while the
+turtle's ribs are all grown together into a shell. But the main thing is
+that with all the animals the ribs are inside the flesh, while the
+turtle has the ribs on the outside, and the flesh beneath them.
+
+
+
+
+BÚLKA AND THE WOLF
+
+
+When I left the Caucasus, they were still fighting there, and in the
+night it was dangerous to travel without a guard.
+
+I wanted to leave as early as possible, and so did not lie down to
+sleep.
+
+My friend came to see me off, and we sat the whole evening and night in
+the village street, in front of my cabin.
+
+It was a moonlit night with a mist, and so bright that one could read,
+though the moon was not to be seen.
+
+In the middle of the night we suddenly heard a pig squealing in the yard
+across the street. One of us cried: "A wolf is choking the pig!"
+
+I ran into the house, grasped a loaded gun, and ran into the street.
+They were all standing at the gate of the yard where the pig was
+squealing, and cried to me: "Here!" Milton rushed after me,--no doubt he
+thought that I was going out to hunt with the gun; but Búlka pricked his
+short ears, and tossed from side to side, as though to ask me whom he
+was to clutch. When I ran up to the wicker fence, I saw a beast running
+straight toward me from the other side of the yard. That was the wolf.
+He ran up to the fence and jumped on it. I stepped aside and fixed my
+gun. The moment the wolf jumped down from the fence to my side, I aimed,
+almost touching him with the gun, and pulled the trigger; but my gun
+made "Click" and did not go off. The Wolf did not stop, but ran across
+the street.
+
+Milton and Búlka made for him. Milton was near to the wolf, but was
+afraid to take hold of him; and no matter how fast Búlka ran on his
+short legs, he could not keep up with him. We ran as fast as we could
+after the wolf, but both the wolf and the dogs disappeared from sight.
+Only at the ditch, at the end of the village, did we hear a low barking
+and whimpering, and saw the dust rise in the mist of the moon and the
+dogs busy with the wolf. When we ran up to the ditch, the wolf was no
+longer there, and both dogs returned to us with raised tails and angry
+faces. Búlka snarled and pushed me with his head: evidently he wanted to
+tell me something, but did not know how.
+
+We examined the dogs, and found a small wound on Búlka's head. He had
+evidently caught up with the wolf before he got to the ditch, but had
+not had a chance to get hold of him, while the wolf snapped at him and
+ran away. It was a small wound, so there was no danger.
+
+We returned to the cabin, and sat down and talked about what had
+happened. I was angry because the gun had missed fire, and thought of
+how the wolf would have remained on the spot, if the gun had shot. My
+friend wondered how the wolf could have crept into the yard. An old
+Cossack said that there was nothing remarkable about it, because that
+was not a wolf, but a witch who had charmed my gun. Thus we sat and kept
+talking. Suddenly the dogs darted off, and we saw the same wolf in the
+middle of the street; but this time he ran so fast when he heard our
+shout that the dogs could not catch up with him.
+
+After that the old Cossack was fully convinced that it was not a wolf,
+but a witch; but I thought that it was a mad wolf, because I had never
+seen or heard of such a thing as a wolf's coming back toward the people,
+after it had been driven away.
+
+In any case I poured some powder on Búlka's wound, and set it on fire.
+The powder flashed up and burned out the sore spot.
+
+I burned out the sore with powder, in order to burn away the poisonous
+saliva, if it had not yet entered the blood. But if the saliva had
+already entered the blood, I knew that the blood would carry it through
+the whole body, and then it would not be possible to cure him.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT HAPPENED TO BÚLKA IN PYATIGÓRSK
+
+
+From the Cossack village I did not travel directly to Russia, but first
+to Pyatigórsk, where I stayed two months. Milton I gave away to a
+Cossack hunter, and Búlka I took along with me to Pyatigórsk.
+
+Pyatigórsk [in English, Five-Mountains] is called so because it is
+situated on Mount Besh-tau. And besh means in Tartar "five," and tau
+"mountain." From this mountain flows a hot sulphur stream. It is as hot
+as boiling water, and over the spot where the water flows from the
+mountain there is always a steam as from a samovár.
+
+The whole place, on which the city stands, is very cheerful. From the
+mountain flow the hot springs, and at the foot of the mountain is the
+river Podkúmok. On the slopes of the mountain are forests; all around
+the city are fields, and in the distance are seen the mountains of the
+Caucasus. On these the snow never melts, and they are always as white as
+sugar. One large mountain, Elbrus, is like a white loaf of sugar; it can
+be seen from everywhere when the weather is clear. People come to the
+hot springs to be cured, and over them there are arbours and awnings,
+and all around them are gardens with walks. In the morning the music
+plays, and people drink the water, or bathe, or stroll about.
+
+The city itself is on the mountain, but at the foot of it there is a
+suburb. I lived in that suburb in a small house. The house stood in a
+yard, and before the windows was a small garden, and in the garden stood
+the landlord's beehives, not in hollow stems, as in Russia, but in
+round, plaited baskets. The bees are there so gentle that in the morning
+I used to sit with Búlka in that garden, amongst the beehives.
+
+Búlka walked about between the hives, and sniffed, and listened to the
+bees' buzzing; he walked so softly among them that he did not interfere
+with them, and they did not bother him.
+
+One morning I returned home from the waters, and sat down in the garden
+to drink coffee. Búlka began to scratch himself behind his ears, and
+made a grating noise with his collar. The noise worried the bees, and so
+I took the collar off. A little while later I heard a strange and
+terrible noise coming from the city. The dogs barked, howled, and
+whimpered, people shouted, and the noise descended lower from the
+mountain and came nearer and nearer to our suburb.
+
+Búlka stopped scratching himself, put his broad head with its white
+teeth between his fore legs, stuck out his tongue as he wished, and lay
+quietly by my side. When he heard the noise he seemed to understand what
+it was. He pricked his ears, showed his teeth, jumped up, and began to
+snarl. The noise came nearer. It sounded as though all the dogs of the
+city were howling, whimpering, and barking. I went to the gate to see
+what it was, and my landlady came out, too. I asked her:
+
+"What is this?"
+
+She said:
+
+"The prisoners of the jail are coming down to kill the dogs. The dogs
+have been breeding so much that the city authorities have ordered all
+the dogs in the city to be killed."
+
+"So they would kill Búlka, too, if they caught him?"
+
+"No, they are not allowed to kill dogs with collars."
+
+Just as I was speaking, the prisoners were coming up to our house. In
+front walked the soldiers, and behind them four prisoners in chains. Two
+of the prisoners had in their hands long iron hooks, and two had clubs.
+In front of our house, one of the prisoners caught a watch-dog with his
+hook and pulled it up to the middle of the street, and another began to
+strike it with the club.
+
+The little dog whined dreadfully, but the prisoners shouted and laughed.
+The prisoner with the hook turned over the dog, and when he saw that it
+was dead, he pulled out the hook and looked around for other dogs.
+
+Just then Búlka rushed headlong at that prisoner, as though he were a
+bear. I happened to think that he was without his collar, so I shouted:
+"Búlka, back!" and told the prisoners not to strike the dog. But the
+prisoner laughed when he saw Búlka, and with his hook nimbly struck him
+and caught him by his thigh. Búlka tried to get away; but the prisoner
+pulled him up toward him and told the other prisoner to strike him. The
+other raised his club, and Búlka would have been killed, but he jerked,
+and broke the skin at the thigh and, taking his tail between his legs,
+flew, with the red sore on his body, through the gate and into the
+house, and hid himself under my bed.
+
+He was saved because the skin had broken in the spot where the hook
+was.
+
+
+
+
+BÚLKA'S AND MILTON'S END
+
+
+Búlka and Milton died at the same time. The old Cossack did not know how
+to get along with Milton. Instead of taking him out only for birds, he
+went with him to hunt wild boars. And that same fall a tusky boar ripped
+him open. Nobody knew how to sew him up, and so he died.
+
+Búlka, too, did not live long after the prisoners had caught him. Soon
+after his salvation from the prisoners he began to feel unhappy, and
+started to lick everything that he saw. He licked my hands, but not as
+formerly when he fawned. He licked for a long time, and pressed his
+tongue against me, and then began to snap. Evidently he felt like biting
+my hand, but did not want to do so. I did not give him my hand. Then he
+licked my boot and the foot of a table, and then he began to snap at
+these things. That lasted about two days, and on the third he
+disappeared, and no one saw him or heard of him.
+
+He could not have been stolen or run away from me. This happened six
+weeks after the wolf had bitten him. Evidently the wolf had been mad.
+Búlka had gone mad, and so went away. He had what hunters call the
+rabies. They say that this madness consists in this, that the mad animal
+gets cramps in its throat. It wants to drink and cannot, because the
+water makes the cramps worse. And so it gets beside itself from pain and
+thirst, and begins to bite. Evidently Búlka was beginning to have these
+cramps when he started to lick and then to bite my hand and the foot of
+the table.
+
+I went everywhere in the neighbourhood and asked about Búlka, but could
+not find out what had become of him, or how he had died. If he had been
+running about and biting, as mad dogs do, I should have heard of him. No
+doubt he ran somewhere into a thicket and there died by himself.
+
+The hunters say that when an intelligent dog gets the rabies, he runs to
+the fields and forests, and there tries to find the herb which he needs,
+and rolls in the dew, and gets cured. Evidently Búlka never got cured.
+He never came back.
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAY HARE
+
+
+A gray hare was living in the winter near the village. When night came,
+he pricked one ear and listened; then he pricked his second ear, moved
+his whiskers, sniffed, and sat down on his hind legs. Then he took a
+leap or two over the deep snow, and again sat down on his hind legs, and
+looked around him. Nothing could be seen but snow. The snow lay in waves
+and glistened like sugar. Over the hare's head hovered a frost vapour,
+and through this vapour could be seen the large, bright stars.
+
+The hare had to cross the highway, in order to come to a threshing-floor
+he knew of. On the highway the runners could be heard squeaking, and the
+horses snorting, and seats creaking in the sleighs.
+
+The hare again stopped near the road. Peasants were walking beside the
+sleighs, and the collars of their caftans were raised. Their faces were
+scarcely visible. Their beards, moustaches, and eyelashes were white.
+Steam rose from their mouths and noses. Their horses were sweaty, and
+the hoarfrost clung to the sweat. The horses jostled under their arches,
+and dived in and out of snow-drifts. The peasants ran behind the horses
+and in front of them, and beat them with their whips. Two peasants
+walked beside each other, and one of them told the other how a horse of
+his had once been stolen.
+
+When the carts passed by, the hare leaped across the road and softly
+made for the threshing-floor. A dog saw the hare from a cart. He began
+to bark and darted after the hare. The hare leaped toward the
+threshing-floor over the snow-drifts, which held him back; but the dog
+stuck fast in the snow after the tenth leap, and stopped. Then the hare,
+too, stopped and sat up on his hind legs, and then softly went on to the
+threshing-floor.
+
+On his way he met two other hares on the sowed winter field. They were
+feeding and playing. The hare played awhile with his companions, dug
+away the frosty snow with them, ate the wintergreen, and went on.
+
+In the village everything was quiet; the fires were out. All one could
+hear was a baby's cry in a hut and the crackling of the frost in the
+logs of the cabins. The hare went to the threshing-floor, and there
+found some companions. He played awhile with them on the cleared floor,
+ate some oats from the open granary, climbed on the kiln over the
+snow-covered roof, and across the wicker fence started back to his
+ravine.
+
+The dawn was glimmering in the east; the stars grew less, and the frost
+vapours rose more densely from the earth. In the near-by village the
+women got up, and went to fetch water; the peasants brought the feed
+from the barn; the children shouted and cried. There were still more
+carts going down the road, and the peasants talked aloud to each other.
+
+The hare leaped across the road, went up to his old lair, picked out a
+high place, dug away the snow, lay with his back in his new lair,
+dropped his ears on his back, and fell asleep with open eyes.
+
+
+
+
+GOD SEES THE TRUTH, BUT DOES NOT TELL AT ONCE
+
+
+In the city of Vladímir there lived a young merchant, Aksénov by name.
+He had two shops and a house.
+
+Aksénov was a light-complexioned, curly-headed, fine-looking man and a
+very jolly fellow and good singer. In his youth Aksénov had drunk much,
+and when he was drunk he used to become riotous, but when he married he
+gave up drinking, and that now happened very rarely with him.
+
+One day in the summer Aksénov went to the Nízhni-Nóvgorod fair. As he
+bade his family good-bye, his wife said to him:
+
+"Iván Dmítrievich, do not start to-day! I have had a bad dream about
+you."
+
+Aksénov laughed, and said:
+
+"Are you afraid that I might go on a spree at the fair?"
+
+His wife said:
+
+"I do not know what I am afraid of, but I had a bad dream: I dreamed
+that you came to town, and when you took off your cap I saw that your
+head was all gray."
+
+Aksénov laughed.
+
+"That means that I shall make some profit. If I strike a good bargain,
+you will see me bring you some costly presents."
+
+And he bade his family farewell, and started.
+
+In the middle of his journey he met a merchant whom he knew, and they
+stopped together in a hostelry for the night. They drank their tea
+together, and lay down to sleep in two adjoining rooms. Aksénov did not
+like to sleep long; he awoke in the middle of the night and, as it was
+easier to travel when it was cool, wakened his driver and told him to
+hitch the horses. Then he went to the "black" hut, paid his bill, and
+went away.
+
+[Illustration: "'Whose knife is this?'"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko_]
+
+When he had gone about forty versts, he again stopped to feed the horses
+and to rest in the vestibule of a hostelry. At dinner-time he came out
+on the porch, and ordered the samovár to be prepared for him. He took
+out his guitar and began to play. Suddenly a tróyka with bells drove up
+to the hostelry, and from the cart leaped an officer with two soldiers,
+and he went up to Aksénov, and asked him who he was and where he came
+from.
+
+Aksénov told him everything as it was, and said:
+
+"Would you not like to drink tea with me?"
+
+But the officer kept asking him questions:
+
+"Where did you stay last night? Were you alone, or with a merchant? Did
+you see the merchant in the morning? Why did you leave so early in the
+morning?"
+
+Aksénov wondered why they asked him about all that; he told them
+everything as it was, and said:
+
+"Why do you ask me this? I am not a thief, nor a robber. I am travelling
+on business of my own, and you have nothing to ask me about."
+
+Then the officer called the soldiers, and said:
+
+"I am the chief of the rural police, and I ask you this, because the
+merchant with whom you passed last night has been found with his throat
+cut. Show me your things, and you look through them!"
+
+They entered the house, took his valise and bag, and opened them and
+began to look through them. Suddenly the chief took a knife out of the
+bag, and cried out:
+
+"Whose knife is this?"
+
+Aksénov looked, and saw that they had taken out a blood-stained knife
+from his bag, and he was frightened "How did the blood get on the
+knife?"
+
+Aksénov wanted to answer, but could not pronounce a word.
+
+"I--I do not know--I--the knife--is not mine!"
+
+Then the chief said:
+
+"In the morning the merchant was found in his bed with his throat cut.
+No one but you could have done it. The house was locked from within, and
+there was no one in the house but you. Here is the bloody knife in your
+bag, and your face shows your guilt. Tell me, how did you kill him, and
+how much money did you rob him of?"
+
+Aksénov swore that he had not done it; that he had not seen the merchant
+after drinking tea with him; that he had with him his own eight
+thousand; that the knife was not his. But his voice faltered, his face
+was pale, and he trembled from fear, as though he were guilty.
+
+The chief called in the soldiers, told them to bind him and to take him
+to the cart. When he was rolled into the cart with his legs tied, he
+made the sign of the cross and began to cry. They took away his money
+and things, and sent him to jail to the nearest town. They sent to
+Vladímir to find out what kind of a man Aksénov was, and all the
+merchants and inhabitants of Vladímir testified to the fact that Aksénov
+had drunk and caroused when he was young, but that he was a good man.
+Then they began to try him. He was tried for having killed the Ryazán
+merchant and having robbed him of twenty thousand roubles.
+
+The wife was grieving for her husband and did not know what to think.
+Her children were still young, and one was still at the breast. She took
+them all and went with them to the town where her husband was kept in
+prison. At first she was not admitted, but later she implored the
+authorities, and she was taken to her husband. When she saw him in
+prison garb and in chains, together with murderers, she fell to the
+ground and could not come to for a long time. Then she placed her
+children about her, sat down beside him, and began to tell him about
+house matters, and to ask him about everything which had happened. He
+told her everything. She said:
+
+"What shall I do?"
+
+He said:
+
+"We must petition the Tsar. An innocent man cannot be allowed to
+perish."
+
+His wife said that she had already petitioned the Tsar, but that the
+petition had not reached him. Aksénov said nothing, and only lowered his
+head. Then his wife said:
+
+"You remember the dream I had about your getting gray. Indeed, you have
+grown gray from sorrow. If you had only not started then!"
+
+And she looked over his hair, and said:
+
+"Iván, my darling, tell your wife the truth: did you not do it?"
+
+Aksénov said, "And you, too, suspect me!" and covered his face with his
+hands, and began to weep.
+
+Then a soldier came, and told his wife that she must leave with her
+children. And Aksénov for the last time bade his family farewell.
+
+When his wife had left, Aksénov thought about what they had been talking
+of. When he recalled that his wife had also suspected him and had asked
+him whether he had killed the merchant, he said to himself: "Evidently
+none but God can know the truth, and He alone must be asked, and from
+Him alone can I expect mercy." And from that time on Aksénov no longer
+handed in petitions and stopped hoping, but only prayed to God.
+
+Aksénov was sentenced to be beaten with the knout, and to be sent to
+hard labour. And it was done.
+
+He was beaten with the knout, and later, when the knout sores healed
+over, he was driven with other convicts to Siberia.
+
+In Siberia, Aksénov passed twenty-six years at hard labour. His hair
+turned white like snow, and his beard grew long, narrow, and gray. All
+his mirth went away. He stooped, began to walk softly, spoke little,
+never laughed, and frequently prayed to God.
+
+In the prison Aksénov learned to make boots, and with the money which he
+earned he bought himself the "Legends of the Holy Martyrs," and read
+them while it was light in the prison; on holidays he went to the prison
+church and read the Epistles, and sang in the choir,--his voice was
+still good. The authorities were fond of Aksénov for his gentleness, and
+his prison comrades respected him and called him "grandfather" and
+"God's man." When there were any requests to be made of the authorities,
+his comrades always sent him to speak for them, and when the convicts
+had any disputes between themselves, they came to Aksénov to settle
+them.
+
+No one wrote Aksénov letters from his home, and he did not know whether
+his wife and children were alive, or not.
+
+Once they brought some new prisoners to the prison. In the evening the
+old prisoners gathered around the new men, and asked them from what town
+they came, or from what village, and for what acts they had been sent
+up. Aksénov, too, sat down on the bed-boards near the new prisoners and,
+lowering his head, listened to what they were saying. One of the new
+prisoners was a tall, sound-looking old man of about sixty years of age,
+with a gray, clipped beard. He was telling them what he had been sent up
+for:
+
+"Yes, brothers, I have come here for no crime at all. I had unhitched a
+driver's horse from the sleigh. I was caught. They said, 'You stole it.'
+And I said, 'I only wanted to get home quickly, for I let the horse go.
+Besides, the driver is a friend of mine. I am telling you the
+truth.'--'No,' they said, 'you have stolen it.' But they did not know
+what I had been stealing, or where I had been stealing. There were
+crimes for which I ought to have been sent up long ago, but they could
+not convict me, and now I am here contrary to the law. 'You are
+lying,--you have been in Siberia, but you did not make a long visit
+there--'"
+
+"Where do you come from?" asked one of the prisoners.
+
+"I am from the city of Vladímir, a burgher of that place. My name is
+Makár, and by my father Seménovich."
+
+Aksénov raised his head, and asked:
+
+"Seménovich, have you not heard in Vladímir about the family of Merchant
+Aksénov? Are they alive?"
+
+"Yes, I have heard about them! They are rich merchants, even though
+their father is in Siberia. He is as much a sinner as I, I think. And
+you, grandfather, what are you here for?"
+
+Aksénov did not like to talk of his misfortune. He sighed, and said:
+
+"For my sins have I passed twenty-six years at hard labour."
+
+Makár Seménovich said:
+
+"For what sins?"
+
+Aksénov said, "No doubt, I deserved it," and did not wish to tell him
+any more; but the other prison people told the new man how Aksénov had
+come to be in Siberia. They told him how on the road some one had killed
+a merchant and had put the knife into his bag, and he thus was sentenced
+though he was innocent.
+
+When Makár Seménovich heard that, he looked at Aksénov, clapped his
+knees with his hands, and said:
+
+"What a marvel! What a marvel! But you have grown old, grandfather!"
+
+He was asked what he was marvelling at, and where he had seen Aksénov,
+but Makár Seménovich made no reply, and only said:
+
+"It is wonderful, boys, where we were fated to meet!"
+
+And these words made Aksénov think that this man might know something
+about who had killed the merchant. He said:
+
+"Seménovich, have you heard before this about that matter, or have we
+met before?"
+
+"Of course I have heard. The earth is full of rumours. That happened a
+long time ago: I have forgotten what I heard," said Makár Seménovich.
+
+"Maybe you have heard who killed the merchant?" asked Aksénov.
+
+Makár Seménovich laughed and said:
+
+"I suppose he was killed by the man in whose bag the knife was found.
+Even if somebody stuck that knife into that bag, he was not caught, so
+he is no thief. And how could the knife have been put in? Was not the
+bag under your head? You would have heard him."
+
+The moment Aksénov heard these words, he thought that that was the man
+who had killed the merchant. He got up and walked away. All that night
+Aksénov could not fall asleep. He felt sad, and had visions: now he saw
+his wife such as she had been when she bade him farewell for the last
+time, as he went to the fair. He saw her, as though she was alive, and
+he saw her face and eyes, and heard her speak to him and laugh. Then he
+saw his children such as they had been then,--just as little,--one of
+them in a fur coat, the other at the breast. And he thought of himself,
+such as he had been then,--gay and young; he recalled how he had been
+sitting on the porch of the hostelry, where he was arrested, and had
+been playing the guitar, and how light his heart had been then. And he
+recalled the pillory, where he had been whipped, and the executioner,
+and the people all around, and the chains, and the prisoners, and his
+prison life of the last twenty-six years, and his old age. And such
+gloom came over him that he felt like laying hands on himself.
+
+"And all that on account of that evil-doer!" thought Aksénov.
+
+And such a rage fell upon him against Makár Seménovich, that he wanted
+to have his revenge upon him, even if he himself were to be ruined by
+it. He said his prayers all night long, but could not calm himself. In
+the daytime he did not walk over to Makár Seménovich, and did not look
+at him.
+
+Thus two weeks passed. At night Aksénov could not sleep, and he felt so
+sad that he did not know what to do with himself.
+
+Once, in the night, he walked all over the prison, and saw dirt falling
+from underneath one bedplace. He stopped to see what it was. Suddenly
+Makár Seménovich jumped up from under the bed and looked at Aksénov with
+a frightened face. Aksénov wanted to pass on, so as not to see him; but
+Makár took him by his arm, and told him that he had dug a passage way
+under the wall, and that he each day carried the dirt away in his
+boot-legs and poured it out in the open, whenever they took the convicts
+out to work. He said:
+
+"Keep quiet, old man,--I will take you out, too. And if you tell, they
+will whip me, and I will not forgive you,--I will kill you."
+
+When Aksénov saw the one who had done him evil, he trembled in his rage,
+and pulled away his arm, and said:
+
+"I have no reason to get away from here, and there is no sense in
+killing me,--you killed me long ago. And whether I will tell on you or
+not depends on what God will put into my soul."
+
+On the following day, when the convicts were taken out to work, the
+soldiers noticed that Makár Seménovich was pouring out the dirt, and so
+they began to search in the prison, and found the hole. The chief came
+to the prison and began to ask all who had dug the hole. Everybody
+denied it. Those who knew had not seen Makár Seménovich, because they
+knew that for this act he would be whipped half-dead. Then the chief
+turned to Aksénov. He knew that Aksénov was a just man, and said:
+
+"Old man, you are a truthful man, tell me before God who has done that."
+
+Makár Seménovich stood as though nothing had happened and looked at the
+chief, and did not glance at Aksénov. Aksénov's arms and lips trembled,
+and he could not utter a word for long time. He thought: "If I protect
+him, why should I forgive him, since he has ruined me? Let him suffer
+for my torments! And if I tell on him, they will indeed whip him to
+death. And suppose that I have a wrong suspicion against him. Will that
+make it easier for me?"
+
+The chief said once more:
+
+"Well, old man, speak, tell the truth! Who has been digging it?"
+
+Aksénov looked at Makár Seménovich, and said:
+
+"I cannot tell, your Honour. God orders me not to tell. And I will not
+tell. Do with me as you please,--you have the power."
+
+No matter how much the chief tried, Aksénov would not say anything more.
+And so they did not find out who had done the digging.
+
+On the following night, as Aksénov lay down on the bed-boards and was
+just falling asleep, he heard somebody come up to him and sit down at
+his feet. He looked in the darkness and recognized Makár. Aksénov said:
+
+"What more do you want of me? What are you doing here?"
+
+Makár Seménovich was silent. Aksénov raised himself, and said:
+
+"What do you want? Go away, or I will call the soldier."
+
+Makár bent down close to Aksénov, and said to him in a whisper:
+
+[Illustration: "'God will forgive you'"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko_]
+
+"Iván Dmítrievich, forgive me!"
+
+Aksénov said:
+
+"For what shall I forgive you?"
+
+"It was I who killed the merchant and put the knife into your bag. I
+wanted to kill you, too, but they made a noise in the yard, so I put the
+knife into your bag and climbed through the window."
+
+Aksénov was silent and did not know what to say. Makár Seménovich
+slipped down from the bed, made a low obeisance, and said:
+
+"Iván Dmítrievich, forgive me, forgive me for God's sake! I will declare
+that it was I who killed the merchant,--you will be forgiven. You will
+return home."
+
+Aksénov said:
+
+"It is easy for you to speak so, but see how I have suffered! Where
+shall I go now? My wife has died, my children have forgotten me. I have
+no place to go to--"
+
+Makár Seménovich did not get up from the floor. He struck his head
+against the earth, and said:
+
+"Iván Dmítrievich, forgive me! When they whipped me with the knout I
+felt better than now that I am looking at you. You pitied me, and did
+not tell on me. Forgive me, for Christ's sake! Forgive me, the accursed
+evil-doer!" And he burst out into tears.
+
+When Aksénov heard Makár Seménovich crying, he began to weep himself,
+and said:
+
+"God will forgive you. Maybe I am a hundred times worse than you!"
+
+And suddenly a load fell off from his soul. And he no longer pined for
+his home, and did not wish to leave the prison, but only thought of his
+last hour.
+
+Makár Seménovich did not listen to Aksénov, but declared his guilt. When
+the decision came for Aksénov to leave,--he was dead.
+
+
+
+
+HUNTING WORSE THAN SLAVERY
+
+
+We were hunting bears. My companion had a chance to shoot at a bear: he
+wounded him, but only in a soft spot. A little blood was left on the
+snow, but the bear got away.
+
+We met in the forest and began to discuss what to do: whether to go and
+find that bear, or to wait two or three days until the bear should lie
+down again.
+
+We asked the peasant bear drivers whether we could now surround the
+bear. An old bear driver said:
+
+"No, we must give the bear a chance to calm himself. In about five days
+it will be possible to surround him, but if we go after him now he will
+only be frightened and will not lie down."
+
+But a young bear driver disputed with the old man, and said that he
+could surround him now.
+
+"Over this snow," he said, "the bear cannot get away far,--he is fat. He
+will lie down to-day again. And if he does not, I will overtake him on
+snow-shoes."
+
+My companion, too, did not want to surround the bear now, and advised
+waiting.
+
+But I said:
+
+"What is the use of discussing the matter? Do as you please, but I will
+go with Demyán along the track. If we overtake him, so much is gained;
+if not,--I have nothing else to do to-day anyway, and it is not yet
+late."
+
+And so we did.
+
+My companions went to the sleigh, and back to the village, but Demyán
+and I took bread with us, and remained in the woods.
+
+When all had left us, Demyán and I examined our guns, tucked our fur
+coats over our belts, and followed the track.
+
+It was fine weather, chilly and calm. But walking on snow-shoes was a
+hard matter: the snow was deep and powdery.
+
+The snow had not settled in the forest, and, besides, fresh snow had
+fallen on the day before, so that the snow-shoes sunk half a foot in the
+snow, and in places even deeper.
+
+The bear track could be seen a distance away. We could see the way the
+bear had walked, for in spots he had fallen in the snow to his belly and
+had swept the snow aside. At first we walked in plain sight of the
+track, through a forest of large trees; then, when the track went into a
+small pine wood, Demyán stopped.
+
+"We must now give up the track," he said. "He will, no doubt, lie down
+here. He has been sitting on his haunches,--you can see it by the snow.
+Let us go away from the track, and make a circle around him. But we must
+walk softly and make no noise, not even cough, or we shall scare him."
+
+We went away from the track, to the left. We walked about five hundred
+steps and there we again saw the track before us. We again followed the
+track, and this took us to the road. We stopped on the road and began to
+look around, to see in what direction the bear had gone. Here and there
+on the road we could see the bear's paws with all the toes printed on
+the snow, while in others we could see the tracks of a peasant's bast
+shoes. He had, evidently, gone to the village.
+
+We walked along the road. Demyán said to me:
+
+"We need not watch the road; somewhere he will turn off the road, to the
+right or to the left,--we shall see in the snow. Somewhere he will turn
+off,--he will not go to the village."
+
+We walked thus about a mile along the road; suddenly we saw the track
+turn off from the road. We looked at it, and see the wonder! It was a
+bear's track, but leading not from the road to the woods, but from the
+woods to the road: the toes were turned to the road. I said:
+
+"That is another bear."
+
+Demyán looked at it, and thought awhile.
+
+"No," he said, "that is the same bear, only he has begun to cheat. He
+left the road backwards."
+
+We followed the track, and so it was. The bear had evidently walked
+about ten steps backwards from the road, until he got beyond a fir-tree,
+and then he had turned and gone on straight ahead. Demyán stopped, and
+said:
+
+"Now we shall certainly fall in with him. He has no place but this swamp
+to lie down in. Let us surround him."
+
+We started to surround him, going through the dense pine forest. I was
+getting tired, and it was now much harder to travel. Now I would strike
+against a juniper-bush, and get caught in it; or a small pine-tree would
+get under my feet; or the snow-shoes would twist, as I was not used to
+them; or I would strike a stump or a block under the snow. I was
+beginning to be worn out. I took off my fur coat, and the sweat was just
+pouring down from me. But Demyán sailed along as in a boat. It looked as
+though the snow-shoes walked under him of their own accord. He neither
+caught in anything, nor did his shoes turn on him.
+
+And he even threw my fur coat over his shoulders, and kept urging me on.
+
+We made about three versts in a circle, and walked past the swamp.
+Demyán suddenly stopped in front of me, and waved his hand. I walked
+over to him. Demyán bent down, and pointed with his hand, and whispered
+to me:
+
+"Do you see, a magpie is chattering on a windfall: the bird is scenting
+the bear from a distance. It is he."
+
+We walked to one side, made another verst, and again hit the old trail.
+Thus we had made a circle around the bear, and he was inside of it. We
+stopped. I took off my hat and loosened my wraps: I felt as hot as in a
+bath, and was as wet as a mouse. Demyán, too, was all red, and he wiped
+his face with his sleeve.
+
+"Well," he said, "we have done our work, sir, so we may take a rest."
+
+The evening glow could be seen through the forest. We sat down on the
+snow-shoes to rest ourselves. We took the bread and salt out of the
+bags; first I ate a little snow, and then the bread. The bread tasted to
+me better than any I had eaten in all my life. We sat awhile; it began
+to grow dark. I asked Demyán how far it was to the village.
+
+"About twelve versts. We shall reach it in the night; but now we must
+rest. Put on your fur coat, sir, or you will catch a cold."
+
+Demyán broke off some pine branches, knocked down the snow, made a bed,
+and we lay down beside each other, with our arms under our heads. I do
+not remember how I fell asleep. I awoke about two hours later. Something
+crashed.
+
+I had been sleeping so soundly that I forgot where I was. I looked
+around me: what marvel was that? Where was I? Above me were some white
+chambers, and white posts, and on everything glistened white tinsel. I
+looked up: there was a white, checkered cloth, and between the checks
+was a black vault in which burned fires of all colours. I looked around,
+and I recalled that we were in the forest, and that the snow-covered
+trees had appeared to me as chambers, and that the fires were nothing
+but the stars that flickered between the branches.
+
+In the night a hoarfrost had fallen, and there was hoarfrost on the
+branches, and on my fur coat, and Demyán was all covered with hoarfrost,
+and hoarfrost fell from above. I awoke Demyán. We got up on our
+snow-shoes and started. The forest was quiet. All that could be heard
+was the sound we made as we slid on our snow-shoes over the soft snow,
+or when a tree would crackle from the frost, and a hollow sound would
+pass through the whole woods. Only once did something living stir close
+to us and run away again. I thought it was the bear. We walked over to
+the place from where the noise had come, and we saw hare tracks. The
+young aspens were nibbled down. The hares had been feeding on them.
+
+We came out to the road, tied the snow-shoes behind us, and walked down
+the road. It was easy to walk. The snow-shoes rattled and rumbled over
+the beaten road; the snow creaked under our boots; the cold hoarfrost
+stuck to our faces like down. And the stars seemed to run toward us
+along the branches: they would flash, and go out again,--just as though
+the sky were walking round and round.
+
+My companion was asleep,--I awoke him. We told him how we had made a
+circle around the bear, and told the landlord to collect the drivers for
+the morning. We ate our supper and lay down to sleep.
+
+I was so tired that I could have slept until dinner, but my companion
+woke me. I jumped up and saw that my companion was all dressed and busy
+with his gun.
+
+"Where is Demyán?"
+
+"He has been in the forest for quite awhile. He has investigated the
+circle, and has been back to take the drivers out."
+
+I washed myself, put on my clothes, and loaded my guns. We seated
+ourselves in the sleigh, and started.
+
+There was a severe frost, the air was calm, and the sun could not be
+seen: there was a mist above, and the hoarfrost was settling.
+
+We travelled about three versts by the road, and reached the forest. We
+saw a blue smoke in a hollow, and peasants, men and women, were there
+with clubs.
+
+We climbed out of the sleigh and went up to the people. The peasants
+were sitting and baking potatoes, and joking with the women.
+
+Demyán was with them. The people got up, and Demyán took them away to
+place them in our last night's circuit. The men and women stretched
+themselves out in single file,--there were thirty of them and they could
+be seen only from the belt up,--and went into the woods; then my
+companion and I followed their tracks.
+
+Though they had made a path, it was hard to walk; still, we could not
+fall, for it was like walking between two walls.
+
+Thus we walked for half a verst. I looked up, and there was Demyán
+running to us from the other side on snow-shoes, and waving his hand for
+us to come to him.
+
+We went up to him, and he showed us where to stand. I took up my
+position and looked around.
+
+To the left of me was a tall pine forest. I could see far through it,
+and beyond the trees I saw the black spot of a peasant driver. Opposite
+me was a young pine growth, as tall as a man's stature. In this pine
+growth the branches were hanging down and stuck together from the snow.
+The path through the middle of the pine grove was covered with snow.
+This path was leading toward me. To the right of me was a dense pine
+forest, and beyond the pine grove there was a clearing. And on this
+clearing I saw Demyán place my companion.
+
+I examined my two guns and cocked them, and began to think where to take
+up a stand. Behind me, about three steps from me, there was a pine-tree.
+"I will stand by that pine, and will lean the other gun against it." I
+made my way to that pine, walking knee-deep in snow. I tramped down a
+space of about four feet each way, and there took my stand. One gun I
+took into my hands, and the other, with hammers raised, I placed against
+the tree. I unsheathed my dagger and put it back in the scabbard, to be
+sure that in case of need it would come out easily.
+
+I had hardly fixed myself, when Demyán shouted from the woods:
+
+"Start it now, start it!"
+
+And as Demyán shouted this, the peasants in the circuit cried, each with
+a different tone of voice: "Come now! OO-oo-oo!" and the women cried, in
+their thin voices: "Ai! Eekh!"
+
+The bear was in the circle. Demyán was driving him. In the circuit the
+people shouted, and only my companion and I stood still, did not speak
+or move, and waited for the bear. I stood, and looked, and listened, and
+my heart went pitapat. I was clutching my gun and trembling. Now, now he
+will jump out, I thought, and I will aim and shoot, and he will fall--
+Suddenly I heard to the left something tumbling through the snow, only
+it was far away. I looked into the tall pine forest: about fifty steps
+from me, behind the trees, stood something large and black. I aimed and
+waited. I thought it might come nearer. I saw it move its ears and turn
+around. Now I could see the whole of him from the side. It was a huge
+beast. I aimed hastily. Bang! I heard the bullet strike the tree.
+Through the smoke I saw the bear make back for the cover and disappear
+in the forest. "Well," I thought, "my business is spoiled: he will not
+run up to me again; either my companion will have a chance to shoot at
+him, or he will go through between the peasants, but never again toward
+me." I reloaded the gun, and stood and listened. The peasants were
+shouting on all sides, but on the right, not far from my companion, I
+heard a woman yell, "Here he is! Here he is! Here he is! This way! This
+way! Oi, oi, oi! Ai, ai, ai!"
+
+There was the bear, in full sight. I was no longer expecting the bear
+to come toward me, and so looked to the right toward my companion. I saw
+Demyán running without the snow-shoes along the path, with a stick in
+his hand, and going up to my companion, sitting down near him, and
+pointing with the stick at something, as though he were aiming. I saw my
+companion raise his gun and aim at where Demyán was pointing. Bang! he
+fired it off.
+
+"Well," I thought, "he has killed him." But I saw that my companion was
+not running toward the bear. "Evidently he missed him, or did not strike
+him right. He will get away," I thought, "but he will not come toward
+me."
+
+What was that? Suddenly I heard something in front of me: somebody was
+flying like a whirlwind, and scattering the snow near by, and panting. I
+looked ahead of me, but he was making headlong toward me along the path
+through the dense pine growth. I could see that he was beside himself
+with fear. When he was within five steps of me I could see the whole of
+him: his chest was black and his head was enormous, and of a reddish
+colour. He was flying straight toward me, and scattering the snow in all
+directions. I could see by the bear's eyes that he did not see me and in
+his fright was rushing headlong. He was making straight for the pine
+where I was standing. I raised my gun, and shot, but he came still
+nearer. I saw that I had not hit him: the bullet was carried past him.
+He heard nothing, plunged onward, and did not see me. I bent down the
+gun, almost rested it against his head. Bang! This time I hit him, but
+did not kill him.
+
+He raised his head, dropped his ears, showed his teeth,--and straight
+toward me. I grasped the other gun; but before I had it in my hand, he
+was already on me, knocked me down, and flew over me. "Well," I thought,
+"that is good, he will not touch me." I was just getting up, when I
+felt something pressing against me and holding me down. In his onrush he
+ran past me, but he turned around and rushed against me with his whole
+breast. I felt something heavy upon me, something warm over my face, and
+I felt him taking my face into his jaws. My nose was already in his
+mouth, and I felt hot, and smelled his blood. He pressed my shoulders
+with his paws, and I could not stir. All I could do was to pull my head
+out of his jaws and press it against my breast, and I turned my nose and
+eyes away. But he was trying to get at my eyes and nose. I felt him
+strike the teeth of his upper jaw into my forehead, right below the
+hair, and the lower jaw into the cheek-bones below the eyes, and he
+began to crush me. It was as though my head were cut with knives. I
+jerked and pulled out my head, but he chawed and chawed and snapped at
+me like a dog. I would turn my head away, and he would catch it again.
+"Well," I thought, "my end has come." Suddenly I felt lighter. I looked
+up, and he was gone: he had jumped away from me, and was running now.
+
+When my companion and Demyán saw that the bear had knocked me into the
+snow, they dashed for me. My companion wanted to get there as fast as
+possible, but lost his way; instead of running on the trodden path, he
+ran straight ahead, and fell down. While he was trying to get out of the
+snow, the bear was gnawing at me. Demyán ran up to me along the path,
+without a gun, just with the stick which he had in his hands, and he
+shouted, "He is eating up the gentleman! He is eating up the gentleman!"
+And he kept running and shouting, "Oh, you wretched beast! What are you
+doing? Stop! Stop!"
+
+The bear listened to him, stopped, and ran away. When I got up, there
+was much blood on the snow, just as though a sheep had been killed, and
+over my eyes the flesh hung in rags. While the wound was fresh I felt no
+pain.
+
+My companion ran up to me, and the peasants gathered around me. They
+looked at my wounds, and washed them with snow. I had entirely forgotten
+about the wounds, and only asked, "Where is the bear? Where has he
+gone?"
+
+Suddenly we heard, "Here he is! Here he is!" We saw the bear running
+once more against us. We grasped our guns, but before we fired he ran
+past us. The bear was mad: he wanted to bite me again, but when he saw
+so many people he became frightened. We saw by the track that the bear
+was bleeding from the head. We wanted to follow him up, but my head hurt
+me, and so we drove to town to see a doctor.
+
+The doctor sewed up my wounds with silk, and they began to heal.
+
+A month later we went out again to hunt that bear; but I did not get the
+chance to kill him. The bear would not leave the cover, and kept walking
+around and around and roaring terribly. Demyán killed him. My shot had
+crushed his lower jaw and knocked out a tooth.
+
+This bear was very large, and he had beautiful black fur. I had the skin
+stuffed, and it is lying now in my room. The wounds on my head have
+healed, so that one can scarcely see where they were.
+
+
+
+
+A PRISONER OF THE CAUCASUS
+
+
+I.
+
+A certain gentleman was serving as an officer in the Caucasus. His name
+was Zhilín.
+
+One day he received a letter from home. His old mother wrote to him:
+
+"I have grown old, and I should like to see my darling son before my
+death. Come to bid me farewell and bury me, and then, with God's aid,
+return to the service. I have also found a bride for you: she is bright
+and pretty and has property. If you take a liking to her, you can marry
+her, and stay here for good."
+
+Zhilín reflected: "Indeed, my old mother has grown feeble; perhaps I
+shall never see her again. I must go; and if the bride is a good girl, I
+may marry her."
+
+He went to the colonel, got a furlough, bade his companions good-bye,
+treated his soldiers to four buckets of vódka, and got himself ready to
+go.
+
+At that time there was a war in the Caucasus. Neither in the daytime,
+nor at night, was it safe to travel on the roads. The moment a Russian
+walked or drove away from a fortress, the Tartars either killed him or
+took him as a prisoner to the mountains. It was a rule that a guard of
+soldiers should go twice a week from fortress to fortress. In front and
+in the rear walked soldiers, and between them were other people.
+
+It was in the summer. The carts gathered at daybreak outside the
+fortress, and the soldiers of the convoy came out, and all started.
+Zhilín rode on horseback, and his cart with his things went with the
+caravan.
+
+They had to travel twenty-five versts. The caravan proceeded slowly; now
+the soldiers stopped, and now a wheel came off a cart, or a horse
+stopped, and all had to stand still and wait.
+
+The sun had already passed midday, but the caravan had made only half
+the distance. It was dusty and hot; the sun just roasted them, and there
+was no shelter: it was a barren plain, with neither tree nor bush along
+the road.
+
+Zhilín rode out ahead. He stopped and waited for the caravan to catch up
+with him. He heard them blow the signal-horn behind: they had stopped
+again.
+
+Zhilín thought: "Why can't I ride on, without the soldiers? I have a
+good horse under me, and if I run against Tartars, I will gallop away.
+Or had I better not go?"
+
+He stopped to think it over. There rode up to him another officer,
+Kostylín, with a gun, and said:
+
+"Let us ride by ourselves, Zhilín! I cannot stand it any longer: I am
+hungry, and it is so hot. My shirt is dripping wet."
+
+Kostylín was a heavy, stout man, with a red face, and the perspiration
+was just rolling down his face. Zhilín thought awhile and said:
+
+"Is your gun loaded?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Well, then, we will go, but on one condition, that we do not separate."
+
+And so they rode ahead on the highway. They rode through the steppe, and
+talked, and looked about them. They could see a long way off.
+
+When the steppe came to an end, the road entered a cleft between two
+mountains. So Zhilín said:
+
+"We ought to ride up the mountain to take a look; for here they may
+leap out on us from the mountain without our seeing them."
+
+But Kostylín said:
+
+"What is the use of looking? Let us ride on!"
+
+Zhilín paid no attention to him.
+
+"No," he said, "you wait here below, and I will take a look up there."
+
+And he turned his horse to the left, up-hill. The horse under Zhilín was
+a thoroughbred (he had paid a hundred roubles for it when it was a colt,
+and had himself trained it), and it carried him up the slope as though
+on wings. The moment he reached the summit, he saw before him a number
+of Tartars on horseback, about eighty fathoms away. There were about
+thirty of them. When he saw them, he began to turn back; and the Tartars
+saw him, and galloped toward him, and on the ride took their guns out of
+the covers. Zhilín urged his horse down-hill as fast as its legs would
+carry him, and he shouted to Kostylín:
+
+"Take out the gun!" and he himself thought about his horse: "Darling,
+take me away from here! Don't stumble! If you do, I am lost. If I get to
+the gun, they shall not catch me."
+
+But Kostylín, instead of waiting, galloped at full speed toward the
+fortress, the moment he saw the Tartars. He urged the horse on with the
+whip, now on one side, and now on the other. One could see through the
+dust only the horse switching her tail.
+
+Zhilín saw that things were bad. The gun had disappeared, and he could
+do nothing with a sword. He turned his horse back to the soldiers,
+thinking that he might get away. He saw six men crossing his path. He
+had a good horse under him, but theirs were better still, and they
+crossed his path. He began to check his horse: he wanted to turn around;
+but the horse was running at full speed and could not be stopped, and he
+flew straight toward them. He saw a red-bearded Tartar on a gray horse,
+who was coming near to him. He howled and showed his teeth, and his gun
+was against his shoulder.
+
+"Well," thought Zhilín, "I know you devils. When you take one alive, you
+put him in a hole and beat him with a whip. I will not fall into your
+hands alive----"
+
+Though Zhilín was not tall, he was brave. He drew his sword, turned his
+horse straight against the Tartar, and thought:
+
+"Either I will knock his horse off its feet, or I will strike the Tartar
+with my sword."
+
+Zhilín got within a horse's length from him, when they shot at him from
+behind and hit the horse. The horse dropped on the ground while going at
+full speed, and fell on Zhilín's leg.
+
+He wanted to get up, but two stinking Tartars were already astride of
+him. He tugged and knocked down the two Tartars, but three more jumped
+down from their horses and began to strike him with the butts of their
+guns. Things grew dim before his eyes, and he tottered. The Tartars took
+hold of him, took from their saddles some reserve straps, twisted his
+arms behind his back, tied them with a Tartar knot, and fastened him to
+the saddle. They knocked down his hat, pulled off his boots, rummaged
+all over him, and took away his money and his watch, and tore all his
+clothes.
+
+Zhilín looked back at his horse. The dear animal was lying just as it
+had fallen down, and only twitched its legs and did not reach the ground
+with them; in its head there was a hole, and from it the black blood
+gushed and wet the dust for an ell around.
+
+A Tartar went up to the horse, to pull off the saddle. The horse was
+struggling still, and so he took out his dagger and cut its throat. A
+whistling sound came from the throat, and the horse twitched, and was
+dead.
+
+The Tartars took off the saddle and the trappings. The red-bearded
+Tartar mounted his horse, and the others seated Zhilín behind him. To
+prevent his falling off, they attached him by a strap to the Tartar's
+belt, and they rode off to the mountains.
+
+Zhilín was sitting back of the Tartar, and shaking and striking with his
+face against the stinking Tartar's back. All he saw before him was the
+mighty back, and the muscular neck, and the livid, shaved nape of his
+head underneath his cap. Zhilín's head was bruised, and the blood was
+clotted under his eyes. And he could not straighten himself on the
+saddle, nor wipe off his blood. His arms were twisted so badly that his
+shoulder bones pained him.
+
+They rode for a long time from one mountain to another, and forded a
+river, and came out on a path, where they rode through a ravine.
+
+Zhilín wanted to take note of the road on which they were travelling,
+but his eyes were smeared with blood, and he could not turn around.
+
+It was getting dark. They crossed another stream and rode up a rocky
+mountain. There was an odour of smoke, and the dogs began to bark. They
+had come to a native village. The Tartars got down from their horses;
+the Tartar children gathered around Zhilín, and screamed, and rejoiced,
+and aimed stones at him.
+
+The Tartar drove the boys away, took Zhilín down from his horse, and
+called a labourer. There came a Nogay, with large cheek-bones; he wore
+nothing but a shirt. The shirt was torn and left his breast bare. The
+Tartar gave him a command. The labourer brought the stocks,--two oak
+planks drawn through iron rings, and one of these rings with a clasp and
+lock.
+
+They untied Zhilín's hands, put the stocks on him, and led him into a
+shed: they pushed him in and locked the door. Zhilín fell on the manure
+pile. He felt around in the darkness for a soft spot, and lay down
+there.
+
+[Illustration: "They rode off to the mountains"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko_]
+
+
+II.
+
+Zhilín lay awake nearly the whole night. The nights were short. He saw
+through a chink that it was getting light. He got up, made the chink
+larger, and looked out.
+
+Through the chink Zhilín saw the road: it went down-hill; on the right
+was a Tartar cabin, and near it two trees. A black dog lay on the
+threshold, and a goat strutted about with her kids, which were jerking
+their little tails. He saw a young Tartar woman coming up the hill; she
+wore a loose coloured shirt and pantaloons and boots, and her head was
+covered with a caftan, and on her head there was a large tin pitcher
+with water. She walked along, jerking her back, and bending over, and by
+the hand she led a young shaven Tartar boy in nothing but his shirt. The
+Tartar woman went into the cabin with the water, and out came the Tartar
+of the day before, with the red beard, wearing a silk half-coat, a
+silver dagger on a strap, and shoes on his bare feet. On his head there
+was a tall, black sheepskin hat, tilted backwards. He came out, and he
+stretched himself and smoothed his red beard. He stood awhile, gave the
+labourer an order, and went away.
+
+Then two boys rode by, taking the horses to water. The muzzles of the
+horses were wet. Then there ran out some other shaven boys, in nothing
+but their shirts, with no trousers; they gathered in a crowd, walked
+over to the shed, picked up a stick, and began to poke it through the
+chink. When Zhilín shouted at the children, they screamed and started to
+run back, so that their bare knees glistened in the sun.
+
+Zhilín wanted to drink,--his throat was all dried up. He thought: "If
+they would only come to see me!" He heard them open the shed. The red
+Tartar came in, and with him another, black-looking fellow, of smaller
+stature. His eyes were black and bright, his cheeks ruddy, his small
+beard clipped; his face looked jolly, and he kept laughing all the time.
+This swarthy fellow was dressed even better: he had on a silk half-coat,
+of a blue colour, embroidered with galloons. In his belt there was a
+large silver dagger; his slippers were of red morocco and also
+embroidered with silver. Over his thin slippers he wore heavier shoes.
+His cap was tall, of white astrakhan.
+
+The red Tartar came in. He said something, as though scolding, and
+stopped. He leaned against the door-post, dangled his dagger, and like a
+wolf looked furtively at Zhilín. But the swarthy fellow--swift, lively,
+walking around as though on springs--went up straight to Zhilín,
+squatted down, showed his teeth, slapped him on the shoulder, began to
+rattle off something in his language, winked with his eyes, clicked his
+tongue, and kept repeating: "Goot Uruss! Goot Uruss!"
+
+Zhilín did not understand a thing and said:
+
+"Give me to drink, give me water to drink!"
+
+The swarthy fellow laughed. "Goot Uruss!" he kept rattling off.
+
+Zhilín showed with his lips and hands that he wanted something to drink.
+
+The swarthy fellow understood what he wanted, laughed out, looked
+through the door, and called some one: "Dina!"
+
+In came a thin, slender little girl, of about thirteen years of age, who
+resembled the swarthy man very much. Evidently she was his daughter. Her
+eyes, too, were black and bright, and her face was pretty. She wore a
+long blue shirt, with broad sleeves and without a belt. The skirt, the
+breast, and the sleeves were trimmed with red. On her legs were
+pantaloons, and on her feet slippers, with high-heeled shoes over them;
+on her neck she wore a necklace of Russian half-roubles. Her head was
+uncovered; her braid was black, with a ribbon through it, and from the
+ribbon hung small plates and a Russian rouble.
+
+Her father gave her a command. She ran away, and came back and brought a
+small tin pitcher. She gave him the water, and herself squatted down,
+bending up in such a way that her shoulders were below her knees. She
+sat there, and opened her eyes, and looked at Zhilín drinking, as though
+he were some animal.
+
+Zhilín handed her back the pitcher. She jumped away like a wild goat.
+Even her father laughed. He sent her somewhere else. She took the
+pitcher and ran away; she brought some fresh bread on a round board, and
+again sat down, bent over, riveted her eyes on him, and kept looking.
+
+The Tartars went away and locked the door.
+
+After awhile the Nogay came to Zhilín, and said:
+
+"Ai-da, master, ai-da!"
+
+He did not know any Russian, either. All Zhilín could make out was that
+he should follow him.
+
+Zhilín started with the stocks, and he limped and could not walk, so
+much did the stocks pull his legs aside. Zhilín went out with the Nogay.
+He saw a Tartar village of about ten houses, and a church of theirs,
+with a small tower. Near one house stood three horses, all saddled. Boys
+were holding the reins. From the house sprang the swarthy Tartar, and he
+waved his hand for Zhilín to come up. He laughed all the while, and
+talked in his language, and disappeared through the door.
+
+Zhilín entered the house. It was a good living-room,--the walls were
+plastered smooth with clay. Along the front wall lay coloured cushions,
+and at the sides hung costly rugs; on the rugs were guns, pistols,
+swords,--all in silver. By one wall there was a small stove, on a level
+with the floor. The floor was of dirt and as clean as a threshing-floor,
+and the whole front corner was carpeted with felt; and over the felt lay
+rugs, and on the rugs cushions. On these rugs sat the Tartars, in their
+slippers without their outer shoes: there were the swarthy fellow, the
+red Tartar, and three guests. At their backs were feather cushions, and
+before them, on a round board, were millet cakes and melted butter in a
+bowl, and Tartar beer, "buza," in a small pitcher. They were eating with
+their hands, and their hands were all greasy from the butter.
+
+The swarthy man jumped up and ordered Zhilín to be placed to one side,
+not on a rug, but on the bare floor; he went back to his rug, and
+treated his guests to millet cakes and buza. The labourer placed Zhilín
+where he had been ordered, himself took off his outer shoes, put them at
+the door, where stood the other shoes, and sat down on the felt next to
+the masters. He looked at them as they ate, and wiped off his spittle.
+
+The Tartars ate the cakes. Then there came a Tartar woman, in a shirt
+like the one the girl had on, and in pantaloons, and with a kerchief
+over her head. She carried away the butter and the cakes, and brought a
+small wash-basin of a pretty shape, and a pitcher with a narrow neck.
+The Tartars washed their hands, then folded them, knelt down, blew in
+every direction, and said their prayers. Then one of the Tartar guests
+turned to Zhilín, and began to speak in Russian:
+
+"You," he said, "were taken by Kazi-Muhammed," and he pointed to the red
+Tartar, "and he gave you to Abdul-Murat." He pointed to the swarthy man.
+"Abdul-Murat is now your master."
+
+Zhilín kept silence. Then Abdul-Murat began to speak. He pointed to
+Zhilín, and laughed, and kept repeating:
+
+"Soldier Uruss! Goot Uruss!"
+
+The interpreter said:
+
+"He wants you to write a letter home that they may send a ransom for
+you. When they send it, you will be set free."
+
+Zhilín thought awhile and said:
+
+"How much ransom does he want?"
+
+The Tartars talked together; then the interpreter said:
+
+"Three thousand in silver."
+
+"No," said Zhilín, "I cannot pay that."
+
+Abdul jumped up, began to wave his hands and to talk to Zhilín, thinking
+that he would understand him. The interpreter translated. He said:
+
+"How much will you give?"
+
+Zhilín thought awhile, and said:
+
+"Five hundred roubles."
+
+Then the Tartars began to talk a great deal, all at the same time. Abdul
+shouted at the red Tartar. He was so excited that the spittle just
+spirted from his mouth.
+
+But the red Tartar only scowled and clicked his tongue.
+
+They grew silent, and the interpreter said:
+
+"The master is not satisfied with five hundred roubles. He has himself
+paid two hundred for you. Kazi-Muhammed owed him a debt. He took you for
+that debt. Three thousand roubles, nothing less will do. And if you do
+not write, you will be put in a hole and beaten with a whip."
+
+"Oh," thought Zhilín, "it will not do to show that I am frightened; that
+will only be worse." He leaped to his feet, and said:
+
+"Tell that dog that if he is going to frighten me, I will not give him a
+penny, and I will refuse to write. I have never been afraid of you dogs,
+and I never will be."
+
+The interpreter translated, and all began to speak at the same time.
+
+They babbled for a long time; then the swarthy Tartar jumped up and
+walked over to Zhilín:
+
+"Uruss," he said, "dzhigit, dzhigit Uruss!"
+
+Dzhigit in their language means a "brave." And he laughed; he said
+something to the interpreter, and the interpreter said:
+
+"Give one thousand roubles!"
+
+Zhilín stuck to what he had said:
+
+"I will not give more than five hundred. And if you kill me, you will
+get nothing."
+
+The Tartars talked awhile and sent the labourer somewhere, and
+themselves kept looking now at Zhilín and now at the door. The labourer
+came, and behind him walked a fat man; he was barefoot and tattered; he,
+too, had on the stocks.
+
+Zhilín just shouted, for he recognized Kostylín. He, too, had been
+caught. They were placed beside each other. They began to talk to each
+other, and the Tartars kept silence and looked at them. Zhilín told what
+had happened to him; and Kostylín told him that his horse had stopped
+and his gun had missed fire, and that the same Abdul had overtaken and
+captured him.
+
+Abdul jumped up, and pointed to Kostylín, and said something. The
+interpreter translated it, and said that both of them belonged to the
+same master, and that the one who would first furnish the money would be
+the first to be released.
+
+"Now you," he said, "are a cross fellow, but your friend is meek; he has
+written a letter home, and they will send five thousand roubles. He will
+be fed well, and will not be insulted."
+
+So Zhilín said:
+
+"My friend may do as he pleases; maybe he is rich, but I am not. As I
+have said, so will it be. If you want to, kill me,--you will not gain by
+it,--but more than five hundred will I not give."
+
+They were silent for awhile. Suddenly Abdul jumped up, fetched a small
+box, took out a pen, a piece of paper, and some ink, put it all before
+Zhilín, slapped him on the shoulder, and motioned for him to write. He
+agreed to the five hundred.
+
+"Wait awhile," Zhilín said to the interpreter. "Tell him that he has to
+feed us well, and give us the proper clothes and shoes, and keep us
+together,--it will be jollier for us,--and take off the stocks." He
+looked at the master and laughed. The master himself laughed. He
+listened to the interpreter, and said:
+
+"I will give you the best of clothes,--a Circassian mantle and
+boots,--you will be fit to marry. We will feed you like princes. And if
+you want to stay together, you may live in the shed. But the stocks
+cannot be taken off, for you will run away. For the night we will take
+them off."
+
+He ran up to Zhilín, and tapped him on the shoulder:
+
+"You goot, me goot!"
+
+Zhilín wrote the letter, but he did not address it right. He thought he
+would run away.
+
+Zhilín and Kostylín were taken back to the shed. They brought for them
+maize straw, water in a pitcher, bread, two old mantles, and worn
+soldier boots. They had evidently been pulled off dead soldiers. For the
+night the stocks were taken off, and they were locked in the barn.
+
+
+III.
+
+Zhilín and his companion lived thus for a whole month. Their master kept
+laughing.
+
+"You, Iván, goot, me, Abdul, goot!"
+
+But he did not feed them well. All he gave them to eat was unsalted
+millet bread, baked like pones, or entirely unbaked dough.
+
+Kostylín wrote home a second letter. He was waiting for the money to
+come, and felt lonesome. He sat for days at a time in the shed counting
+the days before the letter would come, or he slept. But Zhilín knew
+that his letter would not reach any one, and so he did not write
+another.
+
+"Where," he thought, "is my mother to get so much money? As it is, she
+lived mainly by what I sent her. If she should collect five hundred
+roubles, she would be ruined in the end. If God grants it, I will manage
+to get away from here."
+
+And he watched and thought of how to get away.
+
+He walked through the village and whistled, or he sat down somewhere to
+work with his hands, either making a doll from clay, or weaving a fence
+from twigs. Zhilín was a great hand at all kinds of such work.
+
+One day he made a doll, with a nose, and hands, and legs, in a Tartar
+shirt, and put the doll on the roof. The Tartar maidens were going for
+water. His master's daughter, Dina, saw the doll, and she called up the
+Tartar girls. They put down their pitchers, and looked, and laughed.
+Zhilín took down the doll and gave it to them. They laughed, and did not
+dare take it. He left the doll, and went back to the shed to see what
+they would do.
+
+Dina ran up, looked around, grasped the doll, and ran away with it.
+
+In the morning, at daybreak, he saw Dina coming out with the doll in
+front of the house. The doll was all dressed up in red rags, and she was
+rocking the doll and singing to it in her fashion. The old woman came
+out. She scolded her, took the doll away from her and broke it, and sent
+Dina to work.
+
+Zhilín made another doll, a better one than before, and he gave it to
+Dina. One day Dina brought him a small pitcher. She put it down, herself
+sat down and looked at him, and laughed, as she pointed to the pitcher.
+
+"What is she so happy about?" thought Zhilín.
+
+He took the pitcher and began to drink. He thought it was water, but,
+behold, it was milk. He drank the milk, and said:
+
+"It is good!"
+
+Dina was very happy.
+
+"Good, Iván, good!" and she jumped up, clapped her hands, took away the
+pitcher, and ran off.
+
+From that time she brought him milk every day on the sly. The Tartars
+make cheese-cakes from goat milk, and dry them on the roofs,--and so she
+brought him those cakes also. One day the master killed a sheep, so she
+brought him a piece of mutton in her sleeve. She would throw it down and
+run away.
+
+One day there was a severe storm, and for an hour the rain fell as
+though from a pail. All the streams became turbid. Where there was a
+ford, the water was now eight feet deep, and stones were borne down.
+Torrents were running everywhere, and there was a roar in the mountains.
+When the storm was over, streams were coming down the village in every
+direction. Zhilín asked his master to let him have a penknife, and with
+it he cut out a small axle and little boards, and made a wheel, and to
+each end of the wheel he attached a doll.
+
+The girls brought him pieces of material, and he dressed the dolls: one
+a man, the other a woman. He fixed them firmly, and placed the wheel
+over a brook. The wheel began to turn, and the dolls to jump.
+
+The whole village gathered around it; boys, girls, women, and men came,
+and they clicked with their tongues:
+
+"Ai, Uruss! Ai, Iván!"
+
+Abdul had a Russian watch, but it was broken. He called Zhilín, showed
+it to him, and clicked his tongue. Zhilín said:
+
+"Let me have it! I will fix it!"
+
+He took it to pieces with a penknife; then he put it together, and gave
+it back to him. The watch was running now.
+
+The master was delighted. He brought his old half-coat,--it was all in
+rags,--and made him a present of it. What could he do but take it? He
+thought it would be good enough to cover himself with in the night.
+
+After that the rumour went abroad that Zhilín was a great master. They
+began to come to him from distant villages: one, to have him fix a
+gun-lock or a pistol, another, to set a clock a-going. His master
+brought him tools,--pinchers, gimlets, and files.
+
+One day a Tartar became sick: they sent to Zhilín, and said, "Go and
+cure him!" Zhilín did not know anything about medicine. He went, took a
+look at him, and thought, "Maybe he will get well by himself." He went
+to the barn, took some water and sand, and mixed it. In the presence of
+the Tartars he said a charm over the water, and gave it to him to drink.
+Luckily for him, the Tartar got well.
+
+Zhilín began to understand their language. Some of the Tartars got used
+to him. When they needed him, they called, "Iván, Iván!" but others
+looked at him awry, as at an animal.
+
+The red Tartar did not like Zhilín. Whenever he saw him, he frowned and
+turned away, or called him names. There was also an old man; he did not
+live in the village, but came from farther down the mountain. Zhilín saw
+him only when he came to the mosque, to pray to God. He was a small man;
+his cap was wrapped with a white towel. His beard and moustache were
+clipped, and they were as white as down; his face was wrinkled and as
+red as a brick. His nose was hooked, like a hawk's beak, and his eyes
+were gray and mean-looking; of teeth he had only two tusks. He used to
+walk in his turban, leaning on a crutch, and looking around him like a
+wolf. Whenever he saw Zhilín, he grunted and turned away.
+
+One day Zhilín went down-hill, to see where the old man was living. He
+walked down the road, and saw a little garden, with a stone fence, and
+inside the fence were cherry and apricot trees, and stood a hut with a
+flat roof. He came closer to it, and he saw beehives woven from straw,
+and bees were swarming around and buzzing. The old man was kneeling, and
+doing something to a hive. Zhilín got up higher, to get a good look, and
+made a noise with his stocks. The old man looked around and shrieked; he
+pulled the pistol out from his belt and fired at Zhilín. He had just
+time to hide behind a rock.
+
+The old man went to the master to complain about Zhilín. The master
+called up Zhilín, and laughed, and asked:
+
+"Why did you go to the old man?"
+
+"I have not done him any harm," he said. "I just wanted to see how he
+lives."
+
+The master told the old man that. But the old man was angry, and hissed,
+and rattled something off; he showed his teeth and waved his hand
+threateningly at Zhilín.
+
+Zhilín did not understand it all; but he understood that the old man was
+telling his master to kill all the Russians, and not to keep them in the
+village. The old man went away.
+
+Zhilín asked his master what kind of a man that old Tartar was. The
+master said:
+
+"He is a big man! He used to be the first dzhigit: he killed a lot of
+Russians, and he was rich. He had three wives and eight sons. All of
+them lived in the same village. The Russians came, destroyed the
+village, and killed seven of his sons. One son was left alive, and he
+surrendered himself to the Russians. The old man went and surrendered
+himself, too, to the Russians. He stayed with them three months, found
+his son there, and killed him, and then he ran away. Since then he has
+stopped fighting. He has been to Mecca, to pray to God, and that is why
+he wears the turban. He who has been to Mecca is called a Hadji and puts
+on a turban. He has no use for you fellows. He tells me to kill you;
+but I cannot kill you,--I have paid for you; and then, Iván, I like you.
+I not only have no intention of killing you, but I would not let you go
+back, if I had not given my word to you." He laughed as he said that,
+and added in Russian: "You, Iván, good, me, Abdul, good!"
+
+
+IV.
+
+Zhilín lived thus for a month. In the daytime he walked around the
+village and made things with his hands, and when night came, and all was
+quiet in the village, he began to dig in the shed. It was difficult to
+dig on account of the rocks, but he sawed the stones with the file, and
+made a hole through which he meant to crawl later. "First I must find
+out what direction to go in," he thought; "but the Tartars will not tell
+me anything."
+
+So he chose a time when his master was away; he went after dinner back
+of the village, up-hill, where he could see the place. But when his
+master went away, he told his little boy to keep an eye on Zhilín and to
+follow him everywhere. So the boy ran after Zhilín, and said:
+
+"Don't go! Father said that you should not go there. I will call the
+people!"
+
+Zhilín began to persuade him.
+
+"I do not want to go far," he said; "I just want to walk up the
+mountain: I want to find an herb with which to cure you people. Come
+with me; I cannot run away with the stocks. To-morrow I will make you a
+bow and arrows."
+
+He persuaded the boy, and they went together. As he looked up the
+mountain, it looked near, but with the stocks it was hard to walk; he
+walked and walked, and climbed the mountain with difficulty. Zhilín sat
+down and began to look at the place. To the south of the shed there was
+a ravine, and there a herd of horses was grazing, and in a hollow could
+be seen another village. At that village began a steeper mountain, and
+beyond that mountain there was another mountain. Between the mountains
+could be seen a forest, and beyond it again the mountains, rising higher
+and higher. Highest of all, there were white mountains, capped with
+snow, just like sugar loaves. And one snow mountain stood with its cap
+above all the rest. To the east and the west there were just such
+mountains; here and there smoke rose from villages in the clefts.
+
+"Well," he thought, "that is all their side."
+
+He began to look to the Russian side. At his feet was a brook and his
+village, and all around were little gardens. At the brook women were
+sitting,--they looked as small as dolls,--and washing the linen. Beyond
+the village and below it there was a mountain, and beyond that, two
+other mountains, covered with forests; between the two mountains could
+be seen an even spot, and on that plain, far, far away, it looked as
+though smoke were settling. Zhilín recalled where the sun used to rise
+and set when he was at home in the fortress. He looked down there,--sure
+enough, that was the valley where the Russian fortress ought to be.
+There, then, between those two mountains, he had to run.
+
+The sun was beginning to go down. The snow-capped mountains changed from
+white to violet; it grew dark in the black mountains; vapour arose from
+the clefts, and the valley, where our fortress no doubt was, gleamed in
+the sunset as though on fire. Zhilín began to look sharply,--something
+was quivering in the valley, like smoke rising from chimneys. He was
+sure now that it must be the Russian fortress.
+
+It grew late; he could hear the mullah call; the flock was being driven,
+and the cows lowed. The boy said to him, "Come!" but Zhilín did not feel
+like leaving.
+
+They returned home. "Well," thought Zhilín, "now I know the place, and I
+must run." He wanted to run that same night. The nights were dark,--the
+moon was on the wane. Unfortunately the Tartars returned toward evening.
+At other times they returned driving cattle before them, and then they
+were jolly. But this time they did not drive home anything, but brought
+back a dead Tartar, a red-haired companion of theirs. They came back
+angry, and all gathered to bury him. Zhilín, too, went out to see. They
+wrapped the dead man in linen, without putting him in a coffin, and
+carried him under the plane-trees beyond the village, and placed him on
+the grass. The mullah came, and the old men gathered around him, their
+caps wrapped with towels, and took off their shoes and seated themselves
+in a row on their heels, in front of the dead man.
+
+At their head was the mullah, and then three old men in turbans, sitting
+in a row, and behind them other Tartars. They sat, and bent their heads,
+and kept silence. They were silent for quite awhile. Then the mullah
+raised his head, and said:
+
+"Allah!" (That means "God.") He said that one word, and again they
+lowered their heads and kept silence for a long time; they sat without
+stirring. Again the mullah raised his head:
+
+"Allah!" and all repeated, "Allah!" and again they were silent. The dead
+man lay on the grass, and did not stir, and they sat about him like the
+dead. Not one of them stirred. One could hear only the leaves on the
+plane-tree rustling in the breeze. Then the mullah said a prayer, and
+all got up, lifted the dead body, and carried it away. They took it to a
+grave,--not a simple grave, but dug under like a cave. They took the
+dead man under his arms and by his legs, bent him over, let him down
+softly, pushed him under in a sitting posture, and fixed his arms on his
+body.
+
+A Nogay dragged up a lot of green reeds; they bedded the grave with it,
+then quickly filled it with dirt, levelled it up, and put a stone up
+straight at the head of it. They tramped down the earth, and again sat
+down in a row near the grave. They were silent for a long time.
+
+"Allah, Allah, Allah!" They sighed and got up.
+
+A red-haired Tartar distributed money to the old men; then he got up,
+took a whip, struck himself three times on his forehead, and went home.
+
+Next morning Zhilín saw the red Tartar take a mare out of the village,
+and three Tartars followed him. They went outside the village; then the
+red-haired Tartar took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves,--he had
+immense arms,--and took out his dagger and whetted it on a steel. The
+Tartars jerked up the mare's head, and the red-haired man walked over to
+her, cut her throat, threw her down, and began to flay her,--to rip the
+skin open with his fists. Then came women and girls, and they began to
+wash the inside and the entrails. Then they chopped up the mare and
+dragged the flesh to the house. And the whole village gathered at the
+house of the red-haired Tartar to celebrate the dead man's wake.
+
+For three days did they eat the horse-flesh, drink buza, and remember
+the dead man. On the fourth day Zhilín saw them get ready to go
+somewhere for a dinner. They brought horses, dressed themselves up, and
+went away,--about ten men, and the red Tartar with them; Abdul was the
+only one who was left at home. The moon was just beginning to increase,
+and the nights were still dark.
+
+"Well," thought Zhilín, "to-night I must run," and he told Kostylín so.
+But Kostylín was timid.
+
+"How can we run? We do not know the road."
+
+"I know it."
+
+"But we cannot reach it in the night."
+
+"If we do not, we shall stay for the night in the woods. I have a lot of
+cakes with me. You certainly do not mean to stay. It would be all right
+if they sent the money; but suppose they cannot get together so much.
+The Tartars are mean now, because the Russians have killed one of
+theirs. I understand they want to kill us now."
+
+Kostylín thought awhile:
+
+"Well, let us go!"
+
+
+V.
+
+Zhilín crept into the hole and dug it wider, so that Kostylín could get
+through; and then they sat still and waited for everything to quiet down
+in the village.
+
+When all grew quiet, Zhilín crawled through the hole and got out. He
+whispered to Kostylín to crawl out. Kostylín started to come out, but he
+caught a stone with his foot, and it made a noise. Now their master had
+a dappled watch-dog, and he was dreadfully mean; his name was Ulyashin.
+Zhilín had been feeding him before. When Ulyashin heard the voice, he
+began to bark and rushed forward, and with him other dogs. Zhilín gave a
+low whistle and threw a piece of cake to the dog, and the dog recognized
+him and wagged his tail and stopped barking.
+
+The master heard it, and he called out from the hut, "Hait, hait,
+Ulyashin!"
+
+But Zhilín was scratching Ulyashin behind his ears; so the dog was
+silent and rubbed against his legs and wagged his tail.
+
+They sat awhile around the corner. All was silent; nothing could be
+heard but the sheep coughing in the hut corner, and the water rippling
+down the pebbles. It was dark; the stars stood high in the heaven; the
+young moon shone red above the mountain, and its horns were turned
+upward. In the clefts the mist looked as white as milk.
+
+Zhilín got up and said to his companion:
+
+"Now, my friend, let us start!"
+
+They started. They had made but a few steps, when they heard the mullah
+sing out on the roof: "Allah besmillah! Ilrakhman!" That meant that the
+people were going to the mosque. They sat down again, hiding behind a
+wall. They sat for a long time, waiting for the people to pass by. Again
+everything was quiet.
+
+"Well, with God's aid!" They made the sign of the cross, and started.
+They crossed the yard and went down-hill to the brook; they crossed the
+brook and walked down the ravine. The mist was dense and low on the
+ground, and overhead the stars were, oh, so visible. Zhilín saw by the
+stars in what direction they had to go. In the mist it felt fresh, and
+it was easy to walk, only the boots were awkward, they had worn down so
+much. Zhilín took off his boots and threw them away, and marched on
+barefoot. He leaped from stone to stone, and kept watching the stars.
+Kostylín began to fall behind.
+
+"Walk slower," he said. "The accursed boots,--they have chafed my feet."
+
+"Take them off! You will find it easier without them."
+
+Kostylín walked barefoot after that; but it was only worse: he cut his
+feet on the rocks, and kept falling behind. Zhilín said to him:
+
+"If you bruise your feet, they will heal up; but if they catch you; they
+will kill you,--so it will be worse."
+
+Kostylín said nothing, but he groaned as he walked. They walked for a
+long time through a ravine. Suddenly they heard dogs barking. Zhilín
+stopped and looked around; he groped with his hands and climbed a hill.
+
+"Oh," he said, "we have made a mistake,--we have borne too much to the
+right. Here is a village,--I saw it from the mountain; we must go back
+and to the left, and up the mountain. There must be a forest here."
+
+But Kostylín said:
+
+"Wait at least awhile! Let me rest: my feet are all blood-stained."
+
+"Never mind, friend, they will heal up! Jump more lightly,--like this!"
+
+And Zhilín ran back, and to the left, up the mountain into the forest.
+Kostylín kept falling behind and groaning. Zhilín hushed him, and walked
+on.
+
+They got up the mountain, and there, indeed, was a forest. They went
+into the forest, and tore all the clothes they had against the thorns.
+They struck a path in the forest, and followed it.
+
+"Stop!" Hoofs were heard tramping on the path. They stopped to listen.
+It was the sound of a horse's hoofs. They started, and again it began to
+thud. They stopped, and it, too, stopped. Zhilín crawled up to it, and
+saw something standing in the light on the road. It was not exactly a
+horse, and again it was like a horse with something strange above it,
+and certainly not a man. He heard it snort. "What in the world is it?"
+Zhilín gave a light whistle, and it bolted away from the path, so that
+he could hear it crash through the woods: the branches broke off, as
+though a storm went through them.
+
+Kostylín fell down in fright. But Zhilín laughed and said:
+
+"That is a stag. Do you hear him break the branches with his horns? We
+are afraid of him, and he is afraid of us."
+
+They walked on. The Pleiades were beginning to settle,--it was not far
+from morning. They did not know whether they were going right, or not.
+Zhilín thought that that was the path over which they had taken him, and
+that he was about ten versts from his own people; still there were no
+certain signs, and, besides, in the night nothing could be made out.
+They came out on a clearing. Kostylín sat down, and said:
+
+"Do as you please, but I will not go any farther! My feet refuse to
+move."
+
+Zhilín begged him to go on.
+
+"No," he said, "I cannot walk on."
+
+Zhilín got angry, spit out in disgust, and scolded him.
+
+"Then I will go by myself,--good-bye!"
+
+Kostylín got up and walked on. They walked about four versts. The mist
+grew denser in the forest, and nothing could be seen in front of them,
+and the stars were quite dim.
+
+Suddenly they heard a horse tramping in front of them. They could hear
+the horse catch with its hoofs in the stones. Zhilín lay down on his
+belly, and put his ear to the ground to listen.
+
+"So it is, a rider is coming this way!"
+
+They ran off the road, sat down in the bushes, and waited. Zhilín crept
+up to the road, and saw a Tartar on horseback, driving a cow before him,
+and mumbling something to himself. The Tartar passed by them. Zhilín
+went back to Kostylín.
+
+"Well, with God's help, he is gone. Get up, and let us go!"
+
+Kostylín tried to get up, but fell down.
+
+"I cannot, upon my word, I cannot. I have no strength."
+
+The heavy, puffed-up man was in a perspiration, and as the cold mist in
+the forest went through him and his feet were all torn, he went all to
+pieces. Zhilín tried to get him up, but Kostylín cried:
+
+"Oh, it hurts!"
+
+Zhilín was frightened.
+
+"Don't shout so! You know that the Tartar is not far off,--he will hear
+you." But he thought: "He is, indeed, weak, so what shall I do with him?
+It will not do to abandon my companion."
+
+"Well," he said, "get up, get on my back, and I will carry you, if you
+cannot walk."
+
+He took Kostylín on his back, put his hands on Kostylín's legs, walked
+out on the road, and walked on.
+
+"Only be sure," he said, "and do not choke me with your hands, for
+Christ's sake. Hold on to my shoulders!"
+
+It was hard for Zhilín: his feet, too, were blood-stained, and he was
+worn out. He kept bending down, straightening up Kostylín, and throwing
+him up, so that he might sit higher, and dragged him along the road.
+
+Evidently the Tartar had heard Kostylín's shout. Zhilín heard some one
+riding from behind and calling in his language. Zhilín made for the
+brush. The Tartar pulled out his gun and fired; he screeched in his
+fashion, and rode back along the road.
+
+"Well," said Zhilín, "we are lost, my friend! That dog will collect the
+Tartars and they will start after us. If we cannot make another three
+versts, we are lost." But he thought about Kostylín: "The devil has
+tempted me to take this log along. If I had been alone, I should have
+escaped long ago."
+
+Kostylín said:
+
+"Go yourself! Why should you perish for my sake?"
+
+"No, I will not go,--it will not do to leave a comrade."
+
+He took him once more on his shoulders, and held on to him. Thus they
+walked another verst. The woods extended everywhere, and no end was to
+be seen. The mist was beginning to lift, and rose in the air like little
+clouds, and the stars could not be seen. Zhilín was worn out.
+
+They came to a little spring by the road; it was lined with stones.
+Zhilín stopped and put down Kostylín.
+
+"Let me rest," he said, "and get a drink! We will eat our cakes. It
+cannot be far now."
+
+He had just got down to drink, when he heard the tramping of horses
+behind them. Again they rushed to the right, into the bushes, down an
+incline, and lay down.
+
+They could hear Tartar voices. The Tartars stopped at the very spot
+where they had left the road. They talked awhile, then they made a
+sound, as though sicking dogs. Something crashed through the bushes, and
+a strange dog made straight for them. It stopped and began to bark.
+
+Then the Tartars came down,--they, too, were strangers. They took them,
+bound them, put them on their horses, and carried them off.
+
+They travelled about three versts, when they were met by Abdul, the
+prisoners' master, and two more Tartars. They talked with each other,
+and the prisoners were put on the other horses and taken back to the
+village.
+
+Abdul no longer laughed, and did not speak one word with them.
+
+They were brought to the village at daybreak, and were placed in the
+street. The children ran up and beat them with stones and sticks, and
+screamed.
+
+The Tartars gathered in a circle, and the old man from down-hill came,
+too. They talked together. Zhilín saw that they were sitting in judgment
+on them, discussing what to do with them. Some said that they ought to
+be sent farther into the mountains, but the old man said that they
+should be killed. Abdul disputed with them and said:
+
+"I have paid money for them, and I will get a ransom for them."
+
+But the old man said:
+
+"They will not pay us anything; they will only give us trouble. It is a
+sin to feed Russians. Kill them, and that will be the end of it."
+
+They all went their way. The master walked over to Zhilín and said:
+
+"If the ransom does not come in two weeks, I will beat you to death. And
+if you try to run again I will kill you like a dog. Write a letter, and
+write it well!"
+
+Paper was brought to them, and they wrote the letters. The stocks were
+put on them, and they were taken back of the mosque. There was a ditch
+there, about twelve feet in depth,--and into this ditch they were let
+down.
+
+
+VI.
+
+They now led a very hard life. The stocks were not taken off, and they
+were not let out into the wide world. Unbaked dough was thrown down to
+them, as to dogs, and water was let down to them in a pitcher. There was
+a stench in the ditch, and it was close and damp. Kostylín grew very
+ill, and swelled, and had a breaking out on his whole body; and he kept
+groaning all the time, or he slept. Zhilín was discouraged: he saw that
+the situation was desperate. He did not know how to get out of it.
+
+He began to dig, but there was no place to throw the dirt in; the master
+saw it, and threatened to kill him.
+
+One day he was squatting in the ditch, and thinking of the free world,
+and he felt pretty bad. Suddenly a cake fell down on his knees, and a
+second, and some cherries. He looked up,--it was Dina. She looked at
+him, laughed, and ran away. Zhilín thought: "Maybe Dina will help me."
+
+He cleaned up a place in the ditch, scraped up some clay, and began to
+make dolls. He made men, horses, and dogs. He thought: "When Dina comes
+I will throw them to her."
+
+But on the next day Dina did not come. Zhilín heard the tramping of
+horses; somebody rode by, and the Tartars gathered at the mosque; they
+quarrelled and shouted, and talked about the Russians. And he heard the
+old man's voice. He could not make out exactly what it was, but he
+guessed that the Russians had come close to the village, and that the
+Tartars were afraid that they might come to the village, and they did
+not know what to do with the prisoners.
+
+They talked awhile and went away. Suddenly he heard something rustle
+above him. He looked up; Dina was squatting down, and her knees towered
+above her head; she leaned over, and her necklace hung down and dangled
+over the ditch. Her little eyes glistened like stars. She took two
+cheese-cakes out of her sleeve and threw them down to him. Zhilín said
+to her:
+
+"Why have you not been here for so long? I have made you some toys. Here
+they are!"
+
+He began to throw one after the other to her, but she shook her head,
+and did not look at them.
+
+"I do not want them," she said. She sat awhile in silence, and said;
+"Iván, they want to kill you!" She pointed with her hand to her neck.
+
+"Who wants to kill me?"
+
+"My father,--the old men tell him to. I am sorry for you."
+
+So Zhilín said:
+
+"If you pity me, bring me a long stick!"
+
+She shook her head, to say that she could not. He folded his hands, and
+began to beg her:
+
+"Dina, if you please! Dear Dina, bring it to me!"
+
+"I cannot," she said. "The people are at home, and they would see me."
+
+And she went away.
+
+Zhilín was sitting there in the evening, and thinking what would happen.
+He kept looking up. The stars could be seen, and the moon was not yet
+up. The mullah called, and all grew quiet. Zhilín was beginning to fall
+asleep; he thought the girl would be afraid.
+
+Suddenly some clay fell on his head. He looked up and saw a long pole
+coming down at the end of the ditch. It tumbled, and descended, and came
+down into the ditch. Zhilín was happy; he took hold of it and let it
+down,--it was a stout pole. He had seen it before on his master's roof.
+
+He looked up: the stars were shining high in the heavens, and over the
+very ditch Dina's eyes glistened in the darkness. She bent her face over
+the edge of the ditch, and whispered: "Iván, Iván!" and waved her hands
+in front of her face, as much as to say: "Speak softly!"
+
+"What is it?" asked Zhilín.
+
+"They are all gone. There are two only at the house."
+
+So Zhilín said:
+
+"Kostylín, come, let us try for the last time; I will give you a lift."
+
+Kostylín would not even listen.
+
+"No," he said, "I shall never get away from here. Where should I go,
+since I have no strength to turn around?"
+
+"If so, good-bye! Do not think ill of me!"
+
+He kissed Kostylín.
+
+He took hold of the pole, told Dina to hold on to it, and climbed up.
+Two or three times he slipped down: the stocks were in his way. Kostylín
+held him up, and he managed to get on. Dina pulled him by the shirt with
+all her might, and laughed.
+
+Zhilín took the pole, and said:
+
+"Take it to where you found it, for if they see it, they will beat you."
+
+She dragged the pole away, and Zhilín went down-hill. He crawled down an
+incline, took a sharp stone, and tried to break the lock of the stocks.
+But the lock was a strong one, and he could not break it. He heard some
+one running down the hill, leaping lightly. He thought it was Dina. Dina
+ran up, took a stone, and said:
+
+"Let me do it!"
+
+She knelt down and tried to break it; but her arms were as thin as
+rods,--there was no strength in them. She threw away the stone, and
+began to weep. Zhilín again worked on the lock, and Dina squatted near
+him, and held on to his shoulder. Zhilín looked around; on the left,
+beyond the mountain, he saw a red glow,--the moon was rising.
+
+"Well," he thought, "before the moon is up I must cross the ravine and
+get to the forest."
+
+He got up, threw away the stone, and, though in the stocks, started to
+go.
+
+"Good-bye, Dina dear! I will remember you all my life."
+
+Dina took hold of him; she groped all over him, trying to find a place
+to put the cakes. He took them from her.
+
+"Thank you," he said, "you are a clever girl. Who will make dolls for
+you without me?" And he patted her on the head.
+
+Dina began to cry. She covered her eyes with her hands, and ran up-hill
+like a kid. In the darkness he could hear the ornaments in the braid
+striking against her shoulders.
+
+Zhilín made the sign of the cross, took the lock of his fetters in his
+hand, that it might not clank, and started down the road, dragging his
+feet along, and looking at the glow, where the moon was rising. He
+recognized the road. By the straight road it would be about eight
+versts. If he only could get to the woods before the moon was entirely
+out! He crossed a brook,--and it was getting light beyond the mountain.
+He walked through the ravine; he walked and looked, but the moon was not
+yet to be seen. It was getting brighter, and on one side of the ravine
+everything could be seen more and more clearly. The shadow was creeping
+down the mountain, up toward him.
+
+Zhilín walked and kept in the shade. He hurried on, but the moon was
+coming out faster still; the tops of the trees on the right side were
+now in the light. As he came up to the woods, the moon came out entirely
+from behind the mountains, and it grew bright and white as in the
+daytime. All the leaves could be seen on the trees. The mountains were
+calm and bright; it was as though everything were dead. All that could
+be heard was the rippling of a brook below.
+
+He reached the forest,--he came across no men. Zhilín found a dark spot
+in the woods and sat down to rest himself.
+
+He rested, and ate a cake. He found a stone, and began once more to
+break down the lock. He bruised his hands, but did not break the lock.
+He got up, and walked on. He marched about a verst, but his strength
+gave out,--his feet hurt him so. He would make ten steps and then stop.
+"What is to be done?" he thought. "I will drag myself along until my
+strength gives out entirely. If I sit down, I shall not be able to get
+up. I cannot reach the fortress, so, when day breaks, I will lie down in
+the forest for the day, and at night I will move on."
+
+He walked the whole night. He came across two Tartars only, but he heard
+them from afar, and so hid behind a tree.
+
+The moon was beginning to pale, and Zhilín had not yet reached the edge
+of the forest.
+
+"Well," he thought, "I will take another thirty steps, after which I
+will turn into the forest, where I will sit down."
+
+He took the thirty steps, and there he saw that the forest came to an
+end. He went to the edge of it, and there it was quite light. Before him
+lay the steppe and the fortress, as in the palm of the hand, and to the
+left, close by at the foot of the mountain, fires were burning and going
+out, and the smoke was spreading, and men were near the camp-fires.
+
+He took a sharp look at them: the guns were glistening,--those were
+Cossacks and soldiers.
+
+Zhilín was happy. He collected his last strength and walked down-hill.
+And he thought: "God forfend that a Tartar rider should see me in the
+open! Though it is not far off, I should not get away."
+
+No sooner had he thought so, when, behold, on a mound stood three
+Tartars, not more than 150 fathoms away. They saw him, and darted toward
+him. His heart just sank in him. He waved his arms and shouted as loud
+as he could:
+
+"Brothers! Help, brothers!"
+
+Our men heard him, and away flew the mounted Cossacks. They started
+toward him, to cut off the Tartars.
+
+The Cossacks had far to go, but the Tartars were near. And Zhilín
+collected his last strength, took the stocks in his hand, and ran toward
+the Cossacks. He was beside himself, and he made the sign of the cross,
+and shouted:
+
+"Brothers! Brothers! Brothers!"
+
+There were about fifteen Cossacks.
+
+The Tartars were frightened, and they stopped before they reached him.
+And Zhilín ran up to the Cossacks.
+
+The Cossacks surrounded him, and asked:
+
+"Who are you? Where do you come from?"
+
+But Zhilín was beside himself, and he wept, and muttered:
+
+"Brothers! Brothers!"
+
+The soldiers ran out, and surrounded Zhilín: one gave him bread, another
+gruel, a third vódka; one covered him with a cloak, another broke off
+the lock.
+
+The officers heard of it, and took him to the fortress. The soldiers
+were happy, and his companions came to see him.
+
+Zhilín told them what had happened, and said:
+
+"So I have been home, and got married! No, evidently that is not my
+fate."
+
+And he remained in the service in the Caucasus. Not till a month later
+was Kostylín ransomed for five thousand. He was brought back more dead
+than alive.
+
+
+
+
+ERMÁK
+
+
+In the reign of Iván Vasílevich the Terrible there were the rich
+merchants, the Stroganóvs, and they lived in Perm, on the river Káma.
+They heard that along the river Káma, in a circle of 140 versts, there
+was good land: the soil had not been ploughed for centuries, the forests
+had not been cut down for centuries. In the forests were many wild
+animals, and along the river fish lakes, and no one was living on that
+land, but only Tartars passed through it.
+
+The Stroganóvs wrote a letter to the Tsar:
+
+"Give us this land, and we will ourselves build towns there and gather
+people and settle them there, and will not allow the Tartars to pass
+through it."
+
+The Tsar agreed to it, and gave them the land. The Stroganóvs sent out
+clerks to gather people. And there came to them a large number of roving
+people. Whoever came received from the Stroganóvs land, forest, and
+cattle, and no tenant pay was collected. All they had to do was to live
+and, in case of need, to go out in mass to fight the Tartars. Thus the
+land was settled by the Russian people.
+
+About twenty years passed. The Stroganóvs grew richer yet, and that
+land, 140 versts around, was not enough for them. They wanted to have
+more land still. About one hundred versts from them were high mountains,
+the Ural Mountains, and beyond them, they had heard, there was good
+land, and to that land there was no end. This land was ruled by a small
+Siberian prince, Kuchum by name. In former days Kuchum had sworn
+allegiance to the Russian Tsar, but later he began to rebel, and he
+threatened to destroy Stroganóv's towns.
+
+So the Stroganóvs wrote to the Tsar:
+
+"You have given us land, and we have conquered it and turned it over to
+you; now the thievish Tsarling Kuchum is rebelling against you, and
+wants to take that land away and ruin us. Command us to take possession
+of the land beyond the Ural Mountains; we will conquer Kuchum, and will
+bring all his land under your rule."
+
+The Tsar assented, and wrote back:
+
+"If you have sufficient force, take the land away from Kuchum. Only do
+not entice many people away from Russia."
+
+When the Stroganóvs got that letter from the Tsar, they sent out clerks
+to collect more people. And they ordered them to persuade mostly the
+Cossacks from the Vólga and the Don to come. At that time many Cossacks
+were roving along the Vólga and the Don. They used to gather in bands of
+two, three, or six hundred men, and to select an atamán, and to row down
+in barges, to capture ships and rob them, and for the winter they stayed
+in little towns on the shore.
+
+The clerks arrived at the Vólga, and there they asked who the famous
+Cossacks of that region were. They were told:
+
+"There are many Cossacks. It is impossible to live for them. There is
+Míshka Cherkáshenin, and Sarý-Azmán; but there is no fiercer one than
+Ermák Timoféich, the atamán. He has a thousand men, and not only the
+merchants and the people are afraid of him, but even the Tsarian army
+does not dare to cope with him."
+
+And the clerks went to Ermák the atamán, and began to persuade him to go
+to the Stroganóvs. Ermák received the clerks, listened to their
+speeches, and promised to come with his people about the time of the
+Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.
+
+Near the holiday of the Assumption there came to the Stroganóvs six
+hundred Cossacks, with their atamán, Ermák Timoféich. At first Stroganóv
+sent them against the neighbouring Tartars. The Cossacks annihilated
+them. Then, when nothing was doing, the Cossacks roved in the
+neighbourhood and robbed.
+
+So Stroganóv sent for Ermák, and said:
+
+"I will not keep you any longer, if you are going to be so wanton."
+
+But Ermák said:
+
+"I do not like it myself, but I cannot control my people, they are
+spoiled. Give us work to do!"
+
+So Stroganóv said:
+
+"Go beyond the Ural and fight Kuchum, and take possession of his land.
+The Tsar will reward you for it."
+
+And he showed the Tsar's letter to Ermák. Ermák rejoiced, and collected
+his men, and said:
+
+"You are shaming me before my master,--you are robbing without reason.
+If you do not stop, he will drive you away, and where will you go then?
+At the Vólga there is a large Tsarian army; we shall be caught, and then
+we shall suffer for our old misdeeds. But if you feel lonesome, here is
+work for you."
+
+And he showed them the Tsar's letter, in which it said that Stroganóv
+had been permitted to conquer land beyond the Ural. The Cossacks had a
+consultation, and agreed to go. Ermák went to Stroganóv, and they began
+to deliberate how they had best go.
+
+They discussed how many barges they needed, how much grain, cattle,
+guns, powder, lead, how many captive Tartar interpreters, and how many
+foreigners as masters of gunnery.
+
+Stroganóv thought:
+
+"Though it may cost me much, I must give them everything or else they
+will stay here and will ruin me."
+
+Stroganóv agreed to everything, gathered what was needed, and fitted out
+Ermák and the Cossacks.
+
+On the 1st of September the Cossacks rowed with Ermák up the river
+Chúsovaya on thirty-two barges, with twelve men in each. For four days
+they rowed up the river, and then they turned into Serébryanaya River.
+Beyond that point it was impossible to navigate. They asked the guides,
+and learned that from there they had to cross the mountains and walk
+overland about two hundred versts, and then the rivers would begin
+again. The Cossacks stopped, built a town, and unloaded all their
+equipment; they abandoned the boats, made carts, put everything upon
+them, and started overland, across the mountains. All those places were
+covered with forest, and nobody was living there. They marched for about
+ten days, and struck the river Zharóvnya. Here they stopped again, and
+made themselves boats. They loaded them, and rowed down the river. They
+rowed five days, and then came more cheerful places,--meadows, forests,
+lakes. There was a plenty of fish and of animals, and animals that had
+not been scared by hunters. They rowed another day, and sailed into the
+river Túra. Along the Túra they came on Tartar people and towns.
+
+Ermák sent some Cossacks to take a look at a town, to see what it was
+like, and whether there was any considerable force in it. Twenty
+Cossacks went there, and they frightened all the Tartars, and seized the
+whole town, and captured all the cattle. Some of the Tartars they
+killed, and others they brought back alive.
+
+Ermák asked the Tartars through his interpreters what kind of people
+they were, and under whose rule they were living. The Tartars said that
+they were in the Siberian kingdom, and that their king was Kuchum.
+
+Ermák let the Tartars go, but three of the more intelligent he took with
+him, to show him the road.
+
+They rowed on. The farther they rowed, the larger did the river grow;
+and the farther they went, the better did the places become.
+
+They met more and more people; only they were not strong men. And all
+the towns that were near the river the Cossacks conquered.
+
+In one town they captured a large number of Tartars and one old man who
+was held in respect. They asked him what kind of a man he was. He said:
+
+"I am Tauzik, a servant of my king, Kuchum, who has made me a commander
+in this town."
+
+Ermák asked Tauzik about his king; how far his city of Sibír was;
+whether Kuchum had a large force; whether he had much wealth. Tauzik
+told him everything. He said:
+
+"Kuchum is the first king in the world. His city of Sibír is the largest
+city in the world. In that city," he said, "there are as many people and
+as many cattle as there are stars in the heaven. There is no counting
+his force, and not all the kings of the world can conquer him."
+
+But Ermák said:
+
+"We Russians have come here to conquer your king and to take his city,
+and to put it into the hands of the Russian Tsar. We have a large force.
+Those who have come with me are only the advance-guard; those that are
+rowing down behind us in barges are numberless, and all of them have
+guns. Our guns pierce trees, not like your bows and arrows. Just look!"
+
+And Ermák fired at a tree, and pierced it, and the Cossacks began to
+shoot on all sides. Tauzik in fright fell on his knees. Ermák said to
+him:
+
+"Go to your King Kuchum and tell him what you have seen! Let him
+surrender, and if he does not, we will destroy him."
+
+And he dismissed Tauzik.
+
+The Cossacks rowed on. They sailed into the river Toból, and were
+getting nearer to the city of Sibír. They sailed up to the small river
+Babasán, and there they saw a small town on its bank, and around the
+town a large number of Tartars.
+
+They sent an interpreter to the Tartars, to find out what kind of people
+they were. The interpreter returned, and said:
+
+"That is Kuchum's army that has gathered there. The leader of that army
+is Kuchum's own son-in-law, Mametkul. He has commanded me to tell you
+that you must return, or else he will destroy you."
+
+Ermák gathered his Cossacks, landed on the bank, and began to shoot at
+the Tartars. The moment the Tartars heard the shooting, they began to
+run. The Cossacks ran after them, and killed some, and captured others.
+Mametkul barely escaped.
+
+The Cossacks sailed on. They sailed into a broad, rapid river, the
+Irtýsh. Down Irtýsh River they sailed for a day, and came to a fair
+town, and there they stopped. The Cossacks went to the town. As they
+were coming near, the Tartars began to shoot their arrows, and they
+wounded three Cossacks. Then Ermák sent an interpreter to tell the
+Tartars that they must surrender the town, or else they would all be
+killed. The interpreter went, and he returned, and said:
+
+"Here lives Kuchum's servant, Atik Murza Kachara. He has a large force,
+and he says that he will not surrender the town."
+
+Ermák gathered the Cossacks, and said:
+
+"Boys, if we do not take this town, the Tartars will rejoice, and will
+not let us pass on. The more we strike them with terror, the easier will
+it be. Land all, and attack them all at once!"
+
+So they did. There were many Tartars there, and they were brave.
+
+When the Cossacks rushed at them, the Tartars began to shoot their
+arrows. They covered the Cossacks with them. Some were killed, and some
+wounded.
+
+The Cossacks became enraged, and when they got to the Tartars, they
+killed all they could lay their hands on.
+
+In this town the Cossacks found much property,--cattle, rugs, furs, and
+honey. They buried the dead, rested themselves, took away much property,
+and sailed on. They did not sail far, when they saw on the shore, like a
+city, an endless number of troops, and the whole army surrounded by a
+ditch and the ditch protected by timber. The Cossacks stopped. They
+deliberated. Ermák gathered a circle about him.
+
+"Well, boys, what shall we do?"
+
+The Cossacks were frightened. Some said that they ought to sail past,
+while others said that they ought to go back.
+
+And they looked gloomy and began to scold Ermák. They said:
+
+"Why did you bring us here? Already a few of ours have been killed, and
+many have been wounded; and all of us will perish here."
+
+They began to weep.
+
+But Ermák said to his sub-atamán, Iván Koltsó:
+
+"Well, Ványa, what do you think?"
+
+And Koltsó said:
+
+"What do I think? If they do not kill us to-day, they will to-morrow;
+and if not to-morrow, we shall die anyway on the oven. In my opinion, we
+ought to go out on the shore and rush in a body against the Tartars.
+Maybe God will give us victory."
+
+Ermák said:
+
+"You are a brave man, Ványa! That is what must be done. Oh, you boys!
+You are not Cossacks, but old women. All you are good for is to catch
+sturgeon and frighten Tartar women. Can't you see for yourselves? If we
+turn back we shall be destroyed; and if we stay here, they will destroy
+us. How can we go back? After a little work, it will come easier.
+Listen, boys! My father had a strong mare. Down-hill she would pull and
+on an even place she would pull. But when it came to going up-hill, she
+became stubborn and turned back, thinking that it would be easier. But
+my father took a club and belaboured her with it. She twisted and tugged
+and broke the whole cart. My father unhitched her from the cart and gave
+her a terrible whacking. If she had pulled the cart, she would have
+suffered no torment. So it is with us, boys. There is only one thing
+left for us to do, and that is to make straight for the Tartars."
+
+The Cossacks laughed, and said:
+
+"Timoféich, you are evidently more clever than we are. You have no
+business to ask us fools. Take us where you please. A man does not die
+twice, and one death cannot be escaped."
+
+And Ermák said:
+
+"Listen, boys! This is what we shall do. They have not yet seen us all.
+Let us divide into three parts. Those in the middle will march straight
+against them, and the other two divisions will surround them on the
+right and on the left. When the middle detachment begins to walk toward
+them, they will think that we are all there, and so they will leap
+forward. Then we will strike them from the sides. That's the way, boys!
+If we beat these, we shall not have to be afraid of anybody. We shall
+ourselves be kings."
+
+And so they did. When the middle detachment with Ermák advanced, the
+Tartars screamed and leaped forward; then they were attacked by Iván
+Koltsó on the right, and by Meshcheryákov the atamán on the left. The
+Tartars were frightened, and ran. The Cossacks killed a great many of
+them. After that nobody dared to oppose Ermák. And thus he entered the
+very city of Sibír. And there Ermák settled down as though he were a
+king.
+
+Then kinglets came to see Ermák, to bow to him. Tartars began to settle
+down in Sibír, and Kuchum and his son-in-law Mametkul were afraid to go
+straight at him, but kept going around in a circle, wondering how they
+might destroy him.
+
+In the spring, during high water, the Tartars came running to Ermák, and
+said:
+
+"Mametkul is again going against you: he has gathered a large army, and
+is making a stand near the river Vagáy."
+
+Ermák made his way over rivers, swamps, brooks, and forests, stole up
+with his Cossacks, rushed against Mametkul, killed a large number of
+Tartars, and took Mametkul alive and brought him to Sibír. After that
+there were only a few unruly Tartars left, and Ermák went that summer
+against those that had not yet surrendered; and along the Irtýsh and the
+Ob Ermák conquered so much land that one could not march around it in
+two months.
+
+When Ermák had conquered all that land, he sent a messenger to the
+Stroganóvs, and a letter:
+
+"I have taken Kuchum's city," he said, "and have captured Mametkul, and
+have brought all the people here under my rule. Only I have lost many
+Cossacks. Send people to us that we may feel more cheerful. There is no
+end to the wealth in this country."
+
+He sent to them many costly furs,--fox, marten, and sable furs.
+
+Two years passed after that. Ermák was still holding Sibír, but no aid
+came from Russia, and few Russians were left with Ermák.
+
+One day the Tartar Karacha sent a messenger to Ermák, saying:
+
+"We have surrendered to you, but now the Nogays are oppressing us. Send
+your brave men to aid us! We shall together conquer the Nogays. And we
+swear to you that we shall not insult your brave men."
+
+Ermák believed their oath, and sent forty men under Iván Koltsó. When
+these forty men came there, the Tartars rushed against them and killed
+them, so there were still fewer Cossacks left.
+
+Another time some Bukhara merchants sent word to Ermák that they were on
+their way to the city of Sibír with goods, but that Kuchum had taken his
+stand with an army and would not let them pass through.
+
+Ermák took with him fifty men and went out to clear the road for the
+Bukhara merchants. He came to the Irtýsh River, but did not find the
+Bukharans. He remained there over night. It was a dark night, and it
+rained. The Cossacks had just lain down to sleep, when suddenly the
+Tartars rushed out and threw themselves on the sleepy men and began to
+strike them down. Ermák jumped up and began to fight. He was wounded in
+the hand. He ran toward the river. The Tartars after him. He threw
+himself into the river. That was the last time he was seen. His body was
+not recovered, and no one found out how he died.
+
+The following year came the Tsar's army, and the Tartars were pacified.
+
+
+
+
+
+NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES
+
+1869-1872
+
+
+
+
+NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FROM PHYSICS
+
+
+
+
+THE MAGNET
+
+
+I.
+
+In olden days there was a shepherd whose name was Magnes. Magnes lost a
+sheep. He went to the mountains to find it. He came to a place where
+there were barren rocks. He walked over these rocks, and felt that his
+boots were sticking to them. He touched them with his hand, but they
+were dry and did not stick to his hand. He started to walk again, and
+again his boots stuck to the rocks. He sat down, took off one of his
+boots, took it into his hand, and touched the rocks with it.
+
+Whenever he touched them with his skin, or with the sole of his boot,
+they did not stick; but when he touched them with the nails, they did
+stick.
+
+Magnes had a cane with an iron point.
+
+He touched a rock with the wood; it did not stick; he touched it with
+the iron end, and it stuck so that he could not pull it off.
+
+Magnes looked at the stone, and he saw that it looked like iron, and he
+took pieces of that stone home with him. Since then that rock has been
+known, and has been called Magnet.
+
+
+II.
+
+Magnet is found in the earth with iron ore. Where there is magnet in the
+ore, the iron is of the best quality. The magnet resembles iron.
+
+If you put a piece of iron on a magnet, the iron itself begins to
+attract other iron. And if you put a steel needle on a magnet, and hold
+it thus for awhile, the needle will become a magnet, and will attract
+iron. If two magnets are brought together at their ends, one side will
+turn away from the other, while the other sides will be attracted.
+
+If a magnetic rod is broken in two, each half will attract at one end,
+and will turn away at the other end. Cut it again, and the same will
+happen; cut it again, as often as you please, and still the same will
+happen: equal ends will turn away from each other, while opposite ends
+will be attracted, as though the magnet were pushing away at one end,
+and pulling in at the other. No matter how you may break it, it will be
+as though there were a bump at one end, and a saucer at the other.
+Whichever way you put them together,--a bump and a saucer will meet, but
+a bump and a bump, or a saucer and a saucer will not.
+
+
+III.
+
+If you magnetize a needle (holding it for awhile over a magnet), and
+attach it in the middle to a pivot in such a way that it can move freely
+around, and let it loose, it will turn with one end toward midday
+(south), and with the other toward midnight (north).
+
+When the magnet was not known, people did not sail far out to sea. When
+they went out far into the sea, so that land was not to be seen, they
+could tell only by the stars and the sun where they had to sail. But
+when it was dark, and the sun or stars could not be seen, they did not
+know which way to sail. And a ship was borne by the winds and carried on
+rocks and wrecked.
+
+So long as the magnet was not known, they did not sail far from the
+shore; but when the magnet was discovered, they made a magnetic needle
+on a pivot, so that it should move around freely. By this needle they
+could tell in which direction to sail. With the magnetic needle they
+began to sail farther away from the shores, and since then they have
+discovered many new seas.
+
+On ships there is always a magnetic needle (compass), and there is a
+measuring-rope with knots at the stern of a ship. This rope is fixed in
+such a way that when it unrolls, they can tell how far the ship has
+travelled. And thus, in sailing in a boat, they always know in what spot
+it is, whether far from the shore, and in what direction it is sailing.
+
+
+
+
+MOISTURE
+
+
+I.
+
+Why does a spider sometimes make a close cobweb, and sit in the very
+middle of its nest, and at other times leave its nest and start a new
+spider-web?
+
+The spider makes its cobweb according to the weather, both the present
+and the future weather. Looking at a spider, you can tell what kind of
+weather it is going to be: if it sits tightly in the middle of the
+cobweb and does not come out, it means that it is going to rain. If it
+leaves the nest and makes new cobwebs, it is going to clear off.
+
+How can the spider know in advance what weather it is going to be?
+
+The spider's senses are so fine that as soon as the moisture begins to
+gather in the air,--though we do not yet feel it, and for us the weather
+is clear,--for the spider it is already raining.
+
+Just as a naked man will feel the moisture, when a man in his clothes
+does not, so it is already raining for a spider, while for us it is only
+getting ready to rain.
+
+
+II.
+
+Why do the doors swell in the winter and close badly, while in the
+summer they shrink and close well?
+
+Because in the fall and winter the wood is saturated with water, like a
+sponge, and spreads out, while in the summer the water comes out as a
+vapour, and the wood shrinks.
+
+Why does soft wood, like aspen, swell more, and oak less?
+
+Because in the hard wood, in the oak, the empty places are smaller, and
+the water cannot gather there, while in the soft wood in the aspen,
+there are larger empty places, and the water can gather there. In rotten
+wood these empty places are still larger, and so rotten wood swells most
+and shrinks most.
+
+Beehives are made out of the softest and rottenest wood; the very best
+are made from rotten willow wood. Why? Because the air passes through
+the rotten wood, and in such a hive the bees feel better.
+
+Why do boards warp?
+
+Because they dry unevenly. If you place a damp board with one side
+toward the stove, the water will leave it, and the board will contract
+on that side and will pull the other side along; but the damp side
+cannot contract, because it is full of water, and so the whole board
+will be bent.
+
+To keep the floors from warping, the dry boards are cut into small
+pieces, and these pieces are boiled in water. When all the water is
+boiled out of them, they are glued together, and then they never warp
+(parquetry).
+
+
+
+
+THE DIFFERENT CONNECTION OF PARTICLES
+
+
+Why are cart bolsters cut and wheel naves turned not from oak, but from
+birch? Bolsters and naves have to be strong, and oak is not more
+expensive than birch.
+
+Because oak splits lengthwise, and birch does not split, but ravels out.
+
+Because, though oak is more firmly connected than birch, it is connected
+in such a way that it splits lengthwise, while birch does not.
+
+Why are wheels and runners bent from oak and elm, and not from birch and
+linden?
+
+Because, when oak and elm are steamed in a bath, they bend and do not
+break, while birch and linden ravel in every direction.
+
+This is again for the same reason, that is, that the particles of the
+wood in the oak and in the birch are differently connected.
+
+
+
+
+CRYSTALS
+
+
+If you pour salt into water and stir it, the salt will begin to melt and
+will entirely disappear; but if you pour more and still more salt into
+it, the salt will in the end not dissolve, and no matter how much you
+may stir after that, the salt will remain as a white powder. The water
+is saturated with the salt and cannot receive any more. But heat the
+water and it will receive more; and the salt which did not dissolve in
+the cold water, will melt in hot water. But pour in more salt, even the
+hot water will not receive it. And if you heat the water still more, the
+water will pass away in steam, and more of the salt will be left.
+
+Thus, for everything which dissolves in the water there is a measure
+after which the water will not dissolve any more. Of anything, more will
+be dissolved in hot than in cold water, and in each case, when it is
+saturated, it will not receive any more. The thing will be left, but the
+water will go away in steam.
+
+If the water is saturated with saltpetre powder, and then more saltpetre
+is added, and all is heated and is allowed to cool off without being
+stirred, the superfluous saltpetre will not settle as a powder at the
+bottom of the water, but will all gather in little six-edged columns,
+and will settle at the bottom and at the sides, one column near another.
+If the water is saturated with saltpetre powder and is put in a warm
+place, the water will go away in vapours, and the superfluous saltpetre
+will again gather in six-edged columns.
+
+If water is saturated with simple salt and heated, and is allowed to
+pass away in vapour, the superfluous salt will not settle as powder, but
+as little cubes. If the water is saturated both with salt and saltpetre,
+the superfluous salt and saltpetre will not mix, but will settle each in
+its own way: the saltpetre in columns, and the salt in cubes.
+
+If water is saturated with lime, or with some other salt, and anything
+else, each thing will settle in its own way, when the water passes away
+in vapour: one in three-edged columns, another in eight-edged columns, a
+third in bricks, a fourth in little stars,--each in its own way. These
+figures are different in each solid thing. At times these forms are as
+large as a hand,--such stones are found in the ground. At times these
+forms are so small that they cannot be made out with the naked eye; but
+in each thing there is its own form.
+
+If, when the water is saturated with saltpetre, and little figures are
+forming in it, a corner be broken off one of these little figures with a
+needle, new pieces of saltpetre will come up and will fix the broken end
+as it ought to be,--into a six-edged column. The same will happen to
+salt and to any other thing. All the tiny particles turn around and
+attach themselves with the right side to each other.
+
+When ice freezes, the same takes place.
+
+A snowflake flies, and no figure is seen in it; but the moment it
+settles on anything dark and cold, on cloth, on fur,--you can make out
+its figure; you will see a little star, or a six-cornered little board.
+On the windows the steam does not freeze in any form whatever, but
+always as a star.
+
+What is ice? It is cold, solid water. When liquid water becomes solid,
+it forms itself into figures and the heat leaves it. The same takes
+place with saltpetre: when it changes from a liquid into solid figures,
+the heat leaves it. The same is true of salt, of melted cast-iron, when
+it changes from a liquid into a solid. Whenever a thing changes from a
+liquid into a solid, heat leaves it, and it forms figures. And when it
+changes from a solid to a liquid it takes up heat, and the cold leaves
+it, and its figures are dissolved.
+
+Bring in melted iron and let it cool off; bring in hot dough and let it
+cool off; bring in slacked lime and let it cool off,--and it will be
+warm. Bring in ice and let it melt,--and it will grow cold. Bring in
+saltpetre, salt, or any other thing that dissolves in the water, and
+melt it in the water, and it will grow cold. In order to freeze
+ice-cream, they put salt in the water.
+
+
+
+
+INJURIOUS AIR
+
+
+In the village of Nikólskoe, the people went on a holiday to mass. In
+the manor yard were left the cow-tender, the elder, and the groom. The
+cow-tender went to the well for water. The well was in the yard itself.
+She pulled out the bucket, but could not hold it. The bucket pulled away
+from her, struck the side of the well, and tore the rope. The cow-tender
+returned to the hut and said to the elder:
+
+"Aleksándr! Climb down into the well,--I have dropped the bucket into
+it."
+
+Aleksándr said:
+
+"You have dropped it, so climb down yourself."
+
+The cow-tender said that she did not mind fetching it herself, if he
+would let her down.
+
+The elder laughed at her, and said:
+
+"Well, let us go! You have an empty stomach now, so I shall be able to
+hold you up, for after dinner I could not do it."
+
+The elder tied a stick to a rope, and the woman sat astride it, took
+hold of the rope, and began to climb down into the well, while the elder
+turned the well-wheel. The well was about twenty feet deep, and there
+was less than three feet of water in it. The elder let her down slowly,
+and kept asking:
+
+"A little more?"
+
+And the cow-tender cried from below:
+
+"Just a little more!"
+
+Suddenly the elder felt the rope give way: he called the cow-tender, but
+she did not answer. The elder looked into the well, and saw the
+cow-tender lying with her head in the water, and with her feet in the
+air. The elder called for help, but there was nobody near by; only the
+groom came. The elder told him to hold the wheel, and he himself pulled
+out the rope, sat down on the stick, and went down into the well.
+
+The moment the groom let the elder down to the water, the same thing
+happened to the elder. He let go of the rope and fell head foremost upon
+the woman. The groom began to cry, and ran to church to call the people.
+Mass was over, and people were walking home. All the men and women
+rushed to the well. They gathered around it, and everybody holloaed, but
+nobody knew what to do. The young carpenter Iván made his way through
+the crowd, took hold of the rope, sat down on the stick, and told them
+to let him down. Iván tied himself to the rope with his belt. Two men
+let him down, and the rest looked into the well, to see what would
+become of Iván. Just as he was getting near the water, he dropped his
+hands from the rope, and would have fallen down head foremost, if the
+belt had not held him. All shouted, "Pull him out!" and Iván was pulled
+out.
+
+He hung like dead down from the belt, and his head was drooping and
+beating against the sides of the well. His face was livid. They took him
+off the rope and put him down on the ground. They thought that he was
+dead; but he suddenly drew a deep breath, began to rattle, and soon
+revived.
+
+Others wanted to climb down, but an old peasant said that they could not
+go down because there was bad air in the well, and that that bad air
+killed people. Then the peasants ran for hooks and began to pull out the
+elder and the woman. The elder's mother and wife cried at the well, and
+others tried to quiet them; in the meantime the peasants put down the
+hooks and tried to get out the dead people. Twice they got the elder
+half-way up by his clothes; but he was heavy, and his clothes tore and
+he fell down. Finally they stuck two hooks into him and pulled him out.
+Then they pulled out the cow-tender. Both were dead and did not revive.
+
+Then, when they examined the well, they found that indeed there was bad
+air down in the well.
+
+This air is so heavy that neither man nor any animal can live in it.
+They let down a cat into the well, and the moment she reached the place
+where the bad air was, she died. Not only can no animal live there, even
+no candle will burn in it. They let down a candle, and the moment it
+reached that spot, it went out.
+
+There are places underground where that air gathers, and when a person
+gets into one of those places, he dies at once. For this purpose they
+have lamps in the mines, and before a man goes down to such a place,
+they let down the lamp. If it goes out, no man can go there; then they
+let down fresh air until the lamp will burn.
+
+Near the city of Naples there is one such cave. There is always about
+three feet of bad air in it on the ground, but above it the air is good.
+A man can walk through the cave, and nothing will happen to him, but a
+dog will die the moment it enters.
+
+Where does this bad air come from? It is made of the same good air that
+we breathe. If you gather a lot of people in one place, and close all
+the doors and windows, so that no fresh air can get in, you will get the
+same kind of an air as in the well, and people will die.
+
+One hundred years ago, during a war, the Hindoos captured 146 Englishmen
+and shut them up in a cave underground, where the air could not get in.
+
+After the captured Englishmen had been there a few hours they began to
+die, and toward the end of the night 123 had died, and the rest came out
+more dead than alive, and ailing. At first the air had been good in the
+cave; but when the captives had inhaled all the good air, and no fresh
+air came in, it became bad, just like what was in the well, and they
+died.
+
+Why does the good air become bad when many people come together?
+
+Because, when people breathe, they take in good air and breathe out bad
+air.
+
+
+
+
+HOW BALLOONS ARE MADE
+
+
+If you take a blown-up bladder under water and let go of it, it will fly
+up to the surface of the water and will swim on it. Just so, when water
+is boiled in a pot, it becomes light at the bottom, over the fire,--it
+is turned into a gas; and when a little of that water-gas is collected
+it goes up as a bubble. First comes up one bubble, then another, and
+when the whole water is heated, the bubbles come up without stopping.
+Then the water boils.
+
+Just as the bubbles leap to the surface, full of vapoury water, because
+they are lighter than water, just so will a bladder which is filled with
+hydrogen, or with hot air, rise, because hot air is lighter than cold
+air, and hydrogen is lighter than any other gases.
+
+Balloons are made with hydrogen or with hot air. With hydrogen they are
+made as follows: They make a large bladder, attach it by ropes to posts,
+and fill it with hydrogen. The moment the ropes are untied, the balloon
+flies up in the air, and keeps flying up until it gets beyond the air
+which is heavier than hydrogen. When it gets up into the light air, it
+begins to swim in it like a bladder on the surface of the water.
+
+With hot air balloons are made like this: They make a large empty ball,
+with a neck below, like an upturned pitcher, and to the mouth of it they
+attach a bunch of cotton, and that cotton is soaked with spirits, and
+lighted. The fire heats the air in the balloon, and makes it lighter
+than the cold air, and the balloon is drawn upward, like the bladder in
+the water. And the balloon will fly up until it comes to the air which
+is lighter than the hot air in the balloon.
+
+Nearly one hundred years ago two Frenchmen, the brothers Montgolfier,
+invented the air balloons. They made a balloon of canvas and paper and
+filled it with hot air,--the balloon flew. Then they made another, a
+larger balloon, and tied under the balloon a sheep, a cock, and a duck,
+and let it off. The balloon rose and came down safely. Then they
+attached a little basket under the balloon, and a man seated himself in
+it. The balloon flew so high that it disappeared from view; it flew
+away, and came down safely. Then they thought of filling a balloon with
+hydrogen, and began to fly higher and faster.
+
+In order to fly with a balloon, they attach a basket under the balloon,
+and in this basket two, three, and even eight persons are seated, and
+they take with them food and drink.
+
+In order to rise and come down as one pleases, there is a valve in the
+balloon, and the man who is flying with it can pull a rope and open or
+close the valve. If the balloon rises too high, and the man who is
+flying wants to come down, he opens the valve,--the gas escapes, the
+balloon is compressed, and begins to come down. Then there are always
+bags with sand in the balloon. When a bag with sand is thrown out, the
+balloon gets lighter, and it flies up. If the one who is flying wants to
+get down, but sees that it is not what he wants below him,--either a
+river or a forest,--he throws out the sand from the bags, and the
+balloon grows lighter and rises again.
+
+
+
+
+GALVANISM
+
+
+There was once a learned Italian, Galvani. He had an electric machine,
+and he showed his students what electricity was. He rubbed the glass
+hard with silk with something smeared over it, and then he approached to
+the glass a brass knob which was attached to the glass, and a spark flew
+across from the glass to the brass knob. He explained to them that the
+same kind of a spark came from sealing-wax and amber. He showed them
+that feathers and bits of paper were now attracted, and now repelled, by
+electricity, and explained to them the reason of it. He did all kinds of
+experiments with electricity, and showed them all to his students.
+
+Once his wife grew ill. He called a doctor and asked him how to cure
+her. The doctor told him to prepare a frog soup for her. Galvani gave
+order to have edible frogs caught. They caught them for him, killed
+them, and left them on his table.
+
+Before the cook came after the frogs, Galvani kept on showing the
+electric machine to his students, and sending sparks through it.
+
+Suddenly he saw the dead frogs jerk their legs on the table. He watched
+them, and saw that every time when he sent a spark through the machine,
+the frogs jerked their legs. Galvani collected more frogs, and began to
+experiment with them. And every time he sent a spark through the
+machine, the dead frogs moved their legs as though they were alive.
+
+It occurred to Galvani that live frogs moved their legs because
+electricity passed through them. Galvani knew that there was
+electricity in the air; that it was more noticeable in the amber and
+glass, but that it was also in the air, and that thunder and lightning
+came from the electricity in the air.
+
+So he tried to discover whether the dead frogs would not move their legs
+from the electricity in the air. For this purpose he took the frogs,
+skinned them, chopped off their heads, and hung them on brass hooks on
+the roof, beneath an iron gutter. He thought that as soon as there
+should be a storm, and the air should be filled with electricity, it
+would pass by the brass rod to the frogs, and they would begin to move.
+
+But the storm passed several times, and the frogs did not move. Galvani
+was just taking them down, and as he did so a frog's leg touched the
+iron gutter, and it jerked. Galvani took down the frogs and made the
+following experiment: he tied to the brass hook an iron wire, and
+touched the leg with the wire, and it jerked.
+
+So Galvani decided that the animals lived because there was electricity
+in them, and that the electricity jumped from the brain to the flesh,
+and that made the animals move. Nobody had at that time tried this
+matter and they did not know any better, and so they all believed
+Galvani. But at that time another learned man, Volta, experimented in
+his own way, and proved to everybody that Galvani was mistaken. He tried
+touching the frog differently from what Galvani had done, not with a
+copper hook with an iron wire, but either with a copper hook and a
+copper wire, or an iron hook and an iron wire,--and the frogs did not
+move. The frogs moved only when Volta touched them with an iron wire
+that was connected with a copper wire.
+
+Volta thought that the electricity was not in the dead frog but in the
+iron and copper. He experimented and found it to be so: whenever he
+brought together the iron and the copper, there was electricity; and
+this electricity made the dead frogs jerk their legs. Volta tried to
+produce electricity differently from what it had been produced before.
+Before that they used to get electricity by rubbing glass or
+sealing-wax. But Volta got electricity by uniting iron and copper. He
+tried to connect iron and copper and other metals, and by the mere
+combination of metals, silver, platinum, zinc, lead, iron, he produced
+electric sparks.
+
+After Volta they tried to increase electricity by pouring all kinds of
+liquids--water and acids--between the metals. These liquids made the
+electricity more powerful, so that it was no longer necessary, as
+before, to rub in order to produce it; it is enough to put pieces of
+several metals in a bowl and fill it with a liquid, and there will be
+electricity in that bowl, and the sparks will come from the wires.
+
+When this kind of electricity was discovered, people began to apply it:
+they invented a way of gold and silver plating by means of electricity,
+and electric light, and a way to transmit signs from place to place over
+a long distance by means of electricity.
+
+For this purpose pieces of different metals are placed in jars, and
+liquids are poured into them. Electricity is collected in these jars,
+and is transferred by means of wires to the place where it is wanted,
+and from that place the wire is put into the ground. The electricity
+runs through the ground back to the jars, and rises from the earth by
+means of the other wire; thus the electricity keeps going around and
+around, as in a ring,--from the wire into the ground, and along the
+ground, and up the wire, and again through the earth. Electricity can
+travel in either direction, just as one wants to send it: it can first
+go along the wire and return through the earth, or first go through the
+earth, and then return through the wire. Above the wire, in the place
+where the signs are given, there is attached a magnetic hand, and that
+hand turns in one direction, when the electricity is allowed to pass
+through the wire and back through the earth, and in another direction,
+when the electricity is sent through the earth and back through the
+wire. Along this hand there are certain signs, and by means of these
+signs they write from one place to another on the telegraph.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUN'S HEAT
+
+
+Go out in the winter on a calm, frosty day into the field, or into the
+woods, and look about you and listen: all around you is snow, the rivers
+are frozen, dry grass blades stick out of the grass, the trees are
+bare,--nothing is moving.
+
+Look in the summer: the rivers are running and rippling, in every puddle
+the frogs croak and plunge in; the birds fly from place to place, and
+whistle, and sing; the flies and the gnats whirl around and buzz; the
+trees and the grass grow and wave to and fro.
+
+Freeze a pot with water, and it will become as hard as a rock. Put the
+frozen pot on the fire: the ice will begin to break, and melt, and move;
+the water will begin to stir, and bubbles will rise; then, when it
+begins to boil, it whirls about and makes a noise. The same happens in
+the world from the heat. Without heat everything is dead; with the heat
+everything moves and lives. If there is little heat, there is little
+motion; with more heat, there is more motion; with much heat, there is
+much motion; with very much heat, there is also very much motion.
+
+Where does the heat in the world come from? The heat comes from the sun.
+
+In winter the sun travels low, to one side, and its beams do not fall
+straight upon the earth, and nothing moves. The sun begins to travel
+higher above our heads, and begins to shine straight down upon the
+earth, and everything is warmed up in the world, and begins to stir.
+
+The snow settles down; the ice begins to melt on the rivers; the water
+comes down from the mountains; the vapours rise from the water to the
+clouds, and rain begins to fall. Who does it all?--The sun. The seeds
+swell, and let out rootlets; the rootlets take hold of the ground; old
+roots send up new shoots, and the trees and the grass begin to grow. Who
+has done that?--The sun.
+
+The bears and moles get up; the flies and bees awaken; the gnats are
+hatched, and the fish come out from their eggs, when it is warm. Who has
+done it all?--The sun.
+
+The air gets warmed up in one place, and rises, and in its place comes
+colder air,--and there is a wind. Who has done that?--The sun.
+
+The clouds rise and begin to gather and to scatter,--and the lightning
+flashes. Who has made that fire?--The sun.
+
+The grass, the grain, the fruits, the trees grow up; animals find their
+food, men eat their fill, and gather food and fuel for the winter; they
+build themselves houses, railways, cities. Who has prepared it all?--The
+sun.
+
+A man has built himself a house. What has he made it of? Of timbers. The
+timbers were cut out of trees, but the trees are made to grow by the
+sun.
+
+The stove is heated with wood. Who has made the wood to grow?--The sun.
+
+Man eats bread, or potatoes. Who has made them grow?--The sun. Man eats
+meat. Who has made the animals, the birds to grow?--The grass. But the
+grass is made to grow by the sun.
+
+A man builds himself a house from brick and lime. The bricks and the
+lime are burnt by wood. The wood has been prepared by the sun.
+
+Everything that men need, that is for their use,--all that is prepared
+by the sun, and on all that goes much sun's heat. The reason that men
+need bread is because the sun has produced it, and because there is much
+sun's heat in it. Bread warms him who eats it.
+
+The reason that wood and logs are needed is because there is much heat
+in them. He who buys wood for the winter, buys sun's heat; and in the
+winter he burns the wood whenever he wants it, and lets the sun's heat
+into his room.
+
+When there is heat, there is motion. No matter what motion it may
+be,--it all comes from heat, either directly from the sun's heat, or
+from the heat which the sun has prepared in the coal, the wood, the
+bread, and the grass.
+
+Horses and oxen pull, men work,--who moves them?--Heat. Where does the
+heat come from?--From the food. And the food has been prepared by the
+sun.
+
+Watermills and windmills turn around and grind. Who moves them?--Wind
+and water. And who drives the wind?--Heat. And who drives the
+water?--Again heat. Heat raises the water in the shape of vapour, and
+without this the water would not be falling down. A machine works,--it
+is moved by steam. And who makes steam?--Wood. And in the wood is the
+sun's heat.
+
+Heat makes motion, and motion makes heat. And both heat and motion are
+from the sun.
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FROM ZOOLOGY
+
+
+
+
+THE OWL AND THE HARE
+
+
+It was dusk. The owls began to fly through the forest to find some prey.
+
+A large hare leaped out on a clearing and began to smooth out his fur.
+An old owl looked at the hare, and seated himself on a branch; but a
+young owl said to him:
+
+"Why do you not catch the hare?"
+
+The old owl said:
+
+"He is too much for me: if I get caught in him, he will drag me into the
+woods."
+
+But the young owl said:
+
+"I will stick one claw into his body, and with the other I will clutch a
+tree."
+
+The young owl made for the hare, and stuck one claw into his back so
+that all his talons entered the flesh, and the other claw it got ready
+to push into the tree. The hare yanked the owl, while the owl held on to
+the tree, and thought, "He will not get away." The hare darted forward
+and tore the owl. One claw was left in the tree, and the other in the
+hare's back.
+
+The next year a hunter killed that hare, and wondered how the owl's
+talons had grown into the hare's back.
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE WOLVES TEACH THEIR WHELPS
+
+
+I was walking along the road, and heard a shout behind me. It was the
+shepherd boy who was shouting. He was running through the field, and
+pointing to something.
+
+I looked, and saw two wolves running through the field: one was
+full-grown, and the other a whelp. The whelp was carrying a dead lamb on
+his shoulders, and holding on to one of its legs with its teeth. The old
+wolf was running behind. When I saw the wolves, I ran after them with
+the shepherd, and we began to shout. In response to our cries came
+peasants with dogs.
+
+The moment the old wolf saw the dogs and the people, he ran up to the
+whelp, took the lamb away from him, threw it over his back, and both
+wolves ran as fast as they could, and disappeared from view.
+
+Then the boy told what had happened: the large wolf had leaped out from
+the ravine, had seized the lamb, killed it, and carried it off.
+
+The whelp ran up to him and grasped the lamb. The old wolf let the whelp
+carry the lamb, while he himself ran slowly beside him.
+
+Only when there was danger, did the old wolf stop his teaching and
+himself take the lamb.
+
+
+
+
+HARES AND WOLVES
+
+
+The hares feed at night on tree bark; the field hares eat the winter rye
+and the grass, and the threshing-floor hares eat the grain in the
+granary. Through the night the hares make a deep, visible track through
+the snow. The hares are hunted by men, and dogs, and wolves, and foxes,
+and ravens, and eagles. If a hare walked straight ahead, he would be
+easily caught in the morning by his tracks; but God has made a hare
+timid, and his timidity saves him.
+
+A hare goes at night fearlessly through the forests and fields, making
+straight tracks; but as soon as morning comes and his enemies wake up,
+and he hears the bark of dogs, or the squeak of sleighs, or the voice of
+peasants, or the crashing of a wolf through the forest, he begins to
+toss from side to side in his fear. He jumps forward, gets frightened at
+something, and runs back on his track. He hears something again, and he
+leaps at full speed to one side and runs away from his old track. Again
+something makes a noise, and the hare turns back, and again leaps to one
+side. When it is daylight, he lies down.
+
+In the morning the hunters try to follow the hare tracks, and they get
+mixed up on the double tracks and long leaps, and marvel at the hare's
+cunning. But the hare did not mean to be cunning. He is merely afraid of
+everything.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCENT
+
+
+Man sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, smells with his nose,
+tastes with his mouth, and feels with his fingers. One man's eyes see
+better, another man's see worse. One hears from a distance, and another
+is deaf. One has keen senses and smells a thing from a distance, while
+another smells at a rotten egg and does not perceive it. One can tell a
+thing by the touch, and another cannot tell by touch what is wood and
+what paper. One will take a substance in his mouth and will find it
+sweet, while another will swallow it without making out whether it is
+bitter or sweet.
+
+Just so the different senses differ in strength in the animals. But with
+all the animals the sense of smell is stronger than in man.
+
+When a man wants to recognize a thing, he looks at it, listens to the
+noise that it makes, now and then smells at it, or tastes it; but, above
+all, a man has to feel a thing, to recognize it.
+
+But nearly all animals more than anything else need to smell a thing. A
+horse, a wolf, a dog, a cow, a bear do not know a thing until they smell
+it.
+
+When a horse is afraid of anything, it snorts,--it clears its nose so as
+to scent better, and does not stop being afraid until it has smelled the
+object well.
+
+A dog frequently follows its master's track, but when it sees him, it
+does not recognize him and begins to bark, until it smells him and finds
+out that that which has looked so terrible is its master.
+
+Oxen see other oxen stricken down, and hear them roar in the
+slaughter-house, but still do not understand what is going on. But an ox
+or a cow need only find a spot where there is ox blood, and smell it,
+and it will understand and will roar and strike with its feet, and
+cannot be driven off the spot.
+
+An old man's wife had fallen ill; he went himself to milk the cow. The
+cow snorted,--she discovered that it was not her mistress, and would not
+give him any milk. The mistress told her husband to put on her fur coat
+and kerchief,--and the cow gave milk; but the old man threw open the
+coat, and the cow scented him, and stopped giving milk.
+
+When hounds follow an animal's trail, they never run on the track
+itself, but to one side, about twenty paces from it. When an
+inexperienced hunter wants to show the dog the scent, and sticks its
+nose on the track, it will always jump to one side. The track itself
+smells so strong to the dog that it cannot make out on the track whether
+the animal has run ahead or backward. It runs to one side, and then only
+discovers in what direction the scent grows stronger, and so follows the
+animal. The dog does precisely what we do when somebody speaks very loud
+in our ears; we step a distance away, and only then do we make out what
+is being said. Or, if anything we are looking at is too close, we step
+back and only then make it out.
+
+Dogs recognize each other and make signs to each other by means of their
+scent.
+
+The scent is more delicate still in insects. A bee flies directly to the
+flower that it wants to reach; a worm crawls to its leaf; a bedbug, a
+flea, a mosquito scents a man a hundred thousand of its steps away.
+
+If the particles which separate from a substance and enter our noses are
+small, how small must be those particles that reach the organ of smell
+of the insects!
+
+
+
+
+TOUCH AND SIGHT
+
+
+Twist the forefinger over the middle finger and touch a small ball with
+them, so that it may roll between the two fingers, and shut your eyes.
+You will think that there are two balls. Open your eyes,--and you will
+see that it is one ball. The fingers have deceived you, but the eyes
+correct you.
+
+Look (best of all sidewise) at a good, clean mirror,--you will think
+that it is a window or a door, and that there is something behind it.
+Touch it with a finger,--and you will see that it is a mirror. The eyes
+have deceived you, but the fingers correct you.
+
+
+
+
+THE SILKWORM
+
+
+I had some old mulberry-trees in my garden. My grandfather had planted
+them. In the fall I was given a dram of silkworm eggs, and was advised
+to hatch them and raise silkworms. These eggs are dark gray and so small
+that in that dram I counted 5,835 of them. They are smaller than the
+tiniest pin-head. They are quite dead; only when you crush them do they
+crack.
+
+The eggs had been lying around on my table, and I had almost forgotten
+about them.
+
+One day, in the spring, I went into the orchard and noticed the buds
+swelling on the mulberry-trees, and where the sun beat down, the leaves
+were out. I thought of the silkworm eggs, and took them apart at home
+and gave them more room. The majority of the eggs were no longer dark
+gray, as before, but some were light gray, while others were lighter
+still, with a milky shade.
+
+The next morning, I looked at the eggs, and saw that some of the worms
+had hatched out, while other eggs were quite swollen. Evidently they
+felt in their shells that their food was ripening.
+
+The worms were black and shaggy, and so small that it was hard to see
+them. I looked at them through a magnifying-glass, and saw that in the
+eggs they lay curled up in rings, and when they came out they
+straightened themselves out. I went to the garden for some mulberry
+leaves; I got about three handfuls of leaves, which I put on my table,
+and began to fix a place for the worms, as I had been taught to do.
+
+While I was fixing the paper, the worms smelled their food and started
+to crawl toward it. I pushed it away, and began to entice the worms to a
+leaf, and they made for it, as dogs make for a piece of meat, crawling
+after the leaf over the cloth of the table and across pencils, scissors,
+and papers. Then I cut off a piece of paper, stuck holes through it with
+a penknife, placed the leaf on top of it, and with the leaf put it down
+on the worms. The worms crawled through the holes, climbed on the leaf,
+and started to eat.
+
+When the other worms hatched out, I again put a piece of paper with a
+leaf on them, and all crawled through the holes and began to eat. The
+worms gathered on each leaf and nibbled at it from its edges. Then, when
+they had eaten everything, they crawled on the paper and looked for more
+food. Then I put on them new sheets of perforated paper with mulberry
+leaves upon them, and they crawled over to the new food.
+
+They were lying on my shelf, and when there was no leaf, they climbed
+about the shelf, and came to its very edge, but they never fell down,
+though they are blind. The moment a worm comes to an edge, it lets out a
+web from its mouth before descending, and then it attaches itself to it
+and lets itself down; it hangs awhile in the air, and watches, and if it
+wants to get down farther, it does so, and if not, it pulls itself up by
+its web.
+
+For days at a time the worms did nothing but eat. I had to give them
+more and more leaves. When a new leaf was brought, and they transferred
+themselves to it, they made a noise as though a rain were falling on
+leaves,--that was when they began to eat the new leaf.
+
+Thus the older worms lived for five days. They had grown very large and
+began to eat ten times as much as ever. On the fifth day, I knew, they
+would fall asleep, and waited for that to happen. Toward evening, on the
+fifth day, one of the older worms stuck to the paper and stopped eating
+and stirring.
+
+The whole next day I watched it for a long time. I knew that worms
+moulted several times, because they grew up and found it close in their
+old hide, and so put on a new one.
+
+My friend and I watched it by turns. In the evening my friend called
+out:
+
+"It has begun to undress itself,--come!"
+
+I went up to him, and saw that the worm had stuck with its old hide to
+the paper, had torn a hole at the mouth, thrust forth its head, and was
+writhing and working to get out, but the old shirt held it fast. I
+watched it for a long time as it writhed and could not get out, and I
+wanted to help it. I barely touched it with my nail, but soon saw that I
+had done something foolish. Under my nail there was something liquid,
+and the worm died. At first I thought that it was blood, but later I
+learned that the worm has a liquid mass under its skin, so that the
+shirt may come off easier. With my nail I no doubt disturbed the new
+shirt, for, though the worm crawled out, it soon died.
+
+The other worms I did not touch. All of them came out of their shirts in
+the same manner; only a few died, and nearly all came out safely, though
+they struggled hard for a long time.
+
+After shedding their skins, the worms began to eat more voraciously, and
+more leaves were devoured. Four days later they again fell asleep, and
+again crawled out of their skins. A still larger quantity of leaves was
+now consumed by them, and they were now a quarter of an inch in length.
+Six days later they fell asleep once more, and once more came out in new
+skins, and now were very large and fat, and we had barely time to get
+leaves ready for them.
+
+On the ninth day the oldest worms quit eating entirely and climbed up
+the shelves and rods. I gathered them in and gave them fresh leaves, but
+they turned their heads away from them, and continued climbing. Then I
+remembered that when the worms get ready to roll up into larvæ, they
+stop eating and climb upward.
+
+I left them alone, and began to watch what they would do.
+
+The eldest worms climbed to the ceiling, scattered about, crawled in all
+directions, and began to draw out single threads in various directions.
+I watched one of them. It went into a corner, put forth about six
+threads each two inches long, hung down from them, bent over in a
+horseshoe, and began to turn its head and let out a silk web which began
+to cover it all over. Toward evening it was covered by it as though in a
+mist; the worm could scarcely be seen. On the following morning the worm
+could no longer be seen; it was all wrapped in silk, and still it spun
+out more.
+
+Three days later it finished spinning, and quieted down. Later I learned
+how much web it had spun in those three days. If the whole web were to
+be unravelled, it would be more than half a mile in length, seldom less.
+And if we figure out how many times the worm has to toss its head in
+these three days in order to let out all the web, it will appear that in
+these three days the worm tosses its head 300,000 times. Consequently,
+it makes one turn a second, without stopping. But after the work, when
+we took down a few cocoons and broke them open, we found inside the
+worms all dried up and white, looking like pieces of wax.
+
+I knew that from these larvæ with their white, waxen bodies would come
+butterflies; but as I looked at them, I could not believe it. None the
+less I went to look at them on the twentieth day, to see what had become
+of them.
+
+On the twentieth day, I knew, there was to be a change. Nothing was to
+be seen, and I was beginning to think that something was wrong, when
+suddenly I noticed that the end of one of the cocoons grew dark and
+moist. I thought that it had probably spoiled, and wanted to throw it
+away. But then I thought that perhaps it began that way, and so I
+watched to see what would happen. And, indeed, something began to move
+at the wet end. For a long time I could not make out what it was. Later
+there appeared something like a head with whiskers. The whiskers moved.
+Then I noticed a leg sticking out through the hole, then another, and
+the legs scrambled to get out of the cocoon. It came out more and more,
+and I saw a wet butterfly. When all six legs scrambled out, the back
+jumped out, too, and the butterfly crawled out and stopped. When it
+dried it was white; it straightened its wings, flew away, circled
+around, and alighted on the window.
+
+Two days later the butterfly on the window-sill laid eggs in a row, and
+stuck them fast. The eggs were yellow. Twenty-five butterflies laid
+eggs. I collected five thousand eggs. The following year I raised more
+worms, and had more silk spun.
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FROM BOTANY
+
+
+
+
+THE APPLE-TREE
+
+
+I set out two hundred young apple-trees, and for three years I dug
+around them in the spring and the fall, and in winter wrapped them with
+straw against the hares. On the fourth year, when the snow melted, I
+went to take a look at my apple-trees. They had grown stouter during the
+winter: the bark was glossy and filled with sap; all the branches were
+sound, and at all the tips and axils there were pea-shaped flower-buds.
+Here and there the buds were bursting, and the purple edges of the
+flower-leaves could be seen. I knew that all the buds would be blossoms
+and fruit, and I was delighted as I looked at the apple-trees. But when
+I took off the wrapping from the first tree, I saw that down at the
+ground the bark was nibbled away, like a white ring, to the very wood.
+The mice had done that. I unwrapped a second tree, and the same had
+happened there. Of the two hundred trees not one was unharmed. I smeared
+pitch and wax on the nibbled spots; but when the trees were all in
+bloom, the blossoms at once fell off; there came out small leaves, and
+they, too, dropped off. The bark became wrinkled and black. Out of the
+two hundred apple-trees only nine were left. On these nine trees the
+bark had not been gnawed through all around, but strips of bark were
+left on the white ring. On the strips, where the bark held together,
+there grew out knots, and, although the trees suffered, they lived. All
+the rest were ruined; below the rings there came out shoots, but they
+were all wild.
+
+The bark of the tree is like the arteries in man: through the arteries
+the blood goes to the whole body, and through the bark the sap goes
+along the tree and reaches the branches, leaves, and flowers. The whole
+inside of a tree may be taken out, as is often the case with old
+willows, and yet the tree will live so long as the bark is alive; but
+when the bark is ruined, the tree is gone. If a man's arteries are cut
+through, he will die, in the first place, because the blood will flow
+out, and in the second, because the blood will not be distributed
+through the body.
+
+Even thus a birch dries up when the children bore a hole into it, in
+order to drink its sap, and all the sap flows out of it.
+
+Just so the apple-trees were ruined because the mice gnawed the bark all
+around, and the sap could not rise from the roots to the branches,
+leaves, and flowers.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD POPLAR
+
+
+For five years our garden was neglected. I hired labourers with axes and
+shovels, and myself began to work with them in the garden. We cut out
+and chopped out all the dry branches and wild shoots, and the
+superfluous trees and bushes. The poplars and bird-cherries grew ranker
+than the rest and choked the other trees. A poplar grows out from the
+roots, and it cannot be dug out, but the roots have to be chopped out
+underground.
+
+Beyond the pond there stood an enormous poplar, two men's embraces in
+circumference. About it there was a clearing, and this was all overgrown
+with poplar shoots. I ordered them to be cut out: I wanted the spot to
+look more cheerful, but, above all, I wanted to make it easier for the
+old poplar, because I thought that all those young trees came from its
+roots, and were draining it of its sap. When we cut out these young
+poplars, I felt sorry as I saw them chop out the sap-filled roots
+underground, and as all four of us pulled at the poplar that had been
+cut down, and could not pull it out. It held on with all its might, and
+did not wish to die. I thought that, no doubt, they had to live, since
+they clung so much to life. But it was necessary to cut them down, and
+so I did it. Only later, when nothing could be done, I learned that they
+ought not to have been cut down.
+
+I thought that the shoots were taking the sap away from the old poplar,
+but it turned out quite differently. When I was cutting them down, the
+old poplar was already dying. When the leaves came out, I saw (it grew
+from two boughs) that one bough was bare; and that same summer it dried
+up completely. The tree had been dying for quite awhile, and the tree
+knew it, so it tried to give its life to the shoots.
+
+That was the reason why they grew so fast. I wanted to make it easier
+for the tree, and only killed all its children.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRD-CHERRY
+
+
+A bird-cherry grew out on a hazel bush path and choked the bushes. I
+deliberated for a long time whether I had better cut down the
+bird-cherry, or not. This bird-cherry grew not as a bush, but as a tree,
+about six inches in diameter and thirty feet high, full of branches and
+bushy, and all besprinkled with bright, white, fragrant blossoms. You
+could smell it from a distance. I should not have cut it down, but one
+of the labourers (to whom I had before given the order to cut down the
+bird-cherry) had begun to chop it without me. When I came, he had
+already cut in about three inches, and the sap splashed under the axe
+whenever it struck the same cut. "It cannot be helped,--apparently such
+is its fate," I thought, and I picked up an axe myself and began to chop
+it with the peasant.
+
+It is a pleasure to do any work, and it is a pleasure to chop. It is a
+pleasure to let the axe enter deeply in a slanting line, and then to
+chop out the chip by a straight stroke, and to chop farther and farther
+into the tree.
+
+I had entirely forgotten the bird-cherry, and was thinking only of
+felling it as quickly as possible. When I got tired, I put down my axe
+and with the peasant pressed against the tree and tried to make it fall.
+We bent it: the tree trembled with its leaves, and the dew showered down
+upon us, and the white, fragrant petals of the blossoms fell down.
+
+At the same time something seemed to cry,--the middle of the tree
+creaked; we pressed against it, and it was as though something wept,
+there was a crash in the middle, and the tree tottered. It broke at the
+notch and, swaying, fell with its branches and blossoms into the grass.
+The twigs and blossoms trembled for awhile after the fall, and stopped.
+
+"It was a fine tree!" said the peasant. "I am mightily sorry for it!"
+
+I myself felt so sorry for it that I hurried away to the other
+labourers.
+
+
+
+
+HOW TREES WALK
+
+
+One day we were cleaning an overgrown path on a hillock near the pond.
+We cut down a lot of brier bushes, willows, and poplars,--then came the
+turn of a bird-cherry. It was growing on the path, and it was so old and
+stout that it could not be less than ten years old. And yet I knew that
+five years ago the garden had been cleaned. I could not understand how
+such an old bird-cherry could have grown out there. We cut it down and
+went farther. Farther away, in another thicket, there grew a similar
+bird-cherry, even stouter than the first. I looked at its root, and saw
+that it grew under an old linden. The linden with its branches choked
+it, and it had stretched out about twelve feet in a straight line, and
+only then came out to the light, raised its head, and began to blossom.
+
+I cut it down at the root, and was surprised to find it so fresh, while
+the root was rotten. After we had cut it down, the peasants and I tried
+to pull it off; but no matter how much we jerked at it, we were unable
+to drag it away: it seemed to have stuck fast. I said:
+
+"Look whether it has not caught somewhere."
+
+A workman crawled under it, and called out:
+
+"It has another root; it is out on the path!"
+
+I walked over to him, and saw that it was so.
+
+Not to be choked by the linden, the bird-cherry had gone away from
+underneath the linden out on the path, about eight feet from its former
+root. The root which I had cut down was rotten and dry, but the new one
+was fresh. The bird-cherry had evidently felt that it could not exist
+under the linden, so it had stretched out, dropped a branch to the
+ground, made a root of that branch, and left the other root. Only then
+did I understand how the first bird-cherry had grown out on the road. It
+had evidently done the same,--only it had had time to give up the old
+root, and so I had not found it.
+
+
+
+
+THE DECEMBRISTS
+
+Fragments of a Novel
+
+1863-1878
+
+
+
+
+THE DECEMBRISTS
+
+A Novel
+
+
+FIRST FRAGMENT
+
+I.
+
+This happened not long ago, in the reign of Alexander II., in our days
+of civilization, progress, questions, regeneration of Russia, and so
+forth, and so forth; at a time when the victorious Russian army was
+returning from Sevastopol, surrendered to the enemy; when all of Russia
+celebrated the annihilation of the Black Sea fleet, and white-stoned
+Moscow received and congratulated with this happy event the remainders
+of the crews of that fleet, offering them a good Russian cup of vódka,
+and bread and salt, according to the good Russian custom, and bowing
+down to their feet. It was that time when Russia, in the person of
+far-sighted virgin politicians, lamented the shattered dream of a Te
+Deum in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and the loss of two great men, so
+painful for the country, who had perished during the war (one, who had
+been carried away by the desire to celebrate the Te Deum in the
+above-mentioned cathedral at the earliest time possible, and who fell in
+the fields of Wallachia, but who, at least, left two squadrons of
+hussars in the same fields, and the other, an unappreciated man, who had
+distributed tea, other people's money, and bed-sheets to the wounded,
+without stealing any of these things); that time, when on all sides, in
+all branches of human activities, great men--generals, administrators,
+economists, writers, orators, and simply great men, without any especial
+calling or purpose--sprang up in Russia like mushrooms; that time, when,
+at the jubilee of a Moscow actor, there appeared the public opinion,
+confirmed by a toast, which began to rebuke all the criminals,--when
+menacing commissions galloped south from St. Petersburg, to convict and
+punish the evil-doers of the commissariat,--when in all the cities
+dinners with speeches were given to the heroes of Sevastopol, and when
+to them, with arms and legs torn off, toasts were drunk, on meeting them
+on the bridges and on the highways; that time, when oratorical talents
+developed so rapidly in the nation that a certain dram-shopkeeper
+everywhere and upon all occasions wrote and printed and recited by rote
+at dinners such strong speeches, that the guardians of the peace had to
+take repressive measures against the dram-shopkeeper's eloquence,--when
+in the very English club a special room was set aside for the discussion
+of public matters,--when periodicals sprang up under the most
+diversified standards,--periodicals that evolved European principles on
+a European basis, but with a Russian world conception, and periodicals
+on an exclusively Russian basis, but with a European world
+conception,--when suddenly there appeared so many periodicals that all
+names seemed to be exhausted,--"The Messenger," and "The Word," and "The
+Speaker," and "The Observer," and "The Star," and "The Eagle," and many
+more, and, in spite of it, there appeared ever new names; that time,
+when the constellation of philosophic writers made its appearance to
+prove that science was national, and not national, and non-national, and
+so forth, and the constellation of artistic writers, who described a
+grove, and the sunrise, and a storm, and the love of a Russian maiden,
+and the indolence of a certain official, and the bad conduct of many
+officials; that time, when on all sides appeared questions (as in the
+year '56 they called every concourse of circumstances, of which no one
+could make any sense), questions of cadet corps, universities,
+censorship, oral judicature, finance, banking, police, emancipation, and
+many more:--everybody tried to discover ever new questions, everybody
+tried to solve them, wrote, read, spoke, made projects, wanted to mend
+everything, destroy, change, and all Russians, like one man, were in
+indescribable ecstasy.
+
+That is a state of affairs which has been twice repeated in the Russia
+of the nineteenth century,--the first time, when in the year '12 we
+repulsed Napoleon I., and the second time, when in the year '56 we were
+repulsed by Napoleon III. Great, unforgettable time of the regeneration
+of the Russian people! Like the Frenchman who said that he has not lived
+who has not lived through the great French Revolution, I venture to say
+that he who has not lived through the year '56 in Russia does not know
+what life is. The writer of these lines not only lived through that
+time, but was one of the actors of that period. Not only did he pass
+several weeks in one of the blindages of Sevastopol, but he also wrote a
+work on the Crimean War, which brought him great fame, and in which he
+described clearly and minutely how the soldiers fired their guns from
+the bastions, how the wounds were dressed at the ambulance, and how they
+buried people in the cemetery. Having achieved these deeds, the writer
+of these lines arrived in the centre of the empire,--a rocket
+establishment,--where he cut the laurels for his deeds. He saw the
+transports of the two capitals and of the whole nation, and experienced
+in his person to what extent Russia knew how to reward real deserts. The
+mighty of this world sought his friendship, pressed his hands, gave him
+dinners, urged him to come to their houses, and, in order to learn the
+details of the war from him, informed him of their own sentimentalities.
+Consequently the writer of these lines can appreciate that great and
+memorable time. But that is another matter.
+
+At that very time, two vehicles on wheels and a sleigh were standing at
+the entrance of the best Moscow hotel. A young man ran through the door,
+to find out about quarters. In one of the vehicles sat an old man with
+two ladies. He was talking about the condition of Blacksmith Bridge in
+the days of the French. It was the continuation of a conversation
+started as they entered Moscow, and now the old man with the white
+beard, in his unbuttoned fur coat, calmly continued his conversation in
+the vehicle, as though he intended to stay in it overnight. His wife and
+daughter listened to him, but kept looking at the door with some
+impatience. The young man emerged from the door with the porter and room
+servant.
+
+"Well, Sergyéy," asked the mother, thrusting her emaciated face out into
+the glare of the lamplight.
+
+Either because it was his habit, or because he did not wish the porter
+to take him for a lackey on account of the short fur coat which he wore,
+Sergyéy replied in French that there were rooms to be had, and opened
+the carriage door. The old man looked for a moment at his son, and again
+turned to the dark corner of the vehicle, as though nothing else
+concerned him:
+
+"There was no theatre then."
+
+"Pierre!" said his wife, lifting her cloak; but he continued:
+
+"Madame Chalmé was in Tverskáya Street--"
+
+Deep in the vehicle could be heard a youthful, sonorous laugh.
+
+"Papa, step out! You are forgetting where we are."
+
+The old man only then seemed to recall that they had arrived, and looked
+around him.
+
+"Do step out!"
+
+He pulled his cap down, and submissively passed through the door. The
+porter took him under his arm, but, seeing that the old man was walking
+well, he at once offered his services to the lady. Judging from the
+sable cloak, and from the time it took for her to emerge, and from the
+way she pressed down on his arm, and from the way she, leaning on her
+son's arm, walked straight toward the porch, without looking to either
+side, Natálya Nikoláevna, his wife, seemed to the porter to be an
+important personage. He did not even separate the young lady from the
+maids, who climbed out from the other vehicle; like them, she carried a
+bundle and a pipe, and walked behind. He recognized her only by her
+laughing and by her calling the old man father.
+
+"Not that way, father,--to the right!" she said, taking hold of the
+sleeve of his sheepskin coat. "To the right."
+
+On the staircase there resounded, through the noise of the steps, the
+doors, and the heavy breathing of the elderly lady, the same laughter
+which had been heard in the vehicle, and about which any one who heard
+it thought: "How excellently she laughs,--I just envy her."
+
+Their son, Sergyéy, had attended to all the material conditions on the
+road, and, though he lacked knowledge of the matter, he had attended to
+it with the energy and self-satisfying activity which are characteristic
+of twenty-five years of age. Some twenty times, and apparently for no
+important reason, he ran down to the sleigh in his greatcoat, and ran
+up-stairs again, shivering in the cold and taking two or three steps at
+a time with his long, youthful legs. Natálya Nikoláevna asked him not to
+catch a cold, but he said that it was all right, and continued to give
+orders, slamming doors, and walking, and, when it seemed that only the
+servants and peasants had to be attended to, he several times walked
+through all the rooms, leaving the drawing-room by one door, and coming
+in through another, as though he were looking for something else to do.
+
+"Well, papa, will you be driven to the bath-house? Shall I find out?" he
+asked.
+
+His papa was deep in thought and, it seemed, was not at all conscious of
+where he was. He did not answer at once. He heard the words, but did not
+comprehend them. Suddenly he comprehended.
+
+"Yes, yes, yes. Find out, if you please, at Stone Bridge."
+
+The head of the family walked through the rooms with hasty, agitated
+steps, and seated himself in a chair.
+
+"Now we must decide what to do, how to arrange matters," he said. "Help
+along, children, lively! Like good fellows, drag things around, put them
+up, and to-morrow we shall send Serézha with a note to sister Márya
+Ivánovna, to the Nikítins, or we shall go there ourselves. Am I right,
+Natásha? But now, fix things!"
+
+"To-morrow is Sunday. I hope, Pierre, that first of all you will go to
+mass," said his wife, kneeling in front of a trunk and opening it.
+
+"That is so, it is Sunday! We shall by all means all of us go to the
+Cathedral of the Assumption. Thus will our return begin. O Lord! When I
+think of the day when I was for the last time in the Cathedral of the
+Assumption! Do you remember, Natásha? But that is another matter."
+
+And the head of the family rose quickly from the chair, on which he had
+just seated himself.
+
+"Now we must settle down!"
+
+And without doing anything, he kept walking from one room to another.
+
+"Well, shall we drink tea? Or are you tired, and do you want to rest?"
+
+"Yes, yes," replied his wife, taking something out from the trunk. "You
+wanted to go to the bath-house, did you not?"
+
+"Yes--in my day it was near Stone Bridge. Serézha, go and find out
+whether there is still a bath-house near Stone Bridge. This room here
+Serézha and I shall occupy. Serézha! Will you be comfortable here?"
+
+But Serézha had gone to find out about the bath-house.
+
+"No, that will not do," he continued. "You will not have a straight
+passage to the drawing-room. What do you think, Natásha?"
+
+"Calm yourself, Pierre, everything will come out all right," Natásha
+said, from another room, where peasants were bringing in things.
+
+But Pierre was still under the influence of that ecstatic mood which the
+arrival had evoked in him.
+
+"Look there,--don't mix up Serézha's things! You have thrown his
+snow-shoes down in the drawing-room." And he himself picked them up and
+with great care, as though the whole future order of the quarters
+depended upon it, leaned them against the door-post and tried to make
+them stand there. But the snow-shoes did not stick to it, and, the
+moment Pierre walked away from them, fell with a racket across the door.
+Natálya Nikoláevna frowned and shuddered, but, seeing the cause of the
+fall, she said:
+
+"Sónya, darling, pick them up!"
+
+"Pick them up, darling," repeated the husband, "and I will go to the
+landlord, or else you will never get done. I must talk things over with
+him."
+
+"You had better send for him, Pierre. Why should you trouble yourself?"
+
+Pierre assented.
+
+"Sónya, bring him here, what do you call him? M. Cavalier, if you
+please. Tell him that we want to speak about everything."
+
+"Chevalier, papa," said Sónya, ready to go out.
+
+Natálya Nikoláevna, who was giving her commands in a soft voice, and was
+softly stepping from room to room, now with a box, now with a pipe, now
+with a pillow, imperceptibly finding places for a mountain of baggage,
+in passing Sónya, had time to whisper to her:
+
+"Do not go yourself, but send a man!"
+
+While a man went to call the landlord, Pierre used his leisure, under
+the pretext of aiding his consort, in crushing a garment of hers and in
+stumbling against an empty box. Steadying himself with his hand against
+the wall, the Decembrist looked around with a smile; but Sónya was
+looking at him with such smiling eyes that she seemed to be waiting for
+permission to laugh. He readily granted her that permission, and himself
+burst out into such a good-natured laugh that all those who were in the
+room, his wife, the maids, and the peasants, laughed with him. This
+laughter animated the old man still more. He discovered that the divan
+in the room for his wife and daughter was not standing very conveniently
+for them, although they affirmed the opposite, and asked him to calm
+himself. Just as he was trying with his own hands to help a peasant to
+change the position of that piece of furniture, the landlord, a
+Frenchman, entered the room.
+
+"You sent for me," the landlord asked sternly and, in proof of his
+indifference, if not contempt, slowly drew out his handkerchief, slowly
+unfolded it, and slowly cleared his nose.
+
+"Yes, my dear sir," said Peter Ivánovich, stepping up toward him, "you
+see, we do not know ourselves how long we are going to stay here, I and
+my wife--" and Peter Ivánovich, who had the weakness of seeing a
+neighbour in every man, began to expound his plans and affairs to him.
+
+M. Chevalier did not share that view of people and was not interested in
+the information communicated to him by Peter Ivánovich, but the good
+French which Peter Ivánovich spoke (the French language, as is known, is
+something like rank in Russia) and his lordly manner somewhat raised the
+landlord's opinion about the newcomers.
+
+"What can I do for you?" he asked.
+
+This question did not embarrass Peter Ivánovich. He expressed his desire
+to have rooms, tea, a samovár, supper, dinner, food for the servants, in
+short, all those things for which hotels exist, and when M. Chevalier,
+marvelling at the innocence of the old man, who apparently imagined that
+he was in the Trukhmén steppe, or supposed that all these things would
+be given him without pay, informed him that he could have all those
+things, Peter Ivánovich was in ecstasy.
+
+"Now that is nice! Very nice! And so we shall get things all fixed.
+Well, then please--" but he felt embarrassed to be speaking all the time
+about himself, and he began to ask M. Chevalier about his family and his
+business. When Sergyéy Petróvich returned to the room, he did not seem
+to approve of his father's address; he observed the landlord's
+dissatisfaction, and reminded his father of the bath. But Peter
+Ivánovich was interested in the question of how a French hotel could be
+run in Moscow in the year '56, and of how Madame Chevalier passed her
+time. Finally the landlord himself bowed and asked him whether he was
+not pleased to order anything.
+
+"We will have tea, Natásha. Yes? Tea, then, if you please! We will have
+some other talks, my dear monsieur! What a charming man!"
+
+"And the bath, papa?"
+
+"Oh, yes, then we shall have no tea."
+
+Thus the only result from the conversation with the newly arrived guests
+was taken from the landlord. But Peter Ivánovich was now proud and happy
+of his arrangements. The drivers, who came to ask a _pourboire_, vexed
+him, because Serézha had no change, and Peter Ivánovich was on the point
+of sending once more for the landlord, but the happy thought that
+others, too, ought to be happy on that evening helped him out of that
+predicament. He took two three-rouble bills, and, sticking one bill into
+the hand of one of the drivers, he said, "This is for you" (Peter
+Ivánovich was in the habit of saying "you" to all without exception,
+unless to a member of his family); "and this is for you," he said,
+transferring the other bill from the palm of his hand to that of the
+driver, in some such manner as people do when paying a doctor for a
+visit. After attending to all these things, he was taken to the
+bath-house.
+
+Sónya, who was sitting on the divan, put her hand under her head and
+burst out laughing.
+
+"Oh, how nice it is, mamma! Oh, how nice!"
+
+Then she placed her feet on the divan, stretched herself, adjusted
+herself, and fell into the sound, calm sleep of a healthy girl of
+eighteen years of age, after six weeks on the road. Natálya Nikoláevna,
+who was still busy taking out things in her sleeping-room, heard, no
+doubt with her maternal ear, that Sónya was not stirring, and went out
+to take a look at her. She took a pillow and, raising the girl's
+reddened, dishevelled head with her large white hand, placed her on the
+pillow. Sónya drew a deep, deep sigh, shrugged her shoulders, and put
+her head on the pillow, without saying "_Merci_," as though that had all
+been done of its own accord.
+
+"Not on that bed, not on that, Gavrílovna, Kátya," Natálya Nikoláevna
+immediately turned to the maids who were making a bed, and with one
+hand, as though in passing, she adjusted the straying hair of her
+daughter. Without stopping and without hurrying, Natálya Nikoláevna
+dressed herself, and upon the arrival of her husband and her son
+everything was ready: the trunks were no longer in the rooms; in
+Pierre's sleeping-room everything was arranged as it had been for
+several decades in Irkútsk: the morning-gown, the pipe, the
+tobacco-pouch, the sugared water, the Gospel, which he read at night,
+and even the image stuck to the rich wall-paper in the rooms of
+Chevalier, who never used such adornments, but on that evening they
+appeared in all the rooms of the third division of the hotel.
+
+Having dressed herself, Natálya Nikoláevna adjusted her collar and
+cuffs, which, in spite of the journey, were still clean, combed herself,
+and seated herself opposite the table. Her beautiful black eyes gazed
+somewhere into the distance: she looked and rested herself. She seemed
+to be resting, not from the unpacking alone, nor from the road, nor from
+the oppressive years,--she seemed to be resting from her whole life, and
+the distance into which she was gazing, and in which she saw living and
+beloved faces, was that rest which she was wishing for. Whether it was
+an act of love, which she had done for her husband, or the love which
+she had experienced for her children when they were young, or whether it
+was a heavy loss, or a peculiarity of her character,--everyone who
+looked at that woman could not help seeing that nothing could be
+expected from her, that she had long ago given all of herself to life,
+and that nothing was left of her. All that there was left was something
+worthy of respect, something beautiful and sad, as a reminiscence, as
+the moonlight. She could not be imagined otherwise than surrounded by
+all the comforts of life. It was impossible for her ever to be hungry,
+or to eat eagerly, or to have on soiled clothes, or to stumble, or to
+forget to clear her nose. It was a physical impossibility. Why it was
+so, I do not know, but every motion of hers was dignity, grace,
+gentleness toward all those who could enjoy her sight.
+
+    "Sie pflegen und weben
+    Himmlische Rosen ins irdische Leben."
+
+She knew those verses and loved them, but was not guided by them. All
+her nature was an expression of that thought; all her life was this one
+unconscious weaving of invisible roses in the lives of those with whom
+she came in contact. She had followed her husband to Siberia only
+because she loved him; she had not thought what she could do for him,
+and instinctively had done everything. She had made his bed, had put
+away his things, had prepared his dinner and his tea, and, above all,
+had always been where he was, and no woman could have given more
+happiness to her husband.
+
+In the drawing-room the samovár was boiling on the round table. Natálya
+Nikoláevna sat near it. Sónya wrinkled her face and smiled under her
+mother's hand, which was tickling her, when father and son, with
+wrinkled finger-tips and glossy cheeks and foreheads (the father's bald
+spot was particularly glistening), with fluffy white and black hair, and
+with beaming countenances, entered the room.
+
+"It has grown brighter since you have come in," said Natálya Nikoláevna.
+"O Lord, how white you are!"
+
+She had been saying that each Saturday, for several decades, and each
+Saturday Pierre experienced bashfulness and delight, whenever he heard
+that. They seated themselves at the table; there was an odour of tea and
+of the pipe, and there were heard the voices of the parents, the
+children, and the servants, who received their cups in the same room.
+They recalled everything funny that had happened on the road, admired
+Sónya's hair-dressing, and laughed. Geographically they were all
+transferred a distance of five thousand versts, into an entirely
+different, strange milieu, but morally they were that evening still at
+home, just such as the peculiar, long, solitary family life had made
+them to be. It will not be so to-morrow. Peter Ivánovich seated himself
+near the samovár, and lighted his pipe. He was not in a cheerful mood.
+
+"So here we are," he said, "and I am glad that we shall not see any one
+to-night; this is the last evening we shall pass with the family," and
+he washed these words down with a large mouthful of tea.
+
+"Why the last, Pierre?"
+
+"Why? Because the eaglets have learned to fly, and they have to make
+their own nests, and from here they will fly each in a different
+direction--"
+
+"What nonsense!" said Sónya, taking his glass from him, and smiling at
+him, as she smiled at everything. "The old nest is good enough!"
+
+"The old nest is a sad nest; the old man did not know how to make
+it,--he was caught in a cage, and in the cage he reared his young ones,
+and was let out only when his wings no longer would hold him up. No, the
+eaglets must make their nests higher up, more auspiciously, nearer to
+the sun; that is what they are his children for, that his example might
+serve them; but the old one will look on, so long as he is not blind,
+and will listen, when he becomes blind-- Pour in some rum, more,
+more--enough!"
+
+"We shall see who is going to leave," replied Sónya, casting a cursory
+glance at her mother, as though she felt uneasy speaking in her
+presence. "We shall see who is going to leave," she continued. "I am not
+afraid for myself, neither am I for Serézha." (Serézha was walking up
+and down in the room, thinking of how clothes would be ordered for him
+to-morrow, and wondering whether he had better go to the tailor, or send
+for him; he was not interested in Sónya's conversation with his father.)
+Sónya began to laugh.
+
+"What is the matter? What?" asked her father.
+
+"You are younger than we, papa. Much younger, indeed," she said, again
+bursting out into a laugh.
+
+"Indeed!" said the old man, and his austere wrinkles formed themselves
+into a gentle, and yet contemptuous, smile.
+
+Natálya Nikoláevna bent away from the samovár which prevented her seeing
+her husband.
+
+"Sónya is right. You are still sixteen years old, Pierre. Serézha is
+younger in feelings, but you are younger in soul. I can foresee what he
+will do, but you will astound me yet."
+
+Whether he recognized the justice of this remark, or was flattered by
+it, he did not know what reply to make, and only smoked in silence,
+drank his tea, and beamed with his eyes. But Serézha, with
+characteristic egoism of youth, interested in what was said about him,
+entered into the conversation and affirmed that he was really old, that
+his arrival in Moscow and the new life, which was opening before him,
+did not gladden him in the least, and that he calmly reflected on the
+future and looked forward toward it.
+
+"Still, it is the last evening," repeated Peter Ivánovich. "It will not
+be again to-morrow."
+
+And he poured a little more rum into his glass. He sat for a long time
+at the tea-table, with an expression as though he wished to say many
+things, but had no hearers. He moved up the rum toward him, but his
+daughter softly carried away the bottle.
+
+II.
+
+When M. Chevalier, who had been up-stairs to look after his guests,
+returned to his room and gave the benefit of his observations on the
+newcomers to his life companion, in laces and a silk garment, who in
+Parisian fashion was sitting back of the counter, several habitual
+visitors of the establishment were sitting in the room. Serézha, who had
+been down-stairs, had taken notice of that room and of its visitors. If
+you have been in Moscow, you have, no doubt, noticed that room yourself.
+
+If you, a modest man who do not know Moscow, have missed a dinner to
+which you are invited, or have made a mistake in your calculations,
+imagining that the hospitable Muscovites would invite you to dinner, or
+simply wish to dine in the best restaurant, you enter the lackeys' room.
+Three or four lackeys jump up: one of them takes off your fur coat and
+congratulates you on the occasion of the New Year, or of the
+Butter-week, or of your arrival, or simply remarks that you have not
+called for a long while, though you have never been in that
+establishment before.
+
+You enter, and the first thing that strikes your eyes is a table set, as
+you in the first moment imagine, with an endless quantity of palatable
+dishes. But that is only an optical illusion, for the greater part of
+that table is occupied by pheasants in feather, raw lobsters, boxes with
+perfume and pomatum, and bottles with cosmetics and candy. Only at the
+very edge, if you look well, will you find the vódka and a piece of
+bread with butter and sardines, under a wire globe, which is quite
+useless in Moscow in the month of December, even though it is precisely
+such as those which are used in Paris. Then, beyond the table, you see
+the room, where behind a counter sits a Frenchwoman, of extremely
+repulsive exterior, but wearing the cleanest of gloves and a most
+exquisite, fashionable gown. Near the Frenchwoman you will see an
+officer in unbuttoned uniform, taking a dram of vódka, a civilian
+reading a newspaper, and somebody's military or civilian legs lying on a
+velvet chair, and you will hear French conversation, and more or less
+sincere, loud laughter.
+
+If you wish to know what is going on in that room, I should advise you
+not to enter within, but only to look in, as though merely passing by to
+take a sandwich. Otherwise you will feel ill at ease from the
+interrogative silence and glances, and you will certainly take your tail
+between your legs and skulk away to one of the tables in the large hall,
+or to the winter garden. Nobody will keep you from doing so. These
+tables are for everybody, and there, in your solitude, you may call Dey
+a garçon and order as many truffles as you please. The room with the
+Frenchwoman, however, exists for the select, golden Moscow youth, and it
+is not so easy to find your way among the select as you imagine.
+
+On returning to this room, M. Chevalier told his wife that the gentleman
+from Siberia was dull, but that his son and daughter were fine people,
+such as could be raised only in Siberia.
+
+"You ought just to see the daughter! She is a little rose-bush!"
+
+"Oh, this old man is fond of fresh-looking women," said one of the
+guests, who was smoking a cigar. (The conversation, of course, was
+carried on in French, but I render it in Russian, as I shall continue to
+do in this story.)
+
+"Oh, I am very fond of them!" replied M. Chevalier. "Women are my
+passion. Do you not believe me?"
+
+"Do you hear, Madame Chevalier?" shouted a stout officer of Cossacks,
+who owed a big bill in the institution and was fond of chatting with the
+landlord.
+
+"He shares my taste," said M. Chevalier, patting the stout man on his
+epaulet.
+
+"And is this Siberian young lady really pretty?"
+
+M. Chevalier folded his fingers and kissed them.
+
+After that the conversation between the guests became confidential and
+very jolly. They were talking about the stout officer; he smiled as he
+listened to what they were saying about him.
+
+"How can one have such perverted taste!" cried one, through the
+laughter. "Mlle. Clarisse! You know, Strúgov prefers such of the women
+as have chicken calves."
+
+Though Mlle. Clarisse did not understand the salt of that remark, she
+behind her counter burst out into a laughter as silvery as her bad
+teeth and advanced years permitted.
+
+"Has the Siberian lady turned him to such thoughts?" and she laughed
+more heartily still. M. Chevalier himself roared with laughter, as he
+said:
+
+"_Ce vieux coquin_," patting the officer of Cossacks on his head and
+shoulders.
+
+"But who are they, those Siberians? Mining proprietors or merchants?"
+one of the gentlemen asked, during a pause in the laughter.
+
+"Nikíta, ask ze passport from ze chentleman zat as come," said M.
+Chevalier.
+
+"We, Alexander, ze Autocrat--" M. Chevalier began to read the passport,
+which had been brought in the meantime, but the officer of Cossacks tore
+it out of his hands, and his face expressed surprise.
+
+"Guess who it is," he said, "for you all know him by reputation."
+
+"How can we guess? Show it to us! Well, Abdel Kader, ha, ha, ha! Well,
+Cagliostro-- Well, Peter III.--ha, ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"Well, read it!"
+
+The officer of Cossacks unfolded the paper and read the name of him who
+once had been Prince Peter Ivánovich, and the family name which
+everybody knows and pronounces with a certain respect and pleasure, when
+speaking of a person bearing that name, as of a near and familiar
+person. We shall call him Labázov. The officer of Cossacks had a dim
+recollection that this Peter Labázov had been something important in the
+year '25, and that he had been sent to hard labour,--but what he had
+been famous for, he did not exactly know. But of the others not one knew
+anything about him, and they replied:
+
+"Oh, yes, the famous prince," just as they would have said, "Of course,
+he is famous!" about Shakespeare, who had written the "Æneid." But they
+recognized him from the explanations of the stout officer, who told
+them that he was a brother of Prince Iván, an uncle of the Chíkins, of
+Countess Prut, in short, the well-known--
+
+"He must be very rich, if he is a brother of Prince Iván," remarked one
+of the young men, "if the fortune has been returned to him. It has been
+returned to some."
+
+"What a lot of exiles are returning nowadays!" remarked another.
+"Really, fewer seem to have been sent away, than are returning now.
+Zhikínski, tell us that story of the 18th!" he turned to an officer of
+sharp-shooters, who had the reputation of being a good story-teller.
+
+"Do tell it!"
+
+"In the first place, it is a true story, and happened here, at
+Chevalier's, in the large hall. Three Decembrists came to have their
+dinner. They were sitting at one table, eating, drinking, talking.
+Opposite them sat down a gentleman of respectable mien, of about the
+same age, and he listened to their talking about Siberia. He asked them
+something, they exchanged a few words, began to converse, and it turned
+out that he, too, was from Siberia.
+
+"'And do you know Nerchínsk?'
+
+"'Indeed I do, I lived there.'
+
+"'And do you know Tatyána Ivánovna?'
+
+"'Of course I do!'
+
+"'Permit me to ask you,--were you, too, exiled?'
+
+"'Yes, I had the misfortune to suffer, and you?'
+
+"'We are all exiles of the 14th of December. It is strange that we
+should not know you, if you, too, were exiled for the 14th. Permit me to
+know your name!'
+
+"'Fédorov.'
+
+"'Also for the 14th?'
+
+"'No, for the 18th.'
+
+"'For the 18th?'
+
+"'For the 18th of September, for a gold watch. I was falsely accused of
+having stolen it, and I suffered, though innocent.'"
+
+All of them rolled in laughter, except the story-teller, who with a most
+serious face looked at the outstretched hearers and swore that it was a
+true story.
+
+Soon after the story one of the young men got up and went to the club.
+He passed through the halls which were filled with tables at which old
+men were playing whist; turned into the "infernal region," where the
+famous "Puchin" had begun his game against the "company;" stood for
+awhile near one of the billiard-tables, where, holding on to the
+cushion, a distinguished old man was fumbling around and with difficulty
+striking a ball; looked into the library, where a general, holding a
+newspaper a distance away from him, was reading it slowly above his
+glasses, and a registered young man turned the leaves of one periodical
+after another, trying to make no noise; and finally seated himself on a
+divan in the billiard-room, near some young people who were playing
+pyramids, and who were as much gilded as he was.
+
+It was a day of dinners, and there were there many gentlemen who always
+frequented the club. Among them was Iván Vavílovich Pákhtin. He was a
+man of about forty years of age, of medium stature, fair-complexioned,
+with broad shoulders and hips, with a bare head, and a glossy, happy,
+clean-shaven face. He was not playing at pyramids, but had just sat down
+beside Prince D----, with whom he was on "thou" terms, and had accepted
+a glass of champagne which had been offered to him. He had located
+himself so comfortably after the dinner, having quietly unbuckled his
+trousers at the back, that it looked as though he could sit there all
+his life, smoking a cigar, drinking champagne, and feeling the proximity
+of princes, counts, and the children of ministers. The news of the
+arrival of the Labázovs interfered with his calm.
+
+"Where are you going, Pákhtin," said a minister's son, having noticed
+during the game that Pákhtin had got up, pulled his waistcoat down, and
+emptied his champagne in a large gulp.
+
+"Syévernikov has invited me," said Pákhtin, feeling a restlessness in
+his legs. "Well, will you go there?"
+
+"Anastásya, Anastásya, please unlock the door for me." That was a
+well-known gipsy-song, which was in vogue at that time.
+
+"Perhaps. And you?"
+
+"Where shall I, an old married man, go?"
+
+"Well!"
+
+Pákhtin, smiling, went to the glass hall, to join Syévernikov. He was
+fond of having his last word appear to be a joke. And so it came out at
+that time, too.
+
+"Well, how is the countess's health?" he asked, walking over to
+Syévernikov, who had not called him at all, but who, according to
+Pákhtin's surmise, should more than any one else learn of the arrival of
+the Labázovs. Syévernikov had somehow been mixed up with the affair of
+the 14th, and was a friend of the Decembrists. The countess's health was
+much better, and Pákhtin was very glad to hear it.
+
+"Do you know, Labázov has arrived; he is staying at Chevalier's."
+
+"You don't say so! We are old friends. How glad I am! How glad! The poor
+old fellow must have grown old. His wife wrote to my wife--"
+
+But Syévernikov did not finish saying what it was she had written,
+because his partners, who were playing without trumps, had made some
+mistake. While speaking with Iván Pávlovich, he kept an eye on them, and
+now he leaned forward with his whole body against the table, and,
+thumping it with his hands, he tried to prove that they ought to have
+played from the seven. Iván Pávlovich got up and, going up to another
+table, in the middle of a conversation informed another worthy gentleman
+of his bit of news, again got up, and repeated the same at a third
+table. The worthy gentlemen were all glad to hear of the arrival of the
+Labázovs, so that, upon returning to the billiard-room, Iván Pávlovich,
+who at first had had his misgivings about whether he had to rejoice in
+the return of the Labázovs, or not, no longer started with an
+introduction about the ball, about an article in the _Messenger_, about
+health, or weather, but approached everybody directly with the
+enthusiastic announcement of the safe return of the famous Decembrist.
+
+The old man, who was still vainly endeavouring to hit the white ball
+with his cue, would, in Pákhtin's opinion, be very much delighted to
+hear the news. He went up to him.
+
+"Are you playing well, your Excellency?" he said, just as the old man
+stuck his cue into the marker's red waistcoat, wishing to indicate that
+it had to be chalked.
+
+"Your Excellency" was not said, as you might think, from a desire of
+being subservient (no, that was not the fashion in '56). Iván Pávlovich
+was in the habit of calling the old man by his name and patronymic, but
+this was said partly as a joke on men who spoke that way, partly in
+order to hint that he knew full well to whom he was talking, and yet was
+taking liberties, and partly in truth: altogether it was a very delicate
+jest.
+
+"I have just learned that Peter Labázov has returned. Straight from
+Siberia, with his whole family."
+
+These words Pákhtin pronounced just as the old man again missed his
+ball, for such was his bad luck.
+
+"If he has returned as cracked as he went away, there is no cause for
+rejoicing," gruffly said the old man, who was irritated by his
+incomprehensible failure.
+
+This statement vexed Iván Pávlovich, and again he was at a loss whether
+there was any cause for rejoicing at Labázov's return, and, in order
+fully to settle his doubt, he directed his steps to a room, where
+generally assembled the clever people, who knew the meaning and value of
+each thing, and, in short, knew everything. Iván Pávlovich was on the
+same footing of friendship with the frequenters of the intellectual room
+as with the gilded youths and with the dignitaries. It is true, he had
+no special place of his own in the intellectual room, but nobody was
+surprised to see him enter and seat himself on a divan. They were just
+discussing in what year and upon what occasion there had taken place a
+quarrel between two Russian journalists. Waiting for a moment of
+silence, Iván Pávlovich communicated his bit of news, not as something
+joyous, nor as an unimportant event, but as though part of the
+conversation. But immediately, from the way the "intellectuals" (I use
+the word "intellectuals" as a name for the frequenters of the
+"intellectual" room) received the news and began to discuss it, Iván
+Pávlovich understood that it belonged there, and that only there would
+it receive such an elaboration as to enable him to carry it farther and
+_savoir à quoi s'en tenir_.
+
+"Labázov was the only one who was wanting," said one of the
+intellectuals; "now all the living Decembrists have returned to Russia."
+
+"He was one of the herd of the famous--" said Pákhtin, still with an
+inquisitive glance, prepared to make that quotation both jocular and
+serious.
+
+"Indeed, Labázov was one of the most remarkable men of that time," began
+an intellectual. "In 1819 he was an ensign of the Seménovski regiment,
+and was sent abroad with messages to Duke Z----. Then he returned and in
+the year '24 was received in the First Masonic lodge. The Masons of that
+time used all to gather at the house of D---- and at his house. He was
+very rich. Prince Zh----, Fédor D----, Iván P----, those were his
+nearest friends. Then his uncle, Prince Visarión, to remove the young
+man from that society, took him to Moscow."
+
+"Pardon me, Nikoláy Stepánovich," another intellectual interrupted him,
+"it seems to me that that happened in the year '23, because Visarión
+Labázov was appointed a commander of the Third Corps in '24, and was
+then in Warsaw. He had offered him an adjutantship, and after his
+refusal, he was removed. However, pardon me for interrupting you."
+
+"Not at all. Proceed!"
+
+"Pardon me!"
+
+"Proceed! You ought to know that better than I, and, besides, your
+memory and knowledge have been sufficiently attested here."
+
+"In Moscow he against his uncle's will left the army," continued the one
+whose memory and knowledge had been attested, "and there he gathered
+around him a second society, of which he was the progenitor and the
+heart, if it be possible so to express it. He was rich, handsome,
+clever, educated; they say he was exceedingly amiable. My aunt used to
+tell me that she did not know a more bewitching man. Here he married
+Miss Krínski, a few months before the revolt broke out."
+
+"The daughter of Nikoláy Krínski, the one of Borodinó fame, you know,"
+somebody interrupted him.
+
+"Well, yes. Her immense fortune he still possesses, but his own paternal
+estate passed over to his younger brother, Prince Iván, who is now
+Ober-Hof-Kaffermeister" (he gave him some such name) "and was a
+minister."
+
+"The best thing is what he did for his brother," continued the narrator.
+"When he was arrested, there was one thing which he succeeded in
+destroying, and that was his brother's letters and documents."
+
+"Was his brother mixed up in it, too?"
+
+The narrator did not say "Yes," but compressed his lips and gave a
+significant wink.
+
+"Then, during all the inquests Peter Labázov kept denying everything
+which concerned his brother, and so suffered more than the rest. But the
+best part of it is that Prince Iván got all the property, and never sent
+a penny to his brother."
+
+"They say that Peter Labázov himself declined it," remarked one of the
+hearers.
+
+"Yes; but he declined it only because Prince Iván wrote him before the
+coronation, excusing himself and saying that if he had not taken it, it
+would have been confiscated, and that he had children and debts, and
+that now he was unable to return it to him. Peter Labázov replied to him
+in two lines: 'Neither I nor my heirs have any right, nor can have any
+right, to the property legally appropriated by you.' That was all. How
+was that? And Prince Iván swallowed it, and in delight locked up that
+document with the notes in a safe, and showed it to no one."
+
+One of the peculiarities of the intellectual room was that its visitors
+knew, whenever they wanted to know, everything that was taking place in
+the world, no matter how secret the event might have been.
+
+"Still it is a question," said a new interlocutor, "whether it was just
+to deprive the children of Prince Iván of the property, with which they
+have grown up and have been educated, and to which they thought they had
+a right."
+
+Thus the conversation was transferred to an abstract sphere, which did
+not interest Pákhtin.
+
+He felt the necessity of communicating the news to fresh people, and so
+he rose and, speaking to the right and to the left, walked from one hall
+to another. One of his fellow officers stopped him to give him the news
+of Labázov's arrival.
+
+"Who does not know that?" replied Iván Pávlovich, with a calm smile,
+turning to the exit. The news had had time to complete its circle, and
+was again returning to him.
+
+There was nothing else to do in the club, and he went to an evening
+party. It was not a special entertainment, but a salon where guests were
+received any evening. There were there eight ladies, and one old
+colonel, and all found it terribly dull. Pákhtin's firm gait alone and
+his smiling face cheered the ladies and maidens. And the news was the
+more appropriate, since the old Countess Fuks and her daughter were
+present in the salon. When Pákhtin told nearly word for word what he had
+heard in the intellectual room, Madame Fuks, shaking her head and
+marvelling at her old age, began to recall how she used to go out
+together with Natásha Krínski, the present Princess Labázov.
+
+"Her marriage is a very romantic story, and all that happened under my
+eyes. Natásha was almost engaged to Myátlin, who was later killed in a
+duel with Debras. Just then Prince Peter arrived in Moscow, fell in love
+with her, and proposed to her. But her father, who wanted Myátlin very
+much,--they were, in general, afraid of Labázov because he was a
+Mason,--refused him. The young man continued to see her at balls,
+everywhere, and became friendly with Myátlin, whom he begged to decline.
+Myátlin agreed to do so, and he persuaded her to elope. She, too,
+agreed, but the last repentance----" (the conversation was taking place
+in French), "and she went to her father and said that everything was
+ready for the elopement, and she could leave him, but hoped for his
+magnanimity. And, indeed, her father forgave her,--everybody begged for
+her,--and gave his consent. Thus the wedding was celebrated, and it was
+a jolly wedding! Who of us thought that a year later she would follow
+him to Siberia! She, an only daughter, the most beautiful, the richest
+woman of that time. Emperor Alexander always used to notice her at
+balls, and had danced with her so often. Countess G---- gave a _bal
+costumé_,--I remember it as though it were to-day,--and she was a
+Neapolitan maid, oh, so charming! Whenever he came to Moscow, he used to
+ask, '_que fait la belle Napolitaine_?' And suddenly this woman, in such
+a condition (she bore a child on the way), did not stop for a moment to
+think, without preparing anything, without collecting her things, just
+as she was, when they took him, followed him a distance of five thousand
+versts."
+
+"Oh, what a remarkable woman!" said the hostess.
+
+"Both he and she were remarkable people," said another lady. "I have
+been told,--I don't know whether it is true,--that wherever they worked
+in the mines in Siberia, or whatever it is called, the convicts, who
+were with them, improved in their presence."
+
+"But she has never worked in the mines," Pákhtin corrected her.
+
+How much that year '56 meant! Three years before no one had been
+thinking of the Labázovs, and if any one recalled them, it was with that
+unaccountable feeling of dread with which one speaks of one lately dead;
+but now they vividly recalled all the former relations, all the
+beautiful qualities, and each lady was making a plan for getting the
+monopoly of the Labázovs, in order to treat the other guests to them.
+
+"Their son and their daughter have come with them," said Pákhtin.
+
+"If they are only as handsome as their mother used to be," said Countess
+Fuks. "Still, their father, too, was very, very handsome."
+
+"How could they educate their children there?" asked the hostess.
+
+"They say, nicely. They say that the young man is as nice, as amiable,
+and as cultured as though he had been brought up in Paris."
+
+"I predict great success to that young person," said a homely spinster.
+"All those Siberian ladies have something pleasantly trivial about them,
+which everybody, however, likes."
+
+"Yes, yes," said another spinster.
+
+"Here we have another rich prospective bride," said a third spinster.
+
+The old colonel, of German origin, who had come to Moscow three years
+before, in order to marry a rich girl, decided as quickly as possible,
+before the young people knew anything about it, to present himself and
+propose. But the spinsters and ladies thought almost the same about the
+young Siberian.
+
+"No doubt that is the one I am destined to marry," thought a spinster
+who had been going out for eight years.
+
+"No doubt it was for the best that that stupid officer of the Chevalier
+Guards did not propose to me. I should certainly have been unhappy."
+
+"Well, they will again grow yellow with envy, if this one, too, falls in
+love with me," thought a young and pretty lady.
+
+We hear much about the provincialism of small towns,--but there is
+nothing worse than the provincialism of the upper classes. There are no
+new persons there, and society is prepared to receive all kinds of new
+persons, if they should make their appearance; but they are rarely, very
+rarely, recognized as belonging to their circle and accepted, as was the
+case with the Labázovs, and the sensation produced by them is stronger
+than in a provincial town.
+
+III.
+
+"This is Moscow, white-stoned Mother Moscow," said Peter Ivánovich,
+rubbing his eyes in the morning, and listening to the tolling of the
+bells which was proceeding from Gazette Lane. Nothing so vividly
+resurrects the past as sounds, and these sounds of the Moscow bells,
+combined with the sight of a white wall opposite the window, and with
+the rumbling of wheels, so vividly reminded him not only of the Moscow
+which he had known thirty-five years before, but also of the Moscow with
+the Kremlin, with the palaces, with Iván the bell, and so forth, which
+he had been carrying in his heart, that he experienced a childish joy at
+being a Russian, and in Moscow.
+
+There appeared the Bukhara morning-gown, wide open over the broad chest
+with its chintz shirt, the pipe with its amber, the lackey with soft
+manners, tea, the odour of tobacco; a loud male voice was heard in
+Chevalier's apartments; there resounded the morning kisses, and the
+voices of daughter and son, and the Decembrist was as much at home as in
+Irkútsk, and as he would have been in New York or in Paris.
+
+No matter how much I should like to present to my readers the Decembrist
+hero above all foibles, I must confess, for truth's sake, that Peter
+Ivánovich took great pains in shaving and combing himself, and in
+looking at himself in the mirror. He was dissatisfied with the garments,
+which had been made in Siberia with little elegance, and two or three
+times he buttoned and unbuttoned his coat.
+
+But Natálya Nikoláevna entered the drawing-room, rustling with her black
+moire gown, with mittens and with ribbons in her cap, which, though not
+according to the latest fashion, were so arranged that, far from making
+her appear _ridicule_, they made her look _distinguée_. For this ladies
+have a special sixth sense and perspicacity, which cannot be compared to
+anything.
+
+Sónya, too, was so dressed that, although she was two years behind in
+fashion, she could not be reproached in any way. On her mother
+everything was dark and simple, and on the daughter bright and
+cheerful.
+
+Serézha had just awakened, and so they went by themselves to mass.
+Father and mother sat in the back seat, and their daughter was opposite
+them. Vasíli climbed on the box, and the hired carriage took them to the
+Kremlin. When they got out of the carriage, the ladies adjusted their
+robes, and Peter Ivánovich took the arm of his Natálya Nikoláevna, and,
+throwing back his head, walked up to the door of the church. Many
+people, merchants, officers, and everybody else, could not make out what
+kind of people they were.
+
+Who was that old man with his old sunburnt, and still unblanched face,
+with the large, straight work wrinkles of a peculiar fold, different
+from the wrinkles acquired in the English club, with snow-white hair and
+beard, with a good, proud glance and energetic movements? Who was that
+tall lady with that determined gait, and those weary, dimmed, large,
+beautiful eyes? Who was that fresh, stately, strong young lady, neither
+fashionable, nor timid? Merchants? No, no merchants. Germans? No, no
+Germans. Gentlefolk? No, they are different,--they are distinguished
+people. Thus thought those who saw them in church, and for some reason
+more readily and cheerfully made way for them than for men in thick
+epaulets. Peter Ivánovich bore himself just as majestically as at the
+entrance, and prayed quietly, with reserve, and without forgetting
+himself. Natálya Nikoláevna glided down on her knees, took out a
+handkerchief, and wept much during the cherubical song. Sónya seemed to
+be making an effort over herself in order to pray. Devotion did not come
+to her, but she did not look around, and diligently made the signs of
+the cross.
+
+Serézha stayed at home, partly because he had overslept himself, partly
+because he did not like to stand through a mass, which made his legs
+faint,--a matter he was unable to understand, since it was a mere trifle
+for him to walk forty miles on snow-shoes, whereas standing through
+twelve pericopes was the greatest physical torture for him,--but chiefly
+because he felt that more than anything he needed a new suit of clothes.
+He dressed himself and went to Blacksmith Bridge. He had plenty of
+money. His father had made it a rule, ever since his son had passed his
+twenty-first year, to let him have as much money as he wished. It lay
+with him to leave his parents entirely without money.
+
+How sorry I am for the 250 roubles which he threw away in Kuntz's shop
+of ready-made clothes! Any one of the gentlemen who met Serézha would
+have been only too happy to show him around, and would have regarded it
+as a piece of happiness to go with him to get his clothes made. But, as
+it was, he was a stranger in the crowd, and, making his way in his cap
+along Blacksmith Bridge, he went to the end, without looking into the
+shops, opened the door, and came out from it in a cinnamon-coloured
+half-dress coat, which was tight (though at that time they wore wide
+coats), and in loose black trousers (though they wore tight trousers),
+and in a flowery atlas waistcoat, which not one of the gentlemen, who
+were in Chevalier's special room, would have allowed their lackeys to
+wear, and bought a number of other a things; on the other hand, Kuntz
+marvelled at the young man's slender waist, the like of which, as he
+explained to everybody, he had never seen. Serézha knew that he had a
+beautiful waist, and he was very much flattered by the praise of a
+stranger, such as Kuntz was.
+
+He came out with 250 roubles less, but was dressed badly, in fact so
+badly that his apparel two days later passed over into Vasíli's
+possession and always remained a disagreeable memory for Serézha.
+
+At home he went down-stairs, seated himself in the large hall, looking
+now and then into the sanctum, and ordered a breakfast of such strange
+dishes that the servant in the kitchen had to laugh. Then he asked for
+a periodical, and pretended to be reading. When the servant, encouraged
+by the inexperience of the young man, addressed some questions to him,
+Serézha said, "Go to your place!" and blushed. But he said this so
+proudly that the servant obeyed. Mother, father, and daughter, upon
+returning home, found his clothes excellent.
+
+Do you remember that joyous sensation of childhood, when you were
+dressed up for your name-day and taken to mass, and when, upon returning
+with a holiday expression in your clothes, upon your countenance, and in
+your soul, you found toys and guests at home? You knew that on that day
+there would be no classes, that even the grown-ups celebrated on that
+day, and that that was a day of exceptions and pleasures for the whole
+house; you knew that you alone were the cause of that holiday, and that
+you would be forgiven, no matter what you might do, and you were
+surprised to see that the people in the streets did not celebrate along
+with your home folk, and the sounds were more audible, and the colours
+brighter,--in short, a name-day sensation. It was a sensation of that
+kind that Peter Ivánovich experienced on his return from church.
+
+Pákhtin's solicitude of the evening before did not pass in vain: instead
+of toys Peter Ivánovich found at home several visiting-cards of
+distinguished Muscovites, who, in the year '56, regarded it as their
+peremptory duty to show every attention possible to a famous exile, whom
+they would under no consideration have wished to see three years before.
+In the eyes of Chevalier, the porter, and the servants of the hotel, the
+appearance of carriages asking for Peter Ivánovich, on that one morning
+increased their respect and subserviency tenfold.
+
+All those were name-day toys for Peter Ivánovich. No matter how much
+tried in life, how clever a man may be, the expression of respect from
+people respected by a large number of men is always agreeable. Peter
+Ivánovich felt light of heart when Chevalier, bowing, offered to change
+his apartments and asked him to order anything he might need, and
+assured him that he regarded Peter Ivánovich's visit as a piece of luck,
+and when, examining the visiting-cards and throwing them into a vase, he
+called out the names of Count S----, Prince D----, and so forth.
+
+Natálya Nikoláevna said that she would not receive anybody and that she
+would go at once to the house of Márya Ivánovna, to which Peter
+Ivánovich consented, though he wished very much to talk to some of the
+visitors.
+
+Only one visitor managed to get through before the refusal to meet him.
+That was Pákhtin. If this man had been asked why he went away from the
+Prechístenka to go to Gazette Lane, he would have been unable to give
+any excuse, except that he was fond of everything new and remarkable,
+and so had come to see Peter Ivánovich, as something rare. One would
+think that, coming to see a stranger for no other reason than that, he
+would have been embarrassed. But the contrary was true. Peter Ivánovich
+and his son and Sónya Petróvna became embarrassed. Natálya Nikoláevna
+was too much of a _grande dame_ to become embarrassed for any reason
+whatever. The weary glance of her beautiful black eyes was calmly
+lowered on Pákhtin. But Pákhtin was refreshing, self-contented, and
+gaily amiable, as always. He was a friend of Márya Ivánovna's.
+
+"Ah!" said Natálya Nikoláevna.
+
+"Not a friend,--the difference of our years,--but she has always been
+kind to me."
+
+Pákhtin was an old admirer of Peter Ivánovich's,--he knew his
+companions. He hoped that he could be useful to the newcomers. He would
+have appeared the previous evening, but could not find the time, and
+begged to be excused, and sat down and talked for a long time.
+
+"Yes, I must tell you, I have found many changes in Russia since then,"
+Peter Ivánovich said, in reply to a question.
+
+The moment Peter Ivánovich began to speak, you ought to have seen with
+what respectful attention Pákhtin received every word that flew out of
+the mouth of the distinguished old man, and how after each sentence, at
+times after a word, Pákhtin with a nod, a smile, or a motion of his eyes
+gave him to understand that he had received and accepted the memorable
+sentence or word.
+
+The weary glance approved of that manoeuvre. Sergyéy Petróvich seemed to
+be afraid lest his father's conversation should not be weighty enough,
+corresponding to the attention of the hearer. Sónya Petróvna, on the
+contrary, smiled that imperceptible self-satisfied smile which people
+smile who have caught a man's ridiculous side. It seemed to her that
+nothing was to be got from him, that he was a "shyúshka," as she and her
+brother nicknamed a certain class of people.
+
+Peter Ivánovich declared that during his journey he had seen enormous
+changes, which gave him pleasure.
+
+"There is no comparison, the masses--the peasants--stand so much higher
+now, have so much greater consciousness of their dignity," he said, as
+though repeating some old phrases. "I must say that the masses have
+always interested me most. I am of the opinion that the strength of
+Russia does not lie in us, but in the masses," and so forth.
+
+Peter Ivánovich with characteristic zeal evolved his more or less
+original ideas in regard to many important subjects. We shall hear more
+of them in fuller form. Pákhtin was melting for joy, and fully agreed
+with him in everything.
+
+"You must by all means meet the Aksátovs. Will you permit me to
+introduce them to you, prince? You know they have permitted him to
+publish his periodical. To-morrow, they say, the first number will
+appear. I have also read his remarkable article on the consistency of
+the theory of science in the abstract. Remarkably interesting. Another
+article, the history of Servia in the eleventh century, of that famous
+general Karbovánets, is also very interesting. Altogether an enormous
+step."
+
+"Indeed," said Peter Ivánovich. But he was apparently not interested in
+all these bits of information; he did not even know the names and merits
+of all those men whom Pákhtin quoted as universally known.
+
+But Natálya Nikoláevna, without denying the necessity of knowing all
+these men and conditions, remarked in justification of her husband that
+Pierre received his periodicals very late. He read entirely too much.
+
+"Papa, shall we not go to aunty?" asked Sónya, upon coming in.
+
+"We shall, but we must have our breakfast. Won't you have anything?"
+
+Pákhtin naturally declined, but Peter Ivánovich, with the hospitality
+characteristic of every Russian and of him in particular, insisted that
+Pákhtin should eat and drink something. He himself emptied a wine-glass
+of vódka and a tumbler of Bordeaux. Pákhtin noticed that as he was
+filling his glass, Natálya accidentally turned away from it, and the son
+cast a peculiar glance on his father's hands.
+
+After the wine, Peter Ivánovich, in response to Pákhtin's questions
+about what his opinion was in respect to the new literature, the new
+tendency, the war, the peace (Pákhtin had a knack of uniting the most
+diversified subjects into one senseless but smooth conversation), in
+response to these questions Peter Ivánovich at once replied with one
+general _profession de foi_, and either under the influence of the wine,
+or of the subject of the conversation, he became so excited that tears
+appeared in his eyes, and Pákhtin, too, was in ecstasy, and himself
+became tearful, and without embarrassment expressed his conviction that
+Peter Ivánovich was now in advance of all the foremost men and should
+become the head of all the parties. Peter Ivánovich's eyes became
+inflamed,--he believed what Pákhtin was telling him,--and he would have
+continued talking for a long time, if Sónya Petróvna had not schemed to
+get Natálya Nikoláevna to put on her mantilla, and had not come herself
+to raise Peter Ivánovich from his seat. He poured out the rest of the
+wine into a glass, but Sónya Petróvna drank it.
+
+"What is this?"
+
+"I have not had any yet, papa, pardon."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"Well, let us go to Márya Ivánovna's. You will excuse us, Monsieur
+Pákhtin."
+
+And Peter Ivánovich left the room, carrying his head high. In the
+vestibule he met a general, who had come to call on his old
+acquaintance. They had not seen each other for thirty-five years. The
+general was toothless and bald.
+
+"How fresh you still are!" he said. "Evidently Siberia is better than
+St. Petersburg. These are your family,--introduce me to them! What a
+fine fellow your son is! So to dinner to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, yes, by all means."
+
+On the porch they met the famous Chikháev, another old acquaintance.
+
+"How did you find out that I had arrived?"
+
+"It would be a shame for Moscow if it did not know it. It is a shame
+that you were not met at the barrier. Where do you dine? No doubt with
+your sister, Márya Ivánovna. Very well, I shall be there myself."
+
+Peter Ivánovich always had the aspect of a proud man for one who could
+not through that exterior make out the expression of unspeakable
+goodness and impressionableness; but just then even Márya Nikoláevna was
+delighted to see his unwonted dignity, and Sónya Petróvna smiled with
+her eyes, as she looked at him. They arrived at the house of Márya
+Ivánovna. Márya Ivánovna was Peter Ivánovich's godmother and ten years
+his senior. She was an old maid.
+
+Her history, why she did not get married, and how she had passed her
+youth, I will tell some time later.
+
+She had lived uninterruptedly for forty years in Moscow. She had neither
+much intelligence, nor great wealth, and she did not think much of
+connections,--on the contrary; and there was not a man who did not
+respect her. She was so convinced that everybody ought to respect her
+that everybody actually respected her. There were some young liberals
+from the university who did not recognize her power, but these gentlemen
+made a bold front only in her absence. She needed only to enter the
+drawing-room with her royal gait, to say something in her calm manner,
+to smile her kindly smile, and they were vanquished. Her society
+consisted of everybody. She looked upon all of Moscow as her home folk,
+and treated them as such. She had friends mostly among the young people
+and clever men, but women she did not like. She had also dependents,
+whom our literature has for some reason included with the Hungarian
+woman and with generals in one common class for contempt; but Márya
+Ivánovna considered it better for Skópin, who had been ruined in cards,
+and Madame Byéshev, whom her husband had driven away, to be living with
+her than in misery, and so she kept them.
+
+But the two great passions in Márya Ivánovna's present life were her two
+brothers. Peter Ivánovich was her idol. Prince Iván was hateful to her.
+She had not known that Peter Ivánovich had arrived; she had attended
+mass, and was just finishing her coffee.
+
+At the table sat the vicar of Moscow, Madame Byéshev, and Skópin. Márya
+Ivánovna was telling them about young Count V----, the son of P----
+Z----, who had returned from Sevastopol, and with whom she was in love.
+(She had some passion all the time.) He was to dine with her on that
+day. The vicar got up and bowed himself out. Márya Ivánovna did not keep
+him,--she was a freethinker in this respect: she was pious, but had no
+use for monks and laughed at the ladies that ran after them, and boldly
+asserted that in her opinion monks were just such men as we sinful
+people, and that it was better to find salvation in the world than in a
+monastery.
+
+"Give the order not to receive anybody, my dear," she said, "I will
+write to Pierre. I cannot understand why he is not coming. No doubt,
+Natálya Nikoláevna is ill."
+
+Márya Ivánovna was of the opinion that Natálya Nikoláevna did not like
+her and was her enemy. She could not forgive her because it was not she,
+his sister, who had given up her property and had followed him to
+Siberia, but Natálya Nikoláevna, and because her brother had definitely
+declined her offer when she got ready to go with him. After thirty-five
+years she was beginning to believe that Natálya Nikoláevna was the best
+woman in the world and his guardian angel; but she was envious, and it
+seemed all the time to her that she was not a good woman.
+
+She got up, took a few steps in the parlour, and was on the point of
+entering the cabinet when the door opened, and Madame Byéshev's
+wrinkled, grayish face, expressing joyous terror, was thrust through the
+door.
+
+"Márya Ivánovna, prepare yourself," she said.
+
+"A letter?"
+
+"No, something better--"
+
+But before she had a chance to finish, a man's loud voice was heard in
+the antechamber:
+
+"Where is she? Go, Natásha."
+
+"He!" muttered Márya Ivánovna, walking with long, firm steps toward her
+brother. She met them all as though she had last seen them the day
+before.
+
+"When didst thou arrive? Where have you stopped? How have you come,--in
+a carriage?" Such were the questions which Márya Ivánovna put, walking
+with them to the drawing-room and not hearing the answers, and looking
+with large eyes, now upon one, and now upon another. Madame Byéshev was
+surprised at this calm, even indifference, and did not approve of it.
+They all smiled; the conversation died down, and Márya Ivánovna looked
+silently and seriously at her brother.
+
+"How are you?" asked Peter Ivánovich, taking her hand, and smiling.
+
+Peter Ivánovich said "you" to her, though she had said "thou." Márya
+Ivánovna once more looked at his gray beard, his bald head, his teeth,
+his wrinkles, his eyes, his sunburnt face, and recognized all that.
+
+"Here is my Sónya."
+
+But she did not look around.
+
+"What a stup--" her voice faltered, and she took hold of his bald head
+with her large white hands. "What a stupid you are," she had intended to
+say, "not to have prepared me," but her shoulders and breast began to
+tremble, her old face twitched, and she burst out into sobs, pressing to
+her breast his bald head, and repeating: "What a stupid you are not to
+have prepared me!"
+
+Peter Ivánovich no longer appeared as such a great man to himself, not
+so important as he had appeared on Chevalier's porch. His back was
+resting against a chair, but his head was in his sister's arms, his nose
+was pressed against her corset, his nose was tickled, his hair
+dishevelled, and there were tears in his eyes. But he felt happy.
+
+When this outburst of joyous tears was over, Márya Ivánovna understood
+what had happened and believed it, and began to examine them all. But
+several times during the course of the day, whenever she recalled what
+he had been then, and what she had been, and what they were now, and
+whenever the past misfortunes, and past joys and loves, vividly rose in
+her imagination, she was again seized by emotion, and got up and
+repeated: "What a stupid you are, Pierre, what a stupid not to have
+prepared me!"
+
+"Why did you not come straight to me? I should have found room for you,"
+said Márya Ivánovna. "At least, stay to dinner. You will not feel
+lonesome, Sergyéy,--a young, brave Sevastopol soldier is dining here
+to-day. Do you not know Nikoláy Mikháylovich's son? He is a writer,--has
+written something nice. I have not read it, but they praise it, and he
+is a dear fellow,--I shall send for him. Chikháev, too, wanted to come.
+He is a babbler,--I do not like him. Has he already called on you? Have
+you seen Nikíta? That is all nonsense. What do you intend to do? How are
+you, how is your health, Natálya? What are you going to do with this
+young fellow, and with this beauty?"
+
+But the conversation somehow did not flow.
+
+Before dinner Natálya Nikoláevna went with the children to an old aunt;
+brother and sister were left alone, and he began to tell her of his
+plans.
+
+"Sónya is a young lady, she has to be taken out; consequently, we are
+going to live in Moscow," said Márya Ivánovna.
+
+"Never."
+
+"Serézha has to serve."
+
+"Never."
+
+"You are still as crazy as ever."
+
+But she was just as fond of the crazy man.
+
+"First we must stay here, then go to the country, and show everything to
+the children."
+
+"It is my rule not to interfere in family matters," said Márya
+Ivánovna, after calming down from her agitation, "and not to give
+advice. A young man has to serve, that I have always thought, and now
+more than ever. You do not know, Pierre, what these young men nowadays
+are. I know them all: there, Prince Dmítri's son is all ruined. Their
+own fault. I am not afraid of anybody, I am an old woman. It is not
+good." And she began to talk about the government. She was dissatisfied
+with it for the excessive liberty which was given to everything. "The
+one good thing they have done was to let you out. That is good."
+
+Pierre began to defend it, but Márya Ivánovna was not Pákhtin: they
+could come to no terms. She grew excited.
+
+"What business have you to defend it? You are just as senseless as ever,
+I see."
+
+Peter Ivánovich grew silent, with a smile which showed that he did not
+surrender, but that he did not wish to quarrel with Márya Ivánovna.
+
+"You are smiling. We know that. You do not wish to discuss with me, a
+woman," she, said, merrily and kindly, and casting a shrewd, intelligent
+glance at her brother, such as could not be expected from her old,
+large-featured face. "You could not convince me, my friend. I am ending
+my three score and ten. I have not been a fool all that time, and have
+seen a thing or two. I have read none of your books, and I never will.
+There is only nonsense in them!"
+
+"Well, how do you like my children? Serézha?" Peter Ivánovich said, with
+the same smile.
+
+"Wait, wait!" his sister replied, with a threatening gesture. "Don't
+switch me off on your children! We shall have time to talk about them.
+Here is what I wanted to tell you. You are a senseless man, as senseless
+as ever, I see it in your eye. Now they are going to carry you in their
+arms. Such is the fashion. You are all in vogue now. Yes, yes, I see by
+your eyes that you are as senseless as ever," she added, in response to
+his smile. "Keep away, I implore you in the name of Jesus Christ our
+Lord, from those modern liberals. God knows what they are up to. I know
+it will not end well. Our government is silent just now, but when it
+comes later to showing up the nails, you will recall my words. I am
+afraid lest you should get mixed up in things again. Give it up! It is
+all nonsense. You have children."
+
+"Evidently you do not know me, Márya Ivánovna," said her brother.
+
+"All right, all right, we shall see. Either I do not know you, or you do
+not know yourself. I just told you what I had on my heart, and if you
+will listen to me, well and good. Now we can talk about Serézha. What
+kind of a lad is he?" She wanted to say, "I do not like him very much,"
+but she only said: "He resembles his mother remarkably: they are like
+two drops of water. Sónya is you all over,--I like her very much, very
+much--so sweet and open. She is a dear. Where is she, Sónya? Yes, I
+forgot."
+
+"How shall I tell you? Sónya will make a good wife and a good mother,
+but my Serézha is clever, very clever,--nobody will take that from him.
+He studied well,--a little lazy. He is very fond of the natural
+sciences. We have been fortunate: we had an excellent, excellent
+teacher. He wants to enter the university,--to attend lectures on the
+natural sciences, chemistry--"
+
+Márya Ivánovna scarcely listened when her brother began to speak of the
+natural sciences. She seemed to feel sad, especially when he mentioned
+chemistry. She heaved a deep sigh and replied directly to that train of
+thoughts which the natural sciences evoked in her.
+
+"If you knew how sorry I am for them, Pierre," she said, with sincere,
+calm, humble sadness. "So sorry, so sorry. A whole life before them. Oh,
+how much they will suffer yet!"
+
+"Well, we must hope that they will be more fortunate than we."
+
+"God grant it, God grant it! It is hard to live, Pierre! Take this one
+advice from me, my dear: don't philosophize! What a stupid you are,
+Pierre, oh, what a stupid! But I must attend to matters. I have invited
+a lot of people, but how am I going to feed them?" She flared up, turned
+away, and rang the bell.
+
+"Call Tarás!"
+
+"Is the old man still with you?"
+
+"Yes; why, he is a boy in comparison with me."
+
+Tarás was angry and clean, but he undertook to get everything done.
+
+Soon Natálya Nikoláevna and Sónya, agleam with cold and happiness, and
+rustling in their dresses, entered the room; Serézha was still out,
+attending to some purchases.
+
+"Let me get a good look at her!"
+
+Márya Ivánovna took her face. Natálya Nikoláevna began to tell
+something.
+
+
+THE DECEMBRISTS
+
+SECOND FRAGMENT
+
+(Variant of the First Chapter)
+
+The litigation "about the seizure in the Government of Pénza, County of
+Krasnoslobódsk, by the landed proprietor and ex-lieutenant of the
+Guards, Iván Apýkhtin, of four thousand desyatínas of land from the
+neighbouring Crown peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha," was through
+the solicitude of the peasants' representative, Iván Mirónov, decided in
+the court of the first instance--the County Court--in favour of the
+peasants, and the enormous parcel of land, partly in forest, and partly
+in ploughings which had been broken by Apýkhtin's serfs, in the year
+1815 returned into the possession of the peasants, and they in the year
+1816 sowed in this land and harvested.
+
+The winning of this irregular case by the peasants surprised all the
+neighbours and even the peasants themselves. This success of theirs
+could be explained only on the supposition that Iván Petróvich Apýkhtin,
+a very meek, peaceful man, who was opposed to litigations and was
+convinced of the righteousness of this matter, had taken no measures
+against the action of the peasants. On the other hand, Iván Mirónov, the
+peasants' representative, a dry, hook-nosed, literate peasant, who had
+been a township elder and had acted in the capacity of collector of
+taxes, had collected fifty kopeks from each peasant, which money he
+cleverly applied in the distribution of presents, and had very shrewdly
+conducted the whole affair.
+
+Immediately after the decision handed down by the County Court,
+Apýkhtin, seeing the danger, gave a power of attorney to the shrewd
+manumitted serf, Ilyá Mitrofánov, who appealed to the higher court
+against the decision of the County Court. Ilyá Mitrofánov managed the
+affair so shrewdly that, in spite of all the cunning of the peasants'
+representative, Iván Mirónov, in spite of the considerable presents
+distributed by him to the members of the higher court, the case was
+retried in the Government Court in favour of the proprietor, and the
+land was to go back to him from the peasants, of which fact their
+representative was duly informed.
+
+The representative, Iván Mirónov, told the peasants at the meeting of
+the Commune that the gentleman in the Government capital had pulled the
+proprietor's leg and had "mixed up" the whole business, so that they
+wanted to take the land back again, but that the proprietor would not be
+successful, because he had a petition all written up to be sent to the
+Senate, and that then the land would be for ever confirmed to the
+peasants; all they had to do was to collect a rouble from each soul. The
+peasants decided to collect the money and again to entrust the whole
+matter to Iván Mirónov. When Mirónov had all the money in his hands, he
+went to St. Petersburg.
+
+When, in the year 1817, during Passion-week,--it fell late that
+year,--the time came to plough the ground, the Izlegóshcha peasants
+began to discuss at a meeting whether they ought to plough the land
+under litigation during that year, or not; and, although Apýkhtin's
+clerk had come to see them during Lent with the order that they should
+not plough the land and should come to some agreement with him in regard
+to the rye already planted in what had been the doubtful, and now was
+Apýkhtin's land, the peasants, for the very reason that the winter crop
+had been sowed on the debatable land, and because Apýkhtin, in his
+desire to avoid being unfair to them, wished to arbitrate the matter
+with them, decided to plough the land under litigation and to take
+possession of it before touching any other fields.
+
+On the very day when the peasants went out to plough, which was Maundy
+Thursday, Iván Petróvich Apýkhtin, who had been preparing himself for
+communion during the Passion-week, went to communion, and early in the
+morning drove to the church in the village of Izlegóshcha, of which he
+was a parishioner, and there he, without knowing anything about the
+matter, amicably chatted with the church elder. Iván Petróvich had been
+to confession the night before, and had attended vigils at home; in the
+morning he had himself read the Rules, and at eight o'clock had left the
+house. They waited for him with the mass. As he stood at the altar,
+where he usually stood, Iván Petróvich rather reflected than prayed,
+which made him dissatisfied with himself.
+
+Like many people of that time, and, so far as that goes, of all times,
+he was not quite clear in matters of religion. He was past fifty years
+of age; he never omitted carrying out any rite, attended church, and
+went to communion once a year; in talking to his only daughter, he
+instructed her in the articles of faith; but, if he had been asked
+whether he really believed, he would not have known what to reply.
+
+On that day more than on any other, he felt meek of spirit, and,
+standing at the altar, he, instead of praying, thought of how strangely
+everything was constructed in the world: there he was, almost an old
+man, taking the communion for perhaps the fortieth time in his life, and
+he knew that everybody, all his home folk and all the people in the
+church, looked at him as a model and took him for an example, and he
+felt himself obliged to act as an example in matters of religion,
+whereas he himself did not know anything, and soon, very soon, he would
+die, and even if he were killed he could not tell whether that in which
+he was showing an example to others was true. And it also seemed strange
+to him how every one considered--that he saw--old people to be firm and
+to know what was necessary and what not (thus he always thought about
+old men), and there he was old and positively failed to know, and was
+just as frivolous as he had been twenty years before; the only
+difference was that formerly he did not conceal it, while now he did.
+Just as in his childhood it had occurred to him during the service that
+he might crow like a cock, even so now all kinds of foolish things
+passed through his mind, and he, the old man, reverentially bent his
+head, touching the flagstones of the church with the old knuckles of his
+hands, and Father Vasíli was evidently timid in celebrating mass in his
+presence, and incited to zeal by his zeal.
+
+"If they only knew what foolish things are running through my head! But
+that is a sin, a sin; I must pray," he said to himself, when the service
+commenced; and, trying to catch the meaning of the responses, he began
+to pray. Indeed, he soon transferred himself in feeling to the prayer
+and thought of his sins and of everything which he regretted.
+
+A respectable-looking old man, bald-headed, with thick gray hair,
+dressed in a fur coat with a new white patch on one-half of his back,
+stepping evenly with his out-toeing bast shoes, went up to the altar,
+bowed low to him, tossed his hair, and went beyond the altar to place
+some tapers. This was the church elder, Iván Fedótov, one of the best
+peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha. Iván Petróvich knew him. The
+sight of this stern, firm face led Iván Petróvich to a new train of
+thoughts. He was one of those peasants who wanted to take the land away
+from him, and one of the best and richest married farmers, who needed
+the land, who could manage it, and had the means to work it. His stern
+aspect, ceremonious bow, and measured gait, and the exactness of his
+wearing-apparel,--the leg-rags fitted his legs like stockings and the
+laces crossed each other symmetrically on either leg,--all his
+appearance seemed to express rebuke and enmity on account of the land.
+
+"I have asked forgiveness of my wife, of Mánya" (his daughter), "of the
+nurse, of my valet, Volódya, but it is his forgiveness that I ought to
+ask for, and I ought to forgive him," thought Iván Petróvich, and he
+decided that after matins he would ask Iván Fedótov to forgive him.
+
+And so he did.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were but few people in church. The country people were in the
+habit of going to communion in the first and in the fourth week. Now
+there were only forty men and women present, who had not had time to go
+to communion before, a few old peasant women, the church servants, and
+the manorial people of the Apýkhtins and his rich neighbours, the
+Chernýshevs. There was also there an old woman, a relative of the
+Chernýshevs, who was living with them, and a deacon's widow, whose son
+the Chernýshevs, in the goodness of their hearts, had educated and made
+a man of, and who now was serving as an official in the Senate. Between
+the matins and the mass there were even fewer people left in the church.
+There were left two beggar women, who were sitting in the corner and
+conversing with each other and looking at Iván Petróvich with the
+evident desire to congratulate him and talk with him, and two
+lackeys,--one his own, in livery, and the other, Chernýshev's, who had
+come with the old woman. These two were also whispering in an animated
+manner to each other, just as Iván Petróvich came out from the
+altar-place; when they saw him, they grew silent. There was also a
+woman in a tall head-gear with a pearl face-ornament and in a white fur
+coat, with which she covered up a sick child, who was crying, and whom
+she was attempting to quiet; and another, a stooping old woman, also in
+a head-gear, but with a woollen face-ornament and a white kerchief,
+which was tied in the fashion of old women, and in a gray gathered coat
+with an iris-design on the back, who, kneeling in the middle of the
+church, and turning to an old image between two latticed windows, over
+which hung a new scarf with red edges, was praying so fervently,
+solemnly, and impassionately that one could not fail directing one's
+attention to her.
+
+Before reaching the elder, who, standing at the little safe, was
+kneading over the remnants of some tapers into one piece of wax, Iván
+Petróvich stopped to take a look at the praying woman. The old woman was
+praying well. She knelt as straight as it was possible to kneel in front
+of the image; all the members of her body were mathematically
+symmetrical; her feet behind her pressed with the tips of her bast shoes
+at the same angle against the stone floor; her body was bent back, to
+the extent to which her stooping shoulders permitted her to do so; her
+hands were quite regularly placed below her abdomen; her head was thrown
+back, and her face, with an expression of bashful commiseration,
+wrinkled, and with a dim glance, was turned straight toward the image
+with the scarf. Having remained in an immobile position for a minute or
+less,--evidently a definite space of time,--she heaved a deep sigh and,
+taking her right hand away, swung it above her head-gear, touched the
+crown of her head with folded fingers, and made ample crosses by
+carrying her hand down again to her abdomen and to her shoulders; then
+she swayed back and dropped her head on her hands, which were placed
+evenly on the floor, and again raised herself, and repeated the same.
+
+"Now she is praying," Iván Petróvich thought, as he looked at her. "She
+does it differently from us sinners: this is faith, though I know that
+she is praying to her own image, or to her scarf, or to her adornment on
+the image, just like the rest of them. All right. What of it?" he said
+to himself, "every person has his own faith: she prays to her image, and
+I consider it necessary to beg the peasant's forgiveness."
+
+And he walked over to the elder, instinctively scrutinizing the church
+in order to see who was going to see his deed, which both pleased and
+shamed him. It was disagreeable to him, because the old beggar women
+would see it, and more disagreeable still, because Míshka, his lackey,
+would see it. In the presence of Míshka,--he knew how wide-awake and
+shrewd he was,--he felt that he should not have the strength to walk up
+to Iván Fedótov. He beckoned to Míshka to come up to him.
+
+"What is it you wish?"
+
+"Go, my dear, and bring me the rug from the carriage, for it is too damp
+here for my feet."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+When Míshka went away, Iván Petróvich at once went up to Iván Fedótov.
+Iván Fedótov was disconcerted, like a guilty person, at the approach of
+the gentleman. Timidity and hasty motions formed a queer contradiction
+to his austere face and curly steel-gray hair and beard.
+
+"Do you wish a dime taper?" he said, raising the desk, and now and then
+casting his large, beautiful eyes upon the master.
+
+"No, I do not want a taper, Iván. I ask you to forgive me for Christ's
+sake, if I have in any way offended you. Forgive me, for Christ's sake,"
+Iván Petróvich repeated, with a low bow.
+
+Iván Fedótov completely lost his composure and began to move restlessly,
+but when he comprehended it all, he smiled a gentle smile:
+
+"God forgives," he said. "It seems to me, I have received no offence
+from you. God will forgive you,--I have not been offended by you," he
+hastened to repeat.
+
+"Still--"
+
+"God will forgive you, Iván Petróvich. So you want two dime tapers?"
+
+"Yes, two."
+
+"He is an angel, truly, an angel. He begs even a base peasant to forgive
+him. O Lord, true angels," muttered the deacon's widow, in an old black
+capote and black kerchief. "Truly, we ought to understand that."
+
+"Ah, Paramónovna!" Iván Petróvich turned to her. "Are you getting ready
+for communion, too? You, too, must forgive me, for Christ's sake."
+
+"God will forgive you, sir, angel, merciful benefactor! Let me kiss your
+hand!"
+
+"That will do, that will do, you know I do not like that," said Iván
+Petróvich, smiling, and going away from the altar.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The mass, as always, did not take long to celebrate in the parish of
+Izlegóshcha, the more so since there were few communicants. Just as,
+after the Lord's Prayer, the regal doors were closed, Iván Petróvich
+looked through the north door, to call Míshka to take off his fur coat.
+When the priest saw that motion, he angrily beckoned to the deacon, and
+the deacon almost ran out to call in the lackey. Iván Petróvich was in a
+pretty good humour, but this subserviency and expression of respect from
+the priest who was celebrating mass again soured him entirely; his thin,
+bent, shaven lips were bent still more and his kindly eyes were lighted
+up by sarcasm.
+
+"He acts as though I were his general," he thought, and immediately he
+thought of the words of the German tutor, whom he had once taken to the
+altar to attend a Russian divine service, and who had made him laugh
+and had angered his wife, when he said, "_Der Pop war ganz böse, dass
+ich ihm Alles nachgesehen hatte_." He also recalled the answer of the
+young Turk that there was no God, because he had eaten up the last piece
+of him. "And here I am going to communion," he thought, and, frowning,
+he made a low obeisance.
+
+He took off his bear-fur coat, and in his blue dress coat with bright
+buttons and in his tall white neckerchief and waistcoat, and tightly
+fitting trousers, and heelless, sharp-toed boots, went with his soft,
+modest, and light gait to make his obeisances to the large images. Here
+he again met that same obsequiousness from the other communicants, who
+gave up their places to him.
+
+"They act as though they said, '_Après vous, s'il en reste_,'" he
+thought, awkwardly making side obeisances; this awkwardness was due to
+the fact that he was trying to find that mean in which there would be
+neither disrespect, nor hypocrisy. Finally the doors were opened. He
+said the prayer after the priest, repeating the words, "As a robber;"
+his neckerchief was covered with the chalice cloth, and he received his
+communion and the lukewarm water in the ancient dipper, having put new
+silver twenty-kopek pieces on ancient plates; after hearing the last
+prayers, he kissed the cross and, putting on his fur coat left the
+church, receiving congratulations and experiencing the pleasant
+sensation of having everything over. As he left the church, he again
+fell in with Iván Fedótov.
+
+"Thank you, thank you!" he replied to his congratulations. "Well, are
+you going to plough soon?"
+
+"The boys have gone out, the boys have," replied Iván Fedótov, more
+timidly even than before. He supposed that Iván Petróvich knew whither
+the Izlegóshcha peasants had gone out to plough. "It is damp, though.
+Damp it is. It is early yet, early it is."
+
+Iván Petróvich went up to his parents' monument, bowed to it, and went
+back to be helped into his six-in-hand with an outrider.
+
+"Well, thank God," he said to himself, swaying on the soft, round
+springs and looking at the vernal sky with the scattering clouds, at the
+bared earth and the white spots of unmelted snow, and at the tightly
+braided tail of a side horse, and inhaling the fresh spring air, which
+was particularly pleasant after the air in the church.
+
+"Thank God that I have been through the communion, and thank God that I
+now may take a pinch of snuff." And he took out his snuff-box and for a
+long time held the pinch between his fingers, smiling and, without
+letting the pinch out of the hand, raising his cap in response to the
+low bows of the people on the way, especially of the women, who were
+washing the tables and chairs in front of their houses, just as the
+carriage at a fast trot of the large horses of the six-in-hand plashed
+and clattered through the mud of the street of the village of
+Izlegóshcha.
+
+Iván Petróvich held the pinch of snuff, anticipating the pleasure of
+snuffing, not only down the whole village, but even until they got out
+of a bad place at the foot of a hill, toward which the coachman
+descended not without anxiety: he held up the reins, seated himself more
+firmly, and shouted to the outrider to go over the ice. When they went
+around the bridge, over the bed of the river, and scrambled out of the
+breaking ice and mud, Iván Petróvich, looking at two plovers that rose
+from the hollow, took the snuff and, feeling chilly, put on his glove,
+wrapped himself in his fur coat, plunged his chin into the high
+neckerchief, and said to himself, almost aloud, "Glorious!" which he was
+in the habit of saying secretly to himself whenever he felt well.
+
+In the night snow had fallen, and when Iván Petróvich had driven to
+church the snow had not yet disappeared, but was soft; now, though there
+was no sun, it was all melted from the moisture, and on the highway, on
+which he had to travel for three versts before turning into Chirakóvo,
+the snow was white only in last year's grass, which grew in parallel
+lines along the ruts; but on the black road the horses splashed through
+the viscous mud. The good, well-fed, large horses of his own stud had no
+difficulty in pulling the carriage, and it just rolled over the grass,
+where it left black marks, and over the mud, without being at all
+detained. Iván Petróvich was having pleasant reveries; he was thinking
+of his home, his wife, and his daughter.
+
+"Mánya will meet me at the porch, and with delight. She will see such
+holiness in me! She is a strange, sweet girl, but she takes everything
+too much to heart. The rôle of importance and of knowing everything that
+is going on in this world, which I must play before her, is getting to
+be too serious and ridiculous. If she knew that I am afraid of her!" he
+thought. "Well, Káto," (his wife) "will no doubt be in good humour
+to-day, she will purposely be in good humour, and we shall have a fine
+day. It will not be as it was last week on account of the Próshkin
+women. What a remarkable creature! How afraid of her I am! What is to be
+done? She does not like it herself." And he recalled a famous anecdote
+about a calf. A proprietor, having quarrelled with his wife, was sitting
+at a window, when he saw a frisky calf: "I should like to get you
+married!" he said. And Iván Petróvich smiled again, according to his
+custom solving every difficulty and every perplexity by a joke, which
+generally was directed against himself.
+
+At the third verst, near a chapel, the outrider bore to the left, into a
+cross-road, and the coachman shouted to him for having turned in so
+abruptly that the centre horses were struck by the shaft; and the
+carriage almost glided all the way down-hill. Before reaching the house,
+the outrider looked back at the coachman and pointed to something; the
+coachman looked back at the lackey, and indicated something to him. And
+all of them looked in the same direction.
+
+"What are you looking at?" asked Iván Petróvich.
+
+"Geese," said Míshka.
+
+"Where?"
+
+Though he strained his vision, he could not see them.
+
+"There they are. There is the forest, and there is the cloud, so be
+pleased to look between the two."
+
+Iván Petróvich could not see anything.
+
+"It is time for them. Why, it is less than a week to Annunciation."
+
+"That's so."
+
+"Well, go on!"
+
+Near a puddle, Míshka jumped down from the footboard and tested the
+road, again climbed up, and the carriage safely drove on the pond dam in
+the garden, ascended the avenue, drove past the cellar and the laundry,
+from which water was falling, and nimbly rolled up and stopped at the
+porch. The Chernýshev calash had just left the yard. From the house at
+once ran the servants: gloomy old Danílych with the side whiskers,
+Nikoláy, Míshka's brother, and the boy Pavlúshka; and after them came a
+girl with large black eyes and red arms, which were bared above the
+elbow, and with just such a bared neck.
+
+"Márya Ivánovna, Márya Ivánovna! Where are you going? Your mother will
+be worried. You will have time," was heard the voice of fat Katerína
+behind her.
+
+But the girl paid no attention to her; just as her father had expected
+her to do, she took hold of his arm and looked at him with a strange
+glance.
+
+"Well, papa, have you been to communion?" she asked, as though in dread.
+
+"Yes. You look as though you were afraid that I am such a sinner that I
+could not receive the communion."
+
+The girl was apparently offended by her father's jest at such a solemn
+moment. She heaved a sigh and, following him, held his hand, which she
+kissed.
+
+"Who is here?"
+
+"Young Chernýshev. He is in the drawing-room."
+
+"Is mamma up? How is she?"
+
+"Mamma feels better to-day. She is sitting down-stairs."
+
+In the passage room Iván Petróvich was met by nurse Evprakséya, clerk
+Andréy Ivánovich, and a surveyor, who was living at the house, in order
+to lay out some land. All of them congratulated Iván Petróvich. In the
+drawing-room sat Luíza Kárlovna Trugóni, for ten years a friend of the
+house, an emigrant governess, and a young man of sixteen years,
+Chernýshev, with his French tutor.
+
+
+THE DECEMBRISTS
+
+THIRD FRAGMENT
+
+(Variant of the First Chapter)
+
+On the 2d of August, 1817, the sixth department of the Directing Senate
+handed down a decision in the debatable land case between the economic
+peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha and Chernýshev, which was in
+favour of the peasants and against Chernýshev. This decision was an
+unexpected and important calamitous event for Chernýshev. The case had
+lasted five years. It had been begun by the attorney of the rich village
+of Izlegóshcha with its three thousand inhabitants, and was won by the
+peasants in the County Court; but when, with the advice of lawyer Ilyá
+Mitrofánov, a manorial servant bought of Prince Saltykóv, Prince
+Chernýshev carried the case to the Government, he won it and besides,
+the Izlegóshcha peasants were punished by having six of them, who had
+insulted the surveyor, put in jail.
+
+After that, Prince Chernýshev, with his good-natured and merry
+carelessness, entirely acquiesced, the more so since he knew full well
+that he had not "appropriated" any land of the peasants, as was said in
+the petition of the peasants. If the land was "appropriated," his father
+had done it, and since then more than forty years had passed. He knew
+that the peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha were getting along well
+without that land, had no need of it, and lived on terms of friendship
+with him, and was unable to understand why they had become so infuriated
+against him. He knew that he never offended and never wished to offend
+any one, that he lived in peace with everybody, and that he never wished
+to do otherwise, and so could not believe that any one should think of
+offending him. He hated litigations, and so did not defend his case in
+the Senate, in spite of the advice and earnest solicitations of his
+lawyer, Ilyá Mitrofánov; by allowing the time for the appeal to lapse,
+he lost the case in the Senate, and lost it in such a way that he was
+confronted with complete ruin. By the decree of the Senate he not only
+was to be deprived of five thousand desyatínas of land, but also, for
+the illegal tenure of that land, was to be mulcted to the amount of
+107,000 roubles in favour of the peasants.
+
+Prince Chernýshev had eight thousand souls, but all the estates were
+mortgaged and he had large debts, so that this decree of the Senate
+ruined him with his whole large family. He had a son and five daughters.
+He thought of his case when it was too late to attend to it in the
+Senate. According to Ilyá Mitrofánov's words there was but one
+salvation, and that was, to petition the sovereign and to transfer the
+case to the Imperial Council. To obtain this it was necessary in person
+to approach one of the ministers or a member of the Council, or, better
+still, the emperor himself. Taking all that into consideration, Prince
+Grigóri Ivánovich in the fall of the year 1817 with his whole family
+left his beloved estate of Studénets, where he had lived so long without
+leaving it, and went to Moscow. He started for Moscow, and not for St.
+Petersburg, because in the fall of that year the emperor with his whole
+court, with all the highest dignitaries, and with part of the Guards, in
+which the son of Grigóri Ivánovich was serving, was to arrive in Moscow
+to lay the corner-stone of the Church of the Saviour in commemoration
+of the liberation of Russia from the French invasion.
+
+In August, immediately after receiving the terrible news of the decree
+of the Senate, Prince Grigóri Ivánovich got ready to go to Moscow. At
+first the majordomo was sent away to fix the prince's own house on the
+Arbát; then was sent out a caravan with furniture, servants, horses,
+carriages, and provisions. In September the prince with his whole family
+travelled in seven carriages, drawn by his own horses, and, after
+arriving in Moscow, settled in his house. Relatives, friends, visitors
+from the province and from St. Petersburg began to assemble in Moscow in
+the month of September. The Moscow life, with its entertainments, the
+arrival of his son, the débuts of his daughters, and the success of his
+eldest daughter, Aleksándra, the only blonde among all the brunettes of
+the Chernýshevs, so much occupied and diverted the prince's attention
+that, in spite of the fact that here in Moscow he was spending
+everything which would be left to him after paying all he owed, he
+forgot his affair and was annoyed and tired whenever Ilyá Mitrofánov
+talked of it, and undertook nothing for the success of his case.
+
+Iván Mirónovich Baúshkin, the chief attorney of the peasants, who had
+conducted the case against the prince with so much zeal in the Senate,
+who knew all the approaches to the secretaries and departmental chiefs,
+and who had so skilfully distributed the ten thousand roubles, collected
+from the peasants, in the shape of presents, now himself brought his
+activity to an end and returned to the village, where, with the money
+collected for him as a reward and with what was left of the presents, he
+bought himself a grove from a neighbouring proprietor and built there a
+hut and an office. The case was finished in the court of the highest
+instance, and everything would now proceed of its own accord.
+
+The only ones of those concerned in the case who could not forget it
+were the six peasants who were passing their seventh month in jail, and
+their families that were left without their heads. But nothing could be
+done in the matter. They were imprisoned in Krasnoslobódsk, and their
+families tried to get along as well as they could. Nobody could be
+invoked in the case. Iván Mirónovich himself said that he could not take
+it up, because it was not a communal, nor a civil, but a criminal case.
+The peasants were in prison, and nobody paid any attention to them; but
+one family, that of Mikhaíl Gerásimovich, particularly his wife
+Tíkhonovna, could not get used to the idea that the precious old man,
+Gerásimovich, was sitting in prison with a shaven head. Tíkhonovna could
+not rest quiet. She begged Mirónovich to take the case, but he declined
+it. Then she decided to go herself to pray to God for the old man. She
+had made a vow the year before that she would go on a pilgrimage to a
+saint, and had delayed it for another year only because she had had no
+time and did not wish to leave the house to the young daughters-in-law.
+Now that the misfortune had happened and Gerásimovich was put into jail,
+she recalled her vow; she turned her back on her house and, together
+with the deacon's wife of the same village, got ready to go on the
+pilgrimage.
+
+First they went to the county seat to see her old man in the prison and
+to take him some shirts; from there they went through the capital of the
+Government to Moscow. On her way Tíkhonovna told the deacon's wife of
+her sorrow, and the latter advised her to petition the emperor who, it
+was said, was to be in Pénza, telling her of various cases of pardon
+granted by him.
+
+When the pilgrims arrived in Pénza, they heard that there was there, not
+the emperor, but his brother Grand Duke Nikoláy Pávlovich. When he came
+out of the cathedral, Tíkhonovna pushed herself forward, dropped down on
+her knees, and began to beg for her husband. The grand duke was
+surprised, the governor was angry, and the old woman was taken to the
+lockup. The next day she was let out and she proceeded to Tróitsa. In
+Tróitsa she went to communion and confessed to Father Paísi. At the
+confession she told him of her sorrow, and repented having petitioned
+the brother of the Tsar. Father Paísi told her that there was no sin in
+that and that there was no sin in petitioning the Tsar even in a just
+case, and dismissed her. In Khótkov she called on the blessed abbess,
+and she ordered her to petition the Tsar himself.
+
+On their way back, Tíkhonovna and the deacon's wife stopped in Moscow to
+see the saints. Here she heard that the Tsar was there, and she thought
+that it was evidently God's command that she should petition the Tsar.
+All that had to be done was to write the petition.
+
+In Moscow the pilgrims stopped in a hostelry. They begged permission to
+stay there overnight; they were allowed to do so. After supper the
+deacon's wife lay down on the oven, and Tíkhonovna, placing her wallet
+under her head, lay down on a bench and fell asleep. In the morning,
+before daybreak, Tíkhonovna got up, woke the deacon's wife, and went
+out. The innkeeper spoke to her just as she walked into the yard.
+
+"You are up early, granny," he said.
+
+"Before we get there, it will be time for matins," Tíkhonovna replied.
+
+"God be with you, granny!"
+
+"Christ save you!" said Tíkhonovna, and the pilgrims went to the
+Kremlin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After standing through the matins and the mass, and having kissed the
+relics, the old women, with difficulty making their way, arrived at the
+house of the Chernýshevs. The deacon's wife said that the old lady had
+given her an urgent invitation to stop at her house, and had ordered
+that all pilgrims should be received.
+
+"There we shall find a man who will write the petition," said the
+deacon's wife, and the pilgrims started to blunder through the streets
+and ask their way. The deacon's wife had been there before, but had
+forgotten where it was. Two or three times they were almost crushed, and
+people shouted at them and scolded them. Once a policeman took the
+deacon's wife by the shoulder and, giving her a push, forbade her to
+walk through the street on which they were, and directed them through a
+forest of lanes. Tíkhonovna did not know that they were driven off the
+Vozdvízhenka for the very reason that through that street was to drive
+the Tsar, of whom she was thinking all the time, and to whom she
+intended to give the petition.
+
+The deacon's wife walked, as always, heavily and complainingly, while
+Tíkhonovna, as usual, walked lightly and briskly, with the gait of a
+young woman. At the gate the pilgrims stopped. The deacon's wife did not
+recognize the house: there was there a new hut which she had not seen
+before; but on scanning the well with the pumps in the corner of the
+yard, she recognized it all. The dogs began to bark and made for the
+women with the staffs.
+
+"Don't mind them, aunties, they will not touch you. Away there, accursed
+ones!" the janitor shouted to the dogs, raising the broom on them. "They
+are themselves from the country, and just see them bark at country
+people! Come this way! You will stick in the mud,--God has not given any
+frost yet."
+
+But the deacon's wife, frightened by the dogs, and muttering in a
+whining tone, sat down on a bench near the gate and asked the janitor to
+take her by. Tíkhonovna made her customary bow to the janitor and,
+leaning on her crutch and spreading her feet, which were tightly
+covered with leg-rags, stopped near her, looking as always calmly in
+front of her and waiting for the janitor to come up to them.
+
+"Whom do you want?" the janitor asked.
+
+"Do you not recognize us, dear man? Is not your name Egór?" asked the
+deacon's wife. "We are coming back from the saints, and so are calling
+on her Serenity."
+
+"You are from Izlegóshcha," said the janitor. "You are the wife of the
+old deacon,--of course. All right, all right. Go to the house! Everybody
+is received here,--nobody is refused. And who is this one?"
+
+He pointed to Tíkhonovna.
+
+"From Izlegóshcha, Gerásimovich's wife,--used to be Fadyéev's,--I
+suppose you know her?" said Tíkhonovna. "I myself am from Izlegóshcha."
+
+"Of course! They say your husband has been put into jail."
+
+Tíkhonovna made no reply; she only sighed and with a strong motion threw
+her wallet and fur coat over her shoulder.
+
+The deacon's wife asked whether the old lady was at home and, hearing
+that she was, asked him to announce them to her. Then she asked about
+her son, who was an official and, thanks to the prince's influence, was
+serving in St. Petersburg. The janitor could not give her any
+information about him and directed them over a walk, which crossed the
+yard, to the servants' house. The old women went into the house, which
+was full of people,--women, children, both old and young,--all of them
+manorial servants, and prayed turning to the front corner. The deacon's
+wife was at once recognized by the laundress and the old lady's maid,
+and she was at once surrounded and overwhelmed with questions: they took
+off her wallet, placed her at the table, and offered her something to
+eat. In the meantime Tíkhonovna, having made the sign of the cross to
+the images and saluted everybody, was standing at the door, waiting to
+be invited in. At the very door, in front of the first window, sat an
+old man, making boots.
+
+"Sit down, granny! Don't stand up. Sit down here, and take off your
+wallet," he said.
+
+"There is not enough room to turn around as it is. Take her to the
+'black' room," said a woman.
+
+"This comes straight from Madame Chalmé," said a young lackey, pointing
+to the iris design on Tíkhonovna's peasant coat, "and the pretty
+stockings and shoes."
+
+He pointed to her leg-rags and bast shoes, which were new, as she had
+specially put them on for Moscow.
+
+"Parásha, you ought to have such."
+
+"If you are to go to the 'black' room, all right; I will take you
+there." And the old man stuck in his awl and got up; but, on seeing a
+little girl, he called her to take the old woman to the black room.
+
+Tíkhonovna not only paid no attention to what was being said in her
+presence and of her, but did not even look or listen. From the time that
+she entered the house, she was permeated with the feeling of the
+necessity of working for God and with the other feeling, which had
+entered her soul, she did not know when, of the necessity of handing the
+petition. Leaving the clean servant room, she walked over to the
+deacon's wife and, bowing, said to her:
+
+"Mother Paramónovna, for Christ's sake do not forget about my affair!
+See whether you can't find a man."
+
+"What does that woman need?"
+
+"She has suffered insult, and people have advised her to hand a petition
+to the Tsar."
+
+"Take her straight to the Tsar!" said the jesting lackey.
+
+"Oh, you fool, you rough fool," said the old shoemaker. "I will teach
+you a lesson with this last, then you will know how to grin at old
+people."
+
+The lackey began to scold, but the old man, paying no attention to him,
+took Tíkhonovna to the black room.
+
+Tíkhonovna was glad that she was sent out of the baking-room, and was
+taken to the black, the coachmen's room. In the baking-room everything
+looked clean, and the people were all clean, and Tíkhonovna did not feel
+at ease there. The black coachmen's room was more like the inside of a
+peasant house, and Tíkhonovna was more at home there. The black hut was
+a dark pine building, twenty by twenty feet, with a large oven, bed
+places, and hanging-beds, and a newly paved, dirt-covered floor. When
+Tíkhonovna entered the room, there were there the cook, a white,
+ruddy-faced, fat, manorial woman, with the sleeves of her chintz dress
+rolled up, who with difficulty was moving a pot in the oven with an
+oven-fork; then a young, small coachman, who was learning to play the
+balaláyka; an old man with an unshaven, soft white beard, who was
+sitting on a bed place with his bare feet and, holding a skein of silk
+between his lips, was sewing on some fine, good material, and a
+shaggy-haired, swarthy young man, in a shirt and blue trousers, with a
+coarse face, who, chewing bread, was sitting on a bench at the oven and
+leaning his head on both his arms, which were steadied against his
+knees.
+
+Barefoot Nástka with sparkling eyes ran into the room with her lithe,
+bare feet, in front of the old woman, jerking open the door, which stuck
+fast from the steam within, and squeaking in her thin voice:
+
+"Aunty Marína, Simónych sends this old woman, and says that she should
+be fed. She is from our parts: she has been with Paramónovna to worship
+the saints. Paramónovna is having tea.--Vlásevna has sent for her--"
+
+The garrulous little girl would have gone on talking for quite awhile
+yet; the words just poured forth from her and, apparently, it gave her
+pleasure to hear her own voice. But Marína, who was in a perspiration,
+and who had not yet succeeded in pushing away the pot with the beet
+soup, which had caught in the hearth, shouted angrily at her:
+
+"Stop your babbling! What old woman am I to feed now? I have enough to
+do to feed our own people. Shoot you!" she shouted to the pot, which
+came very near falling down, as she removed it from the spot where it
+was caught.
+
+But when she was satisfied in regard to the pot, she looked around and,
+seeing trim Tíkhonovna with her wallet and correct peasant attire,
+making the sign of the cross and bowing low toward the front corner,
+felt ashamed of her words and, as though regaining her consciousness
+after the cares which had worn her out, she put her hand to her breast,
+where beneath the collar-bone buttons clasped her dress, and examined it
+to see whether it was buttoned, and then put her hands to her head to
+fasten the knot of the kerchief, which covered her greasy hair, and took
+up an attitude, leaning against the oven-fork and waiting for the salute
+of the trim old woman. Tíkhonovna made her last low obeisance to God,
+and turned around and saluted in three directions.
+
+"God aid you, good day!" she said.
+
+"You are welcome, aunty!" said the tailor.
+
+"Thank you, granny, take off your wallet! Sit down here," said the cook,
+pointing to a bench where sat the shaggy-haired man. "Move a little,
+can't you? Are you stuck fast?"
+
+The shaggy man, scowling more angrily still, rose, moved away, and,
+continuing to chew, riveted his eyes on the old woman. The young
+coachman made a bow and, stopping his playing, began to tighten the
+strings of his balaláyka, looking now at the old woman, and now at the
+tailor, not knowing how to treat the old woman,--whether respectfully,
+as he thought she ought to be treated, because the old woman wore the
+same kind of attire that his grandmother and mother wore at home (he
+had been taken from the village to be an outrider), or making fun of
+her, as he wished to do and as seemed to him to accord with his present
+condition, his blue coat and his boots. The tailor winked with one eye
+and seemed to smile, drawing the silk to one side of his mouth, and
+looked on. Marína started to put in another pot, but, even though she
+was busy working, she kept looking at the old woman, while she briskly
+and nimbly took off her wallet and, trying not to disturb any one, put
+it under the bench. Nástka ran up to her and helped her, by taking away
+the boots, which were lying in her way under the bench.
+
+"Uncle Pankrát," she turned to the gloomy man, "I will put the boots
+here. Is it all right?"
+
+"The devil take them! Throw them into the oven, if you wish," said the
+gloomy man, throwing them into another corner.
+
+"Nástka, you are a clever girl," said the tailor. "A pilgrim has to be
+made comfortable."
+
+"Christ save you, girl! That is nice," said Tíkhonovna. "I am afraid I
+have put you out, dear man," she said, turning to Pankrát.
+
+"All right," said Pankrát.
+
+Tíkhonovna sat down on the bench, having taken off her coat and
+carefully folded it, and began to take off her footgear. At first she
+untied the laces, which she had taken special care in twisting smooth
+for her pilgrimage; then she carefully unwrapped the white lambskin
+leg-rags and, carefully rubbing them soft, placed them on her wallet.
+Just as she was working on her other foot, another of awkward Marína's
+pots got caught and spilled over, and she again started to scold
+somebody, catching the pot with the fork.
+
+"The hearth is evidently burned out, grandfather. It ought to be
+plastered," said Tíkhonovna.
+
+"When are you going to plaster it? The chimney never cools off: twice a
+day you have to bake bread; one set is taken out, and the other is
+started."
+
+In response to Marína's complaint about the bread-baking and the
+burnt-out hearth, the tailor defended the ways of the Chernýshev house
+and said that they had suddenly arrived in Moscow, that the hut was
+built and the oven put up in three weeks, and that there were nearly one
+hundred servants who had to be fed.
+
+"Of course, lots of cares. A large establishment," Tíkhonovna confirmed
+him.
+
+"Whence does God bring you?" the tailor turned to her.
+
+And Tíkhonovna, continuing to take off her foot-gear, at once told him
+where she came from, whither she had gone, and how she was going home.
+She did not say anything about the petition. The conversation never
+broke off. The tailor found out everything about the old woman, and the
+old woman heard all about awkward, pretty Marína. She learned that
+Marína's husband was a soldier, and she was made a cook; that the tailor
+was making caftans for the driving coachmen; that the stewardess's
+errand girl was an orphan, and that shaggy-haired, gloomy Pankrát was a
+servant of the clerk, Iván Vasílevich.
+
+Pankrát left the room, slamming the door. The tailor told her that he
+was a gruff peasant, but that on that day he was particularly rude
+because the day before he had smashed the clerk's knickknacks on the
+window, and that he was going to be flogged to-day in the stable. As
+soon as Iván Vasílevich should come, he would be flogged. The little
+coachman was a peasant lad, who had been made an outrider, and now that
+he was grown he had nothing to do but attend to the horses, and strum
+the balaláyka. But he was not much of a hand at it.
+
+
+
+
+ON POPULAR EDUCATION
+
+1875
+
+
+
+
+ON POPULAR EDUCATION
+
+
+I suppose each of us has had more than one occasion to come in contact
+with monstrous, senseless phenomena, and to find back of these phenomena
+put forward some important principle, which overshadowed those
+phenomena, so that in our youthful and even maturer years we began to
+doubt whether it was true that those phenomena were monstrous, and
+whether we were not mistaken. And having been unable to convince
+ourselves that monstrous phenomena might be good, or that the protection
+of an important principle was illegitimate, or that the principle was
+only a word, we remained in regard to those phenomena in an ambiguous,
+undecided condition.
+
+In such a state I was, and I assume many of us are, in respect to the
+principle of "development" which obfuscates pedagogy, in its connection
+with the rudiments. But popular education is too near to my heart, and I
+have busied myself too much with it, to remain too long in indecision.
+The monstrous phenomena of the imaginary development I could not call
+good, nor could I be persuaded that the development of the pupil was
+bad, and so I began to inquire what that development was. I do not
+consider it superfluous to communicate the deductions to which I have
+been led during the study of this matter.
+
+To define what is understood by the word "development," I shall take the
+manuals of Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski, as being new works, which
+combine all the latest deductions of German pedagogy, intended as guides
+for the teachers in the popular schools, and selected by the advocates
+of the sound method as manuals in their schools.
+
+In discussing what is to form the foundation for a choice of this or
+that method for the teaching of reading, Mr. Bunákov says:
+
+"No, an opinion about the method of construction based on such
+near-sighted and flimsy foundations (that is, on experience) will be too
+doubtful. Only the theoretical substratum, based on the study of human
+nature, can make the judgments in this sphere firm and independent of
+all casualties, and to a considerable degree guard them against gross
+errors. Consequently for the final choice of the best method of teaching
+the rudiments, it is necessary first of all to stand on theoretic soil,
+on the basis of previous considerations, the general conditions of which
+give to this or that method the actual right to be called satisfactory
+from the pedagogical standpoint. These conditions are: (1) It has to be
+a method which is capable of developing the child's mental powers, so
+that the acquisition of the rudiments may be obtained together with the
+development and the strengthening of the reasoning powers. (2) It must
+introduce into the instruction the child's personal interest, so that
+the matter be furthered by this interest, and not by dulling violence.
+(3) It must represent in itself the process of self-instruction,
+inciting, supporting, and directing the child's self-activity. (4) It
+must be based on the impressions of hearing, as of the sense which
+serves for the acquisition of language. (5) It has to combine analysis
+with synthesis, beginning with the dismemberment of the complex whole
+into simple principles, and passing over to the composition of a complex
+whole out of the simple principles."
+
+So this is what the method of instruction is to be based upon. I will
+remark, not for contradiction, but for the sake of simplicity and
+clearness, that the last two statements are quite superfluous, because
+without the union of analysis and synthesis there can be not only no
+instruction, but also no other activity of the mind, and every
+instruction, except that of the deaf and dumb, is based on the sense of
+hearing. These two conditions are put down only for beauty's sake and
+for the obscuration of the style, so common in pedagogical treatises,
+and so have no meaning whatever. The first three at first sight appear
+quite true as a programme. Everybody, of course, would like to know how
+the method is secured that will "develop," that will "introduce into the
+instruction the pupil's personal interest," and that will "represent the
+process of self-instruction."
+
+But to the questions as to why this method combines all those qualities
+you will find an answer neither in the books of Messrs. Bunákov and
+Evtushévski, nor in any other pedagogical work of the founders of this
+school of pedagogy, unless they be those hazy discussions of this
+nature, such as that every instruction must be based on the union of
+analysis and synthesis, and by all means on the sense of hearing, and so
+forth; or you will find, as in Mr. Evtushévski's book, expositions about
+how in man are formed impressions, sensations, representations, and
+concepts, and you will find the rule that "it is necessary to start from
+the object and lead the pupil up to the idea, and not start with the
+idea, which has no point of contact in his consciousness," and so forth.
+After such discussions there always follows the conclusion that
+therefore the method advocated by the pedagogue gives that exclusive
+real development which it was necessary to find.
+
+After the above-cited definition of what a good method ought to be, Mr.
+Bunákov explains how children ought to be educated, and, having given an
+exposition of all the methods, which in my opinion and experience lead
+to results which are diametrically opposite to development, he says
+frankly and definitely:
+
+"From the standpoint of the above-mentioned fundamental principles for
+estimating the value of the satisfactoriness of the methods of
+rudimentary instruction, the method which we have just elucidated in its
+general features presents the following plastic qualities and
+peculiarities: (1) As a sound method it wholly preserves the
+characteristic peculiarities of all sound method,--it starts from the
+impressions of hearing, at once establishing the regular relation to
+language, and only later adds to them the impressions of sight, thus
+clearly distinguishing sound, matter, and the letter, its
+representation. (2) As a method which unites reading with writing it
+begins with decomposition and passes over to composition, combining
+analysis with synthesis. (3) As a method which passes over to the study
+of words and sounds from the study of objects it proceeds along a
+natural path, coöperates with the regular formation of concepts and
+ideas, and acts in a developing way on all the sides of the child's
+nature: it incites the children to be observant, to group their
+observations, to render them orally; it develops the external senses,
+mind, imagination, memory, the gift of speech, concentration,
+self-activity, the habit of work, the respect for order. (4) As a method
+which provides ample work to all the mental powers of the child, it
+introduces into instruction the personal interest, rousing in children
+willingness and love of work, and transforming it into a process of
+self-instruction."
+
+This is precisely what Mr. Evtushévski does; but why it is all so
+remains inexplicable to him who is looking for actual reasons and does
+not become entangled in such words as psychology, didactics, methodics,
+heuristics. I advise all those who have no inclination for philosophy
+and therefore have no desire to verify all those deductions of the
+pedagogues not to be embarrassed by these words and to be assured that
+a thing which is not clear cannot be the basis of anything, least of all
+of such an important and simple thing as popular education.
+
+All the pedagogues of this school, especially the Germans, the founders
+of the school, start with the false idea that those philosophical
+questions which have remained as questions for all the philosophers from
+Plato to Kant, have been definitely settled by them. They are settled so
+definitely that the process of the acquisition by man of impressions,
+sensations, concepts, ratiocinations, has been analyzed by them down to
+its minutest details, and the component parts of what we call the soul
+or the essence of man have been dissected and divided into parts by
+them, and that, too, in such a thorough manner that on this firm basis
+can go up the faultless structure of the science of pedagogy. This fancy
+is so strange that I do not regard it as necessary to contradict it,
+more especially as I have done so in my former pedagogical essays. All I
+will say is that those philosophical considerations which the pedagogues
+of this school put at the basis of their theory not only fail to be
+absolutely correct, not only have nothing in common with real
+philosophy, but even lack a clear, definite expression with which the
+majority of the pedagogues might agree.
+
+But, perchance, the theory of the pedagogues of the new school, in spite
+of its unsuccessful references to philosophy, has some value in itself.
+And so we will examine it, to see what it consists in. Mr. Bunákov says:
+
+"To these little savages (that is, the pupils) must be imparted the main
+order of school instruction, and into their consciousness must be
+introduced such initial concepts as they will have to come in contact
+with from the start, during the first lessons of drawing, reading,
+writing, and every elementary instruction, such as: the right side and
+the left, to the right--to the left, up--down, near by--around, in
+front--in back, close by--in the distance, before--behind,
+above--below, fast--slow, softly--aloud, and so forth. No matter how
+simple these concepts may be, I know from practice that even city
+children, from well-to-do families, are frequently, when they come to
+the elementary schools, unable to distinguish the right side from the
+left. I assume that there is no need of expatiating on the necessity of
+explaining such concepts to village children, for any one who has had to
+deal with village schools knows this as well as I do."
+
+And Mr. Evtushévski says:
+
+"Without entering into the broad field of the debatable question about
+the innate ability of man, we only see that the child can have no innate
+concepts and ideas about real things,--they have to be formed, and on
+the skill with which they are formed by the educator and teacher depends
+both their regularity and their permanency. In watching the development
+of the child's soul one has to be much more cautious than in attending
+to his body. If the food for the body and the various bodily exercises
+are carefully chosen both as regards their quantity and their quality,
+in conformity with the man's growth, so much more cautious have we to be
+in the choice of food and exercises for the mind. A badly placed
+foundation will precariously support what is fastened to it."
+
+Mr. Bunákov advises that ideas be imparted as follows:
+
+"The teacher may begin a conversation such as he deems fit: one will ask
+every pupil for his name; another about what is going on outside; a
+third about where each comes from, where he lives, what is going on at
+home,--and then he may pass over to the main subject. 'Where are you
+sitting now? Why did you come here? What are we going to do in this
+room? Yes, we are going to study in this room,--so let us call it a
+class-room. See what there is under your feet, below you. Look, but do
+not say anything. The one I will tell to speak shall answer. Tell me,
+what do you see under your feet? Repeat everything we have found out
+and have said about this room: in what room are we sitting? What are the
+parts of the room? What is there on the walls? What is standing on the
+floor?'
+
+"The teacher from the start establishes the order which is necessary for
+the success of his work: each pupil is to answer only when asked to do
+so; all the others are to listen and should be able to repeat the words
+of the teacher and of their companions; the desire to answer, when the
+teacher directs a question to everybody, is to be expressed by raising
+the left hand; the words are to be pronounced neither in a hurry, nor by
+drawing them out, but loudly, distinctly, and correctly. To obtain this
+latter result the teacher gives them a living example by his loud,
+correct, distinct enunciation, showing them in practice the difference
+between soft and loud, distinct and correct, slow and fast. The teacher
+should see to it that all the children take part in the work, by having
+somebody's question answered or repeated, now by one, now by another,
+and now by the whole class at once, but especially by rousing the
+indifferent, inattentive, and playful children: the first he must
+enliven by frequent questions, the second he must cause to concentrate
+themselves on the subject of the common work, and the third he must
+curb. During the first period the children ought to answer in full, that
+is, by repeating the question: 'We are sitting in the class-room' (and
+not in brief, 'In the class-room'); 'Above, over my head, I see the
+ceiling;' 'On the left I see three windows,' and so forth."
+
+Mr. Evtushévski advises that in this way be begun all the lessons on
+numbers from 1 to 10, of which there are to be 120, and which are to be
+continued through the year.
+
+"One. The teacher shows the pupils a cube, and asks: 'How many cubes
+have I?' and taking several cubes into the other hand, he asks, 'And how
+many are there here?'--'Many, a few.'
+
+"'Name here in the class-room an object of which there are
+several.'--'Bench, window, wall, copy-book, pencil, slate-pencil, pupil,
+and so forth.'--'Name an object of which there is only one in the
+class-room.'--'The blackboard, stove, door, ceiling, floor, picture,
+teacher, and so forth.'--'If I put this cube away in my pocket, how many
+cubes will there be left in my hand?'--'Not one.'--'And how many must I
+again put into my hand, to have as many as before?'--'One.'--'What is
+meant by saying that Pétya fell down once? How many times did Pétya
+fall? Did he fall another time? Why does it say once?'--'Because we are
+speaking only of one case and not of another case.'--'Take your slates
+(or copy-books). Make on them a line of this size.' (The teacher draws
+on the blackboard a line two or four inches in length, or shows on the
+ruler that length.) 'Rub it off. How many lines are left?'--'Not
+one.'--'Draw several such lines.' It would be unnatural to invent any
+other exercises in order to acquaint the children with number one. It
+suffices to rouse in them that conception of unity which they, no doubt,
+had previous to their school instruction."
+
+Then Mr. Bunákov speaks of exercises on the board, and so on, and Mr.
+Evtushévski of the number four with its decomposition. Before examining
+the theory itself of the transmission of ideas, the question
+involuntarily arises whether that theory is not mistaken in its very
+problem. Has the condition of the pedagogical material with which it has
+to do been correctly defined? The first thing that startles us is the
+strange relation to some imaginary children, to such as I, at least,
+have never seen in the Russian Empire. The conversations, and the
+information which they impart, refer to children of less than two years
+of age, because two-year-old children know all that is contained in
+them, but as to the questions which have to be asked, they have
+reference to parrots. Any pupil of six, seven, eight, or nine years will
+not understand a thing in these questions, because he knows all about
+that, and cannot make out what it all means. The demands for such
+conversations evince either complete ignorance, or a desire to ignore
+that degree of development on which the pupils stand.
+
+Maybe the children of Hottentots and negroes, or some German children,
+do not know what is imparted to them in such conversations, but Russian
+children, except demented ones, all those who come to a school, not only
+know what is up and what down, what is a bench and what a table, what is
+two and what one, and so forth, but, in my experience, the peasant
+children who are sent to school by their parents can every one of them
+express their thoughts well and correctly, can understand another
+person's thought (if it is expressed in Russian), and can count to
+twenty and more; playing with knuckle-bones they count in pairs and
+sixes, and they know how many points and pairs there are in a six.
+Frequently the pupils who came to my school brought with them the
+problem with the geese, and explained it to me. But even if we admit
+that children possess no such conceptions as those the pedagogues want
+to impart to them by means of conversations, I do not find the method
+chosen by them to be correct.
+
+Thus, for example, Mr. Bunákov has written a reader. This book is to be
+used in conjunction with the conversations to teach the children
+language. I have run through the book and have found it to be a series
+of bad language blunders, wherever extracts from other books are not
+quoted. The same complete ignorance of language I have found in Mr.
+Evtushévski's problems. Mr. Evtushévski wants to give ideas by means of
+problems. First of all he ought to have seen to it that the tool for the
+transmission of ideas, that is, the language, was correct.
+
+What has been mentioned here refers to the form in which the development
+is imparted. Let us look at the contents themselves. Mr. Bunákov
+proposes the following questions to be put to the children: "Where can
+you see cats? where a magpie? where sand? where a wasp and a suslik?
+what are a suslik and a magpie and a cat covered with, and what are the
+parts of their bodies?" (The suslik is a favourite animal of pedagogy,
+no doubt because not one peasant child in the centre of Russia knows
+that word.)
+
+"Naturally the teacher does not always put these questions straight to
+the children, as forming the predetermined programme of the lesson; more
+frequently the small and undeveloped children have to be led up to the
+solution of the question of the programme by a series of suggestive
+questions, by directing their attention to the side of the subject which
+is more correct at the given moment, or by inciting them to recall
+something from their previous observations. Thus the teacher need not
+put the question directly: 'Where can a wasp be seen?' but, turning to
+this or that pupil, he may ask him whether he has seen a wasp, where he
+has seen it, and then only, combining the replies of several pupils,
+compose an answer to the first question of his programme. In answering
+the teacher's questions, the children will often connect several remarks
+that have no direct relation to the matter; for example, when the
+question is about what the parts of a magpie are, one may say
+irrelevantly that a magpie jumps, another that it chatters funnily, a
+third that it steals things,--let them add and give utterance to
+everything that arises in their memory or imagination,--it is the
+teacher's business to concentrate their attention in accordance with the
+programme, and these remarks and additions of the children he should
+take notice of for the purpose of elaborating the other parts of the
+programme. In viewing a new subject, the children at every convenient
+opportunity return to the subjects which have already been under
+consideration. Since they have observed that a magpie is covered with
+feathers, the teacher asks: 'Is the suslik also covered with feathers?
+What is it covered with? And what is a chicken covered with? and a
+horse? and a lizard?' When they have observed that a magpie has two
+legs, the teacher asks: 'How many legs has a dog? and a fox? and a
+chicken? and a wasp? What other animals do you know with two legs? with
+four? with six?'"
+
+Involuntarily the question arises: Do the children know, or do they not
+know, what is so well explained to them in these conversations? If the
+pupils know it all, then, upon occasion, in the street or at home, where
+they do not need to raise their left hands, they will certainly be able
+to tell it in more beautiful and more correct Russian than they are
+ordered to do. They will certainly not say that a horse is "covered"
+with wool; if so, why are they compelled to repeat these questions just
+as the teacher has put them? But if they do not know them (which is not
+to be admitted except as regards the suslik), the question arises: by
+what will the teacher be guided in what is with so much unction called
+the programme of questions,--by the science of zoology, or by logic? or
+by the science of eloquence? But if by none of the sciences, and merely
+by the desire to talk about what is visible in the objects, there are so
+many visible things in objects, and they are so diversified, that a
+guiding thread is needed to show what to talk upon, whereas in objective
+instruction there is no such thread, and there can be none.
+
+All human knowledge is subdivided for the purpose that it may more
+conveniently be gathered, united, and transmitted, and these
+subdivisions are called sciences. But outside their scientific
+classifications you may talk about objects anything you please, and you
+may say all the nonsense imaginable, as we actually see. In any case,
+the result of the conversation will be that the children are either
+made to learn by heart the teacher's words about the suslik, or to
+change their own words, place them in a certain order (not always a
+correct order), and to memorize and repeat them. For this reason all the
+manuals of this kind, in general all the exercises of development,
+suffer on the one hand from absolute arbitrariness, and on the other
+from superfluity. For example, in Mr. Bunákov's book the only story
+which, it seems, is not copied from another author, is the following:
+
+"A peasant complained to a hunter about his trouble: a fox had carried
+off several of his chickens and one duck; the fox was not in the least
+afraid of watch-dog Dandy, who was chained up and kept barking all night
+long; in the morning he had placed a trap with a piece of roast meat in
+the fresh tracks on the snow,--evidently the red-haired sneak was
+disporting near the house, but he did not go into the trap. The hunter
+listened to what the peasant had to say to him, and said: 'Very well;
+now we will see who will be shrewder!' The hunter walked all day with
+his gun and with his dog, over the tracks of the fox, to discover how he
+found his way into the yard. In the daytime the sneak sleeps in his
+lair, and knows nothing of what is going on, so that had to be
+considered: on its path the hunter dug a hole and covered it with
+boards, dirt, and snow; a few steps from it he put down a piece of
+horseflesh. In the evening he seated himself with a loaded gun in his
+ambush, fixed things in such a way that he could see everything and
+shoot comfortably, and there he waited. It grew dark. The moon swam out.
+Cautiously, looking around and listening, the fox crept out of his lair,
+raised his nose, and sniffed. He at once smelled the odour of
+horseflesh, and ran at a slow trot to the place, and suddenly stopped
+and pricked his ears: the shrewd one saw that there was a mound there
+which had not been in that spot the previous evening. This mound
+apparently vexed him, and made him think; he took a large circle around
+it, and sniffed and listened, and sat down, and for a long time looked
+at the meat from a distance, so that the hunter could not shoot him,--it
+was too far. The fox thought and thought, and suddenly ran at full speed
+between the meat and the mound. Our hunter was careful, and did not
+shoot. He knew that the sneak was merely trying to find out whether
+anybody was sitting behind that mound; if he had shot at the running
+fox, he would certainly have missed him, and then he would not have seen
+the sneak, any more than he could see his own ears. Now the fox quieted
+down,--the mound no longer disturbed him: he walked briskly up to the
+meat, and ate it with great delight. Then the hunter aimed carefully,
+without haste, so that he might not miss him. Bang! The fox jumped up
+from pain and fell down dead."
+
+Everything is arbitrary here: it is an arbitrary invention to say that a
+fox could carry off a peasant's duck in winter, that peasants trap
+foxes, that a fox sleeps in the daytime in his lair (for he sleeps only
+at night); arbitrary is that hole which is uselessly dug in winter and
+covered with boards without being made use of; arbitrary is the
+statement that the fox eats horseflesh, which he never does; arbitrary
+is the supposed cunning of the fox, who runs past the hunter; arbitrary
+are the mound and the hunter, who does not shoot for fear of missing,
+that is, everything, from beginning to end, is bosh, for which any
+peasant boy might arraign the author of the story, if he could talk
+without raising his hand.
+
+Then a whole series of so-called exercises in Mr. Bunákov's lessons is
+composed of such questions as: "Who bakes? Who chops? Who shoots?" to
+which the pupil is supposed to answer: "The baker, the wood-chopper, and
+the marksmen," whereas he might just as correctly answer that the woman
+bakes, the axe chops, and the teacher shoots, if he has a gun. Another
+arbitrary statement in that book is that the throat is a part of the
+mouth, and so on.
+
+All the other exercises, such as "The ducks fly, and the dogs?" or "The
+linden and birch are trees, and the horse?" are quite superfluous.
+Besides, it must be observed that if such conversations are really
+carried on with the pupils (which never happens) that is, if the pupils
+are permitted to speak and ask questions, the teacher, choosing simple
+subjects (they are most difficult), is at each step perplexed, partly
+through ignorance, and partly because _ein Narr kann mehr fragen, als
+zehn Weise antworten_.
+
+Exactly the same takes place in the instruction of arithmetic, which is
+based on the same pedagogical principle. Either the pupils are informed
+in the same way of what they already know, or they are quite arbitrarily
+informed of combinations of a certain character that are not based on
+anything. The lesson mentioned above and all the other lessons up to ten
+are merely information about what the children already know. If they
+frequently do not answer questions of that kind, this is due to the fact
+that the question is either wrongly expressed in itself, or wrongly
+expressed as regards the children. The difficulty which the children
+encounter in answering a question of that character is due to the same
+cause which makes it impossible for the average boy to answer the
+question: Three sons were to Noah,[1]--Shem, Ham, and Japheth,--who was
+their father? The difficulty is not mathematical, but syntactical, which
+is due to the fact that in the statement of the problem and in the
+question there is not one and the same subject; but when to the
+syntactical difficulty there is added the awkwardness of the proposer of
+the problems in expressing himself in Russian, the matter becomes of
+greater difficulty still to the pupil; but the trouble is no longer
+mathematical.
+
+  [Footnote 1: The Russian way of saying "Noah had three sons."]
+
+Let anybody understand at once Mr. Evtushévski's problem: "A certain boy
+had four nuts, another had five. The second boy gave all his nuts to the
+first, and this one gave three nuts to a third, and the rest he
+distributed equally to three other friends. How many nuts did each of
+the last get?" Express the problem as follows: "A boy had four nuts. He
+was given five more. He gave away three nuts, and the rest he wants to
+give to three friends. How many can he give to each?" and a child of
+five years of age will solve it. There is no problem here at all, but
+the difficulty may arise only from a wrong statement of the problem, or
+from a weak memory. And it is this syntactical difficulty, which the
+children overcome by long and difficult exercises, that gives the
+teacher cause to think that, teaching the children what they know
+already, he is teaching them anything at all. Just as arbitrarily are
+the children taught combinations in arithmetic and the decomposition of
+numbers according to a certain method and order, which have their
+foundation only in the fancy of the teacher. Mr. Evtushévski says:
+
+"Four. (1) The formation of the number. On the upper border of the board
+the teacher places three cubes together--I I I. How many cubes are there
+here? Then a fourth cube is added. And how many are there now? I I I I.
+How are four cubes formed from three and one? We have to add one cube to
+the three.
+
+"(2) Decomposition into component parts. How can four cubes be formed?
+or, How can four cubes be broken up? Four cubes may be broken up into
+two and two: II + II. Four cubes may be formed from one, and one, and
+one, and one more, or by taking four times one cube: I + I + I + I. Four
+cubes may be broken up into three and one: III + I. It may be formed
+from one, and one, and two: I + I + II. Can four cubes be put together
+in any other way? The pupils convince themselves that there can be no
+other decomposition, distinct from those already given. If the pupils
+begin to break the four cubes in this way: one, two, and one, or, two,
+one and one; or, one and three, the teacher will easily point out to
+them that these decompositions are only repetitions of what has been got
+before, only in a different order.
+
+"Every time, whenever the pupils indicate a new method of decomposition,
+the teacher places the cubes on a ledge of the blackboard in the manner
+here indicated. Thus there will be four cubes on the upper ledge; two
+and two in a second place; in a third place the four cubes will be
+separated at some distance from each other; in a fourth place, three and
+one, and in a fifth one, one, and two.
+
+"(3) Decomposition in order. It may easily happen that the children will
+at once point out the decomposition of the number into component parts
+in order; even then the third exercise cannot be regarded as
+superfluous: Here we have formed four cubes of twos, of separate cubes,
+and of threes,--in what order had we best place the cubes on the board?
+With what shall the decomposition of the four cubes begin? With the
+decomposition into separate cubes. How are four cubes to be formed from
+separate cubes? We must take four times one cube. How are four cubes to
+be formed from twos, from a pair? We must take two twos,--twice two
+cubes, two pairs of cubes. How shall we afterward break up the four
+cubes? They can be formed of threes: for this purpose we take three and
+one, or one and three. The teacher explains to the pupils that the last
+decomposition, that is, 1 1 2, does not come under the accepted order,
+and is a modification of one of the first three."
+
+Why does Mr. Evtushévski not admit this last decomposition? Why must
+there be the order indicated by him? All that is a matter of mere
+arbitrariness and fancy. In reality, it is apparent to every thinking
+man that there is only one foundation for any composition and
+decomposition, and for the whole of mathematics. Here is the
+foundation: 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 1 = 4, and so forth,--precisely
+what the children learn at home, and what in common parlance is called
+counting to ten, to twenty, and so forth. This process is known to every
+pupil, and no matter what decomposition Mr. Evtushévski may make, it is
+to be explained from this one. A boy that can count to four, considers
+four as a whole, and so also three, and two, and one. Consequently, he
+knows that four was produced from the consecutive addition of one.
+Similarly he knows that four is produced by adding twice one to two,
+just as he knows twice one is two. What, then, are the children taught
+here? That which they know, or that process of counting which they must
+learn according to the teacher's fancy.
+
+The other day I happened to witness a lesson in mathematics according to
+Grube's method. The pupil was asked: "How much is 8 and 7?" He hastened
+to answer and said 16. His neighbour, too, was in a hurry and, without
+raising his left hand, said: "8 and 8 is 16, and one less is 15." The
+teacher sternly stopped him, and compelled the first boy to add one
+after one to 8, until he came to 15, though the boy knew long ago that
+he had made a blunder. In that school they had reached the number 15,
+but 16 was supposed to be unknown yet.
+
+I am afraid that many people, reading all these long refutals of the
+methods of object instruction and counting according to Grube, which I
+am making, will say: "What is there here to talk about? Is it not
+evident that it is all mere nonsense which it is not worth while to
+criticize? Why pick out the errors and blunders of a Bunákov and
+Evtushévski, and criticize what is beneath all criticism?"
+
+That was the way I myself thought before I was led to see what was going
+on in the pedagogical world, when I convinced myself that Messrs.
+Bunákov and Evtushévski were not mere individuals, but authorities in
+our pedagogics, and that what they prescribe is actually carried out in
+our schools. In the backwoods we may find teachers, especially women,
+who spread Evtushévski's and Bunákov's manuals out before them and ask
+according to their prescription how much one feather and one feather is,
+and what a hen is covered with. All that would be funny if it were only
+an invention of the theorist, and not a guide in practical work, a guide
+that some follow already, and if it did not concern one of the most
+important affairs of life,--the education of the children. I was amused
+at it when I read it as theoretical fancies; but when I learned and saw
+that that was being practised on children, I felt pity for them and
+ashamed.
+
+From a theoretical standpoint, not to mention the fact that they
+faultily define the aim of education, the pedagogues of this school make
+this essential error, that they depart from the conditions of all
+instruction, whether this instruction be on the highest or lowest stage
+of the science, in a university or in a popular school. The essential
+conditions of all instruction consist in selecting the homogeneous
+phenomena from an endless number of heterogeneous phenomena, and in
+imparting the laws of these phenomena to the students. Thus, in the
+study of language, the pupils are taught the laws of the word, and in
+mathematics, the laws of the numbers. The study of language consists in
+imparting the laws of the decomposition and of the reverse composition
+of sentences, words, syllables, sounds,--and these laws form the subject
+of instruction. The instruction of mathematics consists in imparting the
+laws of the composition and decomposition of the numbers (but I beg to
+observe,--not in the process of the composition and the decomposition of
+the numbers, but in imparting the laws of that composition and
+decomposition). Thus, the first law consists in the ability of regarding
+a collection of units as a unit of a higher order, precisely what a
+child does when he says: "2 and 1 = 3." He regards 2 as a kind of unit.
+On this law are based the consequent laws of numeration, then of
+addition, and of the whole of mathematics. But arbitrary conversations
+about the wasp, and so forth, or problems within the limit of 10,--its
+decomposition in every manner possible,--cannot form a subject of
+instruction, because, in the first place, they transcend the subject
+and, in the second place, because they do not treat of its laws.
+
+That is the way the matter presents itself to me from its theoretical
+side; but theoretical criticism may frequently err, and so I will try to
+verify my deductions by means of practical data. G---- P---- has given
+us a sample of the practical results of both object instruction and of
+mathematics according to Grube's method. One of the older boys was told:
+"Put your hand under your book!" in order to prove that he had been
+taught the conceptions of "over" and "under," and the intelligent boy,
+who, I am sure, knew what "over" and "under" was, when he was three
+years old, put his hand on the book when he was told to put it under it.
+I have all the time observed such examples, and they prove more clearly
+than anything else how useless, strange, and disgraceful, I feel like
+saying, this object instruction is for Russian children. A Russian child
+cannot and will not believe (he has too much respect for the teacher and
+for himself) that the teacher is in earnest when he asks him whether the
+ceiling is above or below, or how many legs he has. In arithmetic, too,
+we have seen that pupils who did not even know how to write the numbers
+and during the whole time of the instruction were exercised only in
+mental calculations up to 10, for half an hour did not stop blundering
+in every imaginable way in response to questions which the teacher put
+to them within the limit of 10. Evidently the instruction of mental
+calculation brought no results, and the syntactical difficulty, which
+consists in unravelling a question that is improperly put, has remained
+the same as ever. And thus, the practical results of the examination
+which took place did not confirm the usefulness of the development.
+
+But I will be more exact and conscientious. Maybe the process of
+development, which at first is confined not so much to the study, as to
+the analysis of what the pupils know already, will produce results later
+on. Maybe the teacher, who at first takes possession of the pupils'
+minds by means of the analysis, later guides them firmly and with ease,
+and from the narrow sphere of the descriptions of a table and the count
+of 2 and 1 leads them into the real sphere of knowledge, in which the
+pupils are no longer confined to learning what they know already, but
+also learn something new, and learn that new information in a new, more
+convenient, more intelligent manner. This supposition is confirmed by
+the fact that all the German pedagogues and their followers, among them
+Mr. Bunákov, say distinctly that object instruction is to serve as an
+introduction to "home science" and "natural science." But we should be
+looking in vain in Mr. Bunákov's manual to find out how this "home
+science" is to be taught, if by this word any real information is to be
+understood, and not the descriptions of a hut and a vestibule,--which
+the children know already. Mr. Bunákov, on page 200, after having
+explained that it is necessary to teach where the ceiling is and where
+the stove, says briefly:
+
+"Now it is necessary to pass over to the third stage of object
+instruction, the contents of which have been defined by me as follows:
+The study of the country, county, Government, the whole realm with its
+natural products and its inhabitants, in general outline, as a sketch of
+home science and the beginning of natural science, with the predominance
+of reading, which, resting on the immediate observations of the first
+two grades, broadens the mental horizon of the pupils,--the sphere of
+their concepts and ideas. We can see from the mere definition that here
+the objectivity appears as a complement to the explanatory reading and
+narrative of the teacher,--consequently, what is said in regard to the
+occupations of the third year has more reference to the discussion of
+the second occupation, which enters into the composition of the subject
+under instruction, which is called the native language,--the explanatory
+reading."
+
+We turn to the third year,--the explanatory reading, but there we find
+absolutely nothing to indicate how the new information is to be
+imparted, except that it is good to read such and such books, and in
+reading to put such and such questions. The questions are extremely
+queer (to me, at least), as, for example, the comparison of the article
+on water by Ushínski and of the article on water by Aksákov, and the
+request made of the pupils that they should explain that Aksákov
+considers water as a phenomenon of Nature, while Ushínski considers it
+as a substance, and so forth. Consequently, we find here again the same
+foisting of views on the pupils, and of subdivisions (generally
+incorrect) of the teacher, and not one word, not one hint, as to how any
+new knowledge is to be imparted.
+
+It is not known what shall be taught: natural history, or geography.
+There is nothing there but reading with questions of the character I
+have just mentioned. On the other side of the instruction about the
+word,--grammar and orthography,--we should just as much be looking in
+vain for any new method of instruction which is based on the preceding
+development. Again the old Perevlévski's grammar, which begins with
+philosophical definitions and then with syntactical analysis, serves as
+the basis of all new grammatical exercises and of Mr. Bunákov's manual.
+
+In mathematics, too, we should be looking in vain, at that stage where
+the real instruction in mathematics begins, for anything new and more
+easy, based on the whole previous instruction of the exercises of the
+second year up to 20. Where in arithmetic the real difficulties are met
+with, where it becomes necessary to explain the subject from all its
+sides to the pupil, as in numeration, in addition, subtraction,
+division, in the division and multiplication of fractions, you will not
+find even a shadow of anything easier, any new explanation, but only
+quotations from old arithmetics.
+
+The character of this instruction is everywhere one and the same. The
+whole attention is directed toward teaching the pupil what he already
+knows. And since the pupil knows what he is being taught, and easily
+recites in any order desired what he is asked to recite by the teacher,
+the teacher thinks that he is really teaching something, and the pupil's
+progress is great, and the teacher, paying no attention to what forms
+the real difficulty of teaching, that is, to teaching something new,
+most comfortably stumps about in one spot.
+
+This explains why our pedagogical literature is overwhelmed with manuals
+for object-lessons, with manuals about how to conduct kindergartens (one
+of the most monstrous excrescences of the new pedagogy), with pictures
+and books for reading, in which are eternally repeated the same articles
+about the fox and the blackcock, the same poems which for some reason
+are written out in prose in all kinds of permutations and with all kinds
+of explanations; but we have not a single new article for children's
+reading, not one Russian, nor Church-Slavic grammar, nor a Church-Slavic
+dictionary, nor an arithmetic, nor a geography, nor a history for the
+popular schools. All the forces are absorbed in writing text-books for
+the instruction of children in subjects they need not and ought not to
+be taught in school, because they are taught them in life. Of course,
+there is no end to the writing of such books; for there can be only one
+grammar and arithmetic, but of exercises and reflections, like those I
+have quoted from Bunákov, and of the orders of the decomposition of
+numbers from Evtushévski, there may be an endless number.
+
+Pedagogy is in the same condition in which a science would be that would
+teach how a man ought to walk; and people would try to discover rules
+about how to teach the children, how to enjoin them to contract this
+muscle, stretch that muscle, and so forth. This condition of the new
+pedagogy results directly from its two fundamental principles: (1) that
+the aim of the school is development and not science, and (2) that
+development and the means for attaining it may be theoretically defined.
+From this has consistently resulted that miserable and frequently
+ridiculous condition in which the whole matter of the schools now is.
+Forces are wasted in vain, and the masses, who at the present moment are
+thirsting for education, as the dried-up grass thirsts for rain, and are
+ready to receive it, and beg for it,--instead of a loaf receive a stone,
+and are perplexed to understand whether they were mistaken in regarding
+education as something good, or whether something is wrong in what is
+being offered to them. That matters are really so there cannot be the
+least doubt for any man who becomes acquainted with the present theory
+of teaching and knows the actual condition of the school among the
+masses. Involuntarily there arises the question: how could honest,
+cultured people, who sincerely love their work and wish to do good,--for
+such I regard the majority of my opponents to be,--have arrived at such
+a strange condition and be in such deep error?
+
+This question has interested me, and I will try to communicate those
+answers which have occurred to me. Many causes have led to it. The most
+natural cause which has led pedagogy to the false path on which it now
+stands, is the criticism of the old order, the criticism for the sake of
+criticism, without positing new principles in the place of those
+criticized. Everybody knows that criticizing is an easy business, and
+that it is quite fruitless and frequently harmful, if by the side of
+what is condemned one does not point out the principles on the basis of
+which this condemnation is uttered. If I say that such and such a thing
+is bad because I do not like it, or because everybody says that it is
+bad, or even because it is really bad, but do not know how it ought to
+be right, the criticism will always be useless and injurious. The views
+of the pedagogues of the new school are, above all, based on the
+criticism of previous methods. Even now, when it seems there would be no
+sense in striking a prostrate person, we read and hear in every manual,
+in every discussion, "that it is injurious to read without
+comprehension; that it is impossible to learn by heart the definitions
+of numbers and operations with numbers; that senseless memorizing is
+injurious; that it is injurious to operate with thousands without being
+able to count 2-3," and so forth. The chief point of departure is the
+criticism of the old methods and the concoction of new ones to be as
+diametrically opposed to the old as possible, but by no means the
+positing of new foundations of pedagogy, from which new methods might
+result.
+
+It is very easy to criticize the old-fashioned method of studying
+reading by means of learning by heart whole pages of the psalter, and of
+studying arithmetic by memorizing what a number is, and so forth. I will
+remark, in the first place, that nowadays there is no need of attacking
+these methods, because there will hardly be found any teachers who would
+defend them, and, in the second place, that if, criticizing such
+phenomena, they want to let it be known that I am a defender of the
+antiquated method of instruction, it is no doubt due to the fact that my
+opponents, in their youth, do not know that nearly twenty years ago I
+with all my might and main fought against those antiquated methods of
+pedagogy and coöperated in their abolition.
+
+And thus it was found that the old methods of instruction were not good
+for anything, and, without building any new foundation, they began to
+look for new methods. I say "without building any new foundation,"
+because there are only two permanent foundations of pedagogy:
+
+(1) The determination of the criterion of what ought to be taught, and
+(2) the criterion of how it has to be taught, that is, the determination
+that the chosen subjects are most necessary, and that the chosen method
+is the best.
+
+Nobody has even paid any attention to these foundations, and each school
+has in its own justification invented quasi-philosophical justificatory
+reflections. But this "theoretical substratum," as Mr. Bunákov has
+accidentally expressed himself quite well, cannot be regarded as a
+foundation. For the old method of instruction possessed just such a
+theoretical substratum.
+
+The real, peremptory question of pedagogy, which fifteen years ago I
+vainly tried to put in all its significance, "Why ought we to know this
+or that, and how shall we teach it?" has not even been touched. The
+result of this has been that as soon as it became apparent that the old
+method was not good, they did not try to find out what the best method
+would be, but immediately set out to discover a new method which would
+be the very opposite of the old one. They did as a man may do who finds
+his house to be cold in winter and does not trouble himself about
+learning why it is cold, or how to help matters, but at once tries to
+find another house which will as little as possible resemble the one he
+is living in. I was then abroad, and I remember how I everywhere came
+across messengers roving all over Europe in search of a new faith, that
+is, officials of the ministry, studying German pedagogy.
+
+We have adopted the methods of instruction current with our nearest
+neighbours, the Germans, in the first place, because we are always
+prone to imitate the Germans; in the second, because it was the most
+complicated and cunning of methods, and if it comes to taking something
+from abroad, of course, it has to be the latest fashion and what is most
+cunning; in the third, because, in particular, these methods were more
+than any others opposed to the old way. And thus, the new methods were
+taken from the Germans, and not by themselves, but with a theoretical
+substratum, that is, with a quasi-philosophical justification of these
+methods.
+
+This theoretical substratum has done great service. The moment parents
+or simply sensible people, who busy themselves with the question of
+education, express their doubt about the efficacy of these methods, they
+are told: "And what about Pestalozzi, and Diesterweg, and Denzel, and
+Wurst, and methodics, heuristics, didactics, concentrism?" and the bold
+people wave their hands, and say: "God be with them,--they know better."
+In these German methods there also lay this other advantage (the cause
+why they stick so eagerly to this method), that with it the teacher does
+not need to try too much, does not need to go on studying, does not need
+to work over himself and the methods of instruction. For the greater
+part of the time the teacher teaches by this method what the children
+know, and, besides, teaches it from a text-book, and that is convenient.
+And unconsciously, in accordance with an innate human weakness, the
+teacher is fond of this convenience. It is very pleasant for me, with my
+firm conviction that I am teaching and doing an important and very
+modern work, to tell the children from the book about the suslik, or
+about a horse's having four legs, or to transpose the cubes by twos and
+by threes, and ask the children how much two and two is; but if, instead
+of telling about the suslik, the teacher had to tell or read something
+interesting, to give the foundations of grammar, geography, sacred
+history, and of the four operations, he would at once be led to working
+over himself, to reading much, and to refreshing his knowledge.
+
+Thus, the old method was criticized, and a new one was taken from the
+Germans. This method is so foreign to our Russian un-pedantic mental
+attitude, its monstrosity is so glaring, that one would think that it
+could never have been grafted on Russia, and yet it is being applied,
+even though only in a small measure, and in some way gives at times
+better results than the old church method. This is due to the fact that,
+since it was taken in our country (just as it originated in Germany)
+from the criticism of the old method, the faults of the former method
+have really been rejected, though, in its extreme opposition to the old
+method, which, with the pedantry characteristic of the Germans, has been
+carried to the farthest extreme, there have appeared new faults, which
+are almost greater than the former ones.
+
+Formerly reading was taught in Russia by attaching to the consonants
+useless endings (_buki_--_uki_, _vyedi_--_yedi_), and in Germany _es em
+de ce_, and so forth, by attaching a vowel to each consonant, now in
+front, and now behind, and that caused some difficulty. Now they have
+fallen into the other extreme, by trying to pronounce the consonants
+without the vowels, which is an apparent impossibility. In Ushínski's
+grammar (Ushínski is with us the father of the sound method), and in all
+the manuals on sound, a consonant is defined thus: "That sound which
+cannot be pronounced by itself." And it is this sound which the pupil is
+taught before any other. When I remarked that it is impossible to
+pronounce _b_ alone, but that it always gives you _b[)u]_, I was told
+that was due to the inability of some persons, and that it took great
+skill to pronounce a consonant. And I have myself seen a teacher correct
+a pupil more than ten times, though he seemed quite satisfactorily to
+pronounce short _b_, until at last the pupil began to talk nonsense. And
+it is with these _b's_, that is, sounds that cannot be pronounced, as
+Ushínski defines them, or the pronunciation of which demands special
+skill, that the instruction of reading begins according to the pedantic
+German manuals.
+
+Formerly syllables were senselessly learned by heart (that was bad);
+diametrically opposed to this, the new fashion enjoins us not to divide
+up into syllables at all, which is absolutely impossible in a long word,
+and which in reality is never done. Every teacher, according to the
+sound method, feels the necessity of letting a pupil rest after a part
+of a word, having him pronounce it separately. Formerly they used to
+read the psalter, which, on account of its high and deep style, is
+incomprehensible to the children (which was bad); in contrast to this
+the children are made to read sentences without any contents whatever,
+to explain intelligible words, or to learn by heart what they cannot
+understand. In the old school the teacher did not speak to the pupil at
+all; now the teacher is ordered to talk to them on anything and
+everything, on what they know already, or what they do not need to know.
+In mathematics they formerly learned by heart the definition of
+operations, but now they no longer have anything to do with operations,
+for, according to Evtushévski, they reach numeration only in the third
+year, and it is assumed that for a whole year they are to be taught
+nothing but numbers up to ten. Formerly the pupils were made to work
+with large abstract numbers, without paying any attention to the other
+side of mathematics, to the disentanglement of the problem (the
+formation of an equation). Now they are taught solving puzzles, forming
+equations with small numbers before they know numeration and how to
+operate with numbers, though experience teaches any teacher that the
+difficulty of forming equations or the solution of puzzles are overcome
+by a general development in life, and not in school.
+
+It has been observed--quite correctly--that there is no greater aid for
+a pupil, when he is puzzled by a problem with large numbers, than to
+give him the same problem with smaller numbers. The pupil, who in life
+learns to grope through problems with small numbers, is conscious of the
+process of solving, and transfers this process to the problem with large
+numbers. Having observed this, the new pedagogues try to teach only the
+solving of puzzles with small numbers, that is, what cannot form the
+subject of instruction and is only the work of life.
+
+In the instruction of grammar the new school has again remained
+consistent with its point of departure,--with the criticism of the old
+and the adoption of the diametrically opposite method. Formerly they
+used to learn by heart the definition of the parts of speech, and from
+etymology passed over to syntax; now they not only begin with syntax,
+but even with logic, which the children are supposed to acquire.
+According to the grammar of Mr. Bunákov, which is an abbreviation of
+Perevlévski's grammar, even with the same choice of examples, the study
+of grammar begins with syntactical analysis, which is so difficult and,
+I will say, so uncertain for the Russian language, which does not fully
+comply with the classic forms of syntax. To sum up, the new school has
+removed certain disadvantages, of which the chief are the superfluous
+addition to the consonants and the memorizing of definitions, and in
+this it is superior to the old method, and in reading and writing
+sometimes gives better results; but, on the other hand, it has
+introduced new defects, which are that the contents of the reading are
+most senseless and that arithmetic is no longer taught as a study.
+
+In practice (I can refer in this to all the inspectors of schools, to
+all the members of school councils, who have visited the schools, and to
+all the teachers), in practice, in the majority of schools, where the
+German method is prescribed, this is what takes place, with rare
+exceptions. The children learn not by the sound system, but by the
+method of letter composition; instead of saying _b_, _v_, they say
+_b[)u]_, _v[)u]_, and break up the words into syllables. The object
+instruction is entirely lost sight of, arithmetic does not proceed at
+all, and the children have absolutely nothing to read. The teachers
+quite unconsciously depart from the theoretical demands and fall in with
+the needs of the masses. These practical results, which are repeated
+everywhere, should, it seems, prove the incorrectness of the method
+itself; but among the pedagogues, those that write manuals and prescribe
+rules, there exists such a complete ignorance of and aversion to the
+knowledge of the masses and their demands that the relation of reality
+to these methods does not in the least impair the progress of their
+business. It is hard to imagine the conception about the masses which
+exists in this world of the pedagogues, and from which result their
+method and all the consequent manner of instruction.
+
+Mr. Bunákov, in proof of how necessary the object instruction and
+development is for the children of a Russian school, with extraordinary
+naïveté adduces Pestalozzi's words: "Let any one who has lived among the
+common people," he says, "contradict my words that there is nothing more
+difficult than to impart any idea to these creatures. Nobody, indeed,
+gainsays that. The Swiss pastors affirm that when the people come to
+them to receive instruction they do not understand what they are told,
+and the pastors do not understand what the people say to them. City
+dwellers who settle in the country are amazed at the inability of the
+country population to express themselves; years pass before the country
+servants learn to express themselves to their masters." This relation of
+the common people in Switzerland to the cultured class is assumed as the
+foundation for just such a relation in Russia.
+
+I regard it as superfluous to expatiate on what is known to everybody,
+that in Germany the people speak a special language, called
+Plattdeutsch, and that in the German part of Switzerland this
+Plattdeutsch is especially far removed from the German language, whereas
+in Russia we frequently speak a bad language, while the masses always
+speak a good Russian, and that in Russia it will be more correct to put
+these words of Pestalozzi in the mouth of peasants speaking of the
+teachers. A peasant and his boy will say quite correctly that it is very
+hard to understand what those creatures, meaning the teachers, say. The
+ignorance about the masses is so complete in this world of the
+pedagogues that they boldly say that to the peasant school come little
+savages, and therefore boldly teach them what is down and what up, that
+a blackboard is placed on a stand, and that underneath it there is a
+groove. They do not know that if the pupils asked the teacher, there
+would turn up very many things which the teacher would not know; that,
+for example, if you rub off the paint from the board, nearly any boy
+will tell you of what kind of wood the board is made, whether of pine,
+linden, or aspen, which the teacher cannot tell; that a boy will always
+tell better than the teacher about a cat or a chicken, because he has
+observed them better than the teacher; that instead of the problem about
+the wagons the boy knows the problems about the crows, about the cattle,
+and about the geese. (About the crows: There flies a flock of crows, and
+there stand some oak-trees: if two crows alight on each, a crow will be
+lacking; if one on each, an oak-tree will be lacking. How many crows and
+how many oak-trees are there? About the cattle: For one hundred roubles
+buy one hundred animals,--calves at half a rouble, cows at three
+roubles, and oxen at ten roubles. How many oxen, cows, and calves are
+there?) The pedagogues of the German school do not even suspect that
+quickness of perception, that real vital development, that contempt for
+everything false, that ready ridicule of everything false, which are
+inherent in every Russian peasant boy,--and only on that account so
+boldly (as I myself have seen), under the fire of forty pairs of
+intelligent youthful eyes, perform their tricks at the risk of ridicule.
+For this reason, a real teacher, who knows the masses, no matter how
+sternly he is enjoined to teach the peasant children what is up and what
+down, and that two and three is five, not one real teacher, who knows
+the pupils with whom he has to deal, will be able to do that.
+
+Thus, the chief causes which have led us into such error are: (1) the
+ignorance about the masses; (2) the involuntarily seductive ease of
+teaching the children what they already know; (3) our proneness to
+imitate the Germans, and (4) the criticism of the old, without putting
+down a new, foundation. This last cause has led the pedagogues of the
+new school to this, that, in spite of the extreme external difference of
+the new method from the old, it is identical with it in its foundation,
+and, consequently, in the methods of instruction and in the results. In
+either method the essential principle consists in the teacher's firm and
+absolute knowledge of what to teach and how to teach, and this knowledge
+of his he does not draw from the demands of the masses and from
+experience, but simply decides theoretically once for all that he must
+teach this or that and in such a way, and so he teaches. The pedagogue
+of the ancient school, which for briefness' sake I shall call the church
+school, knows firmly and absolutely that he must teach from the
+prayer-book and the psalter by making the children learn by rote, and he
+admits no alterations in his methods; in the same manner the teacher of
+the new, the German, school knows firmly and absolutely that he must
+teach according to Bunákov and Evtushévski, begin with the words
+"whisker" and "wasp," ask what is up and what down, and tell about the
+favourite suslik, and he admits no alterations in his method. Both of
+them base their opinion on the firm conviction that they know the best
+methods. From the identity of the foundations arises also a further
+similarity. If you tell a teacher of the church reading that it takes
+the children a long time and causes them difficulty to acquire reading
+and writing, he will reply that the main interest is not in the reading
+and writing, but in the "divine instruction," by which he means the
+study of the church books. The same you will be told by a teacher of
+Russian reading according to the German method. He will tell you (all
+say and write it) that the main question is not the rapidity of the
+acquisition of the art of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but in the
+"development." Both place the aim of instruction in something
+independent of reading, writing, and arithmetic, that is, of science, in
+something else, which is absolutely necessary.
+
+This similarity continues down to the minutest details. In either method
+all instruction previous to the school, all knowledge acquired outside
+the school, is not taken into account,--all entering pupils are regarded
+as equally ignorant, and all are made to learn from the beginning. If a
+boy who knows the letters and the syllables _a_, _be_, enters a church
+school, he is made to change them to _buki-az_--_ba_. The same is true
+of the German school.
+
+Just so, in either school it happens that some children cannot learn the
+rudiments.
+
+Just so, with either method, the mechanical side of instruction
+predominates over the mental. In either school the pupils excel in a
+good handwriting and good enunciation with absolutely exact reading,
+that is, not as it is spoken, but as it is written. Just so, with either
+method, there always reigns an external order in the school, and the
+children are in constant fear and can be guided only with the greatest
+severity. Mr. Korolév has incidentally remarked that in instruction
+according to the sound method blows are not neglected. I have seen the
+same in the schools of the German method, and I assume that without
+blows it is impossible to get along even in the new German school,
+because, like the church school, it teaches without asking what the
+pupil finds interesting to know, but what, in the teacher's opinion,
+seems necessary, and so the school can be based only on compulsion.
+Compulsion is attained with children generally by means of blows. The
+church and the new German school, starting from the same principles and
+arriving at the same results, are absolutely identical. But, if it came
+to choosing one of the two, I should still prefer the church school. The
+defects are the same, but on the side of the church school is the custom
+of a thousand years and the authority of the church, which is so
+powerful with the masses.
+
+Having finished the analysis and criticism of the German school, I
+consider it necessary,--in view of what I have said, namely, that
+criticism is fruitful only when, condemning, it points out how that
+which is bad ought to be,--I consider it necessary to speak of those
+foundations of instruction which I regard as legitimate, and on which I
+rear my method of instruction.
+
+In order to elucidate in what I find these unquestionable foundations of
+every pedagogical activity, I shall be compelled to repeat myself, that
+is, to repeat what I said fifteen years ago in the pedagogical
+periodical, _Yásnaya Polyána_, which I then published. This repetition
+will not be tedious for the pedagogues of the new school, because what I
+then wrote is not exactly forgotten, but has never been considered by
+the pedagogues,--and yet I still think that just what was expressed by
+me at that time might have placed pedagogy, as a theory, on a firm
+foundation. Fifteen years ago, when I took up the matter of popular
+education without any preconceived theories or views on the subject,
+with the one desire to advance the matter in a direct and
+straightforward manner, I, as a teacher in my school, was at once
+confronted with two questions: (1) What must I teach? and (2) How must
+I teach it?
+
+At that time, even as at the present, there existed the greatest
+diversity of opinion in the answers to these questions.
+
+I know that some pedagogues, who are locked up in their narrow
+theoretical world, think that there is no other light than what peeps
+through the windows, and that there is no longer any diversity of
+opinions.
+
+I ask those who think so to observe that it only seems so to them, just
+as it seems so to the circles that are opposed to them. In the whole
+mass of people who are interested in education, there exists, as it has
+existed before, the greatest diversity of opinions. Formerly, just as
+now, some, in reply to the question of what ought to be taught, said
+that outside of the rudiments the most useful information for a primary
+school is obtained from the natural sciences; others, even as now, that
+that was not necessary, and was even injurious; even as now, some
+proposed history, or geography, while others denied their necessity;
+some proposed the Church-Slavic language and grammar, and religion,
+while others found that, too, superfluous, and ascribed a prime
+importance to "development." On the question of how to teach there has
+always been a still greater diversity of answers. The most diversified
+methods of instructing in reading and arithmetic have been proposed.
+
+In the bookstalls there were sold, side by side, the self-teachers
+according to the _buki-az--ba_, Bunákov's lessons, Zolotóv's charts,
+Madame Daragán's alphabets, and all had their advocates. When I
+encountered these questions and found no answer for them in Russian
+literature, I turned to the literature of Europe. After having read what
+had been written on the subject and having made the personal
+acquaintance of the so-called best representatives of the pedagogical
+science in Europe, I not only failed to find anywhere an answer to the
+question I was interested in, but I convinced myself that this question
+does not even exist for pedagogy, as a science; that every pedagogue of
+any given school firmly believed that the methods which he used were the
+best, because they were based on absolute truth, and that it would be
+useless for him to look at them with a critical eye.
+
+However, because, as I said, I took up the matter of popular education
+without any preconceived notions, or because I took up the matter
+without prescribing laws from a distance about how I ought to teach, but
+became a schoolmaster in a village popular school in the backwoods,--I
+could not reject the idea that there must of necessity exist a criterion
+by means of which the question could be solved: What to teach and how to
+teach it. Should I teach the psalter by heart, or the classification of
+the organisms? Should I teach according to the sound alphabet,
+translated from the German, or from the prayer-book? In the solution of
+this question I was aided by a certain pedagogical tact, with which I am
+gifted, and especially by that close and impassioned relation in which I
+stood to the matter.
+
+When I entered at once into the closest direct relations with those
+forty tiny peasants that formed my school (I call them tiny peasants
+because I found in them the same characteristics of perspicacity, the
+same immense store of information from practical life, of jocularity,
+simplicity, and loathing for everything false, which distinguish the
+Russian peasant), when I saw that susceptibility, that readiness to
+acquire the information which they needed, I felt at once that the
+antiquated church method of instruction had outlived its usefulness and
+was not good for them. I began to experiment on other proposed methods
+of instruction; but, because compulsion in education, both by my
+conviction and by my character, are repulsive to me, I did not exercise
+any pressure, and, the moment I noticed that something was not readily
+received, I did not compel them, and looked for something else. From
+these experiments it appeared to me and to those teachers who instructed
+with me at Yásnaya Polyána and in other schools on the same principle of
+freedom, that nearly everything which in the pedagogical world was
+written about schools was separated by an immeasurable abyss from
+reality, and that many of the proposed methods, such as object-lessons,
+the natural sciences, the sound method, and others, called forth
+contempt and ridicule, and were not accepted by the pupils. We began to
+look for those contents and those methods which were readily taken up by
+the pupils, and struck that which forms my method of instruction.
+
+But this method stood in a line with all other methods, and the question
+of why it was better than the rest remained as unsolved as before.
+Consequently, the question of what the criterion was as to what to teach
+and how to teach received an even greater meaning for me; only by
+solving it could I be convinced that what I taught was neither injurious
+nor useless. This question both then and now has appeared to me as a
+corner-stone of the whole pedagogy, and to the solution of this question
+I devoted the publication of the pedagogical periodical _Yásnaya
+Polyána_. In several articles (I do not renounce anything I then said) I
+tried to put the question in all its significance and to solve it as
+much as I could. At that time I found no sympathy in all the pedagogical
+literature, not even any contradiction, but the most complete
+indifference to the question which I put. There were some attacks on
+certain details and trifles, but the question itself evidently did not
+interest any one. I was young then, and that indifference grieved me. I
+did not understand that with my question, "How do you know what to teach
+and how to teach?" I was like a man who, let us say, in a gathering of
+Turkish pashas discussing the question in what manner they may collect
+the greatest revenue from the people, should propose to them the
+following: "Gentlemen, in order to know how much revenue to collect from
+each, we must first analyze the question on what your right to exact
+that revenue is based." Obviously all the pashas would continue their
+discussion of the measures of extortion, and would reply only with
+silence to his irrelevant question. But the question cannot be
+circumvented. Fifteen years ago no attention was paid to it, and the
+pedagogues of every school, convinced that everybody else was talking to
+the wind and that they were right, most calmly prescribed their laws,
+basing their principles on philosophies of a very doubtful character,
+which they used as a substratum for their wee little theories.
+
+And yet, this question is not quite so difficult if we only renounce
+completely all preconceived notions. I have tried to elucidate and solve
+this question, and, without repeating those proofs, which he who wishes
+may read in the article, I will enunciate the results to which I was
+led. "The only criterion of pedagogy is freedom, the only
+method--experience." After fifteen years I have not changed my opinion
+one hair's breadth; but I consider it necessary to define with greater
+precision what I understand by these words, not only in respect to
+education in general, but also in respect to the particular question of
+popular education in a primary school. One hundred years ago the
+question what to teach and how to teach could have had no place either
+in Europe or with us. Education was inseparably connected with religion.
+To learn reading meant to learn Holy Writ. In the Mohammedan countries
+this relation of the rudiments and religion still persists in its full
+force. To learn means to learn the Koran, and, therefore, Arabic. But
+the moment religion ceased to be the criterion of what ought to be
+taught, and the school became independent of it, this question had to
+arise. But it did not arise because the school was not suddenly freed
+from its dependence on religion, but by imperceptible steps. Now it is
+accepted by everybody that religion cannot serve as the contents, nor as
+an indication of the method of education, and that education has
+different demands for its basis. In what do these demands consist? On
+what are they based? In order that these principles should be
+incontrovertible, it is necessary either that they be proved
+philosophically, incontrovertibly, or that, at least, all educated
+people should be agreed on them. But is it so? There can be no doubt
+whatsoever about this, that in philosophy have not been found those
+principles on which could be built up the decision of what ought to be
+taught, the more so since the matter itself is not an abstract, but a
+practical affair, which depends on an endless number of vital
+conditions. Still less can these principles be discovered in the common
+consent of all men who busy themselves with this matter, in the consent
+which we may take as a practical foundation, as an expression of the
+universal common sense. Not only in matters of popular, but even of
+higher education do we see a complete diversity of opinions among the
+best representatives of education, as, for example, in the question of
+classicism and realism. And yet, in spite of the absence of any
+foundations, we see education proceeding on its own path and on the
+whole being guided by only one principle, namely by freedom. There exist
+side by side the classical and the real school, each of which is
+prepared to regard itself as the only natural school, and both satisfy
+some want, for parents send their children to either.
+
+In the popular school the right to determine what the children shall
+learn, no matter from what standpoint we may consider this question,
+belongs just as much to the masses, that is, either to the pupils
+themselves, or to the parents who send the children to school, and so
+the answer to the question what the children are to be taught in a
+popular school can be got only from the masses. But, perhaps, we shall
+say that we, as highly cultured people, must not submit to the demands
+of the rude masses and that we must teach the masses what to wish. Thus
+many think, but to that I can give this one answer: give us a firm,
+incontrovertible foundation why this or that is chosen by you, show me a
+society in which the two diametrically opposed views on education do not
+exist among the highly cultured people; where it is not eternally
+repeated that if education falls into the hands of the clergy, the
+masses are educated in one sense, and if education falls into the hands
+of the progressists, the people are educated in another sense,--show me
+a state of society where that does not exist, and I will agree with you.
+So long as that does not exist, there is no criterion except the freedom
+of the learner, where, in matters of the popular school, the place of
+the learning children is taken by their parents, that is, by the needs
+of the masses.
+
+These needs are not only definite, quite clear, and everywhere the same
+throughout Russia, but also so intelligent and broad that they include
+all the most diversified demands of the people who are debating what the
+masses ought to be taught. These needs are: the knowledge of Russian and
+Church-Slavic reading, and calculation. The masses everywhere and always
+regard the natural sciences as useless trifles. Their programme is
+remarkable not only by its unanimity and firm definiteness, but, in my
+opinion, also by the breadth of its demands and the correctness of its
+view. The masses admit two spheres of knowledge, the most exact and the
+least subject to vacillation from a diversity of views,--the languages
+and mathematics; everything else they regard as trifles. I think that
+the masses are quite correct,--in the first place, because in this
+knowledge there can be no half information, no falseness, which they
+cannot bear, and, in the second, because the sphere of those two kinds
+of knowledge is immense. Russian and Church-Slavic grammar and
+calculation, that is, the knowledge of one dead and one living language,
+with their etymological and syntactical forms and their literatures, and
+arithmetic, that is, the foundation of all mathematics, form their
+programme of knowledge, which, unfortunately, but the rarest of the
+cultured class possess. In the third place, the masses are right,
+because by this programme they will be taught in the primary school only
+what will open to them the more advanced paths of knowledge, for it is
+evident that the thorough knowledge of two languages and their forms,
+and, in addition to them, of arithmetic, completely opens the paths to
+an independent acquisition of all other knowledge. The masses, as though
+feeling the false relation to them, when they are offered incoherent
+scraps of all kinds of information, repel that lie from themselves, and
+say: "I need know but this much,--the church language and my own and the
+laws of the numbers, but that other knowledge I will take myself if I
+want it."
+
+Thus, if we admit freedom as the criterion of what is to be taught, the
+programme of the popular schools is clearly and firmly defined, until
+the time when the masses shall express some new demands. Church-Slavic
+and Russian and arithmetic to their highest possible stages, and nothing
+else but that. That is the determination of the limits of the programme
+of the popular school, which, however, does not presume that all three
+subjects be introduced systematically. With such a programme the
+attainment of symmetrical results in all three subjects would naturally
+be desirable; but it cannot be said that the predominance of one subject
+over another would be injurious. The problem consists only in keeping
+within the limits of the programme. It may happen that from the demands
+of the parents, and especially from the knowledge of the teacher, this
+or that subject will be more prominent,--with a clerical person the
+Church-Slavic language, with a teacher from a county school--either
+Russian or arithmetic; in all these cases the demands of the masses will
+be satisfied, and the instruction will not depart from its fundamental
+criterion.
+
+The second part of the question, how to teach, that is, how to discover
+which method is the best, has remained just as unsolved.
+
+Just as in the first part of the question of what to teach, the
+assumption that on the basis of reflections it is possible to build a
+programme of instruction leads to contradictory schools, so it is also
+with the question as to how to teach. Let us take the very first
+stage of the teaching of reading. One asserts that it is easier to
+teach so from cards; another--according to the _b_, _v_ system; a
+third--according to Korf; a fourth--according to the _be_, _ve_, _ge_
+system, and so forth. It is said that the nuns teach reading in six
+weeks by the _buki-az_--_ba_ system. And every teacher, convinced of the
+superiority of his method, proves this superiority either by the fact
+that he teaches with it faster than others, or by reflections of the
+character which Mr. Bunákov and the German pedagogues adduce. At the
+present time, when there are thousands of examples, we ought to know
+precisely by what to be guided in our choice. Neither theory, nor
+reflections, nor even the results of instruction can show this
+completely.
+
+Education and instruction are generally considered in the abstract, that
+is, the question is discussed how in the best and easiest manner to
+produce a certain act of instruction on a certain subject (whether it be
+one child or a mass of children). This view is quite faulty. All
+education and instruction can be viewed only as a certain relation of
+two persons or of two groups of persons having for their aim education
+or instruction. This definition, more general than all the other
+definitions, has special reference to popular education, where the
+question is the education of an immense number of persons, and where
+there can be no question about an ideal education. In general, with the
+popular education we cannot put the question, "How is the best education
+to be given?" just as with the question of the nutrition of the masses
+we cannot ask how the most nutritious and best loaf is to be baked. The
+question has to be put like this: "How is the best relation to be
+established between given people who want to learn and others who want
+to teach?" or, "How is the best bread to be made from given bolted
+flour?" Consequently the question of how to teach and what is the best
+method is a question of what will be the best relation between teacher
+and pupil.
+
+Nobody, I suppose, will deny that the best relation between teacher and
+pupil is that of naturalness, and that the contrary relation is that of
+compulsion. If so, the measure of all methods is to be found in the
+greater or lesser naturalness of relations and, therefore, in the lesser
+or greater compulsion in instruction. The less the children are
+compelled to learn, the better is the method; the more--the worse. I am
+glad that I do not have to prove this evident truth. Everybody is agreed
+that just as in hygiene the use of any food, medicine, exercise, that
+provokes loathing or pain, cannot be useful, so also in instruction can
+there be no necessity of compelling children to learn anything that is
+tiresome and repulsive to them, and that, if necessity demands that
+children be compelled, it only proves the imperfection of the method.
+Any one who has taught children has no doubt observed that the less the
+teacher himself knows the subject which he teaches and the less he likes
+it, the more will he have to have recourse to severity and compulsion;
+on the contrary, the more the teacher knows and loves his subject, the
+more natural and easy will his instruction be. With the idea that for
+successful instruction not compulsion is wanted, but the rousing of the
+pupil's interest, all the pedagogues of the school which is opposed to
+me agree. The only difference between us is that the conception that the
+teaching must rouse the child's interest is with them lost in a mass of
+other conflicting notions about "development," of the value of which
+they are convinced and in which they exercise compulsion; whereas I
+consider the rousing of the pupil's interest, the greatest possible
+ease, and, therefore, the non-compulsion and naturalness of instruction
+as the fundamental and only measure of good and bad instruction.
+
+Every progress of pedagogy, if we attentively consider the history of
+this matter, consists in an ever increasing approximation toward
+naturalness of relations between teacher and pupil, in a lessened
+compulsion, and in a greater ease of instruction.
+
+The objection was formerly made and, I know, is made even now that it is
+hard to find the limit of freedom which shall be permitted in school. To
+this I will reply that this limit is naturally determined by the
+teacher, his knowledge, his ability to manage the school; that this
+freedom cannot be prescribed; the measure of this freedom is only the
+result of the greater or lesser knowledge and talent of the teacher.
+This freedom is not a rule, but serves as a check in comparing schools
+between themselves, and as a check in comparing new methods which are
+introduced into the school curriculum. The school in which there is less
+compulsion is better than the one in which there is more. The method
+which at its introduction into the school does not demand an increase of
+discipline is good; but the one which demands greater severity is
+certainly bad. Take, for example, a more or less free school, such as
+mine was, and try to start a conversation in it about the table and the
+ceiling, or to transpose cubes,--you will see what it hubbub will arise
+in the school and how you will feel the necessity of restoring order by
+means of severity; try to tell them an interesting story, or to give
+them problems, or make one write on the board and let the others correct
+his mistakes, and allow them to leave the benches, and you will find
+them all occupied and there will be no naughtiness, and you will not
+have to increase your severity,--and you may safely say that the method
+is good.
+
+In my pedagogical articles I have given theoretical reasons why I find
+that only the freedom of choice on the side of the learners as to what
+they are to be taught and how can form a foundation of any instruction;
+in practice I have always applied these rules in the schools under my
+guidance, at first on a large scale, and later in narrower limits, and
+the results have always been very good, both for the teachers and the
+pupils, as also for the evolution of new methods,--and this I assert
+boldly, for hundreds of visitors have come to the Yásnaya Polyána school
+and know all about it.
+
+The consequences of such a relation to the pupils has been for the
+teachers that they did not consider that method best which they knew,
+but tried to discover other methods, became acquainted with other
+teachers for the purpose of learning their methods, tested new methods,
+and, above all, were learning something all the time. A teacher never
+permitted himself to think that in cases of failure it was the pupils'
+fault,--their laziness, playfulness, dulness, deafness, stammering,--but
+was firmly convinced that he alone was to blame for it, and for every
+failure of a pupil or of all the pupils he tried to find a remedy. For
+the pupils the result was that they learned readily, always begged the
+teachers to give them evening classes in the winter, and were absolutely
+free in the school,--which, in my conviction and experience, is the
+chief condition for successful progress in instruction. Between teachers
+and pupils there were always established friendly, natural relations,
+with which alone it is possible for the teacher to know his pupils well.
+If, from a first, external impression of the school, we were to
+determine the difference between the church, the German, and my own
+school, it would be this: in a church school you hear a peculiar,
+unnatural, monotonous shouting of all the pupils and now and then the
+stern cries of the teacher; in the German school you hear only the
+teacher's voice and now and then the timid voices of the pupils; in mine
+you hear the loud voices of the teachers and the pupils, almost
+simultaneously.
+
+As for the methods of instruction the consequences were that not one
+method of instruction was adopted or rejected because it was liked or
+not, but only because it was accepted or not by the pupils without
+compulsion. But in addition to the good results which were always
+obtained without fail from the application of my method by myself and by
+everybody else (more than twenty teachers), who taught according to my
+method ("without fail" I say for the reason that not once did we have a
+pupil who did not learn the rudiments), besides these results, the
+application of the principles of which I have spoken had the effect that
+during these fifteen years all the various modifications, to which my
+method was subjected, not only did not remove it from the needs of the
+masses, but, on the contrary, brought it nearer and nearer to them. The
+masses, at least in our parts, know the method itself and discuss it,
+and prefer it to the church method, which I cannot say of the sound
+method. In the schools which are conducted according to my method the
+teacher cannot remain motionless in his knowledge, such as he is and
+must be with the method of sounds. If a teacher according to the new
+German fashion wants to go ahead and perfect himself, he has to follow
+the pedagogical literature, that is, to read all those new inventions
+about the conversations about the suslik and about the transposition of
+the squares. I do not think that that can promote his personal
+education. On the contrary, in my school, where the subjects of
+instruction, language and mathematics, demand positive knowledge, every
+teacher, in advancing his pupils, feels the need of learning himself,
+which was constantly the case with all the teachers I had.
+
+Besides, the methods of instruction themselves, which are not settled
+once for all, but always strive to be as easy and as simple as possible,
+are modified and improved from the indications which the teacher
+discovers in the relations of the learners to his instruction.
+
+The very opposite to this I see in what, unfortunately, takes place in
+the schools of the German pattern, which of late have been introduced in
+our country in an artificial manner. The failure to recognize that
+before deciding what to teach and how to teach we must solve the
+question how we can find that out has led the pedagogues to a complete
+disagreement with reality, and the abyss which fifteen years ago was
+felt to exist between theory and practice has now reached the farthest
+limits. Now that the masses are on all sides begging for education,
+while pedagogy has more than ever passed to personal fancies, this
+discord has reached incredible proportions.
+
+This discord between the demands of pedagogy and reality has of late
+found its peculiarly striking expression not only in the matter of
+instruction itself, but also in another very important side of the
+school, namely in its administration. In order to show in what condition
+this matter has been and might be, I shall speak of Krapívensk County of
+the Government of Túla, in which I live, which I know, and which, from
+its position, forms the type of the majority of counties of central
+Russia.
+
+In 1862 fourteen schools were opened in a district of ten thousand
+souls, when I was rural judge; besides, there existed about ten schools
+in the district among the clericals and in the manors among the
+servants. In the three remaining districts of the county there were
+fifteen large and thirty small schools among the clericals and manorial
+servants. Without saying anything about the number of the learners, of
+which, I assume, there were in general not less than now, nor about the
+instruction itself, which was partly bad and partly good, but on the
+whole not worse than at present, I will tell how and on what that
+business was based.
+
+All schools were then, with few exceptions, based on a free agreement of
+the teacher with the parents of the pupils, or with the whole
+partnership of the peasants paying a lump sum for everybody. Such a
+relation between the parents or Communes and the teachers is even now
+met with in some exceedingly rare places of our county and of the
+Government in general. Everybody will agree that, leaving aside the
+question of the quality of instruction, such a relation of the teacher
+to the parents and peasants is most just, natural, and desirable. But,
+with the introduction of the law of 1864, this relation was abolished
+and is being abolished more and more. Everybody who knows the matter as
+it is will observe that with the abolition of this relation the people
+take less and less part in the matter of their education, which is only
+natural. In some County Councils the school tax of the peasants is even
+turned into the County Council, and the salary, appointment of teachers,
+location of schools,--all that is done quite independently of those for
+whom it is intended (in theory the peasants, no doubt, are members of
+the County Council, but in practice they have through this mediation no
+influence on their own schools). Nobody will, I suppose, assert that
+that is just, but some will say: "The illiterate peasants cannot judge
+what is good and what bad, and we must build for them as well as we
+can." But how do we know? Do we know firmly, are we all of one opinion,
+how to build schools? And does it not frequently turn out bad, for we
+have built much worse than they have?
+
+Thus, in relation to the administrative side of the schools I have again
+to put a third question, on the same basis of freedom: Why do we know
+how best to arrange a school? To this question German pedagogy gives an
+answer which is quite consistent with its whole system. It knows what
+the best school is, it has formed a clear, definite ideal, down to the
+minutest details, the benches, the hours of instruction, and so forth,
+and gives an answer: the school has to be such and such, according to
+this pattern,--this alone is good and every other school is injurious. I
+know that, although the desire of Henry IV. to give each Frenchman soup
+and a chicken was unrealizable, it was impossible to say that the desire
+was false. But the matter assumes an entirely different aspect when the
+soup is of a very questionable quality and is not a chicken soup, but a
+worthless broth. And yet the so-called science of pedagogy is in this
+matter indissolubly connected with power; both in Germany and with us
+there are prescribed certain ideal one-class, two-class schools, and so
+forth; and the pedagogical and the administrative powers do not wish to
+know the fact that the masses would like to attend to their own
+education. Let us see how such a view of popular education has been
+reflected in practice on the question of education.
+
+Beginning with the year 1862 the idea that education was necessary has
+more and more spread among the masses: on all sides schools were
+established by church servants, hired teachers, and the Communes.
+Whether good or bad, these schools were spontaneous and grew out
+directly from the needs of the masses; with the introduction of the law
+of 1864 this tendency was increased, and in 1870 there were, according
+to the reports, about sixty schools in Krapívensk County. Since then
+officials of the ministry and members of the County Council have begun
+to meddle more and more with school matters, and in Krapívensk County
+forty schools have been closed and schools of a lower order have been
+prohibited from being opened. I know that those who closed those schools
+affirm that these schools existed only nominally and were very bad; but
+I cannot believe it, because I know well-instructed pupils from three
+villages, Trósna, Lamíntsovo, and Yásnaya Polyána, where schools were
+closed. I also know—-and this will seem incredible to many—-what is
+meant by prohibiting the opening of schools. It means that, on the basis
+of a circular of the ministry of public instruction, which spoke of the
+prohibition of unreliable teachers (this, no doubt, had reference to the
+Nihilists), the school council transferred this prohibition to the minor
+schools, taught by sextons, soldiers, and so forth, which the peasants
+themselves had opened, and which, no doubt, are not at all comprised in
+the circular. But, instead, there exist twenty schools with teachers,
+who are supposed to be good because they receive a salary of two hundred
+roubles in silver, and the County Council has distributed Ushínski's
+text-books, and these schools are called one-class schools, because they
+teach in them according to a programme, and the whole year around, that
+is, also in summer, with the exception of July and August.
+
+Leaving aside the question of the quality of the former schools, we
+shall now take a glance at their administrative side, and we will
+compare, from this side, what was before, with what is now. In the
+administrative, external side of the school there are five main
+subjects, which are so closely connected with the school business itself
+that on their good or bad structure depend to a great extent the success
+and dissemination of popular education. These five subjects are: (1) the
+school building, (2) the schedule of instruction, (3) the distribution
+of the schools according to localities, (4) the choice of the teacher,
+and--what is most important--(5) the material means, the remuneration of
+the teachers.
+
+In regard to the school building the masses rarely have any difficulty,
+when they start a school for themselves, and if the Commune is rich and
+there are any communal buildings, such as a storehouse or a deserted
+inn, the Commune fixes it up; if there is none, it buys a building, at
+times even from a landed proprietor, or it builds one of its own. If the
+Commune is not well-to-do and is small, it hires quarters from a
+peasant, or establishes a rotation, and the teacher passes from hut to
+hut. If the Commune, as it most generally does, selects a teacher from
+its own midst, a manorial servant, a soldier, or a church servant, the
+school is located at the house of that person, and the Commune looks
+only after the heating. In any case, I have never heard that the
+question of the location of the school ever troubled a Commune, or that
+half the sum set aside for instruction should be lost, as is done by
+school councils, on the buildings, nay, not even one-sixth or one-tenth
+of the whole sum. The peasant Communes have arranged it one way or
+another, but the question of the school building has never been regarded
+as troublesome. Only under the influence of the higher authorities do
+there occur cases where the Communes build brick buildings with iron
+roofs. The peasants assume that the school is not in the structure, but
+in the teacher, and that the school is not a permanent institution, but
+that as soon as the parents have acquired knowledge, the next generation
+will get the rudiments without a teacher. But the County Council
+department of the ministry always assumes--since for it the whole
+problem consists in inspecting and classifying--that the chief
+foundation of the school is the structure and that the school is a
+permanent establishment, and so, as far as I know, now spends about
+one-half of its money on buildings, and inscribes empty school buildings
+in the list of the schools of the third order. In the Krapívensk County
+Council seven hundred roubles out of two thousand roubles are spent on
+buildings. The ministerial department cannot admit that the teacher
+(that educated pedagogue who is assumed for the masses) would lower
+himself to such an extent as to be willing to go, like a tailor, from
+hut to hut, or to teach in a smoky house. But the masses assume nothing
+and only know that for their money they can hire whom they please, and
+that, if they, the hiring peasants, live in smoky huts, the hired
+teacher has no reason to turn up his nose at them.
+
+In regard to the second question, about the division of the school time,
+the masses have always and everywhere invariably expressed one demand,
+and that is that the instruction shall be carried on in the winter only.
+
+Everywhere the parents quit sending their children in the spring, and
+those children who are left in the school, from one-fourth to one-fifth
+of the whole number, are the little tots or the children of rich
+parents, and they attend school unwillingly. When the masses hire a
+teacher themselves, they always hire him by the month and only for the
+winter. The ministerial department assumes that, just as in the
+institutions of learning there are two months of vacation, so it ought
+also to be in a one-class country school. From the standpoint of the
+ministerial department that is quite reasonable: the children will not
+forget their instruction, the teacher is provided for during the whole
+year, and the inspectors find it more comfortable to travel in the
+summer; but the masses know nothing about all that, and their common
+sense tells them that in winter the children sleep for ten hours,
+consequently their minds are fresh; that in winter there are no plays
+and no work for the children, and that if they study in winter as long
+as possible, taking in even the evenings, for which a lamp costing one
+rouble fifty kopeks is needed and kerosene costing as much, there will
+be enough instruction. Besides, in the summer every boy is of use to
+the peasant, and in summer proceeds the life instruction, which is more
+important than school learning. The masses say that there is no reason
+why they should pay the teacher during the summer. "Rather will we
+increase his pay for the winter months, and that will please him better.
+We prefer to hire a teacher at twenty-five roubles a month for seven
+months, than at twelve roubles a month for the whole year. For the
+summer the teacher will hire himself out elsewhere."
+
+As to the third question, the distribution of the schools according to
+localities, the arrangements of the masses most markedly differ from
+those of the school council. In the first place, the distribution of the
+schools, that is, whether there shall be more or less of them for a
+certain locality, always depends on the character of the whole
+population (when the masses themselves attend to it). Wherever the
+masses are more industrial and work out, where they are nearer to the
+cities, where they need the rudiments,--there there are more schools;
+where the locality is more removed and agricultural, there there are
+fewer of them. In the second place, when the masses themselves attend to
+the matter, they distribute the schools in such a way as to give all the
+parents a chance to make use of the schools in return for their money,
+that is, to send their children to school. The peasants of small, remote
+villages of from thirty to forty souls, where half the population will
+be found, prefer to have a cheap teacher in their own village, than an
+expensive one in the centre of the township, whither their children
+cannot walk or be driven. By this distribution of the schools, the
+schools themselves, as arranged by the peasants, depart, it is true,
+from the required pattern of the school, but, instead, acquire the most
+diversified forms, everywhere adapting themselves to local conditions.
+Here a clerical person from a neighbouring village teaches eight boys at
+his house, receiving fifty kopeks a month from each. Here a small
+village hires a soldier for eight roubles for the winter, and he goes
+from house to house. Here a rich innkeeper hires a teacher for his
+children for five roubles and board, and the neighbouring peasants join
+him, by adding two roubles for each of their boys. There a large village
+or a compact township levies fifteen kopeks from each of the twelve
+hundred souls and hires a teacher for 180 roubles for the winter. There
+the priest teaches, receiving as a remuneration either money, or labour,
+or both. The chief difference in this respect between the view of the
+peasants and that of the County Council is this: the peasants, according
+to the more or less favourable local conditions, introduce schools of a
+better or worse quality, but always in such a way that there is not a
+single locality where some kind of instruction is not offered; while
+with the arrangement of the County Council a large half of the
+population is left outside every possibility of partaking of that
+education even in the distant future.
+
+In matters of the petty villages, forming one-half of the population,
+the ministerial department acts most decisively. It says: "We provide
+schools where there is a building and where the peasants of the township
+have collected enough money to support a teacher at two hundred roubles.
+We will contribute from the County Council what is wanting, and the
+school is entered on the lists." The villages that are removed from the
+school may send their children there, if they so wish. Of course, the
+peasants do not take their children there, because it is too far, and
+yet they pay. Thus, in the Yásenets township all pay for three schools,
+but only 450 souls in three villages make use of the school, though
+there are in all three thousand souls; thus, only one-seventh of the
+population makes use of the school, though all pay for it. In the
+Chermóshen township there are nine hundred souls and there is a school
+there, but only thirty pupils attend it, because all the villages of
+that township are scattered. To nine hundred souls there ought to be
+four hundred pupils. And yet, both in the Yásenets and the Chermóshen
+townships the question of the distribution of schools is regarded as
+satisfactorily solved.
+
+In matters of the choice of a teacher, the masses are again guided by
+quite different views from the County Council. In choosing a teacher,
+the masses look upon him in their own way, and judge him accordingly. If
+the teacher has been in the neighbourhood, and the masses know what the
+results of his teaching are, they value him according to these results
+as a good or as a bad teacher; but, in addition to the scholastic
+qualities, the masses demand that the teacher shall be a man who stands
+in close relations to the peasant, able to understand his life and to
+speak Russian, and so they will always prefer a country to a city
+teacher. In doing so, the masses have no bias and no antipathy toward
+any class in particular: he may be a gentleman, official, burgher,
+soldier, sexton, priest,--that makes no difference so long as he is a
+simple man and a Russian. For this reason the peasants have no cause for
+excluding clerical persons, as the County Councils do. The County
+Councils select their teachers from among strangers, getting them from
+the cities, while the masses look for them among themselves. But the
+chief difference in this respect between the view of the Communes and
+that of the County Council consists in this: the County Council has only
+one type,--the teacher who has attended pedagogical courses, who has
+finished a course in a seminary or school, at two hundred roubles; but
+with the masses, who do not exclude this teacher and appreciate him, if
+he is good, there are gradations of all kinds of teachers. Besides, with
+the majority of school councils there are definite favourite types of
+teachers, for the most part such as are foreign to the masses and
+antagonistic to them, and other types which the school councils
+dislike. Thus, evidently, the favourite type of many counties of the
+Government of Túla are lady teachers; the disliked type are the clerical
+persons, and in the whole of the Túla and Krapívensk counties there is
+not one school with a teacher from the clergy, which is quite remarkable
+from an administrative point of view. In Krapívensk County there are
+fifty parishes. The clerical persons are the cheapest of teachers,
+because they are permanently settled and for the most part can teach in
+their own houses with the aid of their wives and daughters,--and these
+are, it seems, purposely avoided, as though they were very harmful
+people.
+
+In matters of the remuneration of the teachers, the difference between
+the view of the masses and that of the County Council has almost all
+been expressed in the preceding pages. It consists in this: (1) the
+masses choose a teacher according to their means, and they admit and
+know from experience that there are teachers at all prices, from two
+puds of flour a month to thirty roubles a month; (2) teachers are to be
+remunerated for the winter months, for those during which there can be
+some instruction; (3) the masses, in the housing of the school as also
+in matters of the remuneration of the teachers, always know how to find
+a cheap way: they give flour, hay, the use of carts, eggs, and all kinds
+of trifles, which are imperceptible to the world at large, but which
+improve the teacher's condition; (4) above all, a teacher is paid, or is
+remunerated in addition to the payment, by the parents of the pupils,
+who pay by the month, or by the whole Commune which enjoys the
+advantages of the school, and not by the administration that has no
+direct interest in the matter.
+
+The ministerial department cannot act differently in this respect. The
+norm of the salary for a model teacher is given, consequently these
+means have to be got together in some way. For example: a Commune
+intends to open a school,--the township gives it a certain number of
+kopeks per soul. The County Council calculates how much to add. If there
+are no demands made by other schools, it gives more, sometimes twice as
+much as the Commune has given; at times, when all the money has been
+distributed, it gives less, or entirely refuses to give any. Thus, there
+is in Krapívensk County a Commune which gives ninety roubles, and the
+County Council adds to that three hundred roubles for a school with an
+assistant; and there is another Commune which gives 250 roubles, and the
+County Council adds another fifty roubles; and a third Commune which
+offers fifty-six roubles, and the County Council refuses to add anything
+or to open the school, because that money is insufficient for a normal
+school, and all the money has been distributed.
+
+Thus, the chief distinctions between the administrative view of the
+masses and that of the County Council are the following: (1) the County
+Council pays great attention to the housing and spends large sums upon
+it, while the masses obviate this difficulty by domestic, economic
+means, and look upon the primary schools as temporary, passing
+institutions; (2) the ministerial department demands that instruction be
+carried on during the whole year, with the exception of July and August,
+and nowhere introduces evening classes, while the masses demand that
+instruction be carried on only in the winter and are fond of evening
+classes; (3) the ministerial department has a definite type of teachers,
+without which it does not recognize the school, and has a loathing for
+clerical persons and, in general, for local instructors; the masses
+recognize no norm and choose their teachers preferably from local
+inhabitants; (4) the ministerial department distributes the schools by
+accident, that is, it is guided only by the desire of forming a normal
+school, and has no care for that greater half of the population which
+under such a distribution is left outside the school education; the
+masses not only recognize no definite external form of the school, but
+in the greatest variety of ways get teachers with all kinds of means,
+arranging worse and cheaper schools with small means and good and
+expensive schools with greater means, and turn their attention to
+furnishing all localities with instruction in return for their money;
+(5) the ministerial department determines one measure of remuneration,
+which is sufficiently high, and arbitrarily increases the amount from
+the County Council; the masses demand the greatest possible economy and
+distribute the remuneration in such a way that those whose children are
+taught pay directly.
+
+It seems as though it would be superfluous to expatiate on how clearly
+the common sense of the masses is expressed in these demands, in
+contradistinction to that artificial structure, in which, at its very
+birth, they are trying to imprison the business of popular education.
+Even besides this, the feeling of justice is involuntarily provoked
+against such an order of things. See what is taking place. The masses
+have felt the necessity of education, and have begun to work in the
+direction of attaining their end. In addition to all the taxes which
+they pay, they have voluntarily imposed upon themselves the tax for
+education, that is, they have begun to hire teachers. What have we done?
+"Oh, you are able to pay," we said, "wait, then, for you are stupid and
+rude. Let us have the money, and we will arrange it for you in the best
+manner possible."
+
+The masses have given up their money (as I have said, in many County
+Councils the levy for the schools has been turned directly into a tax).
+The money was taken, and the education was arranged for them.
+
+I am not going to repeat about the artificiality of the education, but
+how the whole matter has been arranged. In Krapívensk County there are
+forty thousand souls, including girls, according to the last census.
+According to Bunyakóvski's table of the distribution of ten thousand of
+the Orthodox population for the year 1862, there ought to be, of the
+male sex between six and fourteen years, 1,834, and of the female sex,
+1,989,--in all 3,823 to each ten thousand. According to my own
+observations, there ought to be more, no doubt on account of the
+increase of the population, so that the average school population may
+boldly be put at four thousand. In a school there are, on an average, in
+the large centres, about sixty pupils, and in the smaller, from ten to
+twenty-five. In order that all may receive instruction, the smaller
+centres, forming the greater half of the population, need schools for
+ten, fifteen, and twenty pupils, so that the average of a school, in my
+opinion, would be not more than thirty pupils. How many schools are,
+then, needed for sixteen thousand pupils? Divide sixteen thousand by
+thirty, and we get 530 schools. Let us assume that, although at the
+opening of the schools all pupils from seven to fifteen years of age
+will enter, not all will attend regularly for the period of eight years;
+let us reject one-fourth, that is 130 schools and, consequently, 4,200
+pupils. Let us say that there are four hundred schools. Only twenty have
+been opened. The County Council gives two thousand roubles and has added
+one thousand roubles, making in all three thousand roubles. From some of
+the peasants, not from all, fifteen kopeks are levied from each soul, in
+all about four thousand roubles. On the building of schools seven
+hundred roubles are spent, and on the pedagogical courses twelve hundred
+roubles have been used in one year. But let us suppose that the County
+Council will act quite simply and sensibly, and will not waste money on
+pedagogical courses and other trifles; let us suppose that all peasants
+will pay the new school tax of fifteen kopeks, what will the future of
+this matter be? From the peasants six thousand, from the County Council
+three thousand, in all nine thousand. Let us assume that ten more
+schools will be added. Nine thousand roubles will barely suffice for the
+support of these schools, and that only in case the school council will
+act most prudently and economically. Consequently, with the County
+Council administration, thirty schools to forty thousand of the
+population are the highest limit of what the dissemination of the
+schools in the county may reach. And this limit of the school business
+can be attained only if the peasants will levy fifteen kopeks on each
+soul, which is extremely doubtful, and if the disbursement of this money
+will be in the hands of the peasants, and not of the County Council. I
+do not speak of the possible increase of three thousand roubles, because
+this increase of three thousand roubles partly falls back on those same
+peasants, and on the other hand is not secured by anything, forming only
+an accidental means. Thus, in order to bring the business of popular
+education to the state in which it ought to be, that is, in order that
+there shall be four hundred schools to the forty thousand of the
+population, and in order that the schools shall not be a toy, but may
+answer a real want of the masses, there is no other issue than that the
+peasants be taxed, not fifteen kopeks, but three roubles a soul, in
+order that the necessary three hundred roubles to each school be
+obtained. Even then I do not see any reason for thinking that as many
+schools as are needed would be built.
+
+Do we not see that now, when the simplest arithmetical calculation shows
+that the only means for the success of the schools is the simplification
+of methods, the simplicity and cheapness of the arrangement of the
+school,--the pedagogues are busy, as though having made a wager to
+concoct a most difficult, most complicated, and expensive (and, I must
+add, most bad) instruction? In the manuals of Messrs. Bunákov and
+Evtushévski I have figured up three hundred roubles' worth of aids to
+instruction which, in their opinion, are absolutely necessary for the
+establishment of a primary school. All they talk about in pedagogical
+circles is how to prepare improved teachers in the seminaries, so that a
+village might not be able to get them even for four hundred roubles. On
+that road of perfection, on which pedagogy stands, it is quite apparent
+to me that if 120,000 roubles were collected in a county, the pedagogues
+would find use for them all in twenty schools, with adjustable tables,
+seminaries for teachers, and so forth. Have we not seen that forty
+schools were closed in Krapívensk County, and that those who closed them
+were fully convinced that they thus advanced the cause of education, for
+now they have twenty "good" schools? But what is most remarkable is that
+those who express these demands are not in the least interested in
+knowing whether the masses for whom they are preparing all these things
+want them, and still less, who is going to pay for it all. But the
+County Councils are so befogged by these demands that they do not see
+the simple calculation and the simple justice. It is as though a man
+asked me to buy him two puds of flour for a month, and I bought him for
+that rouble a box of perfumed confectionery and reproached him for his
+ignorance, because he was dissatisfied.
+
+As I wish to remain true to my rule that criticism should point out how
+that which is not good ought to be, I shall try to show how the whole
+school business ought to be arranged, if it is not to be a plaything,
+and is to have a future. The answer is the same as to the first two
+questions,--freedom. The masses must be given the freedom to arrange
+their schools as they wish, and as little as possible should any one
+interfere in their arrangement. Only with such a view of the matter will
+all the obstacles to the dissemination of the schools be obviated,
+though they have seemed insuperable. The chief obstacles are the
+insufficiency of the means and the impossibility of increasing them. To
+the first the masses reply that they are using all the measures at
+their command to make the schools cost little; to the second they reply
+that the means will always be found so long as they themselves are the
+masters, and that they are not willing to increase the means for the
+support of that which they do not need.
+
+The essential difference between the view of the people and of the
+ministerial department consists in the following: (1) In the opinion of
+the masses there is no one definite norm and form of the school, outside
+and below which the school is not recognized, as is assumed by the
+ministerial department; a school may be of any kind, either a very good
+and expensive one, or a very poor and cheap one, but even in a very poor
+one reading and writing may be learned, and, as in a richer parish a
+better pope is appointed and a better church built, so also may a better
+school be built in a wealthy village, and a poorer school in a less
+well-to-do village; but just as one can pray equally well in a poor or
+in a rich parish, even so it is with learning. (2) The masses regard as
+the first condition of their education an even, equal distribution of
+this education, though it be in its lowest stage, and then only they
+propose a further, again an even, raising of the level of education,
+while the ministerial department considers it necessary to give to a
+certain chosen few, to one-twentieth of the whole number, a specimen of
+education, to show them how nice it is. (3) The ministerial department,
+either unable or purposely unwilling to calculate, has raised the
+educational business to such a high, expensive level, and one which is
+so foreign to the masses, that considering the high price at which the
+education is acquired, no issue from that situation can be foreseen, and
+the number of learners can never be increased; but the masses, who know
+how to calculate, and who are interested in that calculation, have no
+doubt long ago figured out what I have pointed out above, and see as
+clear as daylight that those expensive schools, which cost as much as
+four hundred roubles each, may be good indeed, but are not what they
+need, and try in every way possible to diminish the expenses for their
+schools.
+
+What, then, is to be done? How are the County Councils to act in order
+that this business may not be a plaything and a pastime, but shall have
+a future? Let them conform with the needs of the masses, and, so far as
+possible, cheapen and free the forms of the school, and afford the
+Communes the greatest possible power in the establishment of the
+schools.
+
+For this it is necessary that the County Councils shall entirely abandon
+the distribution of the taxes to the schools and the distribution of the
+schools according to localities, but shall leave this distribution to
+the peasants themselves. The determination of the pay to the teacher,
+the hiring, purchase, or building of the house, the choice of place and
+of the teacher himself,--all that ought to be left to the peasants. The
+County Council, that is, the school council, should only demand that the
+Communes inform it where and on what foundations schools have been
+established, not in order that, upon learning the facts, it shall
+prohibit them, as is done now, but in order that, learning about the
+conditions under which the school exists, it may add (if the conditions
+are in conformity with the demands of the council) from its County
+Council's sums, for the support of the school newly founded, a certain,
+definite part of what the school costs the Commune: a half, a third, a
+fourth, according to the quality of the school and the means and wishes
+of the County Council. Thus, for example, a village of twenty souls
+hires a transient man at two roubles a month to teach the children. The
+school council, that is, a person authorized by it, of whom I shall
+speak later, upon receiving that information, invites the transient to
+come to him, asks him what he knows and how he teaches, and, if the
+transient is the least bit educated and does not represent anything
+harmful, apportions to him the amount determined upon by the County
+Council, one-half, one-third, or one-fourth, in precisely the same way
+the school council proceeds in reference to a clerical person hired by
+the Commune at five roubles per month, or in reference to a teacher
+hired at fifteen roubles per month. Of course, that is the way the
+school council acts in reference to the teachers hired by the Communes
+themselves; but if the Communes turn to the school council, the latter
+recommends to them teachers under the same conditions. But in doing so
+the County Council must not forget that there should not be merely
+teachers at two hundred roubles; the school council should be an
+employment agency for teachers of every description and of every price,
+from one rouble to thirty roubles a month. On buildings the school
+council ought not to spend or add anything, because they are one of the
+most unproductive items of expense. But the County Council ought not to
+disdain, as it now does, teachers at two, three, four, five roubles per
+month and locations in smoky huts or by rotation from farm to farm.
+
+The County Council ought to remember that the prototype of the school,
+that ideal toward which it ought to tend, is not a stone building with
+an iron roof, with blackboards and desks, such as we see in model
+schools, but the very hut in which the peasant lives, with those benches
+and tables on which he eats, and not a teacher in a Prince Albert or a
+lady teacher in a chignon, but a male teacher in a caftan and shirt, or
+a female teacher in a peasant skirt and with a kerchief on her head, and
+not with one hundred pupils, but with five, six, or ten.
+
+The County Council must have no bias or antipathy for certain types of
+teachers, as is the case at present. Thus, for example, the Túla County
+Council just now has a special bias for the type of school-teachers from
+the gymnasia and clerical schools, and the greater part of the schools
+in Túla County are in their charge. In Krapívensk County there exists a
+strange antipathy for teachers from the clerical profession, so that in
+this county, where there are as many as fifty parishes, there is not one
+clerical person employed as a teacher. The County Council, in proposing
+a teacher, ought to be guided by two chief considerations: in the first
+place, that the teacher should be as cheap as possible; in the second,
+that by his education he should stand as near to the masses as possible.
+Only thanks to the opposite view on the matter can be explained such an
+inexplicable phenomenon as that in Krapívensk County (almost the same is
+true of the whole Government and of the majority of Governments) there
+are fifty parishes and twenty schools, and that for these twenty schools
+there is not a single clerical teacher, although there is not a parish
+where a priest, or a deacon, or a sexton, or their daughters and wives
+could not be found, who would not be glad to do the teaching for
+one-fourth the pay that the teachers coming from the city would be
+willing to take.
+
+But I shall be told: What kind of schools will those be with bigots,
+drunken soldiers, expelled scribes, and sextons? And what control can
+there be over those formless schools? To this I will reply that, in the
+first place, these teachers, bigots, soldiers, and sextons are not so
+bad as they are imagined to be. In my school practice I often had to do
+with pupils from these schools, and some of them could read fluently and
+write beautifully, and soon abandoned the bad habits which they brought
+with them from those schools. All of us know peasants who have learned
+the rudiments in such schools, and it cannot be said that this learning
+was useless or injurious. In the second place, I will say that teachers
+of that calibre are especially bad because they are quite abandoned in
+the backwoods and teach without any aid or instruction, and that now
+there is not to be found a single one of the old teachers who would not
+tell you with regret that he does not know the new methods and has
+himself learned for copper pence, and that many of them, especially the
+younger church servants, are quite willing to learn the new methods.
+These teachers ought not to be rejected without further ado as
+absolutely worthless. There are among them better and worse teachers
+(and I have seen some very capable ones). They ought to be compared; the
+better of them ought to be selected, encouraged, brought together with
+other better teachers, and instructed,--which is quite feasible and
+precisely the thing in which the duty of the school council is to
+consist.
+
+But how are they to be controlled, watched, and taught, if they breed by
+the hundred in each county? In my opinion the work of the County Council
+and school council ought to consist in nothing but watching the
+pedagogical side of the business, and that is feasible, if these means
+will be taken: in every County Council, which has taken upon itself the
+duty of the dissemination of popular education, or the coöperation with
+it, there ought to be one person--whether it be an unpaid member of the
+school council, or a man at a salary of not less than one thousand
+roubles, hired by the County Council--who is to attend to the
+pedagogical side of the business in the county. That person ought to
+have a general, fresh education within the limits of a gymnasium course,
+that is, he must know Russian thoroughly and Church-Slavic partly,
+arithmetic and algebra thoroughly, and be a teacher, that is, know the
+practice of pedagogy. This person must be freshly educated, because I
+have observed that frequently the information of a man who has long ago
+finished his course even in a university, and who has not refreshed his
+education, is insufficient, not only for the guidance of teachers, but
+even for the examination of a village school. This person must by all
+means be a teacher himself in the same locality, in order that in his
+demands and instructions he may always have in view that pedagogical
+material with which the other teachers have to deal, and that he may
+sustain in himself that live relation to reality which is the chief
+preservative against error and delusion. If a County Council does not
+possess such a man and does not wish to employ one, it has, in my
+opinion, absolutely nothing to do with the popular education, except to
+give money, because every interference with the administrative side of
+the matter, in the way it is done now, can only be injurious.
+
+This member of the County Council, or the educated person hired by it,
+must have the best model school, with an assistant, in the county. In
+addition to conducting this school and applying to it all the newest
+methods of instruction, this head teacher ought to keep an eye on all
+the other schools. This school is not to be a model in the sense of
+introducing into it all kinds of cubes and pictures and all kinds of
+nonsense invented by the Germans, but the teacher in this school should
+experiment on just such peasant children as the other schools consist
+of, in order to determine the simplest methods which may be adopted by
+the majority of the teachers, sextons, and soldiers, who form the bulk
+of all the schools. Since with the arrangement which I propose there
+will certainly be formed large complete schools in the larger centres
+(as I think, in the proportion of one to twenty of all the other
+schools), and in these large schools the teachers will be of a grade of
+education equal to that of the seminarists who have finished a course in
+a theological school, the head teacher will visit all these larger
+schools, bring together these teachers on Sundays, point out to them the
+defects, propose new methods, give counsel and books for their own
+education, and invite them to his school on Sundays. The library of the
+head teacher ought to consist of several copies of the Bible, of
+Church-Slavic and Russian grammars, arithmetic, and algebra. The head
+teacher, whenever he has time, will visit also the small schools and
+invite their teachers to come to see him; but the duty of watching the
+minor teachers is imposed on the older teachers, who just in the same
+way visit their district and invite those teachers to come to see them
+on Sundays and on week-days. The County Council either pays the teachers
+for travelling, or, in adding its portion to what the Communes levy,
+makes it a condition that the Communes furnish transportation. The
+meetings of the teachers and the visits in similar or better schools are
+one of the chief conditions for the successful conduct of the business
+of education, and so the County Council ought to direct its main
+attention to the organization of these meetings, and not spare any money
+for them.
+
+Besides, in the large schools, where there will be more than fifty
+pupils, there ought to be chosen, instead of the assistants which they
+now have, such of the pupils, of either sex, as show marked ability for
+a teacher's calling, and they should be made assistants, two or three in
+each school. These assistants should receive a salary of fifty kopeks to
+one rouble per month, and the teacher should work with them separately
+in the evenings, so that they may not fall behind the others. These
+assistants, chosen from among the best, are to form the future teachers,
+to take the place of the lowest in the minor schools.
+
+Naturally the organization of these teachers' meetings, both for the
+smaller and the larger schools, and the head teacher's visits of
+inspection, and the formation of teachers from pupils acting as
+assistants may take place in a large variety of ways; the main point is
+that the surveillance of any number of schools (even though it may reach
+the norm of one school to every one hundred souls) is possible in this
+manner. With such an arrangement the teachers of both the large and the
+small schools will feel that their labours are appreciated, that they
+have not buried themselves in the backwoods without hope of salvation,
+that they have companions and guides, and that in the matter of
+instruction, both for their own further education and for the
+improvement of their situation, they have means for advancement. With
+such an arrangement, the devotee and the sexton who are able to learn
+will learn; while those who are unable or unwilling to do so will be
+replaced by some one else.
+
+The time of instruction ought to be, as is the wish of all peasants,
+during the seven winter months, and so the salary is to be determined by
+the month. With such an arrangement, leaving out the rapidity and the
+equal distribution of education, the advantage will be this, that the
+schools will be established in those centres where the necessity for
+them is felt by the masses, where they are established spontaneously
+and, therefore, firmly. Where the character of the population demands
+education it will be permanent. Just look: in the towns, the children of
+the innkeepers and well-to-do peasants learn to read in one way or
+another and never forget what they have learned; but in the backwoods,
+where a landed proprietor founds a school, the children learn well, but
+in ten years all is forgotten, and the population is as illiterate as
+ever. For this reason the centres, large or small, where the schools are
+established spontaneously, are particularly precious. Where such a
+school has germinated, no matter how poor it be, it will throw out
+roots, and sooner or later the population will be able to read and
+write. Consequently, these sprouts ought to be deemed precious, and not
+be treated, as they are everywhere,--they ought not to be forbidden,
+because the schools are not according to our taste, that is, the sprouts
+ought not to be killed, and branches stuck in the ground where they will
+not take root.
+
+With merely such an arrangement, without the establishment of costly and
+artificial seminaries, the chosen ones--those selected from the best of
+the pupils themselves, and those who are educated in the schools--will
+form that contingent of cheap popular teachers who will take the place
+of the soldiers and sextons and will fully satisfy all the demands of
+the masses and of the educated classes. The chief advantage of such an
+arrangement is that it alone gives the development of popular education
+a future, that is, takes us out from that blind alley into which the
+County Councils have gone, thanks to the expensive schools and to the
+absence of new sources for the increase of their numbers. Only when the
+masses themselves choose the centres for the schools, themselves choose
+teachers, determine the amount of the remuneration, and directly enjoy
+the advantages of the schools, will they be ready to add means for the
+schools if such should become necessary. I know Communes that paid fifty
+kopeks a soul for a school in each of their villages; but it is
+difficult to compel the peasants to pay fifteen kopeks for a school in
+the township, if not all of them can make use of it. For the whole
+county, for the County Council, the peasants will not add a single
+kopek, because they feel that they will not enjoy the advantages of
+their money. Only with such an arrangement will be found soon the means
+for the proper maintenance of all schools, of one to each one hundred
+souls, which seems so impossible in the present state of affairs.
+
+In addition to this, with the arrangement which I propose, the interests
+of the peasant Communes and of the County Council, as the representative
+of the intelligence of the locality, will indissolubly be connected. Let
+us say that the County Council gives one-third of what the peasants
+give. In furnishing this amount, it will evidently, in one way or
+another, see to it that the money is not wasted, and, consequently, will
+also keep an eye on the two-thirds given by the peasant Communes. The
+peasant Commune sees that the County Council gives its part, and so
+admits the right of the Council to follow the progress of the
+instruction. At the same time, it has an object-lesson in the difference
+which exists between a school maintained at a smaller and that
+maintained at a greater expense, and chooses the one which it needs or
+which is more accessible to it in accordance with its means.
+
+I will again take Krapívensk County, with which I am familiar, to show
+what difference the proposed arrangement would make. I cannot have the
+slightest doubt that the moment permission is granted to open schools,
+wherever wanted and of any description desired, there will at once
+appear very many schools. I am convinced that in Krapívensk County, in
+which there are fifty parishes, there will always be a school in each
+parish, because the parishes are always centres of population, and
+because among the church servants there will always be found one who is
+capable of teaching, likes to teach, and will find his advantage in it.
+In addition to the schools maintained by the church servants there will
+be opened those forty schools that have been closed (more correctly
+thirty, because ten of them were church schools), and there will be
+opened very many new schools, so that in a very short time there will be
+not far from four hundred instead of the twenty at present.
+
+I may be believed or not, but I will assume that in Krapívensk County
+380 additional schools will be opened, the moment they are given over to
+the masses, so that there will be four hundred in all, and I will try to
+determine whether the existence of these four hundred schools, that is,
+of twenty times as many as at present, is possible under the conditions
+which I have assumed in discussing the existing order.
+
+Assuming that all peasants pay fifteen kopeks per soul, and the County
+Council gives three thousand roubles, there will be nine thousand
+roubles, which will suffice only for thirty schools with the former
+arrangement. But with the new arrangement:
+
+I assume that ten of the old schools are left intact; in these schools
+the teachers get twenty roubles per month, which, for the seven winter
+months, amounts to fourteen hundred roubles.
+
+I assume that in every parish there will be established a school with
+the teacher's salary at five roubles per month, which, for fifty
+schools, amounts to 1,750 roubles.
+
+I assume the remaining 340 schools are of the cheap character, at two
+roubles per month; fifteen roubles for each of the 340 schools makes
+5,100 roubles.
+
+Thus the four hundred schools will demand an expenditure in salaries
+amounting to 8,250 roubles. There are still left 750 roubles for school
+appliances and transportation.
+
+The figures for the teachers' wages are not chosen arbitrarily by me: on
+the other hand, the expensive teachers are given a larger salary than
+they now get by the month for the whole year. Even so, the amount
+apportioned to the church servants is what they now receive in the
+majority of cases. But the cheap schools at two roubles per month are
+assumed by me at a higher rate than what the peasants in reality pay, so
+that the calculation may boldly be accepted. In this calculation is
+included the kernel of ten chief teachers and ten or more church servant
+teachers. It is evident that only with such a calculation will the
+school business be placed on a serious and possible basis and have a
+clear and definite future.
+
+If what I have pointed out does not convince anybody that will mean that
+I did not express clearly what I wanted to say, and do not wish to enter
+into any disputes with anybody. I know that no deaf people are so
+hopeless as those who do not want to hear. I know how it is with
+farmers. A new threshing-machine has been bought at a great expense, and
+it is put up and started threshing. It threshes miserably, no matter how
+you set the screw; it threshes badly, and the grain falls into the
+straw. There is a loss, and it is as clear as can be that the machine
+ought to be abandoned and another means be employed for threshing, but
+the money has been spent and the threshing-machine is put up. "Let her
+thresh," says the master. Precisely the same thing will happen with this
+matter. I know that for a long time to come there will flourish the
+object instruction, and cubes, and buttons instead of arithmetic, and
+hissing and sputtering, in teaching the letters, and twenty expensive
+schools of the German pattern, instead of the needed four hundred
+popular, cheap schools. But I know just as surely that the common sense
+of the Russian nation will not permit this false, artificial system of
+instruction to be foisted upon it.
+
+The masses are the chief interested person and the judge, and now do not
+pay a particle of attention to our more or less ingenious discussions
+about the manner in which the spiritual food of education is best to be
+prepared for them. They do not care, because they are firmly convinced
+that in the great business of their mental development they will not
+make a false step and will not accept what is bad,--and it would be like
+making pease stick to the wall to attempt to educate, direct, and teach
+them in the German fashion.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT MEN LIVE BY
+
+1881
+
+
+
+
+WHAT MEN LIVE BY
+
+     We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love
+     the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.
+     (First Ep. of John, iii. 14.)
+
+     But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need,
+     and shutteth, up his heart from him, how dwelleth the love of God
+     in him? (_Ib._ iii. 17.)
+
+     My children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in
+     deed and in truth. (_Ib._ iii. 18.)
+
+     Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and
+     knoweth God. (_Ib._ iv. 7.)
+
+     He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (_Ib._ iv. 8.)
+
+     No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God
+     dwelleth in us. (_Ib._ iv. 12.)
+
+     God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God
+     in him. (_Ib._ iv. 16.)
+
+     If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for
+     he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love
+     God whom he hath not seen. (_Ib._ iv. 20.)
+
+
+I.
+
+A shoemaker was lodging with his wife and children at the house of a
+peasant. He had no house, no land of his own, and supported his family
+by his shoemaker's trade. Bread was dear, but work was cheap, and he
+spent everything he made. The shoemaker and his wife had one fur coat
+between them, and even that was all worn to tatters; this was the second
+year that the shoemaker had been meaning to buy a sheepskin for a new
+fur coat.
+
+Toward fall the shoemaker had saved some money: three roubles in paper
+lay in his wife's coffer, and five roubles and twenty kopeks were
+outstanding in the village.
+
+In the morning the shoemaker went to the village to get him that fur
+coat. He put on his wife's wadded nankeen jacket over his shirt, and
+over it his cloth caftan; he put the three-rouble bill into his pocket,
+broke off a stick, and started after breakfast. He thought:
+
+"I shall get the five roubles from the peasant, will add my own three,
+and with that will buy me a sheepskin for the fur coat."
+
+The shoemaker came to the village, and called on the peasant: he was not
+at home, and his wife promised to send her husband with the money, but
+gave him none herself. He went to another peasant, but the peasant swore
+that he had no money, and gave him only twenty kopeks for mending a pair
+of boots. The shoemaker made up his mind to take the sheepskin on
+credit, but the furrier would not give it to him.
+
+"Bring me the money," he said, "and then you can choose any you please;
+we know what it means to collect debts."
+
+Thus the shoemaker accomplished nothing. All he got was the twenty
+kopeks for the boots he had mended, and a peasant gave him a pair of
+felt boots to patch with leather.
+
+The shoemaker was grieved, spent all the twenty kopeks on vódka, and
+started home without the fur coat. In the morning it had seemed frosty
+to him, but now that he had drunk a little he felt warm even without the
+fur coat. The shoemaker walked along, with one hand striking the stick
+against the frozen mud clumps, and swinging the felt boots in the other,
+and talking to himself.
+
+"I am warm even without a fur coat," he said. "I have drunk a cup, and
+the vódka is coursing through all my veins. I do not need a sheepskin.
+I have forgotten my woe. That's the kind of a man I am! What do I care!
+I can get along without a fur coat: I do not need it all the time. The
+only trouble is the old woman will be sorry. It is a shame indeed: I
+work for him, and he leads me by the nose. Just wait! If you do not
+bring the money, I'll take away your cap, upon my word, I will! How is
+this? He pays me back two dimes at a time! What can you do with two
+dimes? Take a drink, that is all. He says he suffers want. You suffer
+want, and am I not suffering? You have a house, and cattle, and
+everything, and here is all I possess; you have your own grain, and I
+have to buy it. I may do as I please, but I have to spend three roubles
+a week on bread. I come home, and the bread is gone: again lay out a
+rouble and a half! So give me what is mine!"
+
+Thus the shoemaker came up to a chapel at the turn of the road, and
+there he saw something that looked white, right near the chapel. It was
+growing dusk, and the shoemaker strained his eyes, but could not make
+out what it was.
+
+"There was no stone here," he thought. "A cow? It does not look like a
+cow. It looks like the head of a man, and there is something white
+besides. And what should a man be doing there?"
+
+He came nearer, and he could see plainly. What marvel was that? It was
+really a man, either alive or dead, sitting there all naked, leaning
+against the chapel, and not stirring in the least. The shoemaker was
+frightened, and thought to himself:
+
+"Somebody must have killed a man, and stripped him of his clothes, and
+thrown him away there. If I go up to him, I shall never clear myself."
+
+And the shoemaker went past. He walked around the chapel, and the man
+was no longer to be seen. He went past the chapel, and looked back, and
+saw the man leaning away from the building and moving, as though
+watching him. The shoemaker was frightened even more than before, and he
+thought to himself:
+
+"Shall I go up to him, or not? If I go up, something bad may happen. Who
+knows what kind of a man he is? He did not get there for anything good.
+If I go up, he will spring at me and choke me, and I shall not get away
+from him; and if he does not choke me, I may have trouble with him all
+the same. What can I do with him, since he is naked? Certainly I cannot
+take off the last from me and give it to him! May God save me!"
+
+And the shoemaker increased his steps. He was already a distance away
+from the chapel, when his conscience began to smite him.
+
+And the shoemaker stopped on the road.
+
+"What are you doing, Semén?" he said to himself. "A man is dying in
+misery, and you go past him and lose your courage. Have you suddenly
+grown so rich? Are you afraid that they will rob you of your wealth? Oh,
+Semén, it is not right!"
+
+Semén turned back, and went up to the man.
+
+
+II.
+
+Semén walked over to the man, and looked at him; and saw that it was a
+young man, in the prime of his strength, with no bruises on his body,
+but evidently frozen and frightened: he was leaning back and did not
+look at Semén, as though he were weakened and could not raise his eyes.
+Semén went up close to him, and the man suddenly seemed to wake up. He
+turned his head, opened his eyes, and looked at Semén. And this one
+glance made Semén think well of the man. He threw down the felt boots,
+ungirt himself, put his belt on the boots, and took off his caftan.
+
+"What is the use of talking?" he said. "Put it on! Come now!"
+
+Semén took the man by his elbows and began to raise him. The man got up.
+And Semén saw that his body was soft and clean, his hands and feet not
+calloused, and his face gentle. Semén threw his caftan over the man's
+shoulders. He could not find his way into the sleeves. So Semén put them
+in, pulled the caftan on him, wrapped him in it, and girded it with the
+belt.
+
+Semén took off his torn cap, intending to put it on the naked man, but
+his head grew cold, and so he thought: "My whole head is bald, while he
+has long, curly hair." He put it on again. "I had better put the boots
+on him."
+
+He seated himself and put the felt boots on him.
+
+The shoemaker addressed him and said:
+
+"That's the way, my friend! Now move about and get warmed up. This
+business will be looked into without us. Can you walk?"
+
+The man stood, looking meekly at Semén, but could not say a word.
+
+"Why don't you speak? You can't stay here through the winter. We must
+make for a living place. Here, take my stick, lean on it, if you are
+weak. Tramp along!"
+
+And the man went. And he walked lightly, and did not fall behind.
+
+As they were walking along, Semén said to him:
+
+"Who are you, please?"
+
+"I am a stranger."
+
+"I know all the people here about. How did you get near that chapel?"
+
+"I cannot tell."
+
+"Have people insulted you?"
+
+"No one has. God has punished me."
+
+"Of course, God does everything, but still you must be making for some
+place. Whither are you bound?"
+
+"It makes no difference to me."
+
+Semén was surprised. He did not resemble an evil-doer, and was gentle of
+speech, and yet did not say anything about himself. And Semén thought
+that all kinds of things happen, and so he said to the man:
+
+"Well, come to my house and warm yourself a little."
+
+Semén walked up to the farm, and the stranger did not fall behind, but
+walked beside him. A wind rose and blew into Semén's shirt, and his
+intoxication went away, and he began to feel cold. He walked along,
+sniffling, and wrapping himself in his wife's jacket, and he thought:
+
+"There is your fur coat: I went to get myself a fur coat, and I am
+coming back without a caftan, and am even bringing a naked man with me.
+Matréna will not praise me for it!"
+
+And as Semén thought of Matréna, he felt sorry; and as he looked at the
+stranger and recalled how he had looked at him at the chapel, his blood
+began to play in his heart.
+
+[Illustration: "'Whither are you bound?'"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko_]
+
+
+III.
+
+Semén's wife got things done early. She chopped the wood, brought the
+water, fed the children, herself took a bite of something, and fell to
+musing. She was thinking about when to set the bread, whether to-day or
+to-morrow. There was a big slice of it left.
+
+"If Semén has his dinner there," she thought, "and does not eat much for
+supper, the bread will last until to-morrow."
+
+Matréna turned the slice around and a second time, and thought:
+
+"I will not set any bread to-day. I have enough meal for just one
+setting. We shall somehow hold out until Friday."
+
+Matréna put the bread away, and seated herself at the table to put a
+patch in her husband's shirt. She was sewing and thinking of how he
+would buy a sheepskin for a fur coat.
+
+"If only the furrier does not cheat him, for my man is too simple for
+anything. He himself will not cheat a soul, but a little child can
+deceive him. Eight roubles is no small sum. One can pickup a good fur
+coat for it. It will not be tanned, still it will be a fur coat. How we
+suffered last winter without a fur coat! We could not get down to the
+river, or anywhere. And there he has gone out, putting everything on
+him, and I have nothing to dress in. He went away early; it is time for
+him to be back. If only my dear one has not gone on a spree!"
+
+Just as Matréna was thinking this, the steps creaked on the porch, and
+somebody entered. Matréna stuck the needle in the cloth, and went out
+into the vestibule. She saw two coming in: Semén, and with him a man
+without a cap and in felt boots.
+
+Matréna at once smelt the liquor in her husband's breath. "Well," she
+thought, "so it is: he has been on a spree." And when she saw that he
+was without his caftan, in nothing but the jacket, and that he was not
+bringing anything, but only keeping silent and crouching, something
+broke in Matréna's heart. "He has spent all the money in drinks," she
+thought, "and has been on a spree with some tramp, and has even brought
+him along."
+
+Matréna let them pass into the hut, and then stepped in herself. She saw
+the lean young man, and he had on him their caftan. No shirt was to be
+seen under the caftan, and he had no hat on his head. When he entered,
+he stood still, and did not stir, and did not raise his eyes. And
+Matréna thought: "He is not a good man,--he is afraid."
+
+Matréna scowled and went to the oven, waiting to see what would happen.
+
+Semén took off his cap and sat down on the bench like a good man.
+
+"Well, Matréna, will you let us have something for supper, will you?" he
+said.
+
+Matréna growled something under her breath. She stood at the oven, and
+did not stir: she looked now at the one, and now at the other, and shook
+her head. Semén saw that his wife was not in a good humour, but there
+was nothing to be done, and he acted as though he did not see it. He
+took the stranger by the arm:
+
+"Sit down, my friend," he said, "we shall have our supper."
+
+The stranger sat down on the bench.
+
+"Well, have you not cooked anything?"
+
+That simply roiled Matréna.
+
+"I have cooked, but not for you. You seem to have drunk away your
+senses, I see. You went to get a fur coat, and come back without your
+caftan, and have even brought some kind of a naked tramp with you. I
+have no supper for you drunkards."
+
+"Stop, Matréna! What is the use of wagging your tongue without any
+sense? First ask what kind of a man it is--"
+
+"Tell me what you did with the money."
+
+Semén stuck his hand into the caftan, took out the bill, and opened it
+before her.
+
+"Here is the money. Trifónov has not paid me,--he promised to give it to
+me to-morrow."
+
+That enraged Matréna even more: he had bought no fur coat, and the only
+caftan they had he had put on a naked fellow, and had even brought him
+along.
+
+She grabbed the bill from the table, and ran to put it away, and said:
+
+"I have no supper. One cannot feed all the drunkards."
+
+"Oh, Matréna, hold your tongue. First hear what I have to say--"
+
+"Much sense shall I hear from a drunken fool. With good reason did I
+object to marrying you, a drunkard. My mother gave me some linen, and
+you spent it on drinks; you went to buy a fur coat, and spent that,
+too."
+
+Semén wanted to explain to his wife that he had spent twenty kopeks
+only, and wanted to tell her that he had found the man; but Matréna
+began to break in with anything she could think of, and to speak two
+words at once. Even what had happened ten years before, she brought up
+to him now.
+
+Matréna talked and talked, and jumped at Semén, and grabbed him by the
+sleeve.
+
+"Give me my jacket. That is all I have left, and you have taken it from
+me and put it on yourself. Give it to me, you freckled dog,--may the
+apoplexy strike you!"
+
+Semén began to take off the bodice; as he turned back his arm, his wife
+gave the bodice a jerk, and it ripped at the seam. Matréna grabbed the
+jacket, threw it over her head, and made for the door. She wanted to go
+out, but stopped: her heart was doubled, for she wanted to have her
+revenge, and also to find out what kind of a man he was.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Matréna stopped and said:
+
+"If he were a good man, he would not be naked; but, as it is, he has not
+even a shirt on him. If he meant anything good, you would tell me where
+you found that dandy."
+
+"I am telling you: as I was walking along, I saw him sitting at the
+chapel, without any clothes, and almost frozen. It is not summer, and he
+was all naked. God sent me to him, or he would have perished. Well, what
+had I to do? All kinds of things happen! I picked him up and dressed
+him, and brought him here. Calm yourself! It is a sin, Matréna. We shall
+all die."
+
+Matréna wanted to go on scolding, but she looked at the stranger and
+kept silence. The stranger sat without moving, just as he had seated
+himself on the edge of the bench. His hands were folded on his knees,
+his head drooped on his breast, his eyes were not opened, and he frowned
+as though something were choking him. Matréna grew silent. And Semén
+said:
+
+"Matréna, have you no God?"
+
+When Matréna heard these words, she glanced at the stranger, and
+suddenly her heart became softened. She went away from the door, walked
+over to the oven corner, and got the supper ready. She placed a bowl on
+the table, filled it with kvas, and put down the last slice of bread.
+She handed them a knife and spoons.
+
+"Eat, if you please," she said.
+
+Semén touched the stranger.
+
+"Creep through here, good fellow!" he said.
+
+Semén cut up the bread and crumbled it into the kvas, and they began to
+eat. And Matréna sat down at the corner of the table, and leaned on her
+arm, and kept looking at the stranger.
+
+And Matréna pitied the stranger, and took a liking for him. And suddenly
+the stranger grew merry, stopped frowning, raised his eyes on Matréna,
+and smiled.
+
+They got through with their supper. The woman cleared the table, and
+began to ask the stranger:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"I am a stranger."
+
+"How did you get on the road?"
+
+"I cannot tell."
+
+"Has somebody robbed you?"
+
+"God has punished me."
+
+"And you were lying there naked?"
+
+"Yes, I was lying naked, and freezing. Semén saw me, took pity on me,
+pulled off his caftan, put it on me, and told me to come here. And you
+have given me to eat and to drink, and have pitied me. The Lord will
+save you!"
+
+Matréna got up, took from the window Semén's old shirt, the same that
+she had been patching, and gave it to the stranger; and she found a pair
+of trousers, and gave them to him.
+
+"Here, take it! I see that you have no shirt. Put it on, and lie down
+wherever it pleases you,--on the hanging bed or on the oven."
+
+The stranger took off the caftan, put on the shirt, and lay down on the
+hanging bed. Matréna put out the light, took the caftan, and climbed to
+where her husband was.
+
+Matréna covered herself with the corner of the caftan, and she lay and
+could not sleep: the stranger would not leave her mind.
+
+As she thought how he had eaten the last slice of bread and how there
+would be no bread for the morrow; as she thought how she had given him a
+shirt and a pair of trousers, she felt pretty bad; but when she thought
+of how he smiled, her heart was gladdened.
+
+Matréna could not sleep for a long time, and she heard that Semén, too,
+was not sleeping; he kept pulling the caftan on himself.
+
+"Semén!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"We have eaten up the last bread, and I have not set any. I do not know
+what to do for to-morrow. Maybe I had better ask Gossip Malánya for
+some."
+
+"If we are alive we shall find something to eat."
+
+The woman lay awhile and kept silence.
+
+"He must be a good man. But why does he not tell about himself?"
+
+"I suppose he cannot."
+
+"Semén!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"We give, but why does nobody give to us?"
+
+Semén did not know what to say. He only said, "Stop talking!" and turned
+over, and fell asleep.
+
+
+V.
+
+In the morning Semén awoke. The children were asleep; his wife had gone
+to the neighbours to borrow some bread. The stranger of last night, in
+the old trousers and shirt, was alone, sitting on the bench and looking
+upward. And his face was brighter than on the day before.
+
+And Semén said:
+
+"Well, dear man, the belly begs for bread, and the naked body for
+clothes. We must earn our living. Can you work?"
+
+"I do not know anything."
+
+Semén wondered at him, and said:
+
+"If only you are willing: people can learn anything."
+
+"People work, and I, too, will work."
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Michael."
+
+"Well, Mikháyla, you do not want to talk about yourself,--that is your
+business; but a man has to live. If you work as I order you, I will feed
+you."
+
+"God save you, and I will learn. Show me what to do!"
+
+Semén took the flax, put it on his fingers and began to make an end.
+
+"It is not a hard thing to do, you see."
+
+Mikháyla watched him, himself put the flax on his fingers, and made a
+thread end, as Semén had taught him.
+
+Semén showed him how to wax it. Mikháyla again learned the way at once.
+The master showed him how to weld the bristle, and how to whet, and
+Mikháyla learned it all at once.
+
+No matter what work Semén showed to him, he grasped it at once, and on
+the third day he began to sew as though he had done nothing else in all
+his life. He worked without unbending himself, ate little, between the
+periods of work kept silence, and all the time looked toward the sky. He
+did not go into the street, spoke no superfluous word, and did not jest
+or laugh.
+
+Only once was he seen to smile, and that was the first evening, when the
+woman gave him a supper.
+
+
+VI.
+
+Day was added to day, week to week, and the circle of a year went by.
+Mikháyla was living as before with Semén, and working. And the report
+spread about Semén's workman that nobody sewed a boot so neatly and so
+strongly as he. And people from all the surrounding country began to
+come to Semén for boots, and Semén's income began to grow.
+
+One time, in the winter, Semén was sitting with Mikháyla and working,
+when a tróyka with bells stopped at the door. They looked through the
+window: the carriage had stopped opposite the hut, and a fine lad jumped
+down from the box and opened the carriage door. Out of the carriage
+stepped a gentleman in a fur coat. He came out of the carriage, walked
+toward Semén's house, and went on the porch. Up jumped Matréna and
+opened the door wide. The gentleman bent his head and entered the hut;
+he straightened himself up, almost struck the ceiling with his head, and
+took up a whole corner.
+
+Semén got up, bowed to the gentleman, and wondered what he wanted. He
+had not seen such men. Semén himself was spare-ribbed, and Mikháyla was
+lean, and Matréna was as dry as a chip, while this one was like a man
+from another world: his face was red and blood-filled, his neck like a
+bull's, and altogether he looked as though cast in iron.
+
+The gentleman puffed, took off his fur coat, seated himself on a bench,
+and said:
+
+"Who is the master shoemaker?"
+
+Semén stepped forward, and said:
+
+"I, your Excellency."
+
+The gentleman shouted to his lad:
+
+"Oh, Fédka, let me have the material!"
+
+The lad came running in and brought a bundle. The gentleman took it and
+put it on the table.
+
+"Open it!" he said.
+
+The lad opened it. The gentleman pointed to the material, and said to
+Semén:
+
+"Listen now, shoemaker! Do you see the material?"
+
+"I do," he said, "your Honour."
+
+"Do you understand what kind of material this is?"
+
+Semén felt of it, and said:
+
+"It is good material."
+
+"I should say it is! You, fool, have never seen such before. It is
+German material: it costs twenty roubles."
+
+Semén was frightened, and he said:
+
+"How could we have seen such?"
+
+"That's it. Can you make me boots to fit my feet from this material?"
+
+"I can, your Honour."
+
+The gentleman shouted at him:
+
+"That's it: you can. You must understand for whom you are working, and
+what material you have to work on. Make me a pair of boots that will
+wear a year without running down or ripping. If you can, undertake it
+and cut the material; if you cannot, do not undertake it and do not cut
+the material. I tell you in advance: if the boots wear off or rip before
+the year is over, I will put you into jail; if they do not wear off or
+rip for a year, I will give you ten roubles for the work."
+
+Semén was frightened and did not know what to say. He looked at
+Mikháyla. He nudged him with his elbow, and said:
+
+"Friend, what do you say?"
+
+Mikháyla nodded to him: "Take the work!"
+
+Semén took Mikháyla's advice and undertook to make a pair of boots that
+would not wear down or rip.
+
+The gentleman shouted at his lad, told him to pull off the boot from his
+left foot, and stretched out his leg.
+
+"Take the measure!"
+
+Semén sewed together a piece of paper, ten inches in length, smoothed it
+out, knelt down, carefully wiped his hand on his apron so as not to soil
+the gentleman's stocking, and began to measure. He measured the sole,
+then the instep, and then the calf, but there the paper was not long
+enough. His leg at the calf was as thick as a log.
+
+"Be sure and do not make them too tight in the boot-leg!"
+
+Semén sewed up another piece to the strip. The gentleman sat and moved
+his toes in his stocking, and watched the people in the room. He caught
+sight of Mikháyla.
+
+"Who is that man there?" he asked.
+
+"That is my master workman,--he will make those boots."
+
+"Remember," said the gentleman to Mikháyla, "remember! Make them so that
+they will wear a year."
+
+Semén, too, looked at Mikháyla, and he saw that Mikháyla was not looking
+at the gentleman, but gazed at the corner, as though he saw some one
+there. Mikháyla looked and looked, suddenly smiled and shone bright.
+
+"What makes you show your teeth, fool? You had better be sure and get
+the boots in time."
+
+And Mikháyla said:
+
+"They will be done in time."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+The gentleman put on his boot and his fur coat, and wrapped himself up,
+and went to the door. He forgot to bow down, and hit his head against
+the lintel.
+
+The gentleman cursed awhile, and rubbed his head, and seated himself in
+the carriage, and drove away.
+
+When the gentleman was gone, Semén said:
+
+"He is mighty flinty! You can't kill him with a club. He has knocked out
+the lintel, but he himself took little harm."
+
+And Matréna said:
+
+"How can he help being smooth, with the life he leads? Even death will
+not touch such a sledge-hammer!"
+
+
+VII.
+
+And Semén said to Mikháyla:
+
+"To be sure, we have undertaken to do the work, if only we do not get
+into trouble! The material is costly, and the gentleman is cross. I hope
+we shall not make a blunder. Your eyes are sharper, and your hands are
+nimbler than mine, so take this measure! Cut the material, and I will
+put on the last stitches."
+
+Mikháyla did not disobey him, but took the gentleman's material, spread
+it out on the table, doubled it, took the scissors, and began to cut.
+
+Matréna came up and saw Mikháyla cutting, and was wondering at what he
+was doing. Matréna had become used to the shoemaker's trade, and she
+looked, and saw that Mikháyla was not cutting the material in shoemaker
+fashion, but in a round shape.
+
+Matréna wanted to say something, but thought: "Perhaps I do not
+understand how boots have to be made for a gentleman; no doubt Mikháyla
+knows better, and I will not interfere."
+
+Mikháyla cut the pair, and picked up the end, and began to sew, not in
+shoemaker fashion, with the two ends meeting, but with one end, like
+soft shoes.
+
+Again Matréna marvelled, but did not interfere. And Mikháyla kept sewing
+and sewing. They began to eat their dinner, and Semén saw that Mikháyla
+had made a pair of soft shoes from the gentleman's material.
+
+Semén heaved a sigh. "How is this?" he thought. "Mikháyla has lived with
+me a whole year, and has never made a mistake, and now he has made such
+trouble for me. The gentleman ordered boots with long boot-legs, and he
+has made soft shoes, without soles, and has spoiled the material. How
+shall I now straighten it out with the master? No such material can be
+found."
+
+And he said to Mikháyla:
+
+"What is this, dear man, that you have done? You have ruined me. The
+master has ordered boots, and see what you have made!"
+
+He had just begun to scold Mikháyla, when there was a rattle at the door
+ring,--some one was knocking. They looked through the window: there was
+there a man on horseback, and he was tying up his horse. They opened the
+door: in came the same lad of that gentleman.
+
+"Good day!"
+
+"Good day, what do you wish?"
+
+"The lady has sent me about the boots."
+
+"What about the boots?"
+
+"What about the boots? Our master does not need them. Our master has bid
+us live long."
+
+"You don't say!"
+
+"He had not yet reached home, when he died in his carriage. The carriage
+drove up to the house, and the servants came to help him out, but he lay
+as heavy as a bag, and was stiff and dead, and they had a hard time
+taking him out from the carriage. So the lady has sent me, saying: 'Tell
+the shoemaker that a gentleman came to see him, and ordered a pair of
+boots, and left the material for them; well, tell him that the boots are
+not wanted, but that he should use the leather at once for a pair of
+soft shoes. Wait until they make them, and bring them with you.' And so
+that is why I have come."
+
+Mikháyla took the remnants of the material from the table, rolled them
+up, and took the soft shoes which he had made, and clapped them against
+each other, and wiped them off with his apron, and gave them to the lad.
+The lad took the soft shoes.
+
+"Good-bye, masters, good luck to you!"
+
+
+VIII.
+
+There passed another year, and a third, and Mikháyla was now living the
+sixth year with Semén. He was living as before. He went nowhere, did not
+speak an unnecessary word, and all that time had smiled but twice: once,
+when they gave him the supper, and the second time when the gentleman
+came. Semén did not get tired admiring his workman. He no longer asked
+him where he came from; he was only afraid that Mikháyla might leave
+him.
+
+One day they were sitting at home. The housewife was putting the iron
+pots into the oven, and the children were running on the benches, and
+looking out of the window. Semén was sharpening his knives at one
+window, and Mikháyla was heeling a shoe at the other.
+
+One of the little boys ran up to Mikháyla on the bench, leaned against
+his shoulder, and looked out of the window.
+
+"Uncle Mikháyla, look there: a merchant woman is coming to us with some
+little girls. One of the girls is lame."
+
+When the boy said that, Mikháyla threw down his work, turned to the
+window, and looked out into the street.
+
+And Semén marvelled. Mikháyla had never before looked into the street,
+and now he had rushed to the window, and was gazing at something. Semén,
+too, looked out of the window: he saw, indeed, a woman who was walking
+over to his yard. She was well dressed, and led two little girls in fur
+coats and shawls. The girls looked one like the other, so that it was
+hard to tell them apart, only one had a maimed left leg,--she walked
+with a limp.
+
+The woman walked up the porch to the vestibule, felt for the entrance,
+pulled at the latch, and opened the door. First she let the two girls
+in, and then entered herself.
+
+"Good day, people!"
+
+"You are welcome! What do you wish?"
+
+The woman seated herself at the table. The girls pressed close to her
+knees: they were timid before the people.
+
+"I want you to make some leather boots for the girls for the spring."
+
+"Well, that can be done. We have not made such small shoes, but we can
+do it. We can make sharp-edged shoes, or turnover shoes on linen.
+Mikháyla is my master."
+
+Semén looked around at Mikháyla, and he saw that Mikháyla had put away
+his work and was sitting and gazing at the girls.
+
+And Semén marvelled at Mikháyla. Indeed, the girls were pretty:
+black-eyed, chubby, ruddy-faced, and the fur coats and shawls which they
+had on were fine; but still Semén could not make out why he was gazing
+at them as though they were friends of his.
+
+Semén marvelled, and began to talk with the woman and to bargain. They
+came to an agreement, and he took the measures. The woman took the lame
+girl on her knees, and said:
+
+"For this girl take two measures: make one shoe for the lame foot, and
+three for the sound foot. They have the same size of feet, exactly
+alike. They are twins."
+
+Semén took the measure, and he said about the lame girl:
+
+"What has made her lame? She is such a pretty girl. Was she born this
+way?"
+
+"No, her mother crushed her."
+
+Matréna broke in,--she wanted to know who the woman was, and whose the
+children were, and so she said:
+
+"Are you not their mother?"
+
+"I am not their mother, nor their kin, housewife! I am a stranger to
+them: I have adopted them."
+
+"Not your children! How you care for them!"
+
+"Why should I not care for them? I nursed them with my own breast. I had
+a child of my own, but God took him away. I did not care for him so much
+as I have cared for them."
+
+"Whose are they, then?"
+
+
+IX.
+
+The woman began to talk, and said:
+
+"It was six years ago that these orphans lost their parents in one week:
+their father was buried on a Tuesday, and their mother died on Friday.
+These orphans were born three days after their father's death, and their
+mother did not live a day. At that time I was living with my husband in
+the village. We were their neighbours, our yard joining theirs. Their
+father was a lonely man; he worked in the forest. They dropped a tree on
+him, and it fell across his body and squeezed out his entrails. They had
+barely brought him home, when he gave up his soul to God, and that same
+week his wife bore twins,--these girls. The woman was poor and alone;
+she had neither old woman nor girl with her.
+
+"Alone she bore them, and alone she died.
+
+"I went in the morning to see my neighbour, but she, the dear woman, was
+already cold. As she died she fell on the girl, and wrenched her leg.
+The people came, and they washed and dressed her, and made a coffin, and
+buried her. All of them were good people. The girls were left alone.
+What was to be done with them? Of all the women I alone had a baby. I
+had been nursing my first-born boy for eight weeks. I took them for the
+time being to my house. The peasants gathered and thought and thought
+what to do with them, and they said to me: 'Márya, keep the girls
+awhile, and we will try and think what to do with them.' And I nursed
+the straight girl once, but the lame girl I would not nurse. I did not
+want her to live. But, I thought, why should the angelic soul go out,
+and so I pitied her, too. I began to nurse her, and so I raised my own
+and the two girls, all three of them with my own breasts. I was young
+and strong, and I had good food. And God gave me so much milk in my
+breasts that at times they overflowed. I would feed two of them, while
+the third would be waiting. When one rolled away, I took the third. And
+God granted that I should raise the three, but my own child I lost in
+the second year. And God has given me no other children. We began to
+earn more and more, and now we are living here with the merchant at the
+mill. The wages are big, and our living is good. I have no children, and
+how should I live if it were not for these girls? How can I help loving
+them? They are all the wax of my tapers that I have."
+
+With one hand the woman pressed the lame girl to her side, and with the
+other she began to wipe off her tears.
+
+And Matréna sighed, and said:
+
+"Not in vain is the proverb: 'You can live without parents, but not
+without God.'"
+
+And so they were talking among themselves, when suddenly the room was
+lighted as though by sheet lightning from the corner where sat Mikháyla.
+All looked at him, and they saw Mikháyla sitting with folded hands on
+his knees, and looking up, and smiling.
+
+
+X.
+
+The woman went away with the girls, and Mikháyla got up from his bench.
+He lay down his work, took off his apron, bowed to the master and to the
+housewife, and said:
+
+"Forgive me, people! God has forgiven me. You, too, should forgive me."
+
+And the master and his wife saw a light coming from Mikháyla. And Semén
+got up, and bowed to Mikháyla, and said:
+
+"I see, Mikháyla, you are not a simple man, and I cannot keep you, and
+must not beg you to remain. But tell me this: Why, when I found you and
+brought you home, were you gloomy, and when my wife gave you a supper,
+why did you smile at her and after that grow brighter? Later, when the
+gentleman ordered the boots, you smiled for the second time, and after
+that grew brighter, and now, when the woman brought her girls, you
+smiled for the third time, and grew entirely bright. Tell me, Mikháyla,
+why does such light come from you, and why did you smile three times?"
+
+And Mikháyla said:
+
+"The light comes from me, because I had been punished, and now God has
+forgiven me. And I smiled three times because I had to learn three words
+of God. And I have learned the three words: one word I learned when your
+wife took pity on me, and so I smiled for the first time. The second
+word I learned when the rich man ordered the boots, and then I smiled
+for the second time. And now, when I saw the girls, I learned the last,
+the third word, and I smiled for the third time."
+
+And Semén said:
+
+"Tell me, Mikháyla, for what did God punish you, and what are those
+words of God, that I may know them."
+
+And Mikháyla said:
+
+"God punished me for having disobeyed him. I was an angel in heaven, and
+I disobeyed God. I was an angel in heaven, and God sent me down to take
+the soul out of a woman. I flew down to the earth, and I saw the woman
+lying sick, and she had borne twins,--two girls. The girls were
+squirming near their mother, and she could not take them to her breasts.
+The woman saw me, and she knew that God had sent me for her soul. She
+wept, and said: 'Angel of God! My husband has just been buried,--he was
+killed by a tree in the forest. I have neither sister, nor aunt, nor
+granny,--there is no one to bring up my orphans, so do not take my soul!
+Let me raise my own children, and put them on their feet. Children
+cannot live without a father, without a mother.' And I listened to the
+mother, and placed one girl to her breast, and gave the other one into
+her hands, and rose up to the Lord in heaven. And I came before the
+Lord, and said: 'I cannot take the soul out of the mother in childbirth.
+The father was killed by a tree, the mother bore twins, and she begged
+me not to take the soul out of her, saying, Let me rear and bring up my
+children, and put them on their feet. Children cannot live without a
+father or mother. I did not take the soul out of the woman in
+childbirth.' And the Lord said: 'Go and take the soul out of the woman
+in childbirth! And you will learn three words: you will learn what there
+is in men, and what is not given to men, and what men live by. When you
+learn them, you will return to heaven.' I flew back to earth and took
+the soul out of the woman.
+
+"The little ones fell away from the breasts. The dead body rolled over
+on the bed and crushed one of the girls, and wrenched her leg. I rose
+above the village and wanted to take the soul to God; but the wind
+caught me, and my wings fell flat; and dropped off, and the soul went by
+itself before God, and I fell near the road on the earth."
+
+
+XI.
+
+And Semén and Matréna understood whom they had clothed and fed, and who
+had lived with them, and they wept for terror and for joy, and said the
+angel:
+
+"I was left all alone in the field, and naked. I had not known before of
+human wants, neither of cold, nor of hunger, and I became a man. I was
+starved and chilled and did not know what to do. I saw in the field a
+chapel made for the Lord, and I went to God's chapel and wanted to hide
+myself in it. The chapel was locked, and I could not get in. And I
+seated myself behind the chapel, to protect myself against the wind. The
+evening came, I was hungry and chilled, and I ached all over. Suddenly I
+heard a man walking on the road; he was carrying a pair of boots and
+talking to himself. And I saw a mortal face, for the first time since I
+had become a man, and that face was terrible to me, and I turned away
+from it. And I heard the man talking to himself about how he might cover
+his body in the winter from the cold, and how he might feed his wife and
+children. And I thought: 'I am dying from hunger and cold, and here
+comes a man, who is thinking only of how to cover himself and his wife
+with a fur coat, and of how to feed his family. He cannot help me.' The
+man saw me; he frowned, and looked gloomier still, and passed by me. And
+I was in despair. Suddenly I heard the man coming back. I looked at him
+and did not recognize him: before that death had been in his face, and
+now he was revived, and in his face I saw God. He came up to me, and
+clothed me, and took me with him, and led me to his house. I came to
+his house, and a woman came out of the house and began to talk. The
+woman was more terrible yet than the man; the dead spirit was coming out
+of her mouth, and I could not breathe from the stench of death. She
+wanted to send me out into the cold, and I knew that she would die if
+she drove me out. And suddenly her husband reminded her of God. And the
+woman suddenly changed. And when she gave us to eat, and looked at us, I
+glanced at her: there was no longer death in her,--she was alive, and I
+recognized God in her.
+
+"And I recalled God's first word: 'You will know what there is in men.'
+And I learned that there was love in men. And I rejoiced at it, because
+God had begun to reveal to me what He had promised, and I smiled for the
+first time. But I could not yet learn everything. I could not understand
+what was not given to men, and what men lived by.
+
+"I began to live with you, and lived a year, and there came a man, to
+order a pair of boots, such as would wear a year, without ripping or
+turning. I looked at him, and suddenly I saw behind his shoulder my
+companion, the angel of death. None but me saw that angel; but I knew
+him, and I knew that the sun would not go down before the rich man's
+soul would be taken away. And I thought: 'The man is providing for a
+year, and does not know that he will not live until evening.' And I
+thought of God's second word: 'You will learn what is not given to men.'
+
+"I knew already what there was in men. Now I learned what was not given
+to men. It is not given men to know what they need for their bodies. And
+I smiled for the second time. I was glad because I had seen my comrade
+the angel, and because God had revealed the second word to me.
+
+"But I could not understand everything. I could not understand what men
+lived by. And I lived and waited for God to reveal to me the last word.
+And in the sixth year came the twin girls with the woman, and I
+recognized the girls and knew how they were kept alive. I recognized
+them, and I thought: 'The mother begged me for the sake of the children,
+and I believed the mother and thought that the children could not live
+without father and mother, and yet a strange woman has fed them and
+reared them.' And when the woman was touched as she looked at the
+children and wept, I saw in her the living God, and I understood what
+men lived by. And I learned that God had revealed the third word to me
+and forgave me. And I smiled for the third time."
+
+
+XII.
+
+And the angel's body was bared and clothed in light, so that the eye
+could not behold him, and he spoke louder, as though the voice were
+coming not from him but from heaven. And the angel said:
+
+"I have learned that every man lives not by the care for himself, but by
+love.
+
+"It was not given to the mother to know what her children needed for
+life. It was not given to the rich man to know what he needed for
+himself. And it is not given to any man to know whether before evening
+he will need boots for his life, or soft shoes for his death.
+
+"I was kept alive when I was a man not by what I did for myself, but
+because there was love in a passer-by and in his wife, and because they
+pitied and loved me. The orphans were left alive not by what was done
+for them, but because there was love in the heart of a strange woman,
+and she pitied and loved them. And all men live not by what they do for
+themselves, but because there is love in men.
+
+"I knew before that God gave life to men and that He wanted them to
+live; now I understand even something else.
+
+"I understand that God does not want men to live apart, and so He has
+not revealed to them what each needs for himself, but wants them to live
+together, and so He has revealed to them what they all need for
+themselves and for all.
+
+"I understand now that it only seems to men that they live by the care
+for themselves, and that they live only by love. He who has love, is in
+God, and God is in him, because God is love."
+
+And the angel began to sing the praise of God, and from his voice the
+whole hut shook. And the ceiling expanded, and a fiery column rose from
+earth to heaven. And Semén and his wife and children fell to the ground.
+And the wings were unfolded on the angel's shoulders, and he rose to
+heaven.
+
+And when Semén awoke, the hut was as before, and in the room were only
+his family.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE HERMITS
+
+1884
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE HERMITS
+
+     But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for
+     they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not
+     ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye
+     have need of, before ye ask him. (Matt. vi. 7-8.)
+
+
+A bishop was sailing in a ship from Arkhángelsk to Solóvki. On this ship
+there were pilgrims on their way to visit the saints. The wind was
+favourable, the weather clear, and the vessel did not roll. Of the
+pilgrims some were lying down, some eating, some sitting in groups, and
+some talking with each other. The bishop, too, came out on deck, and
+began to walk up and down on the bridge. He walked up to the prow and
+saw there several men sitting together. A peasant was pointing to
+something in the sea and talking, while the people listened to him. The
+bishop stopped to see what the peasant was pointing at: he could see
+nothing except that the sun was glistening on the water. The bishop came
+nearer and began to listen. When the peasant saw the bishop, he took off
+his cap and grew silent. And the people, too, when they saw the bishop,
+took off their caps and saluted him.
+
+"Do not trouble yourselves, friends," said the bishop. "I have just come
+to hear what you, good man, are telling about."
+
+"The fisherman is telling us about the hermits," said a merchant, who
+was a little bolder than the rest.
+
+"What about those hermits?" asked the bishop. He walked over to the
+gunwale and sat down on a box. "Tell me, too, and I will listen. What
+were you pointing at?"
+
+"There is an island glinting there," said the peasant, pointing forward
+and to the right. "On that island the hermits are living and saving
+their souls."
+
+"Where is that island?" asked the bishop.
+
+"Please to follow my hand! There is a small cloud; below it and a little
+to the left of it the island appears like a streak."
+
+The bishop looked and looked, but only the water was rippling in the
+sun, and he could not make out anything with his unaccustomed eye.
+
+"I do not see it," he said. "What kind of hermits are living on that
+island?"
+
+"God's people," replied the peasant. "I had heard about them for a long
+time, and never had any chance to see them; but two summers ago I saw
+them myself."
+
+The fisherman went on to tell how he went out to catch fish and was
+driven to that island, and did not know where he was. In the morning he
+walked out and came to an earth hut, and there he saw one hermit, and
+then two more came out. They fed him and dried him and helped him to
+mend his boat.
+
+"What kind of people are they?" asked the bishop.
+
+"One is small and stooping, a very old man, in an old cassock; he must
+be more than a hundred years old, the gray of his beard is turning
+green, and he smiles all the time, and is as bright as an angel of
+heaven. The second is taller; he, too, is old, and wears a ragged
+caftan; his broad gray beard is streaked yellow, and he is a powerful
+man: he turned my boat around as though it were a vat, before I had a
+chance to help him; he also is a cheerful man. The third man is tall;
+his beard falls down to his knees and is as white as snow; he is a
+gloomy man, and his brows hang over his eyes; he is all naked, and
+girded only with a piece of matting."
+
+"What did they tell you?" asked the bishop.
+
+"They did everything mostly in silence, and spoke little to one another.
+When one looked up, the others understood him. I asked the tall man how
+long they had been living there. He frowned and muttered something, as
+though he were angry, but the little hermit took his arm and smiled, and
+the tall one grew silent. All the little hermit said was: 'Have mercy on
+us,' and smiled."
+
+While the peasant spoke, the ship came nearer to the island.
+
+"Now you can see it plainly," said the merchant. "Please to look there,
+your Reverence!" he said, pointing to the island.
+
+The bishop looked up and really saw a black strip, which was the island.
+The bishop looked at it for quite awhile, then he went away from the
+prow to the stern, and walked over to the helmsman.
+
+"What island is this that we see there?"
+
+"That is a nameless island. There are so many of them here."
+
+"Is it true what they say, that some hermits are saving their souls
+there?"
+
+"They say so, your Reverence, but I do not know whether it is so.
+Fishermen say that they have seen them. But they frequently speak to no
+purpose."
+
+"I should like to land on that island and see the hermits," said the
+bishop. "How can I do it?"
+
+"The ship cannot land there," said the helmsman. "You can get there by a
+boat, but you must ask the captain."
+
+The captain was called out.
+
+"I should like to see those hermits," said the bishop. "Can I not be
+taken there?"
+
+The captain began to dissuade him.
+
+"It can be done, but it will take much time, and, I take the liberty of
+informing your Reverence, it is not worth while to look at them. I have
+heard people say that they were foolish old men: they understand nothing
+and cannot speak, just like the fishes of the sea."
+
+"I wish it," said the bishop. "I will pay you for the trouble, so take
+me there."
+
+It could not be helped. The sailors shifted the sails and the helmsman
+turned the ship, and they sailed toward the island. A chair was brought
+out for the bishop and put at the prow. He sat down and looked. All the
+people gathered at the prow, and all kept looking at the island. Those
+who had sharper eyes saw the rocks on the island, and they pointed to
+the earth hut. And one man could make out the three hermits. The captain
+brought out his spy-glass and looked through it and gave it to the
+bishop.
+
+"That's so," he said, "there, on the shore, a little to the right from
+that big rock, stand three men."
+
+The bishop looked through the glass and turned it to the right spot.
+There were three men there: one tall, a second smaller, and a third a
+very small man. They were standing on the shore and holding each other's
+hands.
+
+The captain walked over to the bishop, and said:
+
+"Here, your Reverence, the ship has to stop. If you wish to go there by
+all means, you will please go from here in a boat, and we will wait here
+at anchor."
+
+The hawsers were let out, the anchor dropped, the sails furled, and the
+vessel jerked and shook. A boat was lowered, the oarsmen jumped into it,
+and the bishop went down a ladder. He sat down on a bench in the boat,
+and the oarsmen pulled at the oars and rowed toward the island. They
+came near to the shore and could see clearly three men standing there: a
+tall man, all naked, with a mat about his loins; the next in size, in a
+tattered caftan; and the stooping old man, in an old cassock. There they
+stood holding each other's hands.
+
+The oarsmen rowed up to the shore and caught their hook in it. The
+bishop stepped ashore.
+
+The old men bowed to him. He blessed them, and they bowed lower still.
+Then the bishop began to talk to them:
+
+"I have heard," he said, "that you are here, hermits of God, saving your
+souls and praying to Christ our God for men. I, an unworthy servant of
+Christ, have been called here by the mercy of God to tend His flock, and
+so I wanted to see you, the servants of God, and to give you some
+instruction, if I can do so."
+
+The hermits kept silence, and smiled, and looked at one another.
+
+"Tell me, how do you save yourselves and serve God?" asked the bishop.
+
+The middle-sized hermit heaved a sigh and looked at the older, the
+stooping hermit. And the stooping hermit smiled, and said:
+
+"We do not know, O servant of God, how to serve God. We only support
+ourselves."
+
+"How, then, do you pray to God?"
+
+And the stooping hermit said:
+
+"We pray as follows: There are three of you and three of us,--have mercy
+on us!"
+
+And the moment the stooping hermit had said that, all three of them
+raised their eyes to heaven, and all three said:
+
+"There are three of you and three of us,--have mercy on us!"
+
+The bishop smiled, and said:
+
+"You have heard that about the Holy Trinity, but you do not pray the
+proper way. I like you, hermits of God, and I see that you want to
+please God, but do not know how to serve Him. I will teach you, not
+according to my way, but from the Gospel will I teach you as God has
+commanded all men to pray to Him."
+
+And the bishop began to explain to the hermits how God had revealed
+Himself to men: he explained to them about God the Father, and God the
+Son, and God the Holy Ghost, and said:
+
+"God the Son came down upon earth to save men and taught them to pray as
+follows. Listen, and repeat after me."
+
+And the bishop began to say, "Our Father." And one of the hermits
+repeated, "Our Father," and the second repeated, "Our Father," and the
+third repeated, "Our Father."
+
+"Which art in heaven." The hermit repeated, "Which art in heaven." But
+the middle hermit got mixed in his words, and did not say it right; and
+the tall, naked hermit did not say it right: his moustache was all over
+his mouth, and he could not speak clearly; and the stooping, toothless
+hermit, too, lisped it indistinctly.
+
+The bishop repeated it a second time, and the hermits repeated it after
+him. And the bishop sat down on a stone, and the hermits stood around
+him and looked into his mouth and repeated after him so long as he
+spoke. And the bishop worked with them all day; he repeated one word
+ten, and twenty, and a hundred times, and the hermits repeated after
+him. They blundered, and he corrected them, and made them repeat from
+the beginning.
+
+The bishop did not leave the hermits until he taught them the whole
+Lord's prayer. They said it with him and by themselves. The middle-sized
+hermit was the first to learn it, and he repeated it all by himself. The
+bishop made him say it over and over again, and both the others said the
+prayer, too.
+
+It was beginning to grow dark, and the moon rose from the sea, when the
+bishop got up to go back to the ship. The bishop bade the hermits
+good-bye, and they bowed to the ground before him. He raised each of
+them, and kissed them, and told them to pray as he had taught them, and
+entered the boat, and was rowed back to the ship.
+
+And as the boat was rowed toward the ship, the bishop heard the hermits
+loudly repeating the Lord's prayer in three voices. The boat came nearer
+to the ship, and the voices of the hermits could no longer be heard, but
+in the moonlight they could be seen standing on the shore, in the spot
+where they had been left: the smallest of them was in the middle, the
+tallest on the right, and the middle-sized man on the left. The bishop
+reached the ship and climbed up to the deck. The anchors were weighed,
+the sails unfurled, and the wind blew and drove the ship, and on they
+sailed. The bishop went to the prow and sat down there and looked at the
+island. At first the hermits could be seen, then they disappeared from
+view, and only the island could be seen; then the island, too,
+disappeared, and only the sea glittered in the moonlight.
+
+The pilgrims lay down to sleep, and everything grew quiet on the deck.
+But the bishop did not feel like sleeping. He sat by himself at the prow
+and looked out to sea to where the island had disappeared, and thought
+of the good hermits. He thought of how glad they had been to learn the
+prayer, and thanked God for having taken him there to help the God's
+people,--to teach them the word of God.
+
+The bishop was sitting and thinking and looking out to sea to where the
+island had disappeared. There was something unsteady in his eyes: now a
+light quivered in one place on the waves, and now in another. Suddenly
+he saw something white and shining in the moonlight,--either a bird, a
+gull, or a white sail on a boat. The bishop watched it closely.
+
+"A sailboat is following after us," he thought. "It will soon overtake
+us. It was far, far away, but now it is very near. It is evidently not a
+boat, for there seems to be no sail. Still it is flying behind us and
+coming up close to us."
+
+The bishop could not make out what it was: a boat, no, it was not a
+boat; a bird, no, not a bird; a fish, no, not a fish! It was like a man,
+but too large for that, and then, how was a man to be in the middle of
+the ocean? The bishop got up and walked over to the helmsman.
+
+"See there, what is it?"
+
+"What is it, my friend? What is it?" asked the bishop, but he saw
+himself that those were the hermits running over the sea. Their beards
+shone white, and, as though the ship were standing still, they came up
+to it.
+
+The helmsman looked around and was frightened. He dropped the helm, and
+called out in a loud voice:
+
+"O Lord! The hermits are running after us on the sea as though it were
+dry land!"
+
+The people heard him, and rushed to the helm. All saw the hermits
+running and holding each other's hands. Those at the ends waved their
+hands, asking the ship to be stopped. All three were running over the
+water as though it were dry land, without moving their feet.
+
+Before the ship could be stopped, the hermits came abreast with the
+ship. They came up to the gunwale, raised their heads, and spoke in one
+voice:
+
+"O servant of God, we have forgotten your lesson. So long as we repeated
+it, we remembered it; but when we stopped for an hour, one word leaped
+out, and then the rest scattered. We do not remember a thing, so teach
+us again."
+
+The bishop made the sign of the cross, bent down to the hermits, and
+said:
+
+"Even your prayer, hermits of God, reaches the Lord. It is not for me to
+teach you. Pray for us sinful men!"
+
+And the bishop made a low obeisance to the hermits. And the hermits
+stopped, turned around, and walked back over the sea. And up to morning
+a light could be seen on the side where the hermits had departed.
+
+
+
+
+NEGLECT THE FIRE
+
+And You Cannot Put It Out
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+NEGLECT THE FIRE
+
+And You Cannot Put It Out
+
+     Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother
+     sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?
+
+     Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but,
+     Until seventy times seven.
+
+     Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king,
+     which would take account of his servants.
+
+     And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which
+     owed him ten thousand talents.
+
+     But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be
+     sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment
+     to be made.
+
+     The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord,
+     have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.
+
+     Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed
+     him, and forgave him the debt.
+
+     But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants,
+     which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took
+     him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest.
+
+     And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought him,
+     saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.
+
+     And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should
+     pay the debt.
+
+     So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they were very sorry,
+     and came and told unto their lord all that was done.
+
+     Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou
+     wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou
+     desiredst me:
+
+     Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant,
+     even as I had pity on thee?
+
+     And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till
+     he should pay all that was due unto him.
+
+     So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from
+     your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.
+     (Matt. xviii. 21-35.)
+
+
+There lived in a village a peasant, by the name of Iván Shcherbakóv. He
+lived well; he was himself in full strength, the first worker in the
+village, and he had three sons,--all of them on their legs: one was
+married, the second about to marry, and the third a grown-up lad who
+drove horses and was beginning to plough. Iván's wife was a clever woman
+and a good housekeeper, and his daughter-in-law turned out to be a quiet
+person and a good worker. There was no reason why Iván should not have
+led a good life with his family. The only idle mouth on the farm was his
+old, ailing father (he had been lying on the oven for seven years, sick
+with the asthma).
+
+Iván had plenty of everything, three horses and a colt, a cow and a
+yearling calf, and fifteen sheep. The women made the shoes and the
+clothes for the men and worked in the field; the men worked on their
+farms.
+
+They had enough grain until the next crop. From the oats they paid their
+taxes and met all their obligations. An easy life, indeed, might Iván
+have led with his children. But next door to him he had a neighbour,
+Gavrílo the Lame, Gordyéy Ivánov's son. And there was an enmity between
+him and Iván.
+
+So long as old man Gordyéy was alive, and Iván's father ran the farm,
+the peasants lived in neighbourly fashion. If the women needed a sieve
+or a vat, or the men had to get another axle or wheel for a time, they
+sent from one farm to another, and helped each other out in a
+neighbourly way. If a calf ran into the yard of the threshing-floor,
+they drove it out and only said: "Don't let it out, for the heap has not
+yet been put away." And it was not their custom to put it away and lock
+it up in the threshing-floor or in a shed, or to revile each other.
+
+Thus they lived so long as the old men were alive. But when the young
+people began to farm, things went quite differently.
+
+The whole thing began from a mere nothing. A hen of Iván's
+daughter-in-law started laying early. The young woman gathered the eggs
+for Passion week. Every day she went to the shed to pick up an egg from
+the wagon-box. But, it seems, the boys scared away the hen, and she flew
+across the wicker fence to the neighbour's yard, and laid an egg there.
+The young woman heard the hen cackle, so she thought:
+
+"I have no time now, I must get the hut in order for the holiday; I will
+go there later to get it."
+
+In the evening she went to the wagon-box under the shed, to fetch the
+egg, but it was not there. The young woman asked her mother-in-law and
+her brother-in-law if they had taken it; but Taráska, her youngest
+brother-in-law, said:
+
+"Your hen laid an egg in the neighbour's yard, for she cackled there and
+flew out from that yard."
+
+The young woman went to look at her hen, and found her sitting with the
+cock on the perch; she had closed her eyes and was getting ready to
+sleep. The woman would have liked to ask her where she laid the egg, but
+she would not have given her any answer. Then the young woman went to
+her neighbour. The old woman met her.
+
+"What do you want, young woman?"
+
+"Granny, my hen has been in your yard to-day,--did she not lay an egg
+there?"
+
+"I have not set eyes on her. We have hens of our own, thank God, and
+they have been laying for quite awhile. We have gathered our own eggs,
+and we do not need other people's eggs. Young woman, we do not go to
+other people's yards to gather eggs."
+
+The young woman was offended. She said a word too much, the neighbour
+answered with two, and the women began to scold. Iván's wife was
+carrying water, and she, too, took a hand in it. Gavrílo's wife jumped
+out, and began to rebuke her neighbour. She reminded her of things that
+had happened, and mentioned things that had not happened at all. And the
+tongue-lashing began. All yelled together, trying to say two words at
+the same time. And they used bad words.
+
+"You are such and such a one; you are a thief, a sneak; you are simply
+starving your father-in-law; you are a tramp."
+
+"And you are a beggar: you have torn my sieve; and you have our
+shoulder-yoke. Give me back the yoke!"
+
+They grabbed the yoke, spilled the water, tore off their kerchiefs, and
+began to fight. Gavrílo drove up from the field, and he took his wife's
+part. Iván jumped out with his son, and they all fell in a heap. Iván
+was a sturdy peasant, and he scattered them all. He yanked out a piece
+of Gavrílo's beard. People ran up to them, and they were with difficulty
+pulled apart.
+
+That's the way it began.
+
+Gavrílo wrapped the piece of his beard in a petition and went to the
+township court to enter a complaint.
+
+"I did not raise a beard for freckled Iván to pull it out."
+
+In the meantime his wife bragged to the neighbours that they would now
+get Iván sentenced and would have him sent to Siberia, and the feud
+began.
+
+The old man on the oven tried to persuade them to stop the first day
+they started to quarrel, but the young people paid no attention to him.
+He said to them:
+
+"Children, you are doing a foolish thing, and for a foolish thing have
+you started a feud. Think of it,--the whole affair began from an egg.
+The children picked up the egg,--well, God be with them! There is no
+profit in one egg. With God's aid there will be enough for everybody.
+Well, you have said a bad word, so correct it, show her how to use
+better words! Well, you have had a fight,--you are sinful people. That,
+too, happens. Well, go and make peace, and let there be an end to it! If
+you keep it up, it will only be worse."
+
+The young people did not obey the old man; they thought that he was not
+using sense, but just babbling in old man's fashion.
+
+Iván did not give in to his neighbour.
+
+"I did not pull his beard," he said. "He jerked it out himself; but his
+son has yanked off my shirt-button and has torn my whole shirt. Here it
+is."
+
+And Iván, too, took the matter to court. The case was heard before a
+justice of the peace, and in the township court. While they were suing
+each other, Gavrílo lost a coupling-pin out of his cart. The women in
+Gavrílo's house accused Iván's son of having taken it.
+
+"We saw him in the night," they said, "making his way under the window
+to the cart, and the gossip says that he went to the dram-shop and asked
+the dram-shopkeeper to take the pin from him."
+
+Again they started a suit. But at home not a day passed but that they
+quarrelled, nay, even fought. The children cursed one another,--they
+learned this from their elders,--and when the women met at the brook,
+they did not so much strike the beetles as let loose their tongues, and
+to no good.
+
+At first the men just accused each other, but later they began to snatch
+up things that lay about loose. And they taught the women and children
+to do the same. Their life grew worse and worse. Iván Shcherbakóv and
+Gavrílo the Lame kept suing one another at the meetings of the Commune,
+and in the township court, and before the justices of the peace, and all
+the judges were tired of them. Now Gavrílo got Iván to pay a fine, or he
+sent him to the lockup, and now Iván did the same to Gavrílo. And the
+more they did each other harm, the more furious they grew. When dogs
+make for each other, they get more enraged the more they fight. You
+strike a dog from behind, and he thinks that the other dog is biting
+him, and gets only madder than ever. Just so it was with these peasants:
+when they went to court, one or the other was punished, either by being
+made to pay a fine, or by being thrown into prison, and that only made
+their rage flame up more and more toward one another.
+
+"Just wait, I will pay you back for it!"
+
+And thus it went on for six years. The old man on the oven kept
+repeating the same advice. He would say to them:
+
+"What are you doing, my children? Drop all your accounts, stick to your
+work, don't show such malice toward others, and it will be better. The
+more you rage, the worse will it be."
+
+They paid no attention to the old man.
+
+In the seventh year the matter went so far that Iván's daughter-in-law
+at a wedding accused Gavrílo before people of having been caught with
+horses. Gavrílo was drunk, and he did not hold back his anger, but
+struck the woman and hurt her so that she lay sick for a week, for she
+was heavy with child. Iván rejoiced, and went with a petition to the
+prosecuting magistrate.
+
+"Now," he thought, "I will get even with my neighbour: he shall not
+escape the penitentiary or Siberia."
+
+Again Iván was not successful. The magistrate did not accept the
+petition: they examined the woman, but she was up and there were no
+marks upon her. Iván went to the justice of the peace; but the justice
+sent the case to the township court. Iván bestirred himself in the
+township office, filled the elder and the scribe with half a bucket of
+sweet liquor, and got them to sentence Gavrílo to having his back
+flogged. The sentence was read to Gavrílo in the court.
+
+The scribe read:
+
+"The court has decreed that the peasant Gavrílo Gordyéy receive twenty
+blows with rods in the township office."
+
+Iván listened to the decree and looked at Gavrílo, wondering what he
+would do. Gavrílo, too, heard the decree, and he became as pale as a
+sheet, and turned away and walked out into the vestibule. Iván followed
+him out and wanted to go to his horse, when he heard Gavrílo say:
+
+"Very well, he will beat my back, and it will burn, but something of his
+may burn worse than that."
+
+When Iván heard these words, he returned to the judges.
+
+"Righteous judges! He threatens to set fire to my house. Listen, he said
+it in the presence of witnesses."
+
+Gavrílo was called in.
+
+"Is it true that you said so?"
+
+"I said nothing. Flog me, if you please. Evidently I must suffer for my
+truth, while he may do anything he wishes."
+
+Gavrílo wanted to say something more, but his lips and cheeks trembled.
+He turned away toward the wall. Even the judges were frightened as they
+looked at him.
+
+"It would not be surprising," they thought, "if he actually did some
+harm to his neighbour or to himself."
+
+And an old judge said to them:
+
+"Listen, friends! You had better make peace with each other. Did you do
+right, brother Gavrílo, to strike a pregnant woman? Luckily God was
+merciful to you, but think what crime you might have committed! Is that
+good? Confess your guilt and beg his pardon! And he will pardon you.
+Then we shall change the decree."
+
+The scribe heard that, and said:
+
+"That is impossible, because on the basis of Article 117 there has taken
+place no reconciliation, but the decree of the court has been handed
+down, and the decree has to be executed."
+
+But the judge paid no attention to the scribe.
+
+"Stop currycombing your tongue. The first article, my friend, is to
+remember God, and God has commanded me to make peace."
+
+And the judge began once more to talk to the peasants, but he could not
+persuade them. Gavrílo would not listen to him.
+
+"I am fifty years old less one," he said, "and I have a married son. I
+have not been beaten in all my life, and now freckled Iván has brought
+me to being beaten with rods, and am I to beg his forgiveness? Well, he
+will--Iván will remember me!"
+
+Gavrílo's voice trembled again. He could not talk. He turned around and
+went out.
+
+From the township office to the village was a distance of ten versts,
+and Iván returned home late. The women had already gone out to meet the
+cattle. He unhitched his horse, put it away, and entered the hut. The
+room was empty. The children had not yet returned from the field, and
+the women were out to meet the cattle. Iván went in, sat down on a
+bench, and began to think. He recalled how the decision was announced to
+Gavrílo, and how he grew pale, and turned to the wall. And his heart was
+pinched. He thought of how he should feel if he were condemned to be
+flogged. He felt sorry for Gavrílo. He heard the old man coughing on the
+oven. The old man turned around, let down his legs, and sat up. He
+pulled himself with difficulty up to the bench, and coughed and coughed,
+until he cleared his throat, and leaned against the table, and said:
+
+"Well, have they condemned him?"
+
+Iván said:
+
+"He has been sentenced to twenty strokes with the rods."
+
+The old man shook his head.
+
+"Iván, you are not doing right. It's wrong, not wrong to him, but to
+yourself. Well, will it make you feel easier, if they flog him?"
+
+"He will never do it again," said Iván.
+
+"Why not? In what way is he doing worse than you?"
+
+"What, he has not harmed me?" exclaimed Iván. "He might have killed the
+woman; and he even now threatens to set fire to my house. Well, shall I
+bow to him for it?"
+
+The old man heaved a sigh, and said:
+
+"You, Iván, walk and drive wherever you please in the free world, and I
+have passed many years on the oven, and so you think that you see
+everything, while I see nothing. No, my son, you see nothing,--malice
+has dimmed your eyes. Another man's sins are in front of you, but your
+own are behind your back. You say that he has done wrong. If he alone
+had done wrong, there would be no harm. Does evil between people arise
+from one man only? Evil arises between two. You see his badness, but you
+do not see your own. If he himself were bad, and you good, there would
+be no evil. Who pulled out his beard? Who blasted the rick which was at
+halves? Who is dragging him to the courts? And yet you put it always on
+him. You yourself live badly, that's why it is bad. Not thus did I live,
+and no such thing, my dear, did I teach you. Did I and the old man, his
+father, live this way? How did we live? In neighbourly fashion. If his
+flour gave out, and the woman came: 'Uncle Frol, I need some
+flour.'--'Go, young woman, into the granary, and take as much as you
+need.' If he had nobody to send out with the horses,--'Go, Iván, and
+look after his horses!' And if I was short of anything, I used to go to
+him. 'Uncle Gordyéy, I need this and that.' And how is it now? The other
+day a soldier was talking about Plévna. Why, your war is worse than what
+they did at Plévna. Do you call this living? It is a sin! You are a
+peasant, a head of a house. You will be responsible. What are you
+teaching your women and your children? To curse. The other day Taráska,
+that dirty nose, cursed Aunt Arína, and his mother only laughed at him.
+Is that good? You will be responsible for it. Think of your soul. Is
+that right? You say a word to me, and I answer with two; you box my
+ears, and I box you twice. No, my son, Christ walked over the earth and
+taught us fools something quite different. If a word is said to
+you,--keep quiet, and let conscience smite him. That's what he, my son,
+has taught us. If they box your ears, you turn the other cheek to them:
+'Here, strike it if I deserve it.' His own conscience will prick him. He
+will be pacified and will do as you wish. That's what he has commanded
+us to do, and not to crow. Why are you silent? Do I tell you right?"
+
+Iván was silent, and he listened.
+
+The old man coughed again, and with difficulty coughed up the phlegm,
+and began to speak again:
+
+"Do you think Christ has taught us anything bad? He has taught us for
+our own good. Think of your earthly life: are you better off, or worse,
+since that Plévna of yours was started? Figure out how much you have
+spent on these courts, how much you have spent in travelling and in
+feeding yourself on the way? See what eagles of sons you have! You ought
+to live, and live well, and go up, but your property is growing less.
+Why? For the same reason. From your pride. You ought to be ploughing
+with the boys in the field and attend to your sowing, but the fiend
+carries you to court or to some pettifogger. You do not plough in time
+and do not sow in time, and mother earth does not bring forth anything.
+Why did the oats not do well this year? When did you sow them? When you
+came back from the city. And what did you gain from the court? Only
+trouble for yourself. Oh, son, stick to your business, and attend to
+your field and your house, and if any one has offended you, forgive him
+in godly fashion, and things will go better with you, and you will feel
+easier at heart."
+
+Iván kept silence.
+
+"Listen, Iván! Pay attention to me, an old man. Go and hitch the gray
+horse, and drive straight back to the office: squash there the whole
+business, and in the morning go to Gavrílo, make peace with him in godly
+fashion, and invite him to the holiday" (it was before Lady-day), "have
+the samovár prepared, get a half bottle, and make an end to all sins, so
+that may never happen again, and command the women and children to live
+in peace."
+
+Iván heaved a sigh, and thought: "The old man is speaking the truth,"
+and his heart melted. The only thing he did not know was how to manage
+things so as to make peace with his neighbour.
+
+And the old man, as though guessing what he had in mind, began once
+more:
+
+"Go, Iván, do not put it off! Put out the fire at the start, for when it
+burns up, you can't control it."
+
+The old man wanted to say something else, but did not finish, for the
+women entered the room and began to prattle like magpies. The news had
+already reached them about how Gavrílo had been sentenced to be flogged,
+and how he had threatened to set fire to the house. They had found out
+everything, and had had time in the pasture to exchange words with the
+women of Gavrílo's house. They said that Gavrílo's daughter-in-law had
+threatened them with the examining magistrate. The magistrate, they
+said, was receiving gifts from Gavrílo. He would now upset the whole
+case, and the teacher had already written another petition to the Tsar
+about Iván, and that petition mentioned all the affairs, about the
+coupling-pin, and about the garden,--and half of the estate would go
+back to him. Iván listened to their talk, and his heart was chilled
+again, and he changed his mind about making peace with Gavrílo.
+
+In a farmer's yard there is always much to do. Iván did not stop to talk
+with the women, but got up and went out of the house, and walked over to
+the threshing-floor and the shed. Before he fixed everything and started
+back again, the sun went down, and the boys returned from the field.
+They had been ploughing up the field for the winter crop. Iván met them,
+and asked them about their work and helped them to put up the horses. He
+laid aside the torn collar and was about to put some poles under the
+shed, when it grew quite dark. Iván left the poles until the morrow;
+instead he threw some fodder down to the cattle, opened the gate, let
+Taráska out with the horses into the street, to go to the night pasture,
+and again closed the gate and put down the gate board.
+
+"Now to supper and to bed," thought Iván. He took the torn collar and
+went into the house. He had entirely forgotten about Gavrílo, and about
+what his father had told him. As he took hold of the ring and was about
+to enter the vestibule, he heard his neighbour on the other side of the
+wicker fence scolding some one in a hoarse voice.
+
+"The devil take him!" Gavrílo was crying to some one. "He ought to be
+killed."
+
+These words made all the old anger toward his neighbour burst forth in
+Iván. He stood awhile and listened to Gavrílo's scolding. Then Gavrílo
+grew quiet, and Iván went into the house.
+
+He entered the room. Fire was burning within. The young woman was
+sitting in the corner behind the spinning-wheel; the old woman was
+getting supper ready; the eldest son was making laces for the bast
+shoes, the second was at the table with a book, and Taráska was getting
+ready to go to the night pasture.
+
+In the house everything was good and merry, if it were not for that
+curse,--a bad neighbour.
+
+Iván was angry when he entered the room. He knocked the cat down from
+the bench and scolded the women because the vat was not in the right
+place. Iván felt out of humour. He sat down, frowning, and began to mend
+the collar. He could not forget Gavrílo's words, with which he had
+threatened him in court, and how he had said about somebody, speaking in
+a hoarse voice: "He ought to be killed."
+
+The old woman got Taráska something to eat. When he was through with his
+supper, he put on a fur coat and a caftan, girded himself, took a piece
+of bread, and went out to the horses. The eldest brother wanted to see
+him off, but Iván himself got up and went out on the porch. It was
+pitch-dark outside, the sky was clouded, and a wind had risen. Iván
+stepped down from the porch, helped his little son to get on a horse,
+frightened a colt behind him, and stood looking and listening while
+Taráska rode down the village, where he met other children, and until
+they all rode out of hearing. Iván stood and stood at the gate, and
+could not get Gavrílo's words out of his head, "Something of yours may
+burn worse."
+
+"He will not consider himself," thought Iván. "It is dry, and a wind is
+blowing. He will enter somewhere from behind, the scoundrel, and will
+set the house on fire, and he will go free. If I could catch him, he
+would not get away from me."
+
+This thought troubled Iván so much that he did not go back to the porch,
+but walked straight into the street and through the gate, around the
+corner of the house.
+
+"I will examine the yard,--who knows?"
+
+And Iván walked softly down along the gate. He had just turned around
+the corner and looked up the fence, when it seemed to him that something
+stirred at the other end, as though it got up and sat down again. Iván
+stopped and stood still,--he listened and looked: everything was quiet,
+only the wind rustled the leaves in the willow-tree and crackled through
+the straw. It was pitch-dark, but his eyes got used to the darkness:
+Iván could see the whole corner and the plough and the penthouse. He
+stood and looked, but there was no one there.
+
+"It must have only seemed so to me," thought Iván, "but I will,
+nevertheless, go and see," and he stole up along the shed. Iván stepped
+softly in his bast shoes, so that he did not hear his own steps. He came
+to the corner, when, behold, something flashed by near the plough, and
+disappeared again. Iván felt as though something hit him in the heart,
+and he stopped. As he stopped he could see something flashing up, and he
+could see clearly some one in a cap squatting down with his back toward
+him, and setting fire to a bunch of straw in his hands. He stood
+stock-still.
+
+"Now," he thought, "he will not get away from me. I will catch him on
+the spot."
+
+Before Iván had walked two lengths of the fence it grew quite bright,
+and no longer in the former place, nor was it a small fire, but the
+flame licked up in the straw of the penthouse and was going toward the
+roof, and there stood Gavrílo so that the whole of him could be seen.
+
+As a hawk swoops down on a lark, so Iván rushed up against Gavrílo the
+Lame.
+
+"I will twist him up," he thought, "and he will not get away from me."
+
+But Gavrílo the Lame evidently heard his steps and ran along the shed
+with as much speed as a hare.
+
+"You will not get away," shouted Iván, swooping down on him.
+
+He wanted to grab him by the collar, but Gavrílo got away from him, and
+Iván caught him by the skirt of his coat. The skirt tore off, and Iván
+fell down.
+
+Iván jumped up.
+
+"Help! Hold him!" and again he ran.
+
+As he was getting up, Gavrílo was already near his yard, but Iván caught
+up with him. He was just going to take hold of him, when something
+stunned him, as though a stone had come down on his head. Gavrílo had
+picked up an oak post near his house and hit Iván with all his might on
+the head, when he ran up to him.
+
+Iván staggered, sparks flew from his eyes, then all grew dark, and he
+fell down. When he came to his senses, Gavrílo was gone. It was as light
+as day, and from his yard came a sound as though an engine were working,
+and it roared and crackled there. Iván turned around and saw that his
+back shed was all on fire and the side shed was beginning to burn; the
+fire, and the smoke, and the burning straw were being carried toward the
+house.
+
+"What is this? Friend!" cried Iván. He raised his hands and brought them
+down on his calves. "If I could only pull it out from the penthouse, and
+put it out! What is this? Friends!" he repeated. He wanted to shout, but
+he nearly strangled,--he had no voice. He wanted to run, but his feet
+would not move,--they tripped each other up. He tried to walk slowly,
+but he staggered, and he nearly strangled. He stood still again and drew
+breath, and started to walk. Before he came to the shed and reached the
+fire, the side shed was all on fire, and he could not get into the yard.
+People came running up, but nothing could be done. The neighbours
+dragged their own things out of their houses, and drove the cattle out.
+After Iván's house, Gavrílo's caught fire; a wind rose and carried the
+fire across the street. Half the village burned down.
+
+All they saved from Iván's house was the old man, who was pulled out,
+and everybody jumped out in just what they had on. Everything else was
+burned, except the horses in the pasture: the cattle were burned, the
+chickens on their roosts, the carts, the ploughs, the harrows, the
+women's chests, the grain in the granary,--everything was burned.
+
+Gavrílo's cattle were saved, and they dragged a few things out of his
+house.
+
+It burned for a long time, all night long. Iván stood near his yard, and
+kept looking at it, and saying:
+
+"What is this? Friends! If I could just pull it out and put it out!"
+
+But when the ceiling in the hut fell down, he jumped into the hottest
+place, took hold of a brand, and wanted to pull it out. The women saw
+him and began to call him back, but he pulled out one log and started
+for another: he staggered and fell on the fire. Then his son rushed
+after him and dragged him out. Iván had his hair and beard singed and
+his garments burnt and his hands blistered, but he did not feel
+anything.
+
+"His sorrow has bereft him of his senses," people said.
+
+The fire died down, but Iván was still standing there, and saying:
+
+"Friends, what is this? If I could only pull it out."
+
+In the morning the elder sent his son to Iván.
+
+"Uncle Iván, your father is dying: he has sent for you, to bid you
+good-bye."
+
+Iván had forgotten about his father, and did not understand what they
+were saying to him.
+
+"What father?" he said. "Send for whom?"
+
+"He has sent for you, to bid you good-bye. He is dying in our house.
+Come, Uncle Iván!" said the elder's son, pulling him by his arm.
+
+Iván followed the elder's son.
+
+When the old man, was carried out, burning straw fell on him and
+scorched him. He was taken to the elder's house in a distant part of the
+village. This part did not burn.
+
+When Iván came to his father, only the elder's wife was there, and the
+children on the oven. The rest were all at the fire. The old man was
+lying on a bench, with a taper in his hand, and looking toward the door.
+When his son entered, he stirred a little. The old woman went up to him
+and said that his son had come. He told her to have him come closer to
+him. Iván went up, and then the old man said:
+
+"What have I told you, Iván? Who has burned the village?"
+
+"He, father," said Iván, "he,--I caught him at it. He put the fire to
+the roof while I was standing near. If I could only have caught the
+burning bunch of straw and put it out, there would not have been
+anything."
+
+"Iván," said the old man, "my death has come, and you, too, will die.
+Whose sin is it?"
+
+Iván stared at his father and kept silence; he could not say a word.
+
+"Speak before God: whose sin is it? What have I told you?"
+
+It was only then that Iván came to his senses, and understood
+everything. And he snuffled, and said:
+
+"Mine, father." And he knelt before his father, and wept, and said:
+"Forgive me, father! I am guilty toward you and toward God."
+
+The old man moved his hands, took the taper in his left hand, and was
+moving his right hand toward his brow, to make the sign of the cross,
+but he did not get it so far, and he stopped.
+
+"Glory be to thee, O Lord! Glory be to thee, O Lord!" he said, and his
+eyes were again turned toward his son.
+
+"Iván! Oh, Iván!"
+
+"What is it, father?"
+
+"What is to be done now?"
+
+Iván was weeping.
+
+"I do not know, father," he said. "How am I to live now, father?"
+
+The old man closed his eyes and lisped something, as though gathering
+all his strength, and he once more opened his eyes and said:
+
+"You will get along. With God's aid will you get along." The old man was
+silent awhile, and he smiled and said:
+
+"Remember, Iván, you must not tell who started the fire. Cover up
+another man's sin! God will forgive two sins."
+
+And the old man took the taper into both hands, folded them over his
+heart, heaved a sigh, stretched himself, and died.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Iván did not tell on Gavrílo, and nobody found out how the fire had been
+started.
+
+And Iván's heart was softened toward Gavrílo, and Gavrílo marvelled at
+Iván, because he did not tell anybody. At first Gavrílo was afraid of
+him, but later he got used to him. The peasants stopped quarrelling, and
+so did their families. While they rebuilt their homes, the two families
+lived in one house, and when the village was built again, and the
+farmhouses were built farther apart, Iván and Gavrílo again were
+neighbours, living in the same block.
+
+And Iván and Gavrílo lived neighbourly together, just as their fathers
+had lived. Iván Shcherbakóv remembered his father's injunction and God's
+command to put out the fire in the beginning. And if a person did him
+some harm, he did not try to have his revenge on the man, but to mend
+matters; and if a person called him a bad name, he did not try to answer
+with worse words still, but to teach him not to speak badly. And thus he
+taught, also the women folk and the children. And Iván Shcherbakóv
+improved and began to live better than ever.
+
+
+
+
+THE CANDLE
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+THE CANDLE
+
+     Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a
+     tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.
+     (Matt. v. 38, 39.)
+
+
+This happened in the days of slavery. There were then all kinds of
+masters. There were such as remembered their hour of death and God, and
+took pity on their people, and there were dogs,--not by that may their
+memory live! But there were no meaner masters than those who from
+serfdom rose, as though out of the mud, to be lords! With them life was
+hardest of all.
+
+There happened to be such a clerk in a manorial estate. The peasants
+were doing manorial labour. There was much land, and the land was good,
+and there was water, and meadows, and forests. There would have been
+enough for everybody, both for the master and for the peasants, but the
+master had placed over them a clerk, a manorial servant of his from
+another estate.
+
+The clerk took the power into his own hand, and sat down on the
+peasants' necks. He was a married man,--he had a wife and two married
+daughters,--and had saved some money: he might have lived gloriously
+without sin, but he was envious, and stuck fast in sin. He began by
+driving the peasants to manorial labour more than the usual number of
+days. He started a brick-kiln, and he drove all the men and women to
+work in it above their strength, and sold the brick. The peasants went
+to the proprietor in Moscow to complain against him, but they were not
+successful. When the clerk learned that the peasants had entered a
+complaint against him, he took his revenge out of them. The peasants led
+a harder life still. There were found faithless people among the
+peasants: they began to denounce their own brothers to the clerk, and to
+slander one another. And all the people became involved, and the clerk
+was furious.
+
+The further it went, the worse it got, and the clerk carried on so
+terribly that the people became afraid of him as of a wolf. When he
+drove through the village, everybody ran away from him as from a wolf,
+so as not to be seen by him. The clerk saw that and raved more than ever
+because people were afraid of him. He tortured the peasants with beating
+and with work, and they suffered very much from him.
+
+It used to happen that such evil-doers were put out of the way, and the
+peasants began to talk that way about him. They would meet somewhere
+secretly, and such as were bolder would say:
+
+"How long are we going to endure this evil-doer? We are perishing
+anyway,--and it is no sin to kill a man like him."
+
+One day the peasants met in the forest, before Easter week: the clerk
+had sent them to clean up the manorial woods. They came together at
+dinner-time, and began to talk:
+
+"How can we live now?" they said. "He will root us up. He has worn us
+out with work: neither in the daytime nor at night does he give any rest
+to us or to the women. And the moment a thing does not go the way he
+wants it to, he nags at us and has us flogged. Semén died from that
+flogging; Anísim he wore out in the stocks. What are we waiting for? He
+will come here in the evening and will again start to torment us. We
+ought just to pull him down from his horse, whack him with an axe, and
+that will be the end of it. We will bury him somewhere like a dog, and
+mum is the word. Let us agree to stand by each other and not give
+ourselves away."
+
+Thus spoke Vasíli Mináev. He was more furious at the clerk than anybody
+else. The clerk had him flogged every week, and had taken his wife from
+him and made her a cook at his house.
+
+Thus the peasants talked, and in the evening the clerk came. He came on
+horseback, and immediately began to nag them because they were not
+cutting right. He found a linden-tree in the heap.
+
+"I have commanded you not to cut any lindens down," he said. "Who cut it
+down? Tell me, or I will have every one of you flogged!"
+
+He tried to find out in whose row the linden was. They pointed to Sídor.
+The clerk beat Sídor's face until the blood came, and struck Vasíli with
+a whip because his pile was small. He rode home.
+
+In the evening the peasants met again, and Vasíli began to speak.
+
+"Oh, people, you are not men, but sparrows! 'We will stand up, we will
+stand up!' but when the time for action came, they all flew under the
+roof. Even thus the sparrows made a stand against the hawk: 'We will not
+give away, we will not give away! We will make a stand, we will make a
+stand!' But when he swooped down on them, they made for the nettles. And
+the hawk seized one of the sparrows, the one he wanted, and flew away
+with him. Out leaped the sparrows: 'Chivik, chivik!' one of them was
+lacking. 'Who is gone? Vánka. Well, served him right!' Just so you did.
+'We will not give each other away, we will not give each other away!'
+When he took hold of Sídor, you ought to have come together and made an
+end of him. But there you say, We will not give away, we will not give
+away! We will make a stand, we will make a stand!' and when he swooped
+down on you, you made for the bushes."
+
+The peasants began to talk that way oftener and oftener, and they
+decided fully to make away with the clerk. During Passion week the clerk
+told the peasants to get ready to plough the manorial land for oats
+during Easter week. That seemed offensive to the peasants, and they
+gathered during Passion week in Vasíli's back yard, and began to talk.
+
+"If he has forgotten God," they said, "and wants to do such things, we
+must certainly kill him. We shall be ruined anyway."
+
+Peter Mikhyéev came to them. He was a peaceable man, and did not take
+counsel with the peasants. He came, and listened to their speeches, and
+said:
+
+"Brothers, you are planning a great crime. It is a serious matter to
+ruin a soul. It is easy to ruin somebody else's soul, but how about our
+own souls? He is doing wrong, and the wrong is at his door. We must
+suffer, brothers."
+
+Vasíli grew angry at these words.
+
+"He has got it into his head that it is a sin to kill a man. Of course
+it is, but what kind of a man is he? It is a sin to kill a good man, but
+such a dog even God has commanded us to kill. A mad dog has to be
+killed, if we are to pity men. If we do not kill him, there will be a
+greater sin. What a lot of people he will ruin! Though we shall suffer,
+it will at least be for other people. Men will thank us for it. If we
+stand gaping he will ruin us all. You are speaking nonsense, Mikhyéev.
+Will it be a lesser sin if we go to work on Christ's holiday? You
+yourself will not go."
+
+And Mikhyéev said:
+
+"Why should I not go? If they send me, I will go to plough. It is not
+for me. God will find out whose sin it is, so long as we do not forget
+him. Brothers, I am not speaking for myself. If we were enjoined to
+repay evil with evil, there would be a commandment of that kind, but we
+are taught just the opposite. You start to do away with evil, and it
+will only pass into you. It is not a hard thing to kill a man. But the
+blood sticks to your soul. To kill a man means to soil your soul with
+blood. You imagine that when you kill a bad man you have got rid of the
+evil, but, behold, you have reared a worse evil within you. Submit to
+misfortune, and misfortune will be vanquished."
+
+The peasants could not come to any agreement: their thoughts were
+scattered. Some of them believed with Vasíli, and others agreed with
+Peter's speech that they ought not commit a crime, but endure.
+
+The peasants celebrated the first day, the Sunday. In the evening the
+elder came with the deputies from the manor, and said:
+
+"Mikhaíl Seménovich, the clerk, has commanded me to get all the peasants
+ready for the morrow, to plough the field for the oats." The elder made
+the round of the village with the deputies and ordered all to go out on
+the morrow to plough, some beyond the river, and some from the highway.
+The peasants wept, but did not dare to disobey, and on the morrow went
+out with their ploughs and began to plough.
+
+Mikhaíl Seménovich, the clerk, awoke late, and went out to look after
+the farm. His home folk--his wife and his widowed daughter (she had come
+for the holidays)--were all dressed up. A labourer hitched a cart for
+them, and they went to mass, and returned home again. A servant made the
+samovár, and when Mikhaíl Seménovich came, they sat down to drink tea.
+Mikhaíl Seménovich drank his tea, lighted a pipe, and sent for the
+elder.
+
+"Well," he said, "have you sent out the peasants to plough?"
+
+"Yes, Mikhaíl Seménovich."
+
+"Well, did all of them go?"
+
+"All. I placed them myself."
+
+"Of course, you have placed them,--but are they ploughing? Go and see,
+and tell them that I will be there in the afternoon, and by that time
+they are to plough a desyatína to each two ploughs, and plough it well.
+If I find any unploughed strips, I will pay no attention to the
+holiday."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The elder started to go out, but Mikhaíl Seménovich called him back. He
+called him back, but he hesitated, for he wanted to say something and
+did not know how to say it. He hesitated awhile, and then he said:
+
+"Listen to what those robbers are saying about me. Tell me
+everything,--who is scolding me, or whatever they may be saying. I know
+those robbers: they do not like to work; all they want to do is to lie
+on their sides and loaf. To eat and be idle, that is what they like;
+they do not consider that if the time of ploughing is missed it will be
+too late. So listen to what they have to say, and let me know everything
+you may hear! Go, but be sure you tell me everything and keep nothing
+from me!"
+
+The elder turned around and left the room. He mounted his horse and rode
+into the field to the peasants.
+
+The clerk's wife had heard her husband's talk with the elder, and she
+came in and began to implore him. The wife of the clerk was a peaceable
+woman, and she had a good heart. Whenever she could, she calmed her
+husband and took the peasants' part.
+
+She came to her husband, and began to beg him: "My dear Míshenka, do not
+sin, for the Lord's holiday! For Christ's sake, send the peasants home!"
+
+Mikhaíl Seménovich did not accept his wife's words, but only laughed at
+her:
+
+"Is it too long a time since the whip danced over you that you have
+become so bold, and meddle in what is not your concern?"
+
+"Míshenka, my dear, I have had a bad dream about you. Listen to my words
+and send the peasants home!"
+
+"Precisely, that's what I say. Evidently you have gathered so much fat
+that you think the whip will not hurt you. Look out!"
+
+Seménovich grew angry, knocked the burning pipe into her teeth, sent her
+away, and told her to get the dinner ready.
+
+Mikhaíl Seménovich ate cold gelatine, dumplings, beet soup with pork,
+roast pig, and milk noodles, and drank cherry cordial, and ate pastry
+for dessert; he called in the cook and made her sit down and sing songs
+to him, while he himself took the guitar and accompanied her.
+
+Mikhaíl Seménovich was sitting in a happy mood and belching, and
+strumming the guitar, and laughing with the cook. The elder came in,
+made a bow, and began to report what he had seen in the field.
+
+"Well, are they ploughing? Will they finish the task?"
+
+"They have already ploughed more than half."
+
+"No strips left?"
+
+"I have not seen any. They are afraid, and are working well."
+
+"And are they breaking up the dirt well?"
+
+"The earth is soft and falls to pieces like a poppy."
+
+The clerk was silent for awhile.
+
+"What do they say about me? Are they cursing me?"
+
+The elder hesitated, but Mikhaíl Seménovich commanded him to tell the
+whole truth.
+
+"Tell everything! You are not going to tell me your words, but theirs.
+If you tell me the truth, I will reward you; and if you shield them,
+look out, I will have you flogged. O Kátyusha, give him a glass of vódka
+to brace him up!"
+
+The cook went and brought the elder the vódka. The elder saluted, drank
+the vódka, wiped his mouth, and began to speak. "I cannot help it," he
+thought, "it is not my fault if they do not praise him; I will tell him
+the truth, if he wants it." And the elder took courage and said:
+
+"They murmur, Mikhaíl Seménovich, they murmur."
+
+"What do they say? Speak!"
+
+"They keep saying that you do not believe in God."
+
+The clerk laughed.
+
+"Who said that?"
+
+"All say so. They say that you are submitting to the devil."
+
+The clerk laughed.
+
+"That is all very well," he said, "but tell me in particular what each
+says. What does Vasíli say?"
+
+The elder did not wish to tell on his people, but with Vasíli he had
+long been in a feud.
+
+"Vasíli," he said, "curses more than the rest."
+
+"What does he say? Tell me!"
+
+"It is too terrible to tell. He says that you will die an unrepenting
+death."
+
+"What a brave fellow!" he said. "Why, then, is he gaping? Why does he
+not kill me? Evidently his arms are too short. All right," he said,
+"Vasíli, we will square up accounts. And Tíshka, that dog, I suppose he
+says so, too?"
+
+"All speak ill of you."
+
+"But what do they say?"
+
+"I loathe to tell."
+
+"Never mind! Take courage and speak!"
+
+"They say: 'May his belly burst, and his guts run out!'"
+
+Mikhaíl Seménovich was delighted, and he even laughed.
+
+"We will see whose will run out first. Who said that? Tíshka?"
+
+[Illustration: "But the candle was still burning"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko_]
+
+"Nobody said a good word. All of them curse you and threaten you."
+
+"Well, and Peter Mikhyéev? What does he say? He, too, I suppose, is
+cursing me?"
+
+"No, Mikhaíl Seménovich, Peter is not cursing."
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"He is the only one of all the peasants who is not saying anything. He
+is a wise peasant. I wondered at him, Mikhaíl Seménovich."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"All the peasants were wondering at what he was doing."
+
+"What was he doing?"
+
+"It is wonderful. I rode up to him. He is ploughing the slanting
+desyatína at Túrkin Height. As I rode up to him, I heard some one
+singing such nice, high tones, and on the plough-staff something was
+shining."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It was shining like a light. I rode up to him, and there I saw a
+five-kopek wax candle was stuck on the cross-bar and burning, and the
+wind did not blow it out. He had on a clean shirt, and was ploughing and
+singing Sunday hymns. And he would turn over and shake off the dirt, but
+the candle did not go out. He shook the plough in my presence, changed
+the peg, and started the plough, but the candle was still burning and
+did not go out."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He said nothing. When he saw me, he greeted me and at once began to
+sing again."
+
+"What did you say to him?"
+
+"I did not say anything to him, but the peasants came up and laughed at
+him: 'Mikhyéev will not get rid of his sin of ploughing during Easter
+week even if he should pray all his life.'"
+
+"What did he say to that?"
+
+"All he said was: 'Peace on earth and good-will to men.' He took his
+plough, started his horses, and sang out in a thin voice, but the candle
+kept burning and did not go out."
+
+The clerk stopped laughing. He put down the guitar, lowered his head,
+and fell to musing.
+
+He sat awhile; then he sent away the cook and the elder, went behind the
+curtain, lay down on the bed, and began to sigh and to sob, just as
+though a cart were driving past with sheaves. His wife came and began to
+speak to him; he gave her no answer. All he said was:
+
+"He has vanquished me. My turn has come."
+
+His wife tried to calm him.
+
+"Go and send them home! Maybe it will be all right. See what deeds you
+have done, and now you lose your courage."
+
+"I am lost," he said. "He has vanquished me."
+
+His wife cried to him:
+
+"You just have it on your brain, 'He has vanquished me, he has
+vanquished me.' Go and send the peasants home, and all will be well. Go,
+and I will have your horse saddled."
+
+The horse was brought up, and the clerk's wife persuaded him to ride
+into the field to send the peasants home.
+
+Mikhaíl Seménovich mounted his horse and rode into the field. He drove
+through the yard, and a woman opened the gate for him, and he passed
+into the village. The moment the people saw the clerk, they hid
+themselves from him, one in the yard, another around a corner, a third
+in the garden.
+
+The clerk rode through the whole village and reached the outer gate. The
+gate was shut, and he could not open it while sitting on his horse. He
+called and called for somebody to open the gate, but no one would come.
+He got down from his horse, opened the gate, and in the gateway started
+to mount again. He put his foot into the stirrup, rose in it, and was on
+the point of vaulting over the saddle, when his horse shied at a pig and
+backed up toward the picket fence; he was a heavy man and did not get
+into his saddle, but fell over, with his belly on picket. There was but
+one sharp post in the picket fence, and it was higher than the rest. It
+was this post that he struck with his belly. He was ripped open and fell
+to the ground.
+
+When the peasants drove home from their work, the horses snorted and
+would not go through the gate. The peasants went to look, and saw
+Mikhaíl lying on his back. His arms were stretched out, his eyes stood
+open, and all his inside had run out and the blood stood in a pool,--the
+earth had not sucked it in.
+
+The peasants were frightened. They took their horses in by back roads,
+but Mikhyéev alone got down and walked over to the clerk. He saw that he
+was dead, so he closed his eyes, hitched his cart, with the aid of his
+son put the dead man in the bed of the cart, and took him to the manor.
+
+The master heard about all these things, and to save himself from sin
+substituted tenant pay for the manorial labour.
+
+And the peasants saw that the power of God was not in sin, but in
+goodness.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO OLD MEN
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO OLD MEN
+
+
+     Therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well:
+     and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to
+     draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For his
+     disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Then saith the
+     woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest
+     drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no
+     dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, If
+     thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee,
+     Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, for the Father
+     seeketh such to worship him. (John iv. 19-23.)
+
+
+I.
+
+Two old men got ready to go to old Jerusalem to pray to God. One of them
+was a rich peasant; his name was Efím Tarásych Shevelév. The other was
+not a well-to-do man, and his name was Eliséy Bodróv.
+
+Efím was a steady man: he did not drink liquor, nor smoke tobacco, nor
+take snuff, had never cursed in his life, and was a stern, firm old man.
+He had served two terms as an elder, and had gone out of his office
+without a deficit. He had a large family,--two sons and a married
+grandson,--and all lived together. As to looks he was a sound, bearded,
+erect man, and only in his seventh decade did a gray streak appear in
+his beard.
+
+Eliséy was neither wealthy nor poor; in former days he used to work out
+as a carpenter, but in his old age he stayed at home and kept bees. One
+son was away earning money, and another was living at home. Eliséy was a
+good-natured and merry man. He liked to drink liquor and take snuff, and
+sing songs; but he was a peaceable man, and lived in friendship with his
+home folk and with the neighbours. In appearance he was an undersized,
+swarthy man, with a curly beard and, like his saint, Prophet Elisha, his
+whole head was bald.
+
+The old men had long ago made the vow and agreed to go together, but
+Tarásych had had no time before: he had so much business on hand. The
+moment one thing came to an end, another began; now he had to get his
+grandson married, now he was expecting his younger son back from the
+army, and now he had to build him a new hut.
+
+On a holiday the two old men once met, and they sat down on logs.
+
+"Well," said Eliséy, "when are we going to carry out our vow?"
+
+Efím frowned.
+
+"We shall have to wait," he said, "for this is a hard year for me. I
+have started to build a house,--I thought I could do it with one
+hundred, but it is going on now in the third. And still it is not done.
+We shall have to let it go till summer. In the summer, God willing, we
+shall go by all means."
+
+"According to my understanding," said Eliséy, "there is no sense in
+delaying. We ought to go at once. Spring is the best time."
+
+"The time is all right, but the work is begun, so how can I drop it?"
+
+"Have you nobody to attend to it? Your son will do it."
+
+"Do it? My eldest is not reliable,--he drinks."
+
+"When we die, friend, they will get along without us. Let your son learn
+it!"
+
+"That is so, but still I want to see things done under my eyes."
+
+"Oh, dear man! You can never attend to everything. The other day the
+women in my house were washing and cleaning up for the holidays. This
+and that had to be done, and everything could not be looked after. My
+eldest daughter-in-law, a clever woman, said: 'It is a lucky thing the
+holidays come without waiting for us, for else, no matter how much we
+might work, we should never get done.'"
+
+Tarásych fell to musing.
+
+"I have spent a great deal of money on this building," he said, "and I
+can't start out on the pilgrimage with empty hands. One hundred roubles
+are not a trifling matter."
+
+Eliséy laughed.
+
+"Don't sin, friend!" he said. "You have ten times as much as I, and yet
+you talk about money. Only say when we shall start. I have no money, but
+that will be all right."
+
+Tarásych smiled.
+
+"What a rich man you are!" he said. "Where shall you get the money
+from?"
+
+"I will scratch around in the house and will get together some there;
+and if that is not enough, I will let my neighbour have ten hives. He
+has been asking me for them."
+
+"You will have a fine swarm! You will be worrying about it."
+
+"Worrying? No, my friend! I have never worried about anything in life
+but sins. There is nothing more precious than the soul."
+
+"That is so; but still, it is not good if things do not run right at
+home."
+
+"If things do not run right in our soul, it is worse. We have made a
+vow, so let us go! Truly, let us go!"
+
+
+II.
+
+Eliséy persuaded his friend to go. Efím thought and thought about it,
+and on the following morning he came to Eliséy.
+
+"Well, let us go," he said, "you have spoken rightly. God controls life
+and death. We must go while we are alive and have strength."
+
+A week later the old men started.
+
+Tarásych had money at home. He took one hundred roubles with him and
+left two hundred with his wife.
+
+Eliséy, too, got ready. He sold his neighbour ten hives and the increase
+of ten other hives. For the whole he received seventy roubles. The
+remaining thirty roubles he swept up from everybody in the house. His
+wife gave him the last she had,--she had put it away for her funeral;
+his daughter-in-law gave him what she had.
+
+Efím Tarásych left all his affairs in the hands of his eldest son: he
+told him where to mow, and how many fields to mow, and where to haul the
+manure, and how to finish the hut and thatch it. He considered
+everything, and gave his orders. But all the order that Eliséy gave was
+that his wife should set out the young brood separately from the hives
+sold and give the neighbour what belonged to him without cheating him,
+but about domestic affairs he did not even speak: "The needs
+themselves," he thought, "will show you what to do and how to do it. You
+have been farming yourselves, so you will do as seems best to you."
+
+The old men got ready. The home folk baked a lot of flat cakes for them,
+and they made wallets for themselves, cut out new leg-rags, put on new
+short boots, took reserve bast shoes, and started. The home folk saw
+them off beyond the enclosure and bade them good-bye, and the old men
+were off for their pilgrimage.
+
+Eliséy left in a happy mood, and as soon as he left his village he
+forgot all his affairs. All the care he had was how to please his
+companion, how to keep from saying an unseemly word to anybody, how to
+reach the goal in peace and love, and how to get home again. As Eliséy
+walked along the road he either muttered some prayer or repeated such of
+the lives of the saints as he knew. Whenever he met a person on the
+road, or when he came to a hostelry, he tried to be as kind to everybody
+as he could, and to say to them God-fearing words. He walked along and
+was happy. There was only one thing Eliséy could not do: he wanted to
+stop taking snuff and had left his snuff-box at home, but he hankered
+for it. On the road a man offered him some. He wrangled with himself and
+stepped away from his companion so as not to lead him into sin, and took
+a pinch.
+
+Efím Tarásych walked firmly and well; he did no wrong and spoke no vain
+words, but there was no lightness in his heart. The cares about his home
+did not leave his mind. He was thinking all the time about what was
+going on at home,--whether he had not forgotten to give his son some
+order, and whether his son was doing things in the right way. When he
+saw along the road that they were setting out potatoes or hauling
+manure, he wondered whether his son was doing as he had been ordered. He
+just felt like returning, and showing him what to do, and doing it
+himself.
+
+
+III.
+
+The old men walked for live weeks. They wore out their home-made bast
+shoes and began to buy new ones. They reached the country of the
+Little-Russians. Heretofore they had been paying for their night's
+lodging and for their dinner, but when they came to the Little-Russians,
+people vied with each other in inviting them to their houses. They let
+them come in, and fed them, and took no money from them, but even filled
+their wallets with bread, and now and then with flat cakes. Thus the old
+men walked without expense some seven hundred versts. They crossed
+another Government and came to a place where there had been a failure of
+crops. There they let them into the houses and did not take any money
+for their night's lodging, but would not feed them. And they did not
+give them bread everywhere,--not even for money could the old men get
+any in some places. The previous year, so the people said, nothing had
+grown. Those who had been rich were ruined,--they sold everything; those
+who had lived in comfort came down to nothing; and the poor people
+either entirely left the country, or turned beggars, or just managed to
+exist at home. In the winter they lived on chaff and orach.
+
+One night the two old men stayed in a borough. There they bought about
+fifteen pounds of bread. In the morning they left before daybreak, so
+that they might walk a good distance before the heat. They marched some
+ten versts and reached a brook. They sat down, filled their cups with
+water, softened the bread with it and ate it, and changed their
+leg-rags. They sat awhile and rested themselves. Eliséy took out his
+snuff-horn. Efím Tarásych shook his head at him.
+
+"Why don't you throw away that nasty thing?" he asked.
+
+Eliséy waved his hand.
+
+"Sin has overpowered me," he said. "What shall I do?"
+
+They got up and marched on. They walked another ten versts. They came to
+a large village, and passed through it. It was quite warm then. Eliséy
+was tired, and wanted to stop and get a drink, but Tarásych would not
+stop. Tarásych was a better walker, and Eliséy had a hard time keeping
+up with him.
+
+"I should like to get a drink," he said.
+
+"Well, drink! I do not want any."
+
+Eliséy stopped.
+
+"Do not wait for me," he said. "I will just run into a hut and get a
+drink of water. I will catch up with you at once."
+
+"All right," he said. And Efím Tarásych proceeded by himself along the
+road, while Eliséy turned to go into a hut.
+
+Eliséy came up to the hut. It was a small clay cabin; the lower part was
+black, the upper white, and the clay had long ago crumbled
+off,--evidently it had not been plastered for a long time,--and the roof
+was open at one end. The entrance was from the yard. Eliséy stepped into
+the yard, and there saw that a lean, beardless man with his shirt stuck
+in his trousers in Little-Russian fashion was lying near the earth
+mound. The man had evidently lain down in a cool spot, but now the sun
+was burning down upon him. He was lying there awake. Eliséy called out
+to him, asking him to give him a drink, but the man made no reply. "He
+is either sick, or an unkind man," thought Eliséy, going up to the door.
+Inside he heard a child crying. He knocked with the door-ring. "Good
+people!" No answer. He struck with his staff against the door.
+"Christian people!" No stir. "Servants of the Lord!" No reply. Eliséy
+was on the point of going away, when he heard somebody groaning within.
+"I wonder whether some misfortune has happened there to the people. I
+must see." And Eliséy went into the hut.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Eliséy turned the ring,--the door was not locked. He pushed the door
+open and walked through the vestibule. The door into the living-room was
+open. On the left there was an oven; straight ahead was the front
+corner; in the corner stood a shrine and a table; beyond the table was a
+bench, and on it sat a bareheaded old woman, in nothing but a shirt; her
+head was leaning on the table, and near her stood a lean little boy, his
+face as yellow as wax and his belly swollen, and he was pulling the old
+woman's sleeve, and crying at the top of his voice and begging for
+something.
+
+Eliséy entered the room. There was a stifling air in the house. He saw a
+woman lying behind the oven, on the floor. She was lying on her face
+without looking at anything, and snoring, and now stretching out a leg
+and again drawing it up. And she tossed from side to side,--and from her
+came that oppressive smell: evidently she was very sick, and there was
+nobody to take her away. The old woman raised her head, when she saw the
+man.
+
+"What do you want?" she said, in Little-Russian. "What do you want? We
+have nothing, my dear man."
+
+Eliséy understood what she was saying: he walked over to her.
+
+"Servant of the Lord," he said, "I have come in to get a drink of
+water."
+
+"There is none, I say, there is none. There is nothing here for you to
+take. Go!"
+
+Eliséy asked her:
+
+"Is there no well man here to take this woman away?"
+
+"There is nobody here: the man is dying in the yard, and we here."
+
+The boy grew quiet when he saw the stranger, but when the old woman
+began to speak, he again took hold of her sleeve.
+
+"Bread, granny, bread!" and he burst out weeping.
+
+Just as Eliséy was going to ask the old woman another question, the man
+tumbled into the hut; he walked along the wall and wanted to sit down on
+the bench, but before reaching it he fell down in the corner, near the
+threshold. He did not try to get up, but began to speak. He would say
+one word at a time, then draw his breath, then say something again.
+
+"We are sick," he said, "and--hungry. The boy is starving." He indicated
+the boy with his head and began to weep.
+
+Eliséy shifted his wallet on his back, freed his arms, let the wallet
+down on the ground, lifted it on the bench, and untied it. When it was
+open, he took out the bread and the knife, out off a slice, and gave it
+to the man. The man did not take it, but pointed to the boy and the
+girl, to have it given to them. Eliséy gave it to the boy. When the boy
+saw the bread, he made for it, grabbed the slice with both his hands,
+and stuck his nose into the bread. A girl crawled out from behind the
+oven and gazed at the bread. Eliséy gave her, too, a piece. He cut off
+another slice and gave it to the old woman. She took it and began to
+chew at it.
+
+"If you would just bring us some water," she said. "Their lips are
+parched. I wanted to bring some yesterday or to-day,--I do not remember
+when,--but I fell down and left the pail there, if nobody took it away."
+
+Eliséy asked where their well was. The old woman told him where. Eliséy
+went out. He found the pail, brought some water, and gave the people to
+drink. The children ate some more bread with water, and the old woman
+ate some, but the man would not eat.
+
+"My stomach will not hold it," he said.
+
+The woman did not get up or come to: she was just tossing on the bed
+place. Eliséy went to the shop, and bought millet, salt, flour, and
+butter. He found an axe, chopped some wood, and made a fire in the oven.
+The girl helped him. Eliséy cooked a soup and porridge, and fed the
+people.
+
+
+V.
+
+The man ate a little, and so did the old woman, and the girl and the
+little boy licked the bowl clean and embraced each other and fell
+asleep.
+
+The man and the old woman told Eliséy how it had all happened.
+
+"We lived heretofore poorly," they said, "but when the crop failed us,
+we ate up in the fall everything we had. When we had nothing left, we
+began to beg from our neighbours and from good people. At first they
+gave us some, but later they refused. Some of them would have been
+willing to give us to eat, but they had nothing themselves. Besides we
+felt ashamed to beg: we owed everybody money and flour and bread. I
+looked for work," said the man, "but could find none. People were
+everywhere looking for work to get something to eat. One day I would
+work, and two I would go around looking for more work. The old woman and
+the girl went a distance away to beg, but the alms were poor,--nobody
+had any bread. Still, we managed to get something to eat: we thought we
+might squeeze through until the new crop; but in the spring they quit
+giving us alms altogether, and sickness fell upon us. It grew pretty
+bad: one day we would have something to eat, and two we went without it.
+We began to eat grass. And from the grass, or from some other reason,
+the woman grew sick. She lay down, and I had no strength, and we had
+nothing with which to improve matters."
+
+"I was the only one," the old woman said, "who worked: but I gave out
+and grew weak, as I had nothing to eat. The girl, too, grew weak and
+lost her courage. I sent her to the neighbours, but she did not go. She
+hid herself in a corner and would not go. A neighbour came in two days
+ago, but when she saw that we were hungry and sick, she turned around
+and went out. Her husband has left, and she has nothing with which to
+feed her young children. So we were lying here and waiting for death."
+
+When Eliséy heard what they said, he changed his mind about catching up
+with his companion, and remained there overnight. In the morning Eliséy
+got up and began to work about the house as though he were the master.
+He set bread with the old woman and made a fire in the oven. He went
+with the girl to the neighbours to fetch what was necessary. Everything
+he wanted to pick up was gone: there was nothing left for farming, and
+the clothes were used up. Eliséy got everything which was needed: some
+things he made himself, and some he bought. Eliséy stayed with them one
+day, and a second, and a third. The little boy regained his strength,
+and he began to walk on the bench and to make friends with Eliséy. The
+girl, too, became quite cheerful and helped him in everything. She kept
+running after Eliséy: "Grandfather, grandfather!"
+
+The old woman got up and went to her neighbour. The man began to walk by
+holding on to the wall. Only the woman was lying down. On the third day
+she came to and asked for something to eat.
+
+"Well," thought Eliséy, "I had not expected to lose so much time. Now I
+must go."
+
+
+VI.
+
+The fourth day was the last of a fast, and Eliséy said to himself:
+
+"I will break fast with them. I will buy something for them for the
+holidays, and in the evening I must leave."
+
+Eliséy went once more to the village and bought milk, white flour, and
+lard. He and the old woman cooked and baked a lot of things, and in the
+morning Eliséy went to mass and came back and broke fast with the
+people. On that day the woman got up and began to move about. The man
+shaved himself, put on a clean shirt,--the old woman had washed it for
+him,--and went to a rich peasant to ask a favour of him. His mowing and
+field were mortgaged to the rich man, so he went to ask him to let him
+have the mowing and the field until the new crop. He came back gloomy in
+the evening, and burst out weeping. The rich man would not show him the
+favour; he had asked him to bring the money.
+
+Eliséy fell to musing.
+
+"How are they going to live now? People will be going out to mow, but
+they cannot go, for it is all mortgaged. The rye will ripen and people
+will begin to harvest it (and there is such a fine stand of it!), but
+they have nothing to look forward to,--their desyatína is sold to the
+rich peasant. If I go away, they will fall back into poverty."
+
+And Eliséy was in doubt, and did not go away in the evening, but put it
+off until morning. He went into the yard to sleep. He said his prayers
+and lay down, but could not fall asleep.
+
+"I ought to go,--as it is I have spent much time and money; but I am
+sorry for the people. You can't help everybody. I meant to bring them
+some water and give each a slice of bread, but see how far I have gone.
+Now I shall have to buy out his mowing and field. And if I buy out the
+field, I might as well buy a cow for the children, and a horse for the
+man to haul his sheaves with. Brother Eliséy Kuzmích, you are in for it!
+You have let yourself loose, and now you will not straighten out
+things."
+
+Eliséy got up, took the caftan from under his head, and unrolled it; he
+drew out his snuff-horn and took a pinch, thinking that he would clear
+his thoughts, but no,--he thought and thought and could not come to any
+conclusion. He ought to get up and go, but he was sorry for the people.
+He did not know what to do. He rolled the caftan up under his head and
+lay down to sleep. He lay there for a long time, and the cocks crowed,
+and then only did he fall asleep. Suddenly he felt as though some one
+had wakened him. He saw himself all dressed, with his wallet and staff,
+and he had to pass through a gate, but it was just open enough to let a
+man squeeze through. He went to the gate and his wallet caught on one
+side, and as he was about to free it, one of his leg-rags got caught on
+the other side and came open. He tried to free the leg-rag, but it was
+not caught in the wicker fence: it was the girl who was holding on to
+it, and crying, "Grandfather, grandfather, bread!" He looked at his
+foot, and there was the little boy holding on to it, and the old woman
+and the man were looking out of the window. Eliséy awoke, and he began
+to speak to himself in an audible voice:
+
+"I will buy out the field and the mowing to-morrow, and will buy a
+horse, and flour to last until harvest-time, and a cow for the children.
+For how would it be to go beyond the sea to seek Christ and lose him
+within me? I must get the people started."
+
+And Eliséy fell asleep until morning. He awoke early. He went to the
+rich merchant, bought out the rye and gave him money for the mowing. He
+bought a scythe,--for that had been sold, too,--and brought it home. He
+sent the man out to mow, and himself went to see the peasants: he found
+a horse and a cart for sale at the innkeeper's. He bargained with him
+for it, and bought it; then he bought a bag of flour, which he put in
+the cart, and went out to buy a cow. As he was walking, he came across
+two Little-Russian women, and they were talking to one another. Though
+they were talking in their dialect, he could make out what they were
+saying about him:
+
+"You see, at first they did not recognize him; they thought that he was
+just a simple kind of a man. They say, he went in to get a drink, and he
+has just stopped there. What a lot of things he has bought them! I
+myself saw him buy a horse and cart to-day of the innkeeper. Evidently
+there are such people in the world. I must go and take a look at him."
+
+When Eliséy heard that, he understood that they were praising him, and
+so he did not go to buy the cow. He returned to the innkeeper and gave
+him the money for the horse. He hitched it up and drove with the flour
+to the house. When he drove up to the gate, he stopped and climbed down
+from the cart. When the people of the house saw the horse, they were
+surprised. They thought that he had bought the horse for them, but did
+not dare say so. The master came out to open the gates.
+
+"Grandfather, where did you get that horse?"
+
+"I bought it," he said. "I got it cheap. Mow some grass and put it in
+the cart, so that the horse may have some for the night. And take off
+the bag!"
+
+The master unhitched the horse, carried the bag to the granary, mowed a
+lot of grass, and put it into the cart. They lay down to sleep. Eliséy
+slept in the street, and thither he had carried his wallet in the
+evening. All the people fell asleep. Eliséy got up, tied his wallet, put
+on his shoes and his caftan, and started down the road to catch up with
+Efím.
+
+
+VII.
+
+Eliséy had walked about five versts, when day began to break. He sat
+down under a tree, untied his wallet, and began to count his money. He
+found that he had seventeen roubles twenty kopeks left.
+
+"Well," he thought, "with this sum I cannot travel beyond the sea, but
+if I beg in Christ's name, I shall only increase my sin. Friend Efím
+will reach the place by himself, and will put up a candle for me. But I
+shall evidently never fulfil my vow. The master is merciful, and he will
+forgive me."
+
+Eliséy got up, slung his wallet over his shoulders, and turned back. He
+made a circle around the village so that people might not see him. And
+soon he reached home. On his way out he had found it hard: it was hard
+keeping up with Efím; but on his way home God made it easy for him, for
+he did not know what weariness was. Walking was just play to him, and he
+swayed his staff, and made as much as seventy versts a day.
+
+Eliséy came back home. The harvest was all in. The home folk were glad
+to see the old man. They asked all about him, why he had left his
+companion and why he had not gone to Jerusalem, but had returned home.
+Eliséy did not tell them anything.
+
+"God did not grant me that I should," he said. "I spent my money on the
+way, and got separated from my companion. And so I did not go. Forgive
+me for Christ's sake."
+
+He gave the old woman what money he had left. He asked all about the
+home matters: everything was right; everything had been attended to and
+nothing missed, and all were living in peace and agreement.
+
+Efím's people heard that very day that Eliséy had come back, and so they
+came to inquire about their old man. And Eliséy told them the same
+story.
+
+"You see," he said, "the old man started to walk briskly, and three days
+before St. Peter's day we lost each other. I wanted to catch up with
+him, but it happened that I spent all my money and could not go on, so I
+returned home."
+
+The people marvelled how it was that such a clever man had acted so
+foolishly as to start and not reach the place and merely spend his
+money. They wondered awhile, and forgot about it. Eliséy, too, forgot
+about it. He began to work about the house: he got the wood ready for
+the winter with his son, threshed the grain with the women, thatched the
+sheds, gathered in the bees, and gave ten hives with the young brood to
+his neighbour. When he got all the work done, he sent his son out to
+earn money, and himself sat down in the winter to plait bast shoes and
+hollow out blocks for the hives.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+All that day that Eliséy passed with the sick people, Efím waited for
+his companion. He walked but a short distance and sat down. He waited
+and waited, and fell asleep; when he awoke, he sat awhile,--but his
+companion did not turn up. He kept a sharp lookout for him, but the sun
+was going down behind a tree, and still Eliséy was not there.
+
+"I wonder whether he has not passed by me," he thought. "Maybe somebody
+drove him past, and he did not see me while I was asleep. But how could
+he help seeing me? In the steppe you can see a long distance off. If I
+go back, he may be marching on, and we shall only get farther separated
+from each other. I will walk on,--we shall meet at the resting-place for
+the night."
+
+When he came to a village, he asked the village officer to look out for
+an old man and bring him to the house where he stayed. Eliséy did not
+come there for the night. Efím marched on, and asked everybody whether
+they had seen a bald-headed old man. No one had seen him. Efím was
+surprised and walked on.
+
+"We shall meet somewhere in Odessa," he thought, "or on the boat," and
+then he stopped thinking about it.
+
+On the road he fell in with a pilgrim. The pilgrim, in calotte, cassock,
+and long hair, had been to Mount Athos, and was now going for the second
+time to Jerusalem. They met at a hostelry, and they had a chat and
+started off together.
+
+They reached Odessa without any accident. They waited for three days for
+a ship. There were many pilgrims there, and they had come together from
+all directions. Again Efím asked about Eliséy, but nobody had seen him.
+
+Efím provided himself with a passport,--that cost five roubles. He had
+forty roubles left for his round trip, and he bought bread and herring
+for the voyage. The ship was loaded, then the pilgrims were admitted,
+and Tarásych sat down beside the pilgrim he had met. The anchors were
+weighed, they pushed off from the shore, and the ship sailed across the
+sea.
+
+During the day they had good sailing; in the evening a wind arose, rain
+fell, and the ship began to rock and to be washed by the waves. The
+people grew excited; the women began to shriek, and such men as were
+weak ran up and down the ship, trying to find a safe place. Efím, too,
+was frightened, but he did not show it: where he had sat down on the
+floor on boarding the ship by the side of Tambóv peasants, he sat
+through the night and the following day; all of them held on to their
+wallets and did not speak. On the third day it grew calmer. On the fifth
+day they landed at Constantinople.
+
+Some of the pilgrims went ashore there, to visit the Cathedral of St.
+Sophia, which now the Turks hold; Tarásych did not go, but remained on
+board the ship. All he did was to buy some white bread. They remained
+there a day, and then again sailed through the sea. They stopped at
+Smyrna town, and at another city by the name of Alexandria, and safely
+reached the city of Jaffa. In Jaffa all pilgrims go ashore: from there
+it is seventy versts on foot to Jerusalem. At the landing the people had
+quite a scare: the ship was high, and the people were let down into
+boats below; but the boats were rocking all the time, and two people
+were let down past the boat and got a ducking, but otherwise all went
+safely.
+
+When all were ashore, they went on afoot; on the third day they reached
+Jerusalem at dinner-time. They stopped in a suburb, in a Russian
+hostelry; there they had their passports stamped and ate their dinner,
+and then they followed a pilgrim to the holy places. It was too early
+yet to be admitted to the Sepulchre of the Lord, so they went to the
+Monastery of the Patriarch. There all the worshippers were gathered, and
+the female sex was put apart from the male. They were all ordered to
+take off their shoes and sit in a circle. A monk came out with a towel,
+and began to wash everybody's feet. He would wash, and rub them clean,
+and kiss them, and thus he went around the whole circle. He washed
+Efím's feet and kissed them. They celebrated vigils and matins, and
+placed a candle, and served a mass for the parents. There they were fed,
+and received wine to drink.
+
+On the following morning they went to the cell of Mary of Egypt, where
+she took refuge. There they placed candles, and a mass was celebrated.
+From there they went to Abraham's Monastery. They saw the Sebak garden,
+the place where Abraham wanted to sacrifice his son to God. Then they
+went to the place where Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene, and to the
+Church of Jacob, the brother of the Lord. The pilgrim showed them all
+the places, and in every place he told how much money they ought to
+give. At dinner they returned to the hostelry. They ate, and were just
+getting ready to lie down to sleep, when the pilgrim, who was rummaging
+through his clothes, began to sigh.
+
+"They have pulled out my pocketbook with money in it," he said. "I had
+twenty-three roubles,--two ten-rouble bills, and three in change."
+
+The pilgrim felt badly about it, but nothing could be done, and all went
+to sleep.
+
+
+IX.
+
+As Efím went to sleep, a temptation came over him.
+
+"They have not taken the pilgrim's money," he thought, "he did not have
+any. Nowhere did he offer anything. He told me to give, but he himself
+did not offer any. He took a rouble from me."
+
+As Efím was thinking so, he began to rebuke himself:
+
+"How dare I judge the man, and commit a sin. I will not sin." The moment
+he forgot himself, he again thought that the pilgrim had a sharp eye on
+money, and that it was unlikely that they had taken the money from him.
+"He never had any money," he thought. "It's only an excuse."
+
+They got up before evening and went to an early mass at the Church of
+the Resurrection,--to the Sepulchre of the Lord. The pilgrim did not
+leave Efím's side, but walked with him all the time.
+
+They came to the church. There was there collected a large crowd of
+worshippers, Greeks, and Armenians, and Turks, and Syrians. Efím came
+with the people to the Holy Gate. A monk led them. He took them past the
+Turkish guard to the place where the Saviour was taken from the cross
+and anointed, and where candles were burning in nine large candlesticks.
+He showed and explained everything to them. Efím placed a candle there.
+Then the monks led Efím to the right over steps to Golgotha, where the
+cross stood; there Efím prayed; then Efím was shown the cleft where the
+earth was rent to the lowermost regions; then he was shown the place
+where Christ's hands and feet had been nailed to the cross, and then he
+was shown Adam's grave, where Christ's blood dropped on his bones. Then
+they came to the rock on which Christ sat when they put the wreath of
+thorns on his head; then to the post to which Christ was tied when he
+was beaten. Then Efím saw the stone with the two holes, for Christ's
+feet. They wanted to show him other things, but the people hastened
+away: all hurried to the grotto of the Lord's Sepulchre. Some foreign
+mass was just ended, and the Russian began. Efím followed the people to
+the grotto.
+
+He wanted to get away from the pilgrim, for in thought he still sinned
+against him, but the pilgrim stuck to him, and went with him to mass at
+the Sepulchre of the Lord. They wanted to stand close to it, but were
+too late. There was such a crowd there that it was not possible to move
+forward or back. Efím stood there and looked straight ahead and prayed,
+but every once in awhile he felt his purse, to see whether it was in his
+pocket. His thoughts were divided; now he thought that the pilgrim had
+deceived him; and then he thought, if he had not deceived him, and the
+pocketbook had really been stolen, the same might happen to him.
+
+
+X.
+
+Efím stood there and prayed and looked ahead into the chapel where the
+Sepulchre itself was, and where over the Sepulchre thirty-six lamps were
+burning. Efím looked over the heads to see the marvellous thing: under
+the very lamps, where the blessed fire was burning, in front of all, he
+saw an old man in a coarse caftan, with a bald spot shining on his whole
+head, and he looked very much like Eliséy Bodróv.
+
+"He resembles Eliséy," he thought. "But how can it be he? He could not
+have got here before me. The previous ship started a week ahead of us.
+He could not have been on that ship. On our ship he was not, for I saw
+all the pilgrims."
+
+Just as Efím was thinking this, the old man began to pray, and made
+three bows: once in front of him, to God, and twice to either side, to
+all the Orthodox people. And as the old man turned his head to the
+right, Efím recognized him. Sure enough, it was Bodróv: it was his
+blackish, curly beard, and the gray streak on his cheeks, and his brows,
+his eyes, his nose, and full face,--all his. Certainly it was he, Eliséy
+Bodróv.
+
+Efím was glad that he had found his companion, and he marvelled how
+Eliséy could have got there ahead of him.
+
+"How in the world did Bodróv get to that place in front?" he thought.
+"No doubt he met a man who knew how to get him there. When all go out, I
+will hunt him up, and I will drop the pilgrim in the colette, and will
+walk with him. Maybe he will take me to the front place."
+
+Efím kept an eye on Eliséy, so as not to lose him. When the masses were
+over, the people began to stir. As they went up to kiss the Sepulchre,
+they crowded and pushed Efím to one side. He was frightened lest his
+purse should be stolen. He put his hand to his purse and tried to make
+his way out into the open. When he got out, he walked and walked, trying
+to find Eliséy, both on the outside and in the church. In the church he
+saw many people in the cells: some ate, and drank wine, and slept there,
+and read their prayers. But Eliséy was not to be found. Efím returned to
+the hostelry, but he did not find his companion there either. On that
+evening the pilgrim, too, did not come back. He was gone, and had not
+returned the rouble to Efím. So Efím was left alone.
+
+On the following day Efím went again to the Sepulchre of the Lord with a
+Tambóv peasant, with whom he had journeyed on the ship. He wanted to
+make his way to the front, but he was again pushed back, and so he stood
+at a column and prayed. He looked ahead of him, and there in front,
+under the lamps, at the very Sepulchre of the Lord, stood Eliséy. He had
+extended his hands, like a priest at the altar, and his bald spot shone
+over his whole head.
+
+"Now," thought Efím, "I will not miss him."
+
+He made his way to the front, but Eliséy was not there. Evidently he had
+left. On the third day he again went to the Sepulchre of the Lord, and
+there he saw Eliséy standing in the holiest place, in sight of
+everybody, and his hands were stretched out, and he looked up, as though
+he saw something above him. And his bald spot shone over his whole head.
+
+"Now," thought Efím, "I will certainly not miss him; I will go and stand
+at the entrance, and then he cannot escape me."
+
+Efím went out and stood there for a long time. He stood until after
+noon: all the people had passed out, but Eliséy was not among them.
+
+Efím passed six weeks in Jerusalem, and visited all the places,
+Bethlehem, and Bethany, and the Jordan, and had a stamp put on a new
+shirt at the Lord's Sepulchre, to be buried in it, and filled a bottle
+of Jordan water, and got some earth, and candles with blessed fire, and
+in eight places inscribed names for the mass of the dead. He spent all
+his money and had just enough left to get home on, and so he started for
+home. He reached Jaffa, boarded a ship, landed at Odessa, and walked
+toward his home.
+
+
+XI.
+
+Efím walked by himself the same way he had come out. As he was getting
+close to his village, he began to worry again about how things were
+going at his house without him. In a year, he thought, much water runs
+by. It takes a lifetime to get together a home, but it does not take
+long to ruin it. He wondered how his son had done without him, how the
+spring had opened, how the cattle had wintered, and whether the hut was
+well built. Efím reached the spot where the year before he had parted
+from Eliséy. It was not possible to recognize the people. Where the year
+before they had suffered want, now there was plenty. Everything grew
+well in the field. The people picked up again and forgot their former
+misery. In the evening Efím reached the very village where the year
+before Eliséy had fallen behind. He had just entered the village, when a
+little girl in a white shirt came running out of a hut.
+
+"Grandfather, grandfather! Come to our house!"
+
+Efím wanted to go on, but the girl would not let him. She took hold of
+his coat and laughed and pulled him to the hut. A woman with a boy came
+out on the porch, and she, too, beckoned to him:
+
+"Come in, grandfather, and eat supper with us and stay overnight!"
+
+Efím stepped in.
+
+"I can, at least, ask about Eliséy," he thought. "This is the very hut
+into which he went to get a drink."
+
+Efím went inside. The woman took off his wallet, gave him water to wash
+himself, and seated him at the table. She fetched milk, cheese, cakes,
+and porridge, and placed it all on the table. Tarásych thanked her and
+praised the people for being hospitable to pilgrims. The woman shook her
+head.
+
+"We cannot help receiving pilgrims," she said. "We received life from a
+pilgrim. We lived forgetting God, and God punished us in such a way that
+all of us were waiting for death. Last summer we came to such a point
+that we were all lying down sick and starved. We should certainly have
+died, but God sent us an old man like you. He stepped in during the
+daytime to get a drink; when he saw us, he took pity on us and remained
+at our house. He gave us to eat and to drink, and put us on our feet
+again. He cleared our land from debt, and bought a horse and cart and
+left it with us."
+
+The old woman entered the room, and interrupted her speech:
+
+"We do not know," she said, "whether he was a man or an angel of the
+Lord. He was good to us all, and pitied us, and then went away without
+giving his name, so that we do not know for whom to pray to God. I see
+it as though it happened just now: I was lying down and waiting for
+death to come; I looked up and saw a man come in,--just a simple,
+bald-headed man,--and ask for a drink. I, sinful woman, thought that he
+was a tramp, but see what he did! When he saw us he put down his wallet,
+right in this spot, and opened it."
+
+The girl broke in.
+
+"No, granny," she said, "first he put his wallet in the middle of the
+room, and only later did he put it on the bench."
+
+And they began to dispute and to recall his words and deeds: where he
+had sat down, and where he had slept, and what he had done, and what he
+had said to each.
+
+Toward evening the master of the house came home on a horse, and he,
+too, began to tell about Eliséy, and how he had stayed at their house.
+
+"If he had not come to us," he said, "we should all of us have died in
+sin. We were dying in despair, and we murmured against God and men. But
+he put us on our feet, and through him we found out God, and began to
+believe in good people. May Christ save him! Before that we lived like
+beasts, and he has made men of us."
+
+They gave Efím to eat and to drink, and gave him a place to sleep, and
+themselves went to bed.
+
+As Efím lay down, he could not sleep, and Eliséy did not leave his mind,
+but he thought of how he had seen him three times in Jerusalem in the
+foremost place.
+
+"So this is the way he got ahead of me," he thought. "My work may be
+accepted or not, but his the Lord has accepted."
+
+In the morning Efím bade the people good-bye: they filled his wallet
+with cakes and went to work, while Efím started out on the road.
+
+
+XII.
+
+Efím was away precisely a year. In the spring he returned home.
+
+He reached his house in the evening. His son was not at home,--he was in
+the dram-shop. He returned intoxicated, and Efím began to ask him about
+the house. He saw by everything that the lad had got into bad ways
+without him. He had spent all the money, and the business he had
+neglected. His father scolded him, and he answered his father with rude
+words.
+
+"You ought to have come back yourself," he said. "Instead, you went away
+and took all the money with you, and now you make me responsible."
+
+The old man became angry and beat his son.
+
+The next morning Efím Tarásych went to the elder to talk to him about
+his son. As he passed Eliséy's farm, Eliséy's wife was standing on the
+porch and greeting him:
+
+"Welcome, friend!" she said. "Did you, dear man, have a successful
+journey?"
+
+Efím Tarásych stopped.
+
+"Thank God," he said, "I have been at Jerusalem, but I lost your husband
+on the way. I hear that he is back."
+
+And the old woman started to talk to him, for she was fond of babbling.
+
+"He is back, my dear; he has been back for quite awhile. He returned
+soon after Assumption day. We were so glad to see him back. It was
+lonely without him. Not that we mean his work,--for he is getting old.
+But he is the head, and it is jollier for us. How happy our lad was!
+Without him, he said, it was as without light for the eyes. It was
+lonely without him, my dear. We love him so much!"
+
+"Well, is he at home now?"
+
+"At home he is, neighbour, in the apiary, brushing in the swarms. He
+says it was a fine swarming season. The old man does not remember when
+there has been such a lot of bees. God gives us not according to our
+sins, he says. Come in, dear one! He will be so glad to see you."
+
+Efím walked through the vestibule and through the yard to the apiary, to
+see Eliséy. When he came inside the apiary, he saw Eliséy standing
+without a net, without gloves, in a gray caftan, under a birch-tree,
+extending his arms and looking up, and his bald spot shone over his
+whole head, just as he had stood in Jerusalem at the Lord's Sepulchre,
+and above him, through the birch-tree, the sun glowed, and above his
+head the golden bees circled in the form of a wreath, and did not sting
+him. Efím stopped.
+
+Eliséy's wife called out to her husband:
+
+"Your friend is here."
+
+Eliséy looked around. He was happy, and walked over toward his friend,
+softly brushing the bees out of his beard.
+
+"Welcome, friend, welcome, dear man! Did you have a successful journey?"
+
+"My feet took me there, and I have brought you some water from the river
+Jordan. Come and get it! But whether the Lord has received my work--"
+
+"Thank God! Christ save you!"
+
+Efím was silent.
+
+"I was there with my feet, but in spirit you were there, or somebody
+else--"
+
+"It is God's work, my friend, God's work."
+
+"On my way home I stopped at the hut where I lost you."
+
+Eliséy was frightened, and he hastened to say:
+
+"It is God's work, my friend, God's work. Well, won't you step in? I
+will bring some honey."
+
+And Eliséy changed the subject, and began to speak of home matters.
+
+Efím heaved a sigh. He did not mention the people of the hut to Eliséy,
+nor what he had seen in Jerusalem. And he understood that God has
+enjoined that each man shall before his death carry out his vow--with
+love and good deeds.
+
+
+
+
+WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO
+
+
+Shoemaker Martýn Avdyéich lived in the city. He lived in a basement, in
+a room with one window. The window looked out on the street. Through it
+the people could be seen as they passed by: though only the feet were
+visible, Martýn Avdyéich could tell the men by their boots. He had lived
+for a long time in one place and had many acquaintances. It was a rare
+pair of boots in the neighbourhood that had not gone once or twice
+through his hands. Some he had resoled; on others he had put patches, or
+fixed the seams, or even put on new uppers. Frequently he saw his own
+work through the window. He had much to do, for he did honest work, put
+in strong material, took no more than was fair, and kept his word. If he
+could get a piece of work done by a certain time he undertook to do it,
+and if not, he would not cheat, but said so in advance. Everybody knew
+Avdyéich, and his work never stopped.
+
+Avdyéich had always been a good man, but in his old age he thought more
+of his soul and came near unto God. Even while Martýn had been living
+with a master, his wife had died, and he had been left with a boy three
+years of age. Their children did not live long. All the elder children
+had died before. At first Martýn had intended sending his son to his
+sister in a village, but then he felt sorry for the little lad, and
+thought: "It will be hard for my Kapitóshka to grow up in somebody
+else's family, and so I will keep him."
+
+Avdyéich left his master, and took up quarters with his son. But God did
+not grant Avdyéich any luck with his children. No sooner had the boy
+grown up so as to be a help to his father and a joy to him, than a
+disease fell upon him and he lay down and had a fever for a week and
+died. Martýn buried his son, and was in despair. He despaired so much
+that he began to murmur against God. He was so downhearted that more
+than once he asked God to let him die, and rebuked God for having taken
+his beloved only son, and not him. He even stopped going to church.
+
+One day an old man, a countryman of Avdyéich's, returning from
+Tróitsa,--he had been a pilgrim for eight years,--came to see him.
+Avdyéich talked with him and began to complain of his sorrow:
+
+"I have even no desire to live any longer, godly man. If I could only
+die. That is all I am praying God for. I am a man without any hope."
+
+And the old man said to him:
+
+"You do not say well, Martýn. We cannot judge God's works. Not by our
+reason, but by God's judgment do we live. God has determined that your
+son should die, and you live. Evidently it is better so. The reason you
+are in despair is that you want to live for your own enjoyment."
+
+"What else shall we live for?" asked Martýn.
+
+And the old man said:
+
+"We must live for God, Martýn. He gives us life, and for Him must we
+live. When you shall live for Him and shall not worry about anything,
+life will be lighter for you."
+
+Martýn was silent, and he said:
+
+"How shall we live for God?"
+
+And the old man said:
+
+"Christ has shown us how to live for God. Do you know how to read? If
+so, buy yourself a Gospel and read it, and you will learn from it how to
+live for God. It tells all about it."
+
+These words fell deep into Avdyéich's heart. And he went that very day
+and bought himself a New Testament in large letters, and began to read.
+
+Avdyéich had meant to read it on holidays only, but when he began to
+read it, his heart was so rejoiced that he read it every day. Many a
+time he buried himself so much in reading that all the kerosene would be
+spent in the lamp, but he could not tear himself away from the book. And
+Avdyéich read in it every evening, and the more he read, the clearer it
+became to him what God wanted of him, and how he should live for God;
+and his heart grew lighter and lighter. Formerly, when he lay down to
+sleep, he used to groan and sob and think of his Kapitóshka, but now he
+only muttered:
+
+"Glory be to Thee, glory to Thee, O Lord! Thy will be done!"
+
+Since then Avdyéich's life had been changed. Formerly, he used on a
+holiday to frequent the tavern, to drink tea, and would not decline a
+drink of vódka. He would drink a glass with an acquaintance and, though
+he would not be drunk, he would come out of the tavern in a happier
+mood, and then he would speak foolish things, and would scold, or
+slander a man. Now all that passed away from him. His life came to be
+calm and happy. In the morning he sat down to work, and when he got
+through, he took the lamp from the hook, put it down on the table,
+fetched the book from the shelf, opened it, and began to read it. And
+the more he read, the better he understood it, and his mind was clearer
+and his heart lighter.
+
+One evening Martýn read late into the night. He had before him the
+Gospel of St. Luke. He read the sixth chapter and the verses: "And unto
+him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him
+that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to
+every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask
+them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to
+them likewise."
+
+And he read also the other verses, where the Lord says: "And why call ye
+me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Whosoever cometh to
+me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he
+is like: he is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and
+laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat
+vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded
+upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that
+without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the
+stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of
+that house was great."
+
+When Avdyéich read these words, there was joy in his heart. He took off
+his glasses, put them on the book, leaned his arms on the table, and
+fell to musing. And he began to apply these words to his life, and he
+thought:
+
+"Is my house on a rock, or on the sand? It is well if it is founded on a
+rock: it is so easy to sit alone,--it seems to me that I am doing
+everything which God has commanded; but if I dissipate, I shall sin
+again. I will just proceed as at present. It is so nice! Help me, God!"
+
+This he thought, and he wanted to go to sleep, but he was loath to tear
+himself away from the book. And he began to read the seventh chapter. He
+read about the centurion, about the widow's son, about the answer to
+John's disciples, and he reached the passage where the rich Pharisee
+invited the Lord to be his guest, and where the sinning woman anointed
+His feet and washed them with her tears, and he justified her. And he
+reached the 44th verse, and read: "And he turned to the woman, and said
+unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou
+gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears,
+and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but
+this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My
+head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my
+feet with ointment."
+
+When he had read these verses, he thought:
+
+"He gave no water for His feet; he gave no kiss; he did not anoint His
+head with oil."
+
+And again Avdyéich took off his glasses and placed them on the book, and
+fell to musing.
+
+"Evidently he was just such a Pharisee as I am. He, no doubt, thought
+only of himself: how to drink tea, and be warm, and in comfort, but he
+did not think of the guest. About himself he thought, but no care did he
+have for the guest. And who was the guest?--The Lord Himself. Would I
+have done so, if He had come to me?"
+
+And Avdyéich leaned his head on both his arms and did not notice how he
+fell asleep.
+
+"Martýn!" suddenly something seemed to breathe over his very ear.
+
+Martýn shuddered in his sleep: "Who is that?"
+
+He turned around and looked at the door, but there was nobody there. He
+bent down again, to go to sleep. Suddenly he heard distinctly:
+
+"Martýn, oh, Martýn, remember, to-morrow I will come to the street."
+
+Martýn awoke, rose from his chair, and began to rub his eyes. He did
+not know himself whether he had heard these words in his dream or in
+waking. He put out the light and went to sleep.
+
+Avdyéich got up in the morning before daybreak, said his prayers, made a
+fire, put the beet soup and porridge on the stove, started the samovár,
+tied on his apron, and sat down at the window to work. And, as he sat
+there at work, he kept thinking of what had happened the night before.
+His thoughts were divided: now he thought that it had only seemed so to
+him, and now again he thought he had actually heard the voice.
+
+"Well," he thought, "such things happen."
+
+Martýn was sitting at the window and not so much working as looking out
+into the street, and if somebody passed in unfamiliar boots, he bent
+over to look out of the window, in order to see not merely the boots,
+but also the face. A janitor passed by in new felt boots; then a
+water-carrier went past; then an old soldier of the days of Nicholas, in
+patched old felt boots, holding a shovel in his hands, came in a line
+with the window. Avdyéich recognized him by his felt boots. The old
+man's name was Stepánych, and he was living with a neighbouring merchant
+for charity's sake. It was his duty to help the janitor. Stepánych began
+to clear away the snow opposite Avdyéich's window. Avdyéich cast a
+glance at him and went back to his work.
+
+"Evidently I am losing my senses in my old age," Avdyéich laughed to
+himself. "Stepánych is clearing away the snow, and I thought that Christ
+was coming to see me. I, old fool, am losing my senses." But before he
+had made a dozen stitches, something drew him again toward the window.
+He looked out, and there he saw Stepánych leaning his shovel against the
+wall and either warming or resting himself.
+
+He was an old, broken-down man, and evidently shovelling snow was above
+his strength. Avdyéich thought: "I ought to give him some tea;
+fortunately the samovár is just boiling." He stuck the awl into the
+wood, got up, placed the samovár on the table, put some tea in the
+teapot, and tapped with his finger at the window. Stepánych turned
+around and walked over to the window. Avdyéich beckoned to him and went
+to open the door.
+
+"Come in and get warmed up!" he said. "I suppose you are feeling cold."
+
+"Christ save you! I have a breaking in my bones," said Stepánych.
+
+He came in, shook off the snow and wiped his boots so as not to track
+the floor, but he was tottering all the time.
+
+"Don't take the trouble to rub your boots. I will clean up,--that is my
+business. Come and sit down!" said Avdyéich. "Here, drink a glass of
+tea!"
+
+Avdyéich filled two glasses and moved one of them up to his guest, and
+himself poured his glass into the saucer and began to blow at it.
+
+Stepánych drank his glass; then he turned it upside down, put the lump
+of sugar on top of it, and began to express his thanks; but it was
+evident that he wanted another glass.
+
+"Have some more," said Avdyéich; and he poured out a glass for his guest
+and one for himself. Avdyéich drank his tea, but something kept drawing
+his attention to the window.
+
+"Are you waiting for anybody?" asked the guest.
+
+"Am I waiting for anybody? It is really a shame to say for whom I am
+waiting: no, I am not exactly waiting, but a certain word has fallen
+deep into my heart: I do not know myself whether it is a vision, or
+what. You see, my friend, I read the Gospel yesterday about Father
+Christ and how He suffered and walked the earth. I suppose you have
+heard of it?"
+
+"Yes, I have," replied Stepánych, "but we are ignorant people,--we do
+not know how to read."
+
+"Well, so I read about how He walked the earth. I read, you know, about
+how He came to the Pharisee, and the Pharisee did not give Him a good
+reception. Well, my friend, as I was reading last night about that very
+thing, I wondered how he could have failed to honour Father Christ. If
+He should have happened to come to me, for example, I should have done
+everything to receive Him. But he did not receive Him well. As I was
+thinking of it, I fell asleep. And as I dozed off I heard some one
+calling me by name: I got up and it was as though somebody were
+whispering to me: 'Wait,' he said: 'I will come to-morrow.' This he
+repeated twice. Would you believe it,--it has been running through my
+head,--I blame myself for it,--and I am, as it were, waiting for Father
+Christ."
+
+Stepánych shook his head and said nothing. He finished his glass and put
+it sidewise, but Avdyéich took it again and filled it with tea.
+
+"Drink, and may it do you good! I suppose when He, the Father, walked
+the earth, He did not neglect anybody, and kept the company mostly of
+simple folk. He visited mostly simple folk, and chose His disciples
+mostly from people of our class, labouring men, like ourselves the
+sinners. He who raises himself up, He said, shall be humbled, and he who
+humbles himself shall be raised. You call me Lord, He said, but I will
+wash your feet. He who wants to be the first, He said, let him be
+everybody's servant; because, He said, blessed are the poor, the meek
+the humble, and the merciful."
+
+Stepánych forgot his tea. He was an old man and easily moved to tears.
+He sat there and listened, and tears flowed down his cheeks.
+
+"Take another glass!" said Avdyéich.
+
+But Stepánych made the sign of the cross, thanked him for the tea,
+pushed the glass away from him, and got up.
+
+"Thank you, Martýn Avdyéich," he said. "You were hospitable to me, and
+have given food to my body and my soul."
+
+"You are welcome. Come in again,--I shall be glad to see you," said
+Avdyéich.
+
+Stepánych went away. Martýn poured out the last tea, finished another
+glass, put away the dishes, and again sat down at the window to
+work,--to tap a boot. And as he worked, he kept looking out of the
+window,--waiting for Christ and thinking of Him and His works. And all
+kinds of Christ's speeches ran through his head.
+
+There passed by two soldiers, one in Crown boots, the other in boots of
+his own; then the proprietor of a neighbouring house came by in clean
+galoshes, and then a baker with a basket. All of these went past the
+window, and then a woman in woollen stockings and peasant shoes came in
+line with the window. She went by the window and stopped near a wall.
+Avdyéich looked at her through the window, and saw that she was a
+strange, poorly dressed woman, with a child: she had stopped with her
+back to the wind and was trying to wrap the child, though she did not
+have anything to wrap it in. The woman's clothes were for the summer,
+and scanty at that. Avdyéich could hear the child cry in the street, and
+her vain attempt to quiet it. Avdyéich got up and went out of his room
+and up to the staircase, and called out:
+
+"Clever Woman! Clever woman!"
+
+The woman heard him and turned around.
+
+"Why are you standing there in the cold with the child? Come in here! It
+will be easier for you to wrap the child in a warm room. Here, this
+way!"
+
+The woman was surprised. She saw an old man in an apron, with glasses
+over his nose, calling to her. She followed him in.
+
+They went down the stairs and entered the room, and Martýn took the
+woman up to the bed.
+
+"Sit down here, clever woman, nearer to the stove, and get warm and feed
+the child."
+
+"There is no milk in my breasts,--I have not had anything to eat since
+morning," said the woman, but still she took the child to her breast.
+
+Avdyéich shook his head, went to the table, fetched some bread and a
+bowl, opened a door in the stove, filled the bowl with beet soup, and
+took out the pot of porridge, but it was not done yet. He put the soup
+on the table, put down the bread, and took off a rag from a hook and put
+it down on the table.
+
+"Sit down, clever woman, and eat, and I will sit with the babe,--I used
+to have children of my own, and so I know how to take care of them."
+
+The woman made the sign of the cross, sat down at the table, and began
+to eat, while Avdyéich seated himself on the bed with the child. He
+smacked his lips at it, but could not smack well, for he had no teeth.
+The babe kept crying all the time. Avdyéich tried to frighten it with
+his finger: he quickly carried his finger down toward the babe's mouth
+and pulled it away again. He did not put his finger into the child's
+mouth, because it was black,--all smeared with pitch. But the child took
+a fancy for his finger and grew quiet, and then began even to smile.
+Avdyéich, too, was happy. The woman was eating in the meantime and
+telling him who she was and whither she was going.
+
+"I am a soldier's wife," she said. "My husband was driven somewhere far
+away eight months ago, and I do not know where he is. I had been working
+as a cook when the baby was born; they would not keep me with the child.
+This is the third month that I have been without a place. I have spent
+all I had saved. I wanted to hire out as a wet-nurse, but they will not
+take me: they say that I am too thin. I went to a merchant woman, where
+our granny lives, and she promised she would take me. I thought she
+wanted me to come at once, but she told me she wanted me next week. She
+lives a distance away. I am all worn out and have worn out the dear
+child, too. Luckily our landlady pities us for the sake of Christ, or
+else I do not know how we should have lived until now."
+
+Avdyéich heaved a sigh, and said:
+
+"And have you no warm clothes?"
+
+"Indeed, it is time now to have warm clothing, dear man! But yesterday I
+pawned my last kerchief for twenty kopeks."
+
+The woman went up to the bed and took her child, but Avdyéich got up,
+went to the wall, rummaged there awhile, and brought her an old
+sleeveless cloak.
+
+"Take this!" he said. "It is an old piece, but you may use it to wrap
+yourself in."
+
+The woman looked at the cloak and at the old man, and took the cloak,
+and burst out weeping. Avdyéich turned his face away; he crawled under
+the bed, pulled out a box, rummaged through it, and again sat down
+opposite the woman.
+
+And the woman said:
+
+"May Christ save you, grandfather! Evidently He sent me to your window.
+My child would have frozen to death. When I went out it was warm, but
+now it has turned dreadfully cold. It was He, our Father, who taught you
+to look through the window and have pity on me, sorrowful woman."
+
+Avdyéich smiled, and said:
+
+"It is He who has instructed me: clever woman, there was good reason why
+I looked through the window."
+
+Martýn told the soldier woman about his dream, and how he had heard a
+voice promising him that the Lord would come to see him on that day.
+
+"Everything is possible," said the woman. She got up, threw the cloak
+over her, wrapped the child in it, and began to bow to Avdyéich and to
+thank him.
+
+"Accept this, for the sake of Christ," said Avdyéich, giving her twenty
+kopeks, with which to redeem her kerchief.
+
+The woman made the sign of the cross, and so did Avdyéich, and he saw
+the woman out.
+
+She went away. Avdyéich ate some soup, put the things away, and sat down
+once more to work. He was working, but at the same time thinking of the
+window: whenever it grew dark there, he looked up to see who was
+passing. There went by acquaintances and strangers, and there was
+nothing peculiar.
+
+Suddenly Avdyéich saw an old woman, a huckstress, stop opposite the very
+window. She was carrying a basket with apples. There were but few of
+them left,--evidently she had sold all, and over her shoulder she
+carried a bag with chips. No doubt, she had picked them up at some new
+building, and was on her way home. The bag was evidently pulling hard on
+her shoulder; she wanted to shift it to her other shoulder, so she let
+the bag down on the flagstones, set the apple-basket on a post, and
+began to shake down the chips. While she was doing that, a boy in a torn
+cap leaped out from somewhere, grasped any apple from the basket, and
+wanted to skip out, but the old woman saw him in time and turned around
+and grabbed the boy by the sleeve. The boy yanked and tried to get away,
+but the old woman held on to him with both her hands, knocked down his
+cap, and took hold of his hair. The boy cried, and the old woman
+scolded. Avdyéich did not have time to put away the awl. He threw it on
+the floor, jumped out of the room, stumbled on the staircase, and
+dropped his glasses. He ran out into the street. The old woman was
+pulling the boy's hair and scolding him. She wanted to take him to a
+policeman; the little fellow struggled and tried to deny what he had
+done:
+
+"I did not take any, so why do you beat me? Let me go!"
+
+Avdyéich tried to separate them. He took the boy's arm, and said:
+
+"Let him go, granny, forgive him for Christ's sake!"
+
+"I will forgive him in such a way that he will not forget until the new
+bath brooms are ripe. I will take the rascal to the police station!"
+
+Avdyéich began to beg the old woman:
+
+"Let him go, granny, he will not do it again. Let him go, for Christ's
+sake!"
+
+The woman let go of him. The boy wanted to run, but Avdyéich held on to
+him.
+
+"Beg the grandmother's forgiveness," he said. "Don't do that again,--I
+saw you take the apple."
+
+The boy began to cry, and he asked her forgiveness.
+
+"That's right. And now, take this apple!" Avdyéich took an apple from
+the basket and gave it to the boy. "I will pay for it, granny," he said
+to the old woman.
+
+"You are spoiling these ragamuffins," said the old woman. "He ought to
+be rewarded in such a way that he should remember it for a week."
+
+"Oh, granny, granny!" said Avdyéich. "That is according to our ways, but
+how is that according to God's ways? If he is to be whipped for an
+apple, what ought to be done with us for our sins?"
+
+The old woman grew silent.
+
+And Avdyéich told the old woman the parable of the lord who forgave his
+servant his whole large debt, after which the servant went and took his
+fellow servant who was his debtor by the throat. The old woman listened
+to him, and the boy stood and listened, too.
+
+"God has commanded that we should forgive," said Avdyéich, "or else we,
+too, shall not be forgiven. All are to be forgiven, but most of all an
+unthinking person."
+
+The old woman shook her head and sighed.
+
+"That is so," said the old woman, "but they are very much spoiled
+nowadays."
+
+"Then we old people ought to teach them," said Avdyéich.
+
+"That is what I say," said the old woman. "I myself had seven of
+them,--but only one daughter is left now." And the old woman began to
+tell where and how she was living with her daughter, and how many
+grandchildren she had. "My strength is waning," she said, "but still I
+work. I am sorry for my grandchildren, and they are such nice
+children,--nobody else meets me the way they do. Aksyútka will not go to
+anybody from me. 'Granny, granny dear, darling!'" And the old woman
+melted with tenderness.
+
+"Of course, he is but a child,--God be with him!" the old woman said
+about the boy.
+
+She wanted to lift the bag on her shoulders, when the boy jumped up to
+her, and said:
+
+"Let me carry it, granny! I am going that way."
+
+The old woman shook her head and threw the bag on the boy's shoulders.
+They walked together down the street. The old woman had forgotten to ask
+Avdyéich to pay her for the apple. Avdyéich stood awhile, looking at
+them and hearing them talk as they walked along.
+
+When they disappeared from sight, he returned to his room. He found his
+glasses on the staircase,--they were not broken,--and he picked up his
+awl and again sat down to work. He worked for awhile; he could not find
+the holes with the bristle, when he looked up and saw the lampman
+lighting the lamps.
+
+"It is evidently time to strike a light," he thought, and he got up and
+fixed the lamp and hung it on the hook, and sat down again to work. He
+finished a boot: he turned it around and looked at it, and he saw that
+it was well done. He put down his tool, swept up the clippings, put away
+the bristles and the remnants and the awls, took the lamp and put it on
+the table, and fetched the Gospel from the shelf. He wanted to open the
+book where he had marked it the day before with a morocco clipping, but
+he opened it in another place. And just as he went to open the Gospel,
+he thought of his dream of the night before. And just as he thought of
+it, it appeared to him as though something were moving and stepping
+behind him. He looked around, and, indeed, it looked as though people
+were standing in the dark corner, but he could not make out who they
+were. And a voice whispered to him:
+
+"Martýn, oh, Martýn, have you not recognized me?"
+
+"Whom?" asked Avdyéich.
+
+"Me," said the voice. "It is I."
+
+And out of the dark corner came Stepánych, and he smiled and vanished
+like a cloud and was no more.
+
+"And it is I," said a voice.
+
+And out of the dark corner came the woman with the babe, and the woman
+smiled and the child laughed, and they, too, disappeared.
+
+"And it is I," said a voice.
+
+And out came the old woman and the boy with the apple, and both smiled
+and vanished.
+
+And joy fell on Avdyéich's heart, and he made the sign of the cross, put
+on his glasses, and began to read the Gospel, there where he had opened
+it. And at the top of the page he read:
+
+"I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me
+drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in."
+
+And at the bottom of the page he read:
+
+"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren,
+ye have done it unto me." (Matt. xxv.)
+
+And Avdyéich understood that his dream had not deceived him, that the
+Saviour had really come to him on that day, and that he had received
+Him.
+
+
+
+
+TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+
+
+THE FIEND PERSISTS, BUT GOD RESISTS
+
+
+In ancient times there lived a good master. He had plenty of everything,
+and many slaves served him. And the slaves prided themselves on their
+master. They said:
+
+"There is not a better master under heaven. He feeds us and dresses us
+well, and gives us work to do according to our strength, and never
+offends us with a word, and bears no grudge against any one; he is not
+like other masters who torture their slaves worse than cattle, and
+punish them with cause and without cause, and never say a good word to
+them. Our master wishes us good, and does us good, and speaks good words
+to us. We do not want any better life."
+
+Thus the slaves boasted of their master. And the devil was annoyed to
+see the slaves living well and in love with their master. And the devil
+took possession of one of the master's slaves, Aleb. He took possession
+of him and commanded him to seduce other slaves. And when all the slaves
+were resting and praising their master, Aleb raised his voice and said:
+
+"Brothers, in vain do you pride yourselves on the goodness of your
+master. Try to do the devil's bidding, and he, too, will be kind to you.
+We serve our master well, and please him in everything. He needs only
+to have a thing in mind, and we do it.--we guess his thoughts. Why,
+then, should he not be good to us? Stop doing his bidding and do him
+some wrong, and he will be like everybody else, and will repay evil with
+evil, much worse than the worst of masters."
+
+And the other slaves began to dispute with Aleb. They disputed and made
+a wager. Aleb undertook to anger the good master. He undertook to do so
+on condition that if he did not succeed in making him angry, he should
+lose his holiday garment, but if he did, each should give him his own
+holiday garment, and, besides, they promised to defend him against the
+master and to free him if the master should put him in irons or throw
+him into prison. They made this wager, and Aleb promised to anger the
+master on the following morning.
+
+Aleb was serving in the master's sheepfold and tended on costly
+thoroughbred rams. And so, when the good master came the next morning
+with his guests to the sheepfold to show them his favourite expensive
+rams, the devil's labourer winked to his companions: "Watch me now! I am
+going to anger the master." All the slaves gathered and looked through
+the door and over the enclosure, and the devil climbed a tree and looked
+from there into the yard, to see how his labourer was going to serve
+him. The master walked through the yard, showing his guests the sheep
+and lambs, and he wanted to show them his best ram.
+
+"The other rams are nice, too, but the one with the twisted horns is
+priceless, and I think more of him than of the pupil of my eye."
+
+The sheep and the lambs were shying from the people in the yard, and the
+guests could not get a good look at the expensive ram. The moment the
+ram stopped, the labourer of the devil, as though by accident,
+frightened the sheep, and they got all mixed. The guests could not make
+out which was the expensive ram. The master got tired of it, so he said:
+
+"Aleb, my dear friend, take the trouble carefully to catch the best ram
+with the twisted horns and to hold him awhile."
+
+The moment the master had said that, Aleb rushed forward, like a lion,
+into the midst of the rams and caught the priceless ram by his fleece.
+He got hold of the wool, and with one hand he seized the left hind leg
+and raised it and in the eyes of the master jerked it in such a way that
+it snapped like a linden post. Aleb had broken the ram's leg beneath the
+knee. The ram began to bleat and fell down on his fore legs. Aleb
+grasped the right leg while the left hung loose like a whip-cord. The
+guests and all the slaves groaned, and the devil rejoiced, when he saw
+how cleverly Aleb had done his work. The master looked blacker than
+night. He frowned, lowered his head, and did not say a word. The guests
+and the slaves were silent. They waited to see what would happen.
+
+The master was silent, then shook himself, as though he wanted to throw
+something off, and raised his head and lifted it to the sky. He looked
+at it for a short time, and the wrinkles on his face disappeared, and he
+smiled and lowered his eyes on Aleb. He looked at Aleb, and smiled, and
+said:
+
+"O Aleb, Aleb! Your master has commanded you to anger me. But my master
+is stronger than yours: you have not angered me, but I will anger your
+master. You were afraid that I would punish you, and you wanted to be
+free, Aleb. Know, then, that you will receive no punishment from me,
+and, since you wanted to be free, I free you in the presence of these my
+guests. Go in all four directions and take your holiday garment with
+you!"
+
+And the good master went with his guests to the house. But the devil
+ground his teeth and fell down from the tree and sank through the
+earth.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE GIRLS WISER THAN OLD PEOPLE
+
+
+It was an early Easter. They had just quit using sleighs. In the yards
+lay snow, and rills ran down the village. A large puddle had run down
+from a manure pile into a lane between two farms. And at this puddle two
+girls, one older than the other, had met. Both of them had been dressed
+by their mothers in new bodices. The little girl had a blue bodice, and
+the elder a yellow one with a design. Both had their heads wrapped in
+red kerchiefs. After mass the two girls went to the puddle, where they
+showed their new garments to each other, and began to play. They wanted
+to plash in the water. The little girl started to go into the puddle
+with her shoes on, but the older girl said to her:
+
+"Don't go, Malásha, your mother will scold you. I will take off my
+shoes, and you do the same."
+
+The girls took off their shoes, raised their skirts, and walked through
+the puddle toward each other. Malásha stepped in up to her ankles, and
+said:
+
+"It is deep, Akúlka, I am afraid."
+
+"Never mind," she replied, "it will not be any deeper. Come straight
+toward me!" They came closer to each other. Akúlka said:
+
+"Malásha, look out, and do not splash it up, but walk softly."
+
+She had barely said that when Malásha plumped her foot into the water
+and bespattered Akúlka's bodice, and not only her bodice, but also her
+nose and eyes. When Akúlka saw the spots on her bodice, she grew angry
+at Malásha, and scolded her, and ran after her, and wanted to strike
+her. Malásha was frightened and, seeing what trouble she had caused,
+jumped out of the puddle and ran home.
+
+Akúlka's mother passed by; she saw her daughter's bodice bespattered and
+her shirt soiled.
+
+"Where, accursed one, did you get yourself so dirty?"
+
+"Malásha has purposely splashed it on me."
+
+Akúlka's mother grasped Malásha and gave her a knock on the nape of her
+neck. Malásha began to howl, and her mother ran out of the house.
+
+"Why do you strike my daughter?" she began to scold her neighbour.
+
+One word brought back another, and the women began to quarrel. The men,
+too, ran out, and a big crowd gathered in the street. All were crying,
+and nobody could hear his neighbour. They scolded and cursed each other;
+one man gave another man a push, and a fight had begun, when Akúlka's
+grandmother came out. She stepped in the midst of the peasants, and
+began to talk to them:
+
+"What are you doing, dear ones? Consider the holiday. This is a time for
+rejoicing. And see what sin you are doing!"
+
+They paid no attention to the old woman, and almost knocked her off her
+feet. She would never have stopped them, if it had not been for Akúlka
+and Malásha. While the women exchanged words, Akúlka wiped off her
+bodice, and went back to the puddle in the lane. She picked up a pebble
+and began to scratch the ground so as to let the water off into the
+street. While she was scratching, Malásha came up and began to help her:
+she picked up a chip and widened the rill. The peasants had begun to
+fight, just as the water went down the rill toward the place where the
+old woman was trying to separate the men. The girls ran, one from one
+side of the rill, the other from the other side.
+
+"Look out, Malásha, look out!" shouted Akúlka.
+
+Malásha wanted to say something herself, but could not speak for
+laughter.
+
+The girls were running and laughing at a chip which was bobbing up and
+down the rill. They ran straight into the crowd of the peasants. The old
+woman saw them and said to the peasants:
+
+"Shame on you before God, men! You have started fighting on account of
+these two girls, and they have long ago forgotten it: the dear children
+have been playing nicely together. They are wiser than you."
+
+The men looked at the girls, and they felt ashamed. Then they laughed at
+themselves, and scattered to their farms.
+
+"Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the
+kingdom of heaven."
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO BROTHERS AND THE GOLD
+
+
+In ancient times there lived not far from Jerusalem two brothers, the
+elder named Athanasius, and the younger John. They lived in a mountain,
+not far from the city, and supported themselves on what people offered
+them. The brothers passed all their days at work. They worked not for
+themselves, but for the poor. Wherever were those who were oppressed by
+labour, or sick people, or orphans, or widows, thither the brothers
+went, and there they worked, and received no pay. Thus the two brothers
+passed the whole week away from each other, and met only on Saturday
+evening in their abode. On Sunday alone did they stay at home, and then
+they prayed and talked with each other. And an angel of the Lord came
+down to them and blessed them. On Monday they separated each in his own
+direction. Thus they lived for many years, and each week the angel of
+the Lord came down to them and blessed them.
+
+One Monday, when the brothers had already gone out to work and had gone
+each in his direction, the elder brother, Athanasius, was loath to part
+from his brother, and he stopped and looked back. John was walking with
+lowered head, in his direction, without looking back. But suddenly John,
+too, stopped and, as though he had suddenly noticed something, gazed at
+something, while shielding his eyes. Then he approached what he was
+gazing at, suddenly jumped to one side, and, without looking back, ran
+down-hill and up-hill again, away from the place, as though a wolf were
+after him. Athanasius was surprised. He went back to that spot, to see
+what it was that had so frightened his brother. He went up to it and
+saw something shining in the sun. He came nearer, and there lay a heap
+of gold on the ground, as though poured out from a measure. And
+Athanasius was still more surprised, both at the gold and at his
+brother's leap.
+
+"Why was he frightened, and why did he run away?" thought Athanasius.
+"There is no sin in gold. The sin is in man. With gold one may do wrong,
+but also some good. How many orphans and widows may be fed, how many
+naked people dressed, and the poor and sick aided with this gold! We now
+serve people, but our service is small, though it is to the best of our
+strength. With this gold, however, we can serve people better."
+
+Thus Athanasius thought, and he wanted to tell it all to his brother;
+but John was out of the range of hearing, and could be seen only as a
+speck the size of a beetle on another mountain.
+
+Athanasius took off his cloak, scooped up as much gold as he was able to
+carry away, threw it on his shoulder, and carried it into the city. He
+came to a hostelry and left the gold with the keeper, and went back for
+the rest. When he had brought all the gold, he went to the merchants,
+bought some land in the city, and stones and timber, and hired
+labourers, and began to build three houses.
+
+Athanasius lived for three months in the city, and built three houses
+there: one--an asylum for widows and orphans, another--a hospital for
+the sick and the lame, and a third--for pilgrims and for the needy. And
+Athanasius found three God-fearing old men, and one of them he placed in
+charge of the asylum, the second--of the hospital, and the third--of the
+hostelry. And Athanasius had still three thousand gold coins left. He
+gave each old man one thousand coins to distribute them to the poor.
+
+The three houses began to fill up with people, and the people began to
+praise Athanasius for everything he had done. And Athanasius was glad of
+that and did not feel like leaving the city. But he loved his brother
+and so he bade the people farewell and, without keeping a single coin,
+went back to his abode, wearing the same old garment in which he had
+come.
+
+As Athanasius was approaching his mountain, he thought:
+
+"My brother did not judge rightly when he jumped from the gold and ran
+away from it. Have I not done better?"
+
+And no sooner had Athanasius thought so than he saw the angel who used
+to bless him standing in the road and looking threateningly at him. And
+Athanasius was frightened and only said:
+
+"For what, O Lord?"
+
+And the angel opened his lips, and said:
+
+"Go hence! You are not worthy of living with your brother. One leap of
+your brother is worth all the deeds which you have done with your gold."
+
+And Athanasius began to speak of how many poor people and pilgrims he
+had fed, and how many orphans he had housed. And the angel said:
+
+"The devil who placed the gold there has also taught you these words."
+
+Then only did his conscience trouble him, and he saw that he had done
+his deeds not for God, and he wept and began to repent.
+
+The angel stepped out of the road and opened the path on which his
+brother, John, was already standing and waiting for him. After that
+Athanasius no longer submitted to the temptation of the devil who had
+scattered the gold, and he understood that not with gold, but only with
+words can we serve God and men.
+
+And the brothers began to live as before.
+
+
+
+
+ILYÁS
+
+
+In the Government of Ufá there lived a Bashkir, Ilyás. His father had
+left him no wealth. His father had died a year after he had got his son
+married. At that time Ilyás had seven mares, two cows, and a score of
+sheep; but Ilyás was a good master and began to increase his
+possessions; he worked with his wife from morning until night, got up
+earlier than anybody, and went to bed later, and grew richer from year
+to year. Thus Ilyás passed thirty-five years at work, and came to have a
+vast fortune.
+
+Ilyás finally had two hundred head of horses, 150 head of cattle, and
+twelve hundred sheep. Men herded Ilyás's herds and flocks, and women
+milked the mares and cows, and made kumys, butter, and cheese. Ilyás had
+plenty of everything, and in the district everybody envied him his life.
+People said:
+
+"Ilyás is a lucky fellow. He has plenty of everything,--he does not need
+to die."
+
+Good people made Ilyás's friendship and became his friends. And guests
+came to him from a distance. He received them all, and fed them, and
+gave them to drink. No matter who came, he received kumys, and tea, and
+sherbet, and mutton. If guests came to see him, a sheep or two were
+killed, and if many guests arrived, he had them kill a mare.
+
+Ilyás had two sons and a daughter. He had got all of them married. When
+Ilyás had been poor, his sons had worked with him and had herded the
+horses and the cattle and the sheep; but when they grew rich, the sons
+became spoiled, and one of them even began to drink. One of them, the
+eldest, was killed in a fight, and the other, the younger, had a proud
+wife, and did not obey his father, and his father had to give him a
+separate maintenance.
+
+Ilyás gave him a house and cattle, and his own wealth was diminished.
+Soon after a plague fell on Ilyás's sheep, and many of them died. Then
+there was a famine year, the hay crop was a failure, and in the winter
+many head of cattle died. Then the Kirgizes drove off the best herd of
+horses. And thus Ilyás's estate grew less, and he fell lower and lower,
+and his strength began to wane.
+
+When he was seventy years old, he began to sell off his furs, rugs,
+saddles, and tents, and soon had to sell his last head of cattle, so
+that he was left without anything. Before he knew it, all was gone, and
+in his old age he had to go with his wife to live among strangers. All
+that Ilyás had left of his fortune was what garments he had on his body,
+a fur coat, a cap, and his morocco slippers and shoes, and his wife,
+Sham-shemagi, who was now an old woman. The son to whom he had given the
+property had left for a distant country, and his daughter had died. And
+so there was nobody to help the old people.
+
+Their neighbour, Muhamedshah, took pity on them. Muhamedshah was neither
+rich nor poor, and he lived an even life, and was a good man. He
+remembered Ilyás's hospitality, and so pitied him, and said to Ilyás:
+
+"Come to live with me, Ilyás, and bring your wife with you! In the
+summer work according to your strength in my truck-garden, and in the
+winter feed the cattle, and let Sham-shemagi milk the mares and make
+kumys. I will feed and clothe you and will let you have whatever you may
+need."
+
+Ilyás thanked his neighbour, and went to live with his wife as
+Muhamedshah's labourers. At first it was hard for them, but soon they
+got used to the work, and the old people worked according to their
+strength.
+
+It was profitable for the master to keep these people, for they had been
+masters themselves and knew all the order and were not lazy, but worked
+according to their strength; but it pained Muhamedshah to see the
+well-to-do people brought down so low.
+
+One day distant guests, match-makers, happened to call on Muhamedshah;
+and the mulla, too, came. Muhamedshah ordered his men to catch a sheep
+and kill it. Ilyás flayed the sheep and cooked it and sent it in to the
+guests. They ate the mutton, drank tea, and then started to drink kumys.
+The guests and the master were sitting on down cushions on the rugs,
+drinking kumys out of bowls, and talking; but Ilyás got through with his
+work and walked past the door. When Muhamedshah saw him, he said to a
+guest:
+
+"Did you see the old man who just went past the door?"
+
+"I did," said the guest; "but what is there remarkable about him?"
+
+"What is remarkable is that he used to be our richest man. Ilyás is his
+name; maybe you have heard of him?"
+
+"Of course I have," said the guest. "I have never seen him, but his fame
+has gone far abroad."
+
+"Now he has nothing left, and he lives with me as a labourer, and his
+wife is with him,--she milks the cows."
+
+The guest was surprised. He clicked with his tongue, shook his head, and
+said:
+
+"Evidently fortune flies around like a wheel: one it lifts up, another
+it takes down. Well, does the old man pine?"
+
+"Who knows? He lives quietly and peaceably, and works well."
+
+Then the guest said:
+
+"May I speak with him? I should like to ask him about his life."
+
+"Of course you may," said the master, and he called out of the tent:
+"Babay!" (This means "grandfather" in the Bashkia language.) "Come in
+and drink some kumys, and bring your wife with you!"
+
+Ilyás came in with his wife. He exchanged greetings with the guests and
+with the master, said a prayer, and knelt down at the door; but his wife
+went back of a curtain and sat down with the mistress.
+
+A bowl of kumys was handed to Ilyás. Ilyás saluted the guests and the
+master, made a bow, drank a little, and put down the bowl.
+
+"Grandfather," the guest said to him, "I suppose it makes you feel bad
+to look at us and think of your former life, considering what fortune
+you had and how hard your life is now."
+
+But Ilyás smiled and said:
+
+"If I should tell you about my happiness and unhappiness, you would not
+believe me,--you had better ask my wife. She is a woman, and what is in
+her heart is on her tongue: she will tell you all the truth about this
+matter."
+
+And the guest spoke to her behind the curtain:
+
+"Well, granny, tell us how you judge about your former happiness and
+present sorrow."
+
+And Sham-shemagi spoke from behind the curtain:
+
+"I judge like this: My husband and I lived for fifty years trying to
+find happiness, and we did not find it; but now it is the second year
+that we have nothing left and that we live as labourers, and we have
+found that happiness and need no other."
+
+The guests were surprised and the master marvelled, and he even got up
+to throw aside the curtain and to look at the old woman. But the old
+woman was standing with folded hands, smiling and looking at her
+husband, and the old man was smiling, too. The old woman said once
+more:
+
+"I am telling you the truth, without any jest: for half a century we
+tried to find happiness, and so long as we were rich, we did not find
+it; now nothing is left, and we are working out,--and we have come to
+have such happiness that we wish for no other.".
+
+"Wherein does your happiness lie?"
+
+"In this: when we were rich, my husband and I did not have an hour's
+rest: we had no time to talk together, to think of our souls, or to
+pray. We had so many cares! Now guests called on us,--and there were the
+cares about what to treat them to and what presents to make so that they
+should not misjudge us. When the guests left, we had to look after the
+labourers: they thought only of resting and having something good to
+eat, but we cared only about having our property attended to,--and so
+sinned. Now we were afraid that a wolf would kill a colt or a calf, and
+now that thieves might drive off a herd. When we lay down to sleep, we
+could not fall asleep, fearing lest the sheep might crush the lambs. We
+would get up in the night and walk around; no sooner would we be quieted
+than we would have a new care,--how to get fodder for the winter. And,
+worse than that, there was not much agreement between my husband and me.
+He would say that this had to be done so and so, and I would say
+differently, and so we began to quarrel, and sin. Thus we lived from one
+care to another, from one sin to another, and saw no happy life."
+
+"Well, and now?"
+
+"Now my husband and I get up, speak together peaceably, in agreement,
+for we have nothing to quarrel about, nothing to worry about,--all the
+care we have is to serve our master. We work according to our strength,
+and we work willingly so that our master shall have no loss, but profit.
+When we come back, dinner is ready, and supper, and kumys. If it is
+cold, there are dung chips to make a fire with and a fur coat to warm
+ourselves. For fifty years we looked for happiness, but only now have we
+found it."
+
+The guests laughed.
+
+And Ilyás said:
+
+"Do not laugh, brothers! This is not a joke, but a matter of human life.
+My wife and I were foolish and wept because we had lost our fortune, but
+now God has revealed the truth to us, and we reveal this to you, not for
+our amusement but for your good."
+
+And the mulla said:
+
+"That was a wise speech, and Ilyás has told the precise truth,--it says
+so, too, in Holy Writ."
+
+And the guests stopped laughing and fell to musing.
+
+
+
+
+A FAIRY-TALE
+
+     About Iván the Fool and His Two Brothers, Semén the Warrior and
+     Tarás the Paunch, and His Dumb Sister Malánya, and About the Old
+     Devil and the Three Young Devils
+
+     1885
+
+
+
+
+A FAIRY-TALE
+
+     About Iván the Fool and His Two Brothers, Semén the Warrior and
+     Tarás the Paunch, and His Dumb Sister Malánya, and About the Old
+     Devil and the Three Young Devils
+
+
+I.
+
+In a certain kingdom, in a certain realm, there lived a rich peasant. He
+had three sons, Semén the Warrior, Tarás the Paunch, and Iván the Fool,
+and a daughter Malánya, the dumb old maid.
+
+Semén the Warrior went to war, to serve the king; Tarás the Paunch went
+to a merchant in the city, to sell wares; but Iván the Fool and the girl
+remained at home, to work and hump their backs.
+
+Semén the Warrior earned a high rank and an estate, and married a lord's
+daughter. His salary was big, and his estate was large, but still he
+could not make both ends meet: whatever he collected, his wife scattered
+as though from a sleeve, and they had no money.
+
+Semén the Warrior came to his estate, to collect the revenue. His clerk
+said to him:
+
+"Where shall it come from? We have neither cattle, nor tools: neither
+horses, nor cows, nor plough, nor harrow. Everything has to be
+provided, then there will be an income."
+
+And Semén the Warrior went to his father:
+
+"You are rich, father," he said, "and you have not given me anything.
+Cut off a third and I will transfer it to my estate."
+
+And the old man said:
+
+"You have brought nothing to my house, why should I give you a third? It
+will be unfair to Iván and to the girl."
+
+But Semén said:
+
+"But he is a fool, and she is a dumb old maid. What do they need?"
+
+And the old man said:
+
+"As Iván says so it shall be!"
+
+But Iván said:
+
+"All right, let him have it!"
+
+So Semén the Warrior took his third from the house, transferred it to
+his estate, and again went away to serve the king.
+
+Tarás the Paunch, too, earned much money,--and married a merchant woman.
+Still he did not have enough, and he came to his father, and said:
+
+"Give me my part!"
+
+The old man did not want to give Tarás his part:
+
+"You," he said, "have brought nothing to the house, and everything in
+the house has been earned by Iván. I cannot be unfair to him and to the
+girl."
+
+But Tarás said:
+
+"What does he want it for? He is a fool. He cannot marry, for no one
+will have him; and the dumb girl does not need anything, either. Give
+me," he said, "half of the grain, Iván! I will not take your tools, and
+of your animals I want only the gray stallion,--you cannot plough with
+him."
+
+Iván laughed.
+
+"All right," he said, "I will earn it again."
+
+So Tarás, too, received his part. Tarás took the grain to town, and
+drove off the gray stallion, and Iván was left with one old mare, and he
+went on farming and supporting his father and his mother.
+
+
+II.
+
+The old devil was vexed because the brothers had not quarrelled in
+dividing up, but had parted in love. And so he called up three young
+devils.
+
+"You see," he said, "there are three brothers, Semén the Warrior, Tarás
+the Paunch, and Iván the Fool. They ought to be quarrelling, but,
+instead, they live peacefully; they exchange with each other bread and
+salt. The fool has spoiled all my business. Go all three of you.--get
+hold of them, and mix them up in such a way that they shall tear out one
+another's eyes. Can you do it?"
+
+"We can," they said.
+
+"How are you going to do it?"
+
+"We will do it like this," they said: "First we will ruin them, so that
+they will have nothing to eat; then we will throw them all in a heap, so
+that they will quarrel together."
+
+"Very well," he said. "I see that you know your business. Go, and do not
+return to me before you have muddled all three, or else I will flay all
+three of you."
+
+The three devils all went to a swamp, and considered how to take hold of
+the matter: they quarrelled and quarrelled, for they wanted each of them
+to get the easiest job, and finally they decided to cast lots for each
+man. If one of them got through first, he was to come and help the
+others. The devils cast lots, and set a time when they were to meet
+again in the swamp, in order to find out who was through, and who needed
+help.
+
+When the time came, the devils gathered in the swamp. They began to
+talk about their affairs. The first devil, Semén the Warrior's, began to
+speak.
+
+"My affair," he said, "is progressing. To-morrow my Semén will go to his
+father."
+
+His comrades asked him how he did it.
+
+"In the first place," he said, "I brought such bravery over Semén that
+he promised his king to conquer the whole world, and the king made him a
+commander and sent him out to fight the King of India. They came
+together for a fight. But that very night I wet all his powder, and I
+went over to the King of India and made an endless number of soldiers
+for him out of straw. When Semén's soldiers saw the straw soldiers
+walking upon them on all sides, they lost their courage. Semén commanded
+them to fire their cannon and their guns, but they could not fire them.
+Semén's soldiers were frightened and ran away like sheep. And the King
+of India vanquished them. Semén is disgraced,--they have taken his
+estate from him, and to-morrow he is to be beheaded. I have only one
+day's work left to do: to let him out of the prison, so that he can run
+home. To-morrow I shall be through with him, so tell me which of you I
+am to aid!"
+
+Then the other devil, Tarás's, began to speak:
+
+"I do not need any help," he said, "for my affair is also progressing
+nicely,--Tarás will not live another week. In the first place, I have
+raised a belly on him, and made him envious. He is so envious of other
+people's property that, no matter what he sees, he wants to buy it. He
+has bought up an endless lot of things and spent all his money on them
+and is still buying. He now buys on other people's money. He has quite a
+lot on his shoulders, and is so entangled that he will never free
+himself. In a week the time will come for him to pay, and I will change
+all his wares into manure,--and he will not be able to pay his debts,
+and will go to his father's."
+
+They began to ask the third devil, Iván's.
+
+"How is your business?"
+
+"I must say, my business is not progressing at all. The first thing I
+did was to spit into his kvas jug, so as to give him a belly-ache, and I
+went to his field and made the soil so hard that he should not be able
+to overcome it. I thought that he would never plough it up, but he, the
+fool, came with his plough and began to tear up the soil. His belly-ache
+made him groan, but he stuck to his ploughing. I broke one plough of
+his, but he went home, fixed another plough, wrapped new leg-rags on
+him, and started once more to plough. I crept under the earth, and tried
+to hold the ploughshare, but I could not do it,--he pressed so hard on
+the plough; the ploughshares are sharp, and he has cut up my hands. He
+has ploughed up nearly the whole of it,--only a small strip is left.
+Come and help me, brothers, or else, if we do not overpower him, all our
+labours will be lost. If the fool is left and continues to farm, they
+will have no want, for he will feed them all."
+
+Semén's devil promised to come on the morrow to help him, and thereupon
+the devils departed.
+
+
+III.
+
+Iván ploughed up all the fallow field, and only one strip was left. His
+belly ached, and yet he had to plough. He straightened out the lines,
+turned over the plough, and went to the field. He had just made one
+furrow, and was coming back, when something pulled at the plough as
+though it had caught in a root. It was the devil that had twined his
+legs about the plough-head and was holding it fast.
+
+"What in the world is that?" thought Iván. "There were no roots here
+before, but now there are."
+
+Iván stuck his hand down in the furrow, and felt something soft. He
+grabbed it and pulled it out. It was as black as a root, but something
+was moving on it. He took a glance at it, and, behold, it was a live
+devil.
+
+"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing!" And Iván swung him and was
+about to strike him against the plough-handle; but the devil began to
+scream.
+
+"Do not beat me," he said, "and I will do for you anything you wish."
+
+"What will you do for me?"
+
+"Say what you want!"
+
+Iván scratched himself.
+
+"My belly aches,--can you cure me?"
+
+"I can," he said.
+
+"Very well, cure me!"
+
+The devil bent down to the furrow, scratched awhile in it, pulled out a
+few roots,--three of them in a bunch,--and gave them to Iván.
+
+"Here," he said, "is a root, which, if you swallow, will make your ache
+go away at once."
+
+Iván took the roots, tore them up, and swallowed one. His belly-ache
+stopped at once.
+
+Then the devil began to beg again:
+
+"Let me go, now, and I will slip through the earth, and will not come up
+again."
+
+"All right," he said, "God be with you!"
+
+And the moment Iván mentioned God's name, the devil bolted through the
+earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was left. Iván
+put the remaining two roots in his cap, and started to finish his work.
+He ploughed up the strip, turned over the plough, and went home. He
+unhitched the horse, came to the house, and there found his eldest
+brother, Semén the Warrior, with his wife, eating supper. His estate had
+been taken from him, and he had with difficulty escaped from prison and
+come to his father's to live.
+
+Semén saw Iván, and, "I have come to live with you," he said. "Feed me
+and my wife until I find a new place!"
+
+"All right," he said, "stay here!"
+
+Iván wanted to sit down on a bench, but the lady did not like the smell
+of Iván. So she said to her husband:
+
+"I cannot eat supper with a stinking peasant."
+
+"All right," he said, "I have to go anyway to pasture the mare for the
+night."
+
+Iván took some bread and his caftan, and went out to herd his mare.
+
+
+IV.
+
+That night Semén's devil got through with his work and by agreement went
+to find Iván's devil, to help to make an end of the fool. He came to the
+field and looked for him everywhere, but found only the hole.
+
+"Something has evidently gone wrong with my comrade," he thought,--"I
+must take his place. The ploughing is done,--I shall have to catch him
+in the mowing time."
+
+The devil went to the meadows and sent a flood on the mowing so that it
+was all covered with mud. Iván returned in the morning from the night
+watch, whetted his scythe, and went out to mow the meadows. He came, and
+began to mow: he swung the scythe once, and a second time, and it grew
+dull and would not cut,--it was necessary to grind it. Iván worked hard
+and in vain.
+
+"No," he said, "I will go home, and will bring the grindstone with me,
+and a round loaf. If I have to stay here for a week, I will not give up
+until I mow it all."
+
+When the devil heard it he thought:
+
+"This fool is stiff-necked,--I cannot get at him. I must try something
+else."
+
+Iván came back, ground his scythe, and began to mow. The devil crept
+into the grass and began to catch the scythe by the snath-end and to
+stick the point into the ground. It went hard with Iván, but he finished
+the mowing, and there was left only one scrubby place in the swamp. The
+devil crawled into the swamp and thought:
+
+"If I get both my paws cut, I will not let him mow it."
+
+Iván went into the swamp; the grass was not dense, but he found it hard
+to move the scythe. Iván grew angry and began to swing the scythe with
+all his might. The devil gave in; he had hardly time to get away,--he
+saw that matters were in bad shape, so he hid in a bush. Iván swung the
+scythe with all his might and struck the bush, and cut off half of the
+devil's tail. Iván finished the mowing, told the girl to rake it up, and
+himself went to cut the rye.
+
+He went out with a round knife, but the bobtailed devil had been there
+before him and had so mixed up the rye that he could not cut it with the
+round knife. Iván went back, took the sickle, and began to cut it; he
+cut all the rye.
+
+"Now I must go to the oats," he said.
+
+The bobtailed devil heard it, and thought:
+
+"I could not cope with him on the rye, but I will get the better of him
+in the oats,--just let the morning come."
+
+The devil ran in the morning to the oats-field, but the oats were all
+cut down. Iván had cut them in the night, to keep them from dropping the
+seed.
+
+The devil grew angry:
+
+"The fool has cut me all up, and has worn me out. I have not seen such
+trouble even in war-time. The accursed one does not sleep,--I cannot
+keep up with him. I will go now to the ricks, and will rot them all."
+
+And the devil went to the rye-rick, climbed between the sheaves, and
+began to rot them: he warmed them up, and himself grew warm and fell
+asleep.
+
+Iván hitched his mare, and went with the girl to haul away the ricks. He
+drove up to one and began to throw the sheaves into the cart. He had
+just put two sheaves in when he stuck his fork straight into the devil's
+back; he raised it, and, behold, on the prongs was a live devil, and a
+bobtailed one at that, and he was writhing and twisting, and trying to
+get off.
+
+"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing! Are you here again?"
+
+"I am a different devil," he said. "My brother was here before. I was
+with your brother Semén."
+
+"I do not care who you are," he replied, "you will catch it, too."
+
+He wanted to strike him against the ground, but the devil began to beg
+him:
+
+"Let me go, and I will not do it again, and I will do for you anything
+you please."
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"I can make soldiers for you from anything."
+
+"What good are they?"
+
+"You can turn them to any use you please: they will do anything."
+
+"Can they play music?"
+
+"They can."
+
+"All right, make them for me!"
+
+And the devil said:
+
+"Take a sheaf of rye, strike the lower end against the ground, and say:
+'By my master's command not a sheaf shall you stand, but as many straws
+as there are so many soldiers there be.'"
+
+Iván took the sheaf, shook it against the ground, and spoke as the devil
+told him to. And the sheaf fell to pieces, and the straws were changed
+into soldiers, and in front a drummer was drumming, and a trumpeter
+blowing the trumpet. Iván laughed.
+
+"I declare," he said, "it is clever. This is nice to amuse the girls
+with."
+
+"Let me go now," said the devil.
+
+"No," he said, "I will do that with threshed straw, and I will not let
+full ears waste for nothing. I will thresh them first."
+
+So the devil said:
+
+"Say, 'As many soldiers, so many straws there be! With my master's
+command again a sheaf it shall stand.'"
+
+Iván said this, and the sheaf was as before. And the devil begged him
+again:
+
+"Let me go now!"
+
+"All right!" Iván caught him on the cart-hurdle, held him down with his
+hand, and pulled him off the fork. "God be with you!" he said.
+
+The moment he said, "God be with you," the devil bolted through the
+earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was left.
+
+Iván went home, and there he found his second brother. Tarás and his
+wife were sitting and eating supper. Tarás the Paunch had not calculated
+right, and so he ran away from his debts and came to his father's. When
+he saw Iván, he said:
+
+"Iván, feed me and my wife until I go back to trading!"
+
+"All right," he said, "stay with us!"
+
+Iván took off his caftan, and seated himself at the table.
+
+But the merchant's wife said:
+
+"I cannot eat with a fool. He stinks of sweat."
+
+So Tarás the Paunch said:
+
+"Iván, you do not smell right, so go and eat in the vestibule!"
+
+"All right," he said, and, taking bread, he went out. "It is just
+right," he said, "for it is time for me to go and pasture the mare for
+the night."
+
+
+V.
+
+That night Tarás's devil got through with his job, and he went by
+agreement to help out his comrades,--to get the best of Iván the Fool.
+He came to the field and tried to find his comrades, but all he saw was
+a hole in the ground; he went to the meadows, and found a tail in the
+swamp, and in the rye stubbles he found another hole.
+
+"Well," he thought, "evidently some misfortune has befallen my comrades;
+I must take their place, and go for the fool."
+
+The devil went forth to find Iván. But Iván was through with the field,
+and was chopping wood in the forest.
+
+The brothers were not comfortable living together, and they had ordered
+the fool to cut timber with which to build them new huts.
+
+The devil ran to the woods, climbed into the branches, and did not let
+Iván fell the trees. Iván chopped the tree in the right way, so that it
+might fall in a clear place; he tried to make it fall, but it came down
+the wrong way, and fell where it had no business to fall, and got caught
+in the branches. Iván made himself a lever with his axe, began to turn
+the tree, and barely brought it down. Iván went to chop a second tree,
+and the same thing happened. He worked and worked at it, and brought it
+down. He started on a third tree, and again the same happened.
+
+Iván had expected to cut half a hundred trunks, and before he had
+chopped ten it was getting dark. Iván was worn out. Vapours rose from
+him as though a mist were going through the woods, but he would not give
+up. He chopped down another tree, and his back began to ache so much
+that he could not work: he stuck the axe in the wood, and sat down to
+rest himself.
+
+The devil saw that Iván had stopped, and was glad:
+
+"Well," he thought, "he has worn himself out, and he will stop soon. I
+will myself take a rest," and he sat astride a bough, and was happy.
+
+But Iván got up, pulled out his axe, swung with all his might, and hit
+the tree so hard from the other side that it cracked and came down with
+a crash. The devil had not expected it and had no time to straighten out
+his legs. The bough broke and caught the devil's hand. Iván began to
+trim, and behold, there was a live devil. Iván was surprised.
+
+"I declare," he said, "you are a nasty thing! Are you here again?"
+
+"I am not the same," he said. "I was with your brother Tarás."
+
+"I do not care who you are,--you will fare the same way." Iván swung his
+axe, and wanted to crush him with the back of the axe.
+
+The devil began to beg him:
+
+"Do not kill me,--I will do anything you please for you."
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"I can make as much money for you as you wish."
+
+"All right, make it for me!"
+
+And the devil taught him how to do it.
+
+"Take some oak leaves from this tree," he said, "and rub them in your
+hands. The gold will fall to the ground."
+
+Iván took some leaves and rubbed them,--and the gold began to fall.
+
+"This is nice to have," he said, "when you are out celebrating with the
+boys."
+
+"Let me go now!" said the devil.
+
+"All right!" Iván took his lever, and freed the devil. "God be with
+you," he said, and the moment he mentioned God's name, the devil bolted
+through the earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was
+left.
+
+
+VI.
+
+The brothers built themselves houses, and began to live each by himself.
+But Iván got through with his field work, and brewed some beer and
+invited his brothers to celebrate with him. They would not be Iván's
+guests:
+
+"We have never seen a peasant celebration," they said.
+
+Iván treated the peasants and their wives, and himself drank until he
+was drunk, and he went out into the street to the khorovód. He went up
+to the women, and told them to praise him.
+
+"I will give you what you have not seen in all your lives."
+
+The women laughed, and praised him. When they got through, they said:
+
+"Well, let us have it!"
+
+"I will bring it to you at once," he said.
+
+He picked up the seed-basket and ran into the woods. The women laughed:
+"What a fool he is!" And they forgot about him, when, behold, he was
+running toward them, and carrying the basket full of something.
+
+"Shall I let you have it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Iván picked up a handful of gold and threw it to the women. O Lord, how
+they darted for the money! The peasants rushed out and began to tear it
+out of the hands of the women. They almost crushed an old woman to
+death. Iván laughed.
+
+"Oh, you fools," he said, "why did you crush that old woman? Be more
+gentle, and I will give you some more." He began to scatter more gold.
+People ran up, and Iván scattered the whole basketful. They began to ask
+for more. But Iván said:
+
+"That is all. I will give you more some other time. Now let us have
+music! Sing songs!"
+
+The women started a song.
+
+"I do not like your kind of songs," he said.
+
+"What kind is better?"
+
+"I will show you in a minute," he said. He went to the threshing-floor,
+pulled out a sheaf, straightened it up, placed it on end, and struck it
+against the ground.
+
+"At your master's command not a sheaf shall you stand, each straw a
+soldier shall be."
+
+The sheaf flew to pieces, and out came the soldiers, and the drums began
+to beat and the trumpets to sound. Iván told the soldiers to play songs,
+and went into the street with them. The people were surprised. The
+soldiers played songs, and then Iván took them back to the
+threshing-floor, and told nobody to follow him. He changed the soldiers
+back into a sheaf, and threw it on the loft. He went home and went to
+sleep behind the partition.
+
+
+VII.
+
+On the next morning his eldest brother, Semén the Warrior, heard of it,
+and he went to see Iván.
+
+"Reveal to me," he said, "where did you find those soldiers, and where
+did you take them to?"
+
+"What is that to you?" he said.
+
+"What a question! With soldiers anything may be done. You can get a
+kingdom for yourself."
+
+Iván was surprised.
+
+"Indeed? Why did you not tell me so long ago?" he said. "I will make as
+many for you as you please. Luckily the girl and I have threshed a lot
+of straw."
+
+Iván took his brother to the threshing-floor, and said:
+
+"Look here! I will make them for you, but you take them away, or else,
+if we have to feed them, they will ruin the village in one day."
+
+Semén the Warrior promised that he would take the soldiers away, and
+Iván began to make them. He struck a sheaf against the floor, there was
+a company; he struck another, there was a second, and he made such a lot
+of them that they took up the whole field.
+
+"Well, will that do?"
+
+Semén was happy, and said:
+
+"It will do. Thank you, Iván."
+
+"All right," he said. "If you need more, come to me, and I will make you
+more. There is plenty of straw to-day."
+
+Semén the Warrior at once attended to the army, collected it as was
+proper, and went forth to fight.
+
+No sooner had Semén the Warrior left, than Tarás the Paunch came. He,
+too, had heard of the evening's affair, and he began to beg his brother:
+
+"Reveal to me, where do you get the gold money from? If I had such free
+money, I would with it gather in all the money of the whole world."
+
+Iván was surprised.
+
+"Indeed? You ought to have told me so long ago," he said. "I will rub up
+for you as much as you want."
+
+His brother was glad:
+
+"Give me at least three seed-baskets full!"
+
+"All right," he said, "let us go to the woods! But hitch up the horse,
+or you will not be able to carry it away."
+
+They went to the woods, and Iván began to rub the oak leaves. He rubbed
+up a large heap.
+
+"Will that do, eh?"
+
+Tarás was happy.
+
+"It will do for awhile," he said. "Thank you, Iván."
+
+"You are welcome. If you need more, come to me, and I will rub up some
+more,--there are plenty of leaves left."
+
+Tarás the Paunch gathered a whole wagon-load of money, and went away to
+trade with it.
+
+Both brothers left the home. And Semén went out to fight, and Tarás to
+trade. And Semén the Warrior conquered a whole kingdom for himself,
+while Tarás the Paunch made a big heap of money by trading.
+
+The brothers met, and they revealed to one another where Semén got the
+soldiers, and Tarás the money.
+
+Semén the Warrior said to his brother:
+
+"I have conquered a kingdom for myself, and I lead a good life, only I
+have not enough money to feed my soldiers with."
+
+And Tarás the Paunch said:
+
+"And I have earned a whole mound of money, but here is the trouble: I
+have nobody to guard the money."
+
+So Semén the Warrior said:
+
+"Let us go to our brother! I will tell him to make me more soldiers, and
+I will give them to you to guard your money; and you tell him to rub me
+more money with which to feed the soldiers."
+
+And they went to Iván. When they came to him, Semén said:
+
+"I have not enough soldiers, brother. Make me some more soldiers,--if
+you have to work over two stacks."
+
+Iván shook his head.
+
+"I will not make you any soldiers, for nothing in the world."
+
+"But you promised you would."
+
+"So I did, but I will not make them for you."
+
+"Why, you fool, won't you make them?"
+
+"Because your soldiers have killed a man. The other day I was ploughing
+in the field, when I saw a woman driving with a coffin in the road, and
+weeping all the time. I asked her who had died, and she said, 'Semén's
+soldiers have killed my husband in a war.' I thought that the soldiers
+would make music, and there they have killed a man. I will give you no
+more."
+
+And he stuck to it, and made no soldiers for him.
+
+Then Tarás the Paunch began to beg Iván to make him more gold money. But
+Iván shook his head.
+
+"I will not rub any, for nothing in the world."
+
+"But you promised you would."
+
+"So I did, but I will not do it."
+
+"Why, you fool, will you not do it?"
+
+"Because your gold coins have taken away Mikháylovna's cow."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"They just did. Mikháylovna had a cow, whose milk the children sipped,
+but the other day the children came to me to ask for some milk. I said
+to them: 'Where is your cow?' And they answered: 'Tarás the Paunch's
+clerk came, and he gave mother three gold pieces, and she gave him the
+cow, and now we have no milk to sip.' I thought you wanted to play with
+the gold pieces, and you take the cow away from the children. I will not
+give you any more."
+
+And the fool stuck to it, and did not give him any. So the brothers went
+away.
+
+They went away, and they wondered how they might mend matters. Then
+Semén said:
+
+"This is what we shall do. You give me money to feed the soldiers with,
+and I will give you half my kingdom with the soldiers to guard your
+money." Tarás agreed to it. The brothers divided up, and both became
+kings, and rich men.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+But Iván remained at home, supporting father and mother, and working the
+field with the dumb girl.
+
+One day Iván's watch-dog grew sick: he had the mange and was dying. Iván
+was sorry for him, and he took some bread from the dumb girl, put it in
+his hat, and took it out and threw it to the dog. But the cap was torn,
+and with the bread one of the roots fell out. The old dog swallowed it
+with the bread. And no sooner had he swallowed it than he jumped up,
+began to play and to bark, and wagged his tail,--he was well again.
+
+When his father and his mother saw that, they were surprised.
+
+"With what did you cure the dog?"
+
+And Iván said to them:
+
+"I had two roots with which to cure all diseases, and he swallowed one."
+
+It happened that at that time the king's daughter grew ill, and the king
+proclaimed in all the towns and villages that he would reward him who
+should cure her, and that if it should be an unmarried man, he should
+have his daughter for a wife. The same was also proclaimed in Iván's
+village.
+
+Father and mother called Iván, and said to him:
+
+"Have you heard what the king has proclaimed? You said that you had a
+root, so go and cure the king's daughter. You will get a fortune for the
+rest of your life."
+
+"All right," he said. And he got ready to go. He was dressed up, and
+went out on the porch, and saw a beggar woman with a twisted arm.
+
+"I have heard that you can cure," she said. "Cure my arm, for I cannot
+dress myself."
+
+And Iván said:
+
+"All right!" He took the root, gave it to the beggar woman, and told her
+to swallow it.
+
+She swallowed it, and was cured at once and could wave her arm. Iván's
+parents came out to see him off on his way to the king, and when they
+heard that he had given away the last root and had nothing left with
+which to cure the king's daughter, they began to upbraid him.
+
+"You have taken pity on the beggar woman, but you have no pity on the
+king's daughter."
+
+But he hitched his horse, threw a little straw into the hamper, and was
+getting ready to drive away.
+
+"Where are you going, fool?"
+
+"To cure the king's daughter."
+
+"But you have nothing to cure her with!"
+
+"All right," he said, and drove away.
+
+He came to the king's palace, and the moment he stepped on the porch,
+the king's daughter was cured.
+
+The king rejoiced, and sent for Iván. He had him all dressed up:
+
+"Be my son-in-law!" he said.
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+And Iván married the king's daughter. The king died soon after, and Iván
+became king. Thus all three brothers were kings.
+
+
+IX.
+
+The three brothers were reigning.
+
+The elder brother, Semén the Warrior, lived well. With his straw
+soldiers he got him real soldiers. He commanded his people to furnish a
+soldier to each ten homes, and every such soldier had to be tall of
+stature, and white of body, and clean of face. And he gathered a great
+many such soldiers and taught them all what to do. And if any one acted
+contrary to his will, he at once sent his soldiers against that person,
+and did as he pleased. And all began to be afraid of him.
+
+He had an easy life. Whatever he wished for, or his eyes fell upon, was
+his. He would send out his soldiers, and they would take away and bring
+to him whatever he needed.
+
+Tarás the Paunch, too, lived well. The money which he had received from
+Iván he had not spent, but he had increased it greatly. He, too, had
+good order in his kingdom. The money he kept in coffers, and exacted
+more money from the people. He exacted money from each soul for walking
+past, and driving past, and for bast shoes, and leg-rags, and
+shoe-laces. And no matter what he wished, he had; for money they brought
+him everything, and they went to work for him, because everybody needs
+money.
+
+Nor did Iván the Fool live badly. As soon as he had buried his
+father-in-law, he took off his royal garments and gave them to his wife
+to put away in the coffer. He put on his old hempen shirt and trousers,
+and his bast shoes, and began to work.
+
+"I do not feel well," he said. "My belly is growing larger, and I cannot
+eat, nor sleep."
+
+He brought his parents and the dumb girl, and began to work again.
+
+People said to him:
+
+"But you are a king!"
+
+"All right," he said, "but a king, too, has to eat."
+
+The minister came to him, and said:
+
+"We have no money with which to pay salaries."
+
+"All right," he said, "if you have none, pay no salaries!"
+
+"But they will stop serving you."
+
+"All right," he said, "Let them stop serving! They will have more time
+for work. Let them haul manure. They have not hauled any for a long
+time."
+
+People came to Iván to have a case tried. One said:
+
+"He stole money from me."
+
+But Iván replied:
+
+"All right, evidently he needed it."
+
+All saw that Iván was a fool. His wife said to him:
+
+"They say about you that you are a fool."
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+Iván's wife, too, was a fool, and she thought and thought.
+
+"Why should I go against my husband?" she said. "The thread belongs
+where the needle is."
+
+She took off her regal garments, put them in a coffer, and went to the
+dumb girl to learn to work. She learned, and began to help her husband.
+
+All the wise men left Iván's kingdom, and only the fools were left.
+Nobody had any money. They lived and worked and fed themselves and all
+good people.
+
+
+X.
+
+The old devil waited and waited for some news from the young devils
+about how they had destroyed the three brothers, but none came. He went
+to find out for himself: he looked everywhere for the three, but found
+only three holes.
+
+"Well," he thought, "evidently they did not get the best of them. I
+shall have to try it myself."
+
+He went to find the brothers, but they were no longer in their old
+places. He found them in different kingdoms. All three were living and
+reigning there. That vexed the old devil.
+
+"I shall have to do the work myself," he said.
+
+First of all he went to King Semén. He did not go to him in his own
+form, but in the shape of a general. He went to him, and said:
+
+"I have heard that you, King Semén, are a great warrior. I have had good
+instruction in this business, and I want to serve you."
+
+King Semén began to ask him questions, and he saw that he was a clever
+man, and so received him into his service.
+
+The old general began to teach King Semén how to gather a great army.
+
+"In the first place," he said, "you must collect more soldiers, for too
+many people in your kingdom are walking about idly. You must shave the
+heads of all the young men without exception, and then you will have an
+army which will be five times as large as it is now. In the second
+place, you must introduce new guns and cannon. I will get you the kind
+of guns that fire one hundred bullets at once, as though pouring out
+pease. And I will get you cannon that burn with their fire: whether a
+man, or a horse, or a wall,--they burn everything."
+
+King Semén listened to his new general, and ordered all the young men
+without exception to be drafted as soldiers, and started new factories.
+He had a lot of new guns and cannon made, and at once started a war
+against a neighbouring king. The moment the enemy's army came out
+against him, he ordered his soldiers to fire at them with bullets and to
+burn them with the cannon fire. He at once maimed and burnt one-half the
+army. The neighbouring king became frightened, and he surrendered and
+gave up his kingdom to him. King Semén was happy.
+
+"Now I will vanquish the King of India," he said.
+
+But the King of India heard of King Semén, and adopted all his
+inventions and added a few of his own. The King of India drafted not
+only all the young men, but he also made all the unmarried women serve
+as soldiers, and so he had even more soldiers than King Semén. He
+adopted all of King Semén's guns and cannon, and introduced flying in
+the air and throwing explosive bombs from above.
+
+King Semén went out to make war on the King of India. He thought that he
+would conquer him as he had conquered before; but the scythe was cutting
+too fine,--the King of India did not give Semén's army a chance to fire
+a single shot, for he sent his women into the air, to throw explosive
+bombs on Semén's army. The women began to pour the bombs on Semén's
+army, like borax on cockroaches, and the whole army ran away, and King
+Semén was left alone. The King of India took possession of the whole of
+Semén's kingdom, and Semén the Warrior ran whither his eyes took him.
+
+The old devil had done up this brother, and he made for King Tarás. He
+took the shape of a merchant and settled in Tarás's kingdom. He started
+an establishment, and began to issue money. The merchant paid high
+prices for everything, and the whole nation rushed to the merchant to
+get his money. And the people had so much money that they paid all their
+back taxes and paid on time all the taxes as they fell due. King Tarás
+was happy.
+
+"Thanks to the merchant," he thought, "I shall now have more money than
+ever, and my life will improve."
+
+And King Tarás fell on new plans. He began to build himself a new
+palace: he commanded the people to haul lumber and stone, and to come to
+work, and offered high prices for everything. King Tarás thought that as
+before the people would rush to work for him. But, behold, all the
+lumber and stone was being hauled to the merchant, and only the
+labourers were rushing to the king.
+
+King Tarás offered higher prices, but the merchant went higher still.
+King Tarás had much money, but the merchant had more still, and the
+merchant could offer better pay than the king. The royal palace came to
+a standstill,--it could not be built.
+
+King Tarás wanted to get a garden laid out. When the fall came, King
+Tarás proclaimed that he wanted people to come and set out trees for
+him; but nobody came, as they were all digging a pond for the merchant.
+
+Winter came. King Tarás wanted to buy sable furs for a new coat, and he
+sent out men to buy them. The messenger came back, and said that there
+were no sables,--that all the furs were in the merchant's possession, as
+he had offered a higher price, and that he had made himself a sable rug.
+
+King Tarás wanted to have some stallions. He sent messengers to buy them
+for him; but they came back, and said that the merchant had all the good
+stallions, and they were hauling water and filling up the pond.
+
+All the business of the king came to a stop. Men would not do anything
+for him, but worked only for the merchant; all he received was the
+merchant's money, for taxes.
+
+And the king collected such a mass of money that he did not know what to
+do with it, and his life grew bad. The king stopped planning things, and
+only thought of how he might pass his life peacefully, but he could not
+do so. He was oppressed in everything. His cooks, and his coachmen, and
+his servants began to leave him for the merchant. And he began to suffer
+for lack of food. He would send the women to market to buy provisions,
+but there was nothing there, for the merchant bought up everything, and
+all he received was money for taxes.
+
+King Tarás grew angry and sent the merchant abroad; but the merchant
+settled at the border and continued to do his work: as before, people
+dragged for the merchant's money all the things from the king to him.
+The king was in a bad plight: he did not eat for days at a time, and the
+rumour was spread that the merchant was boasting that he was going to
+buy the king himself with his money. King Tarás lost his courage, and
+did not know what to do.
+
+Semén the Warrior came to him, and said:
+
+"Support me, for the King of India has vanquished me."
+
+But Tarás himself was pinched.
+
+"I have not eaten myself for two days," he said.
+
+
+XI.
+
+The old devil had done up the two brothers, and now went to Iván. The
+old devil took the shape of a general, and he came to Iván and tried to
+persuade him to provide himself with an army.
+
+"It will not do for a king to live without an army," he said. "Just
+command me, and I will gather soldiers from among your people, and will
+get you up an army."
+
+Iván took his advice.
+
+"All right," he said, "get me up an army: teach them to play good
+music,--I like that."
+
+The old devil started to go over the kingdom, to gather volunteers. He
+said that they should go and get their crowns shaved, for which they
+would get a bottle of vódka each, and a red cap.
+
+The fools laughed at him.
+
+"We have all the liquor we want," they said, "for we distil it
+ourselves, and as for caps, our women will make us any we want, even
+motley ones, with tassels at that."
+
+Not one of them would go. The old devil went to Iván and said:
+
+"Your fools will not go of their own will; you will have to force them."
+
+"All right," he said, "drive them by force!"
+
+And so the old devil announced that all the fools were to inscribe
+themselves as soldiers, and that Iván would execute those who would not
+go.
+
+The fools came to the general and said:
+
+"You say that the king will have us killed if we do not become soldiers,
+but you do not tell us what we shall have to do as soldiers. They say
+that soldiers, too, are killed."
+
+"Yes, that cannot be helped."
+
+When the fools heard that, they became stubborn.
+
+"We will not go," they said. "If so, let us be killed at home! Death
+cannot be escaped anyway."
+
+"Fools that you are!" said the old devil. "A soldier may be killed or
+not, but if you do not go, King Iván will certainly have you killed."
+
+The fools considered the matter, and went to see Iván the Fool.
+
+"Your general has come," they said, "and tells us all to turn soldiers.
+'If you become soldiers,' he says, 'you may be killed, or not, but if
+you do not become soldiers King Iván will certainly put you to death.'
+Is that true?"
+
+Iván began to laugh.
+
+"How can I, one man, have you all put to death? If I were not a fool, I
+should explain that to you, but as it is, I do not understand it
+myself."
+
+"If so," they said, "we shall not become soldiers."
+
+"All right," he said, "don't."
+
+The fools went to the general and refused to become soldiers.
+
+The old devil saw that his business did not work, so he went to the King
+of Cockroachland, and got into his favour.
+
+"Let us go," he said, "and wage war on King Iván, and vanquish him. He
+has no money, but he has plenty of grain, and cattle, and all kinds of
+things."
+
+The King of Cockroachland went out to make war: he had gathered a large
+army, and collected guns and cannon, and left his borders, to enter
+Iván's kingdom.
+
+People came to Iván and said:
+
+"The King of Cockroachland is coming against us."
+
+"All right," he said, "let him come."
+
+The King of Cockroachland crossed the border, and sent the
+advance-guard to find Iván's army. They looked and looked for it, and
+could not find it. They thought that they might wait for it to show up.
+But they heard nothing about it,--there was no army to fight.
+
+The King of Cockroachland sent out his men to take possession of the
+villages. The soldiers came to one village,--and there the fools jumped
+out to look at the soldiers and to marvel at them. The soldiers began to
+take away the grain and the cattle: the fools gave it all up, and did
+not resist. The soldiers went to the next village, and the same
+happened. The soldiers walked for a day or two, and everywhere the same
+happened. They gave up all they had, and nobody resisted, and they
+invited the soldiers to come and live with them:
+
+"If you, dear people," they said, "have not enough to live on in your
+country, come and settle among us."
+
+The soldiers walked and walked, but no army was to be found; everywhere
+people were living, and feeding themselves and other people, and they
+did not resist, but invited them to come and live with them.
+
+The soldiers felt bad, and they came back to the King of Cockroachland.
+
+"We cannot fight here," they said, "so take us to some other place: war
+would be a good thing, but this is as though we were to cut soup. We
+cannot fight here."
+
+The King of Cockroachland grew wroth, and commanded his soldiers to
+march through the whole kingdom, and destroy villages and houses, and
+burn the grain and kill the cattle.
+
+"If you do not obey my command," he said, "I shall have you all
+executed."
+
+The soldiers became frightened, and began to carry out the king's
+command. They started to burn the houses and the grain, and to kill the
+cattle. And still the fools did not resist, but only wept. The old men
+wept, and the old women wept, and the children wept.
+
+"Why do you offend us? Why do you destroy the property? If you need it,
+take it along!"
+
+The soldiers felt ashamed. They did not go any farther, and the whole
+army ran away.
+
+
+XII.
+
+The old devil went away,--he could not get at Iván by means of the
+soldiers. The old devil changed into a clean-looking gentleman, and went
+to live in Iván's kingdom: he wished to get at him by means of money, as
+he had done with Tarás the Paunch.
+
+"I want to do you good," he said, "and to teach you what is good and
+proper. I will build a house in your country, and will start an
+establishment."
+
+"All right," he said, "stay here!"
+
+The clean-looking gentleman stayed overnight, and the following morning
+he took a large bag of gold to the market-square, and a sheet of paper,
+and said:
+
+"You are all of you living like pigs. I will teach you how to live.
+Build me a house according to this plan! You work, and I will show you
+how, and will pay gold money to you."
+
+And he showed them the gold. The fools were astounded: they had no such
+a thing as money, and only exchanged things among themselves, or paid
+with work. They marvelled at the gold and said:
+
+"They are nice things."
+
+And for these gold things they began to give him what they had and to
+work for him. The old devil rejoiced and thought:
+
+"My affair is proceeding favourably. I will now ruin Iván completely, as
+I have ruined Tarás, and will buy him up, guts and all."
+
+As soon as the fools had any gold, they gave it all away to their women
+for necklaces, and their girls wove it into their braids, and the
+children began to play in the streets with those pretty things. When all
+had enough of it, they refused to get any more. The clean-looking
+gentleman's palace was not half done, and the grain and the cattle were
+not yet attended to for the year. And the gentleman demanded that they
+should go and work for him, and haul his grain, and drive his cattle; he
+promised them much gold for everything and for all work.
+
+But no one came to work, and they brought nothing to him. Only now and
+then a boy or girl would run in to exchange an egg for a gold coin;
+otherwise nobody came, and he had nothing to eat. The clean-looking
+gentleman was starved, and he went to the village to buy something to
+eat: he went into one yard, and offered a gold coin for a chicken, but
+the woman would not take it.
+
+"I have too many of them as it is," she said.
+
+He went to a homeless woman, to buy a herring of her, and offered her a
+gold coin.
+
+"I do not want it, dear man," she said. "I have no children, and so
+there is nobody to play with it; I myself have three of these for show."
+
+He went to a peasant to buy bread of him, but the peasant, too, would
+not take the money.
+
+"I do not want it," he said. "If you want bread, for Christ's sake,
+wait, and I will have my wife cut you off a piece."
+
+The devil just spit out and ran away from the peasant. Not only would he
+not take anything for Christ's sake, but it was worse than cutting him
+even to hear that word.
+
+And so he did not get any bread. Everywhere it was the same; no matter
+where the devil went, they gave him nothing for money, but said:
+
+"Bring us something else, or come and work for it, or take it for
+Christ's sake!"
+
+But the devil had nothing but money. He did not like to work, and for
+Christ's sake he could not take anything. The old devil grew angry.
+
+"What else do you want, if I give you money? You can buy anything for
+money, or hire a labourer."
+
+The fools paid no attention to him.
+
+"No," they said, "we do not want it. We have no taxes and no wages to
+pay, so what do we want with the money?"
+
+The old devil went to bed without eating supper.
+
+This affair reached the ears of Iván the Fool. They went to ask him:
+
+"What shall we do? A clean-looking gentleman has appeared among us: he
+is fond of eating and drinking, and does not like to work, and does not
+beg for Christ's sake, but only offers us gold pieces. So long as we did
+not have enough of them, we gave him everything, but now we do not give
+him any more. What shall we do with him? We are afraid that he will
+starve."
+
+Iván listened to what they had to say.
+
+"All right," he said, "we shall have to feed him. Let him go from farm
+to farm as a shepherd!"
+
+The old devil could not help himself, and he began to go from farm to
+farm. The turn came to Iván's farm. The old devil came to dinner, and
+the dumb girl was just fixing it. Those who were lazy used to deceive
+her. Without having worked they came to dinner earlier and ate up all
+the porridge. And so the dumb girl contrived to tell the
+good-for-nothing by their hands: if one had calluses, she seated him at
+the table, but if not, she gave him what was left of the dinner. The old
+devil climbed behind the table; but the dumb girl took hold of his
+hands, and there were no calluses; the hands were clean and smooth, and
+the nails long.
+
+The dumb girl bawled, and pulled the devil out from behind the table.
+
+Iván's wife said to him:
+
+"Don't take it amiss, clean gentleman! My sister-in-law will not let a
+man without calluses sit down at the table. Wait awhile! Let the people
+eat first, and then you will get what is left."
+
+The old devil was insulted, because at the king's house they would feed
+him with the swine. He said to Iván:
+
+"What a fool's law you have in your country to let all men work with
+their hands! You have invented that in your stupidity. Do men work with
+their hands only? How do you suppose clever people work?"
+
+But Iván said:
+
+"How can we fools know? We labour mostly with our hands and with our
+backs."
+
+"That is so, because you are fools. I will teach you," he said, "how to
+work with your heads. You will see that with your heads you can work
+faster than with your hands."
+
+Iván marvelled.
+
+"Indeed," he said, "we are called fools for good reason."
+
+And the old devil said:
+
+"But it is not easy to work with the head. You do not give me anything
+to eat because I have no calluses on my hands, and you do not know that
+it is a hundred times harder to work with the head. At times it just
+makes the head burst."
+
+Iván fell to musing.
+
+"But why do you torture yourself so much, my dear? It is no small matter
+to have your head burst. You had better do some easy work,--with your
+hands and back."
+
+And the devil said:
+
+"The reason I torture myself is because I pity you fools. If I did not
+torture myself, you would remain fools to the end of your days. I have
+worked with my head, and now I will teach you, too."
+
+Iván marvelled.
+
+"Teach us," he said, "for now and then the hands get tired, and it would
+be nice to use the head instead."
+
+The devil promised to teach him.
+
+And Iván proclaimed throughout his kingdom that a clean-looking man had
+appeared who would teach people how to work with their heads, that they
+could work more with their heads than with their hands, and that they
+should come and learn.
+
+In Iván's kingdom there was a high tower, and a straight staircase led
+up to it, and at the top there was a spy-room. Iván took the gentleman
+there so that he might see better.
+
+The gentleman stood up on the tower and began to speak from it. The
+fools gathered around to look at him. The fools thought that he would
+show them in fact how to work with the head instead of the hands. But
+the old devil taught them only in words how to live without working.
+
+The fools did not understand a word. They looked and looked and went
+away, each to his work.
+
+The old devil stood on the tower a day, and a second day, and kept
+talking. He wanted to eat; but the fools did not have enough sense to
+send some bread up to the tower. They thought that if he could work
+better with his head than with his hands, he would somehow earn bread
+for himself with his head. The old devil stood another day in the
+tower-room, and kept talking all the time. And the people came up and
+looked, and looked and went away.
+
+Then Iván asked:
+
+"Well, has the gentleman begun to work with his head?"
+
+"Not yet," people said, "he is still babbling."
+
+The old devil stood another day on the tower and began to weaken; he
+tottered and struck his head against a post. One of the fools saw that,
+and told Iván's wife about it, and she ran to her husband in the field.
+
+"Come, let us go and see," she said. "The gentleman is beginning to work
+with his head."
+
+Iván was surprised.
+
+"Indeed?" he said. He turned in the horse, and went to the tower. When
+he came up to it, the old devil was weakened from hunger and tottering
+from side to side and knocking his head against the posts. Just as Iván
+came up, the devil stumbled and fell and rattled down the stairs, head
+foremost: he counted all the steps.
+
+"Well," said Iván, "the clean-looking gentleman told the truth when he
+said that at times the head bursts. This is worse than calluses: such
+works will leave bumps on the head."
+
+The old devil came down the whole staircase and struck his head against
+the ground. Iván wanted to go and see how much work he had done, but
+suddenly the earth gave way, and the old devil went through the earth,
+and nothing but a hole was left.
+
+Iván scratched himself.
+
+"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing! It is again he. He must be
+the father of those others. What a big fellow he is!"
+
+Iván is still living, and people are all the time rushing to his
+kingdom, and his brothers, too, came to him, and he is feeding them all.
+If any one comes and says: "Feed me!" he replies:
+
+"All right, stay here, we have plenty of everything."
+
+They have but one custom in his country, and that is, if one has
+calluses on his hands, he may sit down at the table, and if he has not,
+he gets the remnants.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+  On page 133, the original read: "The Tartars after him. He into the
+  river."
+
+  This has been changed to "The Tartars after him. He threw himself into
+  the river."
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales, by Leo Tolstoy</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Leo Tolstoy</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Translator: Leo Wiener</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November 15, 2011 [eBook #38025]<br />
+[Most recently updated: October 28, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Anna Hall, Albert László, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FABLES FOR CHILDREN, STORIES FOR CHILDREN, NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES, POPULAR EDUCATION, DECEMBRISTS, MORAL TALES ***</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h1><span class="smcap">The Complete Works of</span><br />
+COUNT TOLSTÓY<br />
+<span class="smcap">Volume XII.</span></h1>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 413px;">
+<a href="images/i_005.jpg">
+<img src="images/i_005_s.jpg" width="413" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+<span class="caption">&quot;The clerk beat Sidor&#39;s face until the
+blood came&quot;
+<br />
+<i>Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko</i></span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="center big">FABLES FOR CHILDREN &#9880;
+STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+&#9880; NATURAL SCIENCE
+STORIES &#9880; POPULAR EDUCATION &#9880;
+DECEMBRISTS
+&#9880; MORAL TALES &#9880; &#9880; &#9880;</p>
+
+<p class="center big">By COUNT LEV N. T&#769;OLSTÓY</p>
+
+<p class="center">Translated from the Original Russian and Edited by</p>
+
+<p class="center big">LEO WIENER</p>
+
+<p class="center">Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 306px;">
+<a href="images/i_008.jpg">
+<img src="images/i_008_s.jpg" width="306" height="300" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">BOSTON &#9880; DANA ESTES &amp;
+COMPANY &#9880; PUBLISHERS
+</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a><br /><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="center">EDITION DE LUXE</p>
+
+<p class="center">Limited to One Thousand Copies,
+of which this is
+No. 411</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Copyright, 1904</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">By Dana Estes &amp; Company</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Entered at Stationers' Hall</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Colonial Press: Electrotyped and Printed by
+C. H. Simonds &amp; Co., Boston, Mass., U. S. A.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<ul class="toc">
+<li>&nbsp;<span class="label right"><span class="smcaplc">PAGE</span></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h3>FABLES FOR CHILDREN</h3>
+<ul class="toc">
+<li><span class="smcap">Æsop's Fables</span>       &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Adaptations and Imitations of Hindoo Fables</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h3>STORIES FOR CHILDREN</h3>
+<ul class="toc">
+<li><span class="smcap">The Foundling</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Peasant and the Cucumbers</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Fire</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_41">41</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Old Horse</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">How I Learned to Ride</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Willow</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Búlka</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Búlka and the Wild Boar</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Pheasants</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Milton and Búlka</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Turtle</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Búlka and the Wolf</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">What Happened to Búlka in Pyatigórsk</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Búlka's and Milton's End</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Gray Hare</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">God Sees the Truth, but Does Not Tell at Once</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Hunting Worse than Slavery</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">A Prisoner of the Caucasus</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Ermák</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_124">124</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h3>NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES</h3>
+<ul class="toc">
+<li><span class="smcap">Stories From Physics:</span><br /></li>
+<li><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span><span class="smcap indent">The Magnet</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">Moisture</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">The Different Connection of Particles</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_142">142</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">Crystals</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">Injurious Air</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">How Balloons Are Made</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">Galvanism</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">The Sun's Heat</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></span></li>
+<li><br /></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Stories From Zoology:</span><br /></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">The Owl and the Hare</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">How the Wolves Teach Their Whelps</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">Hares and Wolves</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">The Scent</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_162">162</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">Touch and Sight</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_164">164</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">The Silkworm</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></span></li>
+<li><br /></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Stories From Botany:</span><br /></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">The Apple-Tree</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_170">170</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">The Old Poplar</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">The Bird-Cherry</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap indent">How Trees Walk</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></span></li>
+<li><hr class="tb" /></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Decembrists</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">On Popular Education</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">What Men Live By</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_327">327</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Three Hermits</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_363">363</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Neglect the Fire</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_375">375</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Candle</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_395">395</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Two Old Men</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_409">409</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Where Love Is, There God Is Also</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_445">445</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h3>TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK ILLUSTRATIONS</h3>
+<ul class="toc">
+<li><span class="smcap">The Fiend Persists, but God Resists</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_463">463</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Little Girls Wiser than Old People</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_466">466</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">The Two Brothers and the Gold</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_469">469</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">Ilyás</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_472">472</a></span></li>
+<li><hr class="tb" /></li>
+<li><span class="smcap">A Fairy-Tale about Iván the Fool</span> &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_481">481</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<ul class="toc">
+<li>"<span class="smcap">The clerk beat Sídor's face until the blood came</span>" (<i>The Candle, see page 397</i>)       &nbsp;<span class="label"><i>Frontispiece</i></span></li>
+<li>"'<span class="smcap">Whose knife is this?</span>'" &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></span></li>
+<li>"'<span class="smcap">God will forgive you</span>'" &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></span></li>
+<li>"<span class="smcap">They rode off to the mountains</span>" &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></span></li>
+<li>"'<span class="smcap">Whither are you bound?</span>'" &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_332">332</a></span></li>
+<li>"<span class="smcap">But the candle was still burning</span>" &nbsp;<span class="label"><a href="#Page_403">403</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2>FABLES FOR CHILDREN<br />
+1869-1872</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+<p class="big center"><a name="FABLES_FOR_CHILDREN" id="FABLES_FOR_CHILDREN"></a>FABLES FOR CHILDREN</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="I_AESOPS_FABLES" id="I_AESOPS_FABLES"></a>I. ÆSOP'S FABLES</h2>
+
+
+<h3>THE ANT AND THE DOVE</h3>
+
+<p>An Ant came down to the brook: he wanted to drink.
+A wave washed him down and almost drowned him. A
+Dove was carrying a branch; she saw the Ant was drowning,
+so she cast the branch down to him in the brook.
+The Ant got up on the branch and was saved. Then a
+hunter placed a snare for the Dove, and was on the point
+of drawing it in. The Ant crawled up to the hunter and
+bit him on the leg; the hunter groaned and dropped the
+snare. The Dove fluttered upwards and flew away.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE TURTLE AND THE EAGLE</h3>
+
+<p>A Turtle asked an Eagle to teach her how to fly. The
+Eagle advised her not to try, as she was not fit for it;
+but she insisted. The Eagle took her in his claws, raised
+her up, and dropped her: she fell on stones and broke to
+pieces.</p>
+
+<h3>THE POLECAT</h3>
+
+<p>A Polecat entered a smithy and began to lick the filings.
+Blood began to flow from the Polecat's mouth, but
+he was glad and continued to lick; he thought that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+blood was coming from the iron, and lost his whole
+tongue.</p>
+
+<h3>THE LION AND THE MOUSE</h3>
+
+<p>A Lion was sleeping. A Mouse ran over his body.
+He awoke and caught her. The Mouse besought him;
+she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go, and I will do you a favour!"</p>
+
+<p>The Lion laughed at the Mouse for promising him a
+favour, and let her go.</p>
+
+<p>Then the hunters caught the Lion and tied him with a
+rope to a tree. The Mouse heard the Lion's roar, ran up,
+gnawed the rope through, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember? You laughed, not thinking that
+I could repay, but now you see that a favour may come
+also from a Mouse."</p>
+
+<h3>THE LIAR</h3>
+
+<p>A Boy was watching the sheep and, pretending that he
+saw a wolf, he began to cry:</p>
+
+<p>"Help! A wolf! A wolf!"</p>
+
+<p>The peasants came running up and saw that it was not
+so. After doing this for a second and a third time, it
+happened that a wolf came indeed. The Boy began to
+cry:</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, quickly, a wolf!"</p>
+
+<p>The peasants thought that he was deceiving them as
+usual, and paid no attention to him. The wolf saw
+there was no reason to be afraid: he leisurely killed the
+whole flock.</p>
+
+<h3>THE ASS AND THE HORSE</h3>
+
+<p>A man had an Ass and a Horse. They were walking
+on the road; the Ass said to the Horse:</p>
+
+<p>"It is heavy for me.&mdash;I shall not be able to carry it
+all; take at least a part of my load."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Horse paid no attention to him. The Ass fell
+down from overstraining himself, and died. When the
+master transferred the Ass's load on the Horse, and added
+the Ass's hide, the Horse began to complain:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, woe to me, poor one, woe to me, unfortunate
+Horse! I did not want to help him even a little, and
+now I have to carry everything, and his hide, too."</p>
+
+<h3>THE JACKDAW AND THE DOVES</h3>
+
+<p>A Jackdaw saw that the Doves were well fed,&mdash;so
+she painted herself white and flew into the dove-cot.
+The Doves thought at first that she was a dove like
+them, and let her in. But the Jackdaw forgot herself
+and croaked in jackdaw fashion. Then the Doves began
+to pick at her and drove her away. The Jackdaw flew
+back to her friends, but the jackdaws were frightened at
+her, seeing her white, and themselves drove her away.</p>
+
+<h3>THE WOMAN AND THE HEN</h3>
+
+<p>A Hen laid an egg each day. The Mistress thought
+that if she gave her more to eat, she would lay twice as
+much. So she did. The Hen grew fat and stopped laying.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE LION, THE BEAR, AND THE FOX</h3>
+
+<p>A Lion and a Bear procured some meat and began to
+fight for it. The Bear did not want to give in, nor did
+the Lion yield. They fought for so long a time that they
+both grew feeble and lay down. A Fox saw the meat
+between them; she grabbed it and ran away with it.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE DOG, THE COCK, AND THE FOX</h3>
+
+<p>A Dog and a Cock went to travel together. At night
+the Cock fell asleep in a tree, and the Dog fixed a place<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+for himself between the roots of that tree. When the
+time came, the Cock began to crow. A Fox heard the
+Cock, ran up to the tree, and began to beg the Cock to
+come down, as she wanted to give him her respects for
+such a fine voice.</p>
+
+<p>The Cock said:</p>
+
+<p>"You must first wake up the janitor,&mdash;he is sleeping
+between the roots. Let him open up, and I will come
+down."</p>
+
+<p>The Fox began to look for the janitor, and started
+yelping. The Dog sprang out at once and killed the
+Fox.</p>
+
+<h3>THE HORSE AND THE GROOM</h3>
+
+<p>A Groom stole the Horse's oats, and sold them, but
+he cleaned the Horse each day. Said the Horse:</p>
+
+<p>"If you really wish me to be in good condition, do not
+sell my oats."</p>
+
+<h3>THE FROG AND THE LION</h3>
+
+<p>A Lion heard a Frog croaking, and thought it was a
+large beast that was calling so loud. He walked up,
+and saw a Frog coming out of the swamp. The Lion
+crushed her with his paw and said:</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing to look at, and yet I was frightened."</p>
+
+<h3>THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE ANTS</h3>
+
+<p>In the fall the wheat of the Ants got wet; they were
+drying it. A hungry Grasshopper asked them for something
+to eat. The Ants said:</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you not gather food during the summer?"</p>
+
+<p>She said:</p>
+
+<p>"I had no time: I sang songs."</p>
+
+<p>They laughed, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"If you sang in the summer, dance in the winter!"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE HEN AND THE GOLDEN EGGS</h3>
+
+<p>A master had a Hen which laid golden eggs. He
+wanted more gold at once, and so killed the Hen (he
+thought that inside of her there was a large lump of gold),
+but she was just like any other hen.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN</h3>
+
+<p>An Ass put on a lion's skin, and all thought it was a
+lion. Men and animals ran away from him. A wind
+sprang up, and the skin was blown aside, and the Ass
+could be seen. People ran up and beat the Ass.</p>
+
+<h3>THE HEN AND THE SWALLOW</h3>
+
+<p>A Hen found some snake's eggs and began to sit on
+them. A Swallow saw it and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Stupid one! You will hatch them out, and, when
+they grow up, you will be the first one to suffer from
+them."</p>
+
+<h3>THE STAG AND THE FAWN</h3>
+
+<p>A Fawn once said to a Stag:</p>
+
+<p>"Father, you are larger and fleeter than the dogs, and,
+besides, you have huge antlers for defence; why, then, are
+you so afraid of the dogs?"</p>
+
+<p>The Stag laughed, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You speak the truth, my child. The trouble is,&mdash;the
+moment I hear the dogs bark, I run before I have
+time to think."</p>
+
+<h3>THE FOX AND THE GRAPES</h3>
+
+<p>A Fox saw some ripe bunches of grapes hanging high,
+and tried to get at them, in order to eat them.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She tried hard, but could not get them. To drown her
+annoyance she said:</p>
+
+<p>"They are still sour."</p>
+
+<h3>THE MAIDS AND THE COCK</h3>
+
+<p>A mistress used to wake the Maids at night and, as
+soon as the cocks crowed, put them to work. The Maids
+found that hard, and decided to kill the Cock, so that the
+mistress should not be wakened. They killed him, but
+now they suffered more than ever: the mistress was
+afraid that she would sleep past the time and so began
+to wake the Maids earlier.</p>
+
+<h3>THE FISHERMAN AND THE FISH</h3>
+
+<p>A Fisherman caught a Fish. Said the Fish:</p>
+
+<p>"Fisherman, let me go into the water; you see I am
+small: you will have little profit of me. If you let me
+go, I shall grow up, and then you will catch me when it
+will be worth while."</p>
+
+<p>But the Fisherman said:</p>
+
+<p>"A fool would be he who should wait for greater profit,
+and let the lesser slip out of his hands."</p>
+
+<h3>THE FOX AND THE GOAT</h3>
+
+<p>A Goat wanted to drink. He went down the incline
+to the well, drank his fill, and gained in weight. He
+started to get out, but could not do so. He began to
+bleat. A Fox saw him and said:</p>
+
+<p>"That's it, stupid one! If you had as much sense in
+your head as there are hairs in your beard, you would
+have thought of how to get out before you climbed down."</p>
+
+<h3>THE DOG AND HER SHADOW</h3>
+
+<p>A Dog was crossing the river over a plank, carrying a
+piece of meat in her teeth. She saw herself in the water<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+and thought that another dog was carrying a piece of
+meat. She dropped her piece and dashed forward to take
+away what the other dog had: the other meat was gone,
+and her own was carried away by the stream.</p>
+
+<p>And thus the Dog was left without anything.</p>
+
+<h3>THE CRANE AND THE STORK</h3>
+
+<p>A peasant put out his nets to catch the Cranes for
+tramping down his field. In the nets were caught the
+Cranes, and with them one Stork.</p>
+
+<p>The Stork said to the peasant:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go! I am not a Crane, but a Stork; we are
+most honoured birds; I live on your father's house. You
+can see by my feathers that I am not a Crane."</p>
+
+<p>The peasant said:</p>
+
+<p>"With the Cranes I have caught you, and with them
+will I kill you."</p>
+
+<h3>THE GARDENER AND HIS SONS</h3>
+
+<p>A Gardener wanted his Sons to get used to gardening.
+As he was dying, he called them up and said to them:</p>
+
+<p>"Children, when I am dead, look for what is hidden in
+the vineyard."</p>
+
+<p>The Sons thought that it was a treasure, and when
+their father died, they began to dig there, and dug up the
+whole ground. They did not find the treasure, but they
+ploughed the vineyard up so well that it brought forth
+more fruit than ever.</p>
+
+<h3>THE WOLF AND THE CRANE</h3>
+
+<p>A Wolf had a bone stuck in his throat, and could not
+cough it up. He called the Crane, and said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Crane, you have a long neck. Thrust your head into
+my throat and draw out the bone! I will reward you."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Crane stuck his head in, pulled out the bone, and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Give me my reward!"</p>
+
+<p>The Wolf gnashed his teeth and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not enough reward for you that I did
+not bite off your head when it was between my
+teeth?"</p>
+
+<h3>THE HARES AND THE FROGS</h3>
+
+<p>The Hares once got together, and began to complain
+about their life:</p>
+
+<p>"We perish from men, and from dogs, and from eagles,
+and from all the other beasts. It would be better to die
+at once than to live in fright and suffer. Come, let us
+drown ourselves!"</p>
+
+<p>And the Hares raced away to drown themselves in a
+lake. The Frogs heard the Hares and plumped into the
+water. So one of the Hares said:</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, boys! Let us put off the drowning! Evidently
+the Frogs are having a harder life than we: they are
+afraid even of us."</p>
+
+<h3>THE FATHER AND HIS SONS</h3>
+
+<p>A Father told his Sons to live in peace: they paid no
+attention to him. So he told them to bring the bath
+broom, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Break it!"</p>
+
+<p>No matter how much they tried, they could not
+break it. Then the Father unclosed the broom,
+and told them to break the rods singly. They
+broke it.</p>
+
+<p>The Father said:</p>
+
+<p>"So it is with you: if you live in peace, no one will
+overcome you; but if you quarrel, and are divided, any
+one will easily ruin you."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE FOX</h3>
+
+<p>A Fox got caught in a trap. She tore off her tail, and
+got away. She began to contrive how to cover up her
+shame. She called together the Foxes, and begged them
+to cut off their tails.</p>
+
+<p>"A tail," she said, "is a useless thing. In vain do we
+drag along a dead weight."</p>
+
+<p>One of the Foxes said:</p>
+
+<p>"You would not be speaking thus, if you were not tailless!"</p>
+
+<p>The tailless Fox grew silent and went away.</p>
+
+<h3>THE WILD ASS AND THE TAME ASS</h3>
+
+<p>A Wild Ass saw a Tame Ass. The Wild Ass went up
+to him and began to praise his life, saying how smooth his
+body was, and what sweet feed he received. Later, when
+the Tame Ass was loaded down, and a driver began to
+goad him with a stick, the Wild Ass said:</p>
+
+<p>"No, brother, I do not envy you: I see that your life
+is going hard with you."</p>
+
+<h3>THE STAG</h3>
+
+<p>A Stag went to the brook to quench his thirst. He
+saw himself in the water, and began to admire his horns,
+seeing how large and branching they were; and he looked
+at his feet, and said: "But my feet are unseemly and
+thin."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a Lion sprang out and made for the Stag.
+The Stag started to run over the open plain. He was getting
+away, but there came a forest, and his horns caught
+in the branches, and the lion caught him. As the Stag
+was dying, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"How foolish I am! That which I thought to be
+unseemly and thin was saving me, and what I gloried in
+has been my ruin."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE DOG AND THE WOLF</h3>
+
+<p>A Dog fell asleep back of the yard. A Wolf ran up and
+wanted to eat him.</p>
+
+<p>Said the Dog:</p>
+
+<p>"Wolf, don't eat me yet: now I am lean and bony. Wait
+a little,&mdash;my master is going to celebrate a wedding;
+then I shall have plenty to eat; I shall grow fat. It will
+be better to eat me then."</p>
+
+<p>The Wolf believed her, and went away. Then he came
+a second time, and saw the Dog lying on the roof. The
+Wolf said to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, have they had the wedding?"</p>
+
+<p>The Dog replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, Wolf! If you catch me again asleep in front
+of the yard, do not wait for the wedding."</p>
+
+<h3>THE GNAT AND THE LION</h3>
+
+<p>A Gnat came to a Lion, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that you have more strength than I?
+You are mistaken! What does your strength consist in?
+Is it that you scratch with your claws, and gnaw with
+your teeth? That is the way the women quarrel with
+their husbands. I am stronger than you: if you wish
+let us fight!"</p>
+
+<p>And the Gnat sounded his horn, and began to bite the
+Lion on his bare cheeks and his nose. The Lion struck
+his face with his paws and scratched it with his
+claws. He tore his face until the blood came, and
+gave up.</p>
+
+<p>The Gnat trumpeted for joy, and flew away. Then he
+became entangled in a spider's web, and the spider began
+to suck him up. The Gnat said:</p>
+
+<p>"I have vanquished the strong beast, the Lion, and
+now I perish from this nasty spider."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE HORSE AND HIS MASTERS</h3>
+
+<p>A gardener had a Horse. She had much to do, but
+little to eat; so she began to pray to God to get another
+master. And so it happened. The gardener sold the
+Horse to a potter. The Horse was glad, but the potter
+had even more work for her to do. And again the Horse
+complained of her lot, and began to pray that she might
+get a better master. And this prayer, too, was fulfilled.
+The potter sold the Horse to a tanner. When the Horse
+saw the skins of horses in the tanner's yard, she began to
+cry:</p>
+
+<p>"Woe to me, wretched one! It would be better if I
+could stay with my old masters. It is evident they have
+sold me now not for work, but for my skin's sake."</p>
+
+<h3>THE OLD MAN AND DEATH</h3>
+
+<p>An Old Man cut some wood, which he carried away.
+He had to carry it far. He grew tired, so he put down
+his bundle, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if Death would only come!"</p>
+
+<p>Death came, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Here I am, what do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>The Old Man was frightened, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Lift up my bundle!"</p>
+
+<h3>THE LION AND THE FOX</h3>
+
+<p>A Lion, growing old, was unable to catch the animals,
+and so intended to live by cunning. He went into a den,
+lay down there, and pretended that he was sick. The animals
+came to see him, and he ate up those that went into
+his den. The Fox guessed the trick. She stood at the
+entrance of the den, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Lion, how are you feeling?"</p>
+
+<p>The Lion answered:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Poorly. Why don't you come in?"</p>
+
+<p>The Fox replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I do not come in because I see by the tracks that
+many have entered, but none have come out."</p>
+
+<h3>THE STAG AND THE VINEYARD</h3>
+
+<p>A Stag hid himself from the hunters in a vineyard.
+When the hunters missed him, the Stag began to nibble
+at the grape-vine leaves.</p>
+
+<p>The hunters noticed that the leaves were moving, and
+so they thought, "There must be an animal under those
+leaves," and fired their guns, and wounded the Stag.</p>
+
+<p>The Stag said, dying:</p>
+
+<p>"It serves me right for wanting to eat the leaves that
+saved me."</p>
+
+<h3>THE CAT AND THE MICE</h3>
+
+<p>A house was overrun with Mice. A Cat found his
+way into the house, and began to catch them. The Mice
+saw that matters were bad, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Mice, let us not come down from the ceiling! The
+Cat cannot get up there."</p>
+
+<p>When the Mice stopped coming down, the Cat decided
+that he must catch them by a trick. He grasped the ceiling
+with one leg, hung down from it, and made believe
+that he was dead.</p>
+
+<p>A Mouse looked out at him, but said:</p>
+
+<p>"No, my friend! Even if you should turn into a bag,
+I would not go up to you."</p>
+
+<h3>THE WOLF AND THE GOAT</h3>
+
+<p>A Wolf saw a Goat browsing on a rocky mountain, and
+he could not get at her; so he said to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Come down lower! The place is more even, and the
+grass is much sweeter to feed on."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the Goat answered:</p>
+
+<p>"You are not calling me down for that, Wolf: you are
+troubling yourself not about my food, but about yours."</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE REEDS AND THE OLIVE-TREE</h3>
+
+<p>The Olive-tree and the Reeds quarrelled about who was
+stronger and sounder. The Olive-tree laughed at the
+Reeds because they bent in every wind. The Reeds kept
+silence. A storm came: the Reeds swayed, tossed, bowed
+to the ground,&mdash;and remained unharmed. The Olive-tree
+strained her branches against the wind,&mdash;and broke.</p>
+
+<h3>THE TWO COMPANIONS</h3>
+
+<p>Two Companions were walking through the forest
+when a Bear jumped out on them. One started to run,
+climbed a tree, and hid himself, but the other remained
+in the road. He had nothing to do, so he fell down on
+the ground and pretended that he was dead.</p>
+
+<p>The Bear went up to him, and sniffed at him; but he
+had stopped breathing.</p>
+
+<p>The Bear sniffed at his face; he thought that he was
+dead, and so went away.</p>
+
+<p>When the Bear was gone, the Companion climbed down
+from the tree and laughing, said: "What did the Bear
+whisper in your ear?"</p>
+
+<p>"He told me that those who in danger run away from
+their companions are bad people."</p>
+
+<h3>THE WOLF AND THE LAMB</h3>
+
+<p>A Wolf saw a Lamb drinking at a river. The Wolf
+wanted to eat the Lamb, and so he began to annoy him.
+He said:</p>
+
+<p>"You are muddling my water and do not let me
+drink."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Lamb said:</p>
+
+<p>"How can I muddle your water? I am standing downstream
+from you; besides, I drink with the tips of my
+lips."</p>
+
+<p>And the Wolf said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why did you call my father names last summer?"</p>
+
+<p>The Lamb said:</p>
+
+<p>"But, Wolf, I was not yet born last summer."</p>
+
+<p>The Wolf got angry, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"It is hard to get the best of you. Besides, my stomach
+is empty, so I will devour you."</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE LION, THE WOLF, AND THE FOX</h3>
+
+<p>An old, sick Lion was lying in his den. All the animals
+came to see the king, but the Fox kept away. So
+the Wolf was glad of the chance, and began to slander the
+Fox before the Lion.</p>
+
+<p>"She does not esteem you in the least," he said, "she
+has not come once to see the king."</p>
+
+<p>The Fox happened to run by as he was saying these
+words. She heard what the Wolf had said, and thought:</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, Wolf, I will get my revenge on you."</p>
+
+<p>So the Lion began to roar at the Fox, but she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do not have me killed, but let me say a word! I did
+not come to see you because I had no time. And I had
+no time because I ran over the whole world to ask the
+doctors for a remedy for you. I have just got it, and so I
+have come to see you."</p>
+
+<p>The Lion said:</p>
+
+<p>"What is the remedy?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is this: if you flay a live Wolf, and put his warm
+hide on you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>When the Lion stretched out the Wolf, the Fox laughed,
+and said:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's it, my friend: masters ought to be led to do
+good, not evil."</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE LION, THE ASS, AND THE FOX</h3>
+
+<p>The Lion, the Ass, and the Fox went out to hunt. They
+caught a large number of animals, and the Lion told the
+Ass to divide them up. The Ass divided them into three
+equal parts and said: "Now, take them!"</p>
+
+<p>The Lion grew angry, ate up the Ass, and told the Fox
+to divide them up anew. The Fox collected them all into
+one heap, and left a small bit for herself. The Lion
+looked at it and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Clever Fox! Who taught you to divide so well?"</p>
+
+<p>She said:</p>
+
+<p>"What about that Ass?"</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE PEASANT AND THE WATER-SPRITE</h3>
+
+<p>A Peasant lost his axe in the river; he sat down on the
+bank in grief, and began to weep.</p>
+
+<p>The Water-sprite heard the Peasant and took pity on
+him. He brought a gold axe out of the river, and said:
+"Is this your axe?"</p>
+
+<p>The Peasant said: "No, it is not mine."</p>
+
+<p>The Water-sprite brought another, a silver axe.</p>
+
+<p>Again the Peasant said: "It is not my axe."</p>
+
+<p>Then the Water-sprite brought out the real axe.</p>
+
+<p>The Peasant said: "Now this is my axe."</p>
+
+<p>The Water-sprite made the Peasant a present of all three
+axes, for having told the truth.</p>
+
+<p>At home the Peasant showed his axes to his friends,
+and told them what had happened to him.</p>
+
+<p>One of the peasants made up his mind to do the same:
+he went to the river, purposely threw his axe into the
+water, sat down on the bank, and began to weep.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Water-sprite brought out a gold axe, and asked: "Is
+this your axe?"</p>
+
+<p>The Peasant was glad, and called out: "It is mine,
+mine!"</p>
+
+<p>The Water-sprite did not give him the gold axe, and did
+not bring him back his own either, because he had told an
+untruth.</p>
+
+<h3>THE RAVEN AND THE FOX</h3>
+
+<p>A Raven got himself a piece of meat, and sat down on
+a tree. The Fox wanted to get it from him. She went
+up to him, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Raven, as I look at you,&mdash;from your size and
+beauty,&mdash;you ought to be a king! And you would
+certainly be a king, if you had a good voice."</p>
+
+<p>The Raven opened his mouth wide, and began to croak
+with all his might and main. The meat fell down. The
+Fox caught it and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Raven! If you had also sense, you would certainly
+be a king."</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="II_ADAPTATIONS_AND_IMITATIONS" id="II_ADAPTATIONS_AND_IMITATIONS"></a>II. ADAPTATIONS AND IMITATIONS
+OF HINDOO FABLES</h2>
+
+
+<h3>THE SNAKE'S HEAD AND TAIL</h3>
+
+<p>The Snake's Tail had a quarrel with the Snake's Head
+about who was to walk in front. The Head said:</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot walk in front, because you have no eyes
+and no ears."</p>
+
+<p>The Tail said:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I have strength, I move you; if I want to, I
+can wind myself around a tree, and you cannot get off the
+spot."</p>
+
+<p>The Head said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let us separate!"</p>
+
+<p>And the Tail tore himself loose from the Head, and
+crept on; but the moment he got away from the Head, he
+fell into a hole and was lost.</p>
+
+<h3>FINE THREAD</h3>
+
+<p>A Man ordered some fine thread from a Spinner. The
+Spinner spun it for him, but the Man said that the thread
+was not good, and that he wanted the finest thread he
+could get. The Spinner said:</p>
+
+<p>"If this is not fine enough, take this!" and she pointed
+to an empty space.</p>
+
+<p>He said that he did not see any. The Spinner said:</p>
+
+<p>"You do not see it, because it is so fine. I do not see
+it myself."</p>
+
+<p>The Fool was glad, and ordered some more thread of
+this kind, and paid her for what he got.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE PARTITION OF THE INHERITANCE</h3>
+
+<p>A Father had two Sons. He said to them: "When I
+die, divide everything into two equal parts."</p>
+
+<p>When the Father died, the Sons could not divide without
+quarrelling. They went to a Neighbour to have him
+settle the matter. The Neighbour asked them how their
+Father had told them to divide. They said:</p>
+
+<p>"He ordered us to divide everything into two equal
+parts."</p>
+
+<p>The Neighbour said:</p>
+
+<p>"If so, tear all your garments into two halves, break
+your dishes into two halves, and cut all your cattle into
+two halves!"</p>
+
+<p>The Brothers obeyed their Neighbour, and lost everything.</p>
+
+<h3>THE MONKEY</h3>
+
+<p>A Man went into the woods, cut down a tree, and
+began to saw it. He raised the end of the tree on a
+stump, sat astride over it, and began to saw. Then he
+drove a wedge into the split that he had sawed, and went
+on sawing; then he took out the wedge and drove it in
+farther down.</p>
+
+<p>A Monkey was sitting on a tree and watching him.
+When the Man lay down to sleep, the Monkey seated
+herself astride the tree, and wanted to do the same; but
+when she took out the wedge, the tree sprang back and
+caught her tail. She began to tug and to cry. The Man
+woke up, beat the Monkey, and tied a rope to her.</p>
+
+<h3>THE MONKEY AND THE PEASE</h3>
+
+<p>A Monkey was carrying both her hands full of pease.
+A pea dropped on the ground; the Monkey wanted to
+pick it up, and dropped twenty peas. She rushed to pick<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+them up and lost all the rest. Then she flew into a rage,
+swept away all the pease and ran off.</p>
+
+<h3>THE MILCH COW</h3>
+
+<p>A Man had a Cow; she gave each day a pot full of
+milk. The Man invited a number of guests. To have as
+much milk as possible, he did not milk the Cow for ten
+days. He thought that on the tenth day the Cow would
+give him ten pitchers of milk.</p>
+
+<p>But the Cow's milk went back, and she gave less milk
+than before.</p>
+
+<h3>THE DUCK AND THE MOON</h3>
+
+<p>A Duck was swimming in the pond, trying to find
+some fish, but she did not find one in a whole day.
+When night came, she saw the Moon in the water; she
+thought that it was a fish, and plunged in to catch the
+Moon. The other ducks saw her do it and laughed at
+her.</p>
+
+<p>That made the Duck feel so ashamed and bashful that
+when she saw a fish under the Water, she did not try to
+catch it, and so died of hunger.</p>
+
+<h3>THE WOLF IN THE DUST</h3>
+
+<p>A Wolf wanted to pick a sheep out of a flock, and
+stepped into the wind, so that the dust of the flock might
+blow on him.</p>
+
+<p>The Sheep Dog saw him, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"There is no sense, Wolf, in your walking in the dust:
+it will make your eyes ache."</p>
+
+<p>But the Wolf said:</p>
+
+<p>"The trouble is, Doggy, that my eyes have been aching
+for quite awhile, and I have been told that the dust from
+a flock of sheep will cure the eyes."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE MOUSE UNDER THE GRANARY</h3>
+
+<p>A Mouse was living under the granary. In the floor
+of the granary there was a little hole, and the grain fell
+down through it. The Mouse had an easy life of it, but
+she wanted to brag of her ease: she gnawed a larger hole
+in the floor, and invited other mice.</p>
+
+<p>"Come to a feast with me," said she; "there will be
+plenty to eat for everybody."</p>
+
+<p>When she brought the mice, she saw there was no
+hole. The peasant had noticed the big hole in the floor,
+and had stopped it up.</p>
+
+<h3>THE BEST PEARS</h3>
+
+<p>A master sent his Servant to buy the best-tasting pears.
+The Servant came to the shop and asked for pears. The
+dealer gave him some; but the Servant said:</p>
+
+<p>"No, give me the best!"</p>
+
+<p>The dealer said:</p>
+
+<p>"Try one; you will see that they taste good."</p>
+
+<p>"How shall I know," said the Servant, "that they all
+taste good, if I try one only?"</p>
+
+<p>He bit off a piece from each pear, and brought them
+to his master. Then his master sent him away.</p>
+
+<h3>THE FALCON AND THE COCK</h3>
+
+<p>The Falcon was used to the master, and came to his
+hand when he was called; the Cock ran away from his
+master and cried when people went up to him. So the
+Falcon said to the Cock:</p>
+
+<p>"In you Cocks there is no gratitude; one can see that
+you are of a common breed. You go to your masters
+only when you are hungry. It is different with us wild
+birds. We have much strength, and we can fly faster
+than anybody; still we do not fly away from people, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+of our own accord go to their hands when we are called.
+We remember that they feed us."</p>
+
+<p>Then the Cock said:</p>
+
+<p>"You do not run away from people because you have
+never seen a roast Falcon, but we, you know, see roast
+Cocks."</p>
+
+<h3>THE JACKALS AND THE ELEPHANT</h3>
+
+<p>The Jackals had eaten up all the carrion in the woods,
+and had nothing to eat. So an old Jackal was thinking
+how to find something to feed on. He went to an Elephant,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"We had a king, but he became overweening: he told
+us to do things that nobody could do; we want to choose
+another king, and my people have sent me to ask you to
+be our king. You will have an easy life with us. Whatever
+you will order us to do, we will do, and we will
+honour you in everything. Come to our kingdom!"</p>
+
+<p>The Elephant consented, and followed the Jackal.
+The Jackal brought him to a swamp. When the Elephant
+stuck fast in it, the Jackal said:</p>
+
+<p>"Now command! Whatever you command, we will
+do."</p>
+
+<p>The Elephant said:</p>
+
+<p>"I command you to pull me out from here."</p>
+
+<p>The Jackal began to laugh, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Take hold of my tail with your trunk, and I will
+pull you out at once."</p>
+
+<p>The Elephant said:</p>
+
+<p>"Can I be pulled out by a tail?"</p>
+
+<p>But the Jackal said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, then, do you command us to do what is impossible?
+Did we not drive away our first king for telling
+us to do what could not be done?"</p>
+
+<p>When the Elephant died in the swamp the Jackals
+came and ate him up.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>THE HERON, THE FISHES, AND THE CRAB</h3>
+
+<p>A Heron was living near a pond. She grew old, and
+had no strength left with which to catch the fish. She
+began to contrive how to live by cunning. So she said
+to the Fishes:</p>
+
+<p>"You Fishes do not know that a calamity is in store
+for you: I have heard the people say that they are going
+to let off the pond, and catch every one of you. I know
+of a nice little pond back of the mountain. I should
+like to help you, but I am old, and it is hard for me to
+fly."</p>
+
+<p>The Fishes begged the Heron to help them. So the
+Heron said:</p>
+
+<p>"All right, I will do what I can for you, and will
+carry you over: only I cannot do it at once,&mdash;I will
+take you there one after another."</p>
+
+<p>And the Fishes were happy; they kept begging her:
+"Carry me over! Carry me over!"</p>
+
+<p>And the Heron started carrying them. She would
+take one up, would carry her into the field, and would eat
+her up. And thus she ate a large number of Fishes.</p>
+
+<p>In the pond there lived an old Crab. When the Heron
+began to take out the Fishes, he saw what was up, and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Heron, take me to the new abode!"</p>
+
+<p>The Heron took the Crab and carried him off. When
+she flew out on the field, she wanted to throw the Crab
+down. But the Crab saw the fish-bones on the ground,
+and so squeezed the Heron's neck with his claws, and
+choked her to death. Then he crawled back to the pond,
+and told the Fishes.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE WATER-SPRITE AND THE PEARL</h3>
+
+<p>A Man was rowing in a boat, and dropped a costly
+pearl into the sea. The Man returned to the shore, took<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+a pail, and began to draw up the water and to pour it out
+on the land. He drew the water and poured it out for
+three days without stopping.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth day the Water-sprite came out of the sea,
+and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you drawing the water?"</p>
+
+<p>The Man said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am drawing it because I have dropped a pearl into it."</p>
+
+<p>The Water-sprite asked him:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you stop soon?"</p>
+
+<p>The Man said:</p>
+
+<p>"I will stop when I dry up the sea."</p>
+
+<p>Then the Water-sprite returned to the sea, brought back
+that pearl, and gave it to the Man.</p>
+
+<h3>THE BLIND MAN AND THE MILK</h3>
+
+<p>A Man born blind asked a Seeing Man:</p>
+
+<p>"Of what colour is milk?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seeing Man said: "The colour of milk is the same
+as that of white paper."</p>
+
+<p>The Blind Man asked: "Well, does that colour rustle
+in your hands like paper?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seeing Man said: "No, it is as white as white
+flour."</p>
+
+<p>The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as soft and as
+powdery as flour?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seeing Man said: "No, it is simply as white as a
+white hare."</p>
+
+<p>The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as fluffy and soft
+as a hare?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seeing Man said: "No, it is as white as snow."</p>
+
+<p>The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as cold as snow?"</p>
+
+<p>And no matter how many examples the Seeing Man
+gave, the Blind Man was unable to understand what the
+white colour of milk was like.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE WOLF AND THE BOW</h3>
+
+<p>A hunter went out to hunt with bow and arrows. He
+killed a goat. He threw her on his shoulders and carried
+her along. On his way he saw a boar. He threw down
+the goat, and shot at the boar and wounded him. The
+boar rushed against the hunter and butted him to death,
+and himself died on the spot. A Wolf scented the blood,
+and came to the place where lay the goat, the boar, the
+man, and his bow. The Wolf was glad, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Now I shall have enough to eat for a long time;
+only I will not eat everything at once, but little by
+little, so that nothing may be lost: first I will eat the
+tougher things, and then I will lunch on what is soft
+and sweet."</p>
+
+<p>The Wolf sniffed at the goat, the boar, and the man,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"This is all soft food, so I will eat it later; let me first
+start on these sinews of the bow."</p>
+
+<p>And he began to gnaw the sinews of the bow. When
+he bit through the string, the bow sprang back and hit him
+on his belly. He died on the spot, and other wolves ate
+up the man, the goat, the boar, and the Wolf.</p>
+
+<h3>THE BIRDS IN THE NET</h3>
+
+<p>A Hunter set out a net near a lake and caught a number
+of birds. The birds were large, and they raised the
+net and flew away with it. The Hunter ran after them.
+A Peasant saw the Hunter running, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you running? How can you catch up
+with the birds, while you are on foot?"</p>
+
+<p>The Hunter said:</p>
+
+<p>"If it were one bird, I should not catch it, but now I
+shall."</p>
+
+<p>And so it happened. When evening came, the birds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+began to pull for the night each in a different direction:
+one to the woods, another to the swamp, a third to the
+field; and all fell with the net to the ground, and the
+Hunter caught them.</p>
+
+<h3>THE KING AND THE FALCON</h3>
+
+<p>A certain King let his favourite Falcon loose on a
+hare, and galloped after him.</p>
+
+<p>The Falcon caught the hare. The King took him away,
+and began to look for some water to drink. The King
+found it on a knoll, but it came only drop by drop. The
+King fetched his cup from the saddle, and placed it under
+the water. The Water flowed in drops, and when the
+cup was filled, the King raised it to his mouth and
+wanted to drink it. Suddenly the Falcon fluttered on the
+King's arm and spilled the water. The King placed
+the cup once more under the drops. He waited for
+a long time for the cup to be filled even with the brim,
+and again, as he carried it to his mouth, the Falcon
+flapped his wings and spilled the water.</p>
+
+<p>When the King filled his cup for the third time and
+began to carry it to his mouth, the Falcon again spilled
+it. The King flew into a rage and killed him by flinging
+him against a stone with all his force. Just then the
+King's servants rode up, and one of them ran up-hill to
+the spring, to find as much water as possible, and to fill
+the cup. But the servant did not bring the water; he
+returned with the empty cup, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot drink that water; there is a snake in the
+spring, and she has let her venom into the water. It is
+fortunate that the Falcon has spilled the water. If you
+had drunk it, you would have died."</p>
+
+<p>The King said:</p>
+
+<p>"How badly I have repaid the Falcon! He has saved
+my life, and I killed him."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE KING AND THE ELEPHANTS</h3>
+
+<p>An Indian King ordered all the Blind People to be assembled,
+and when they came, he ordered that all the
+Elephants be shown to them. The Blind Men went to
+the stable and began to feel the Elephants. One felt a
+leg, another a tail, a third the stump of a tail, a fourth a
+belly, a fifth a back, a sixth the ears, a seventh the tusks,
+and an eighth a trunk.</p>
+
+<p>Then the King called the Blind Men, and asked them:
+"What are my Elephants like?"</p>
+
+<p>One Blind Man said: "Your Elephants are like posts."
+He had felt the legs.</p>
+
+<p>Another Blind Man said: "They are like bath brooms."
+He had felt the end of the tail.</p>
+
+<p>A third said: "They are like branches." He had felt
+the tail stump.</p>
+
+<p>The one who had touched a belly said: "The Elephants
+are like a clod of earth."</p>
+
+<p>The one who had touched the sides said: "They are
+like a wall."</p>
+
+<p>The one who had touched a back said: "They are like
+a mound."</p>
+
+<p>The one who had touched the ears said: "They are
+like a mortar."</p>
+
+<p>The one who had touched the tusks said: "They are
+like horns."</p>
+
+<p>The one who had touched the trunk said that they
+were like a stout rope.</p>
+
+<p>And all the Blind Men began to dispute and to quarrel.</p>
+
+<h3>WHY THERE IS EVIL IN THE WORLD</h3>
+
+<p>A Hermit was living in the forest, and the animals
+were not afraid of him. He and the animals talked together
+and understood each other.</p>
+
+<p>Once the Hermit lay down under a tree, and a Raven<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+a Dove, a Stag, and a Snake gathered in the same place,
+to pass the night. The animals began to discuss why
+there was evil in the world.</p>
+
+<p>The Raven said:</p>
+
+<p>"All the evil in the world comes from hunger. When
+I eat my fill, I sit down on a branch and croak a little,
+and it is all jolly and good, and everything gives me
+pleasure; but let me just go without eating a day or two,
+and everything palls on me so that I do not feel like
+looking at God's world. And something draws me on,
+and I fly from place to place, and have no rest. When I
+catch a glimpse of some meat, it makes me only feel
+sicker than ever, and I make for it without much thinking.
+At times they throw sticks and stones at me, and
+the wolves and dogs grab me, but I do not give in. Oh,
+how many of my brothers are perishing through hunger!
+All evil comes from hunger."</p>
+
+<p>The Dove said:</p>
+
+<p>"According to my opinion, the evil does not come from
+hunger, but from love. If we lived singly, the trouble
+would not be so bad. One head is not poor, and if it is,
+it is only one. But here we live in pairs. And you
+come to like your mate so much that you have no rest:
+you keep thinking of her all the time, wondering whether
+she has had enough to eat, and whether she is warm.
+And when your mate flies away from you, you feel entirely
+lost, and you keep thinking that a hawk may have
+carried her off, or men may have caught her; and you
+start out to find her, and fly to your ruin,&mdash;either into
+the hawk's claws, or into a snare. And when your mate
+is lost, nothing gives you any joy. You do not eat or
+drink, and all the time search and weep. Oh, so many
+of us perish in this way! All the evil is not from hunger,
+but from love."</p>
+
+<p>The Snake said:</p>
+
+<p>"No, the evil is not from hunger, nor from love, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+from rage. If we lived peacefully, without getting into a
+rage, everything would be nice for us. But, as it is,
+whenever a thing does not go exactly right, we get angry,
+and then nothing pleases us. All we think about is how
+to revenge ourselves on some one. Then we forget ourselves,
+and only hiss, and creep, and try to find some one
+to bite. And we do not spare a soul,&mdash;we even bite
+our own father and mother. We feel as though we could
+eat ourselves up. And we rage until we perish. All the
+evil in the World comes from rage."</p>
+
+<p>The Stag said:</p>
+
+<p>"No, not from rage, or from love, or from hunger does
+all the evil in the world come, but from terror. If it
+were possible not to be afraid, everything would be well.
+We have swift feet and much strength: against a small
+animal we defend ourselves with our horns, and from a
+large one we flee. But how can I help becoming frightened?
+Let a branch crackle in the forest, or a leaf rustle,
+and I am all atremble with fear, and my heart flutters as
+though it wanted to jump out, and I fly as fast as I can.
+Again, let a hare run by, or a bird flap its wings, or a dry
+twig break off, and you think that it is a beast, and you
+run straight up against him. Or you run away from a
+dog and run into the hands of a man. Frequently you
+get frightened and run, not knowing whither, and at full
+speed rush down a steep hill, and get killed. We have
+no rest. All the evil comes from terror."</p>
+
+<p>Then the Hermit said:</p>
+
+<p>"Not from hunger, not from love, not from rage, not
+from terror are all our sufferings, but from our bodies
+comes all the evil in the world. From them come hunger,
+and love, and rage, and terror."</p>
+
+<h3>THE WOLF AND THE HUNTERS</h3>
+
+<p>A Wolf devoured a sheep. The Hunters caught the
+Wolf and began to beat him. The Wolf said:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"In vain do you beat me: it is not my fault that I am
+gray,&mdash;God has made me so."</p>
+
+<p>But the Hunters said:</p>
+
+<p>"We do not beat the Wolf for being gray, but for eating
+the sheep."</p>
+
+<h3>THE TWO PEASANTS</h3>
+
+<p>Once upon a time two Peasants drove toward each
+other and caught in each other's sleighs. One cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Get out of my way,&mdash;I am hurrying to town."</p>
+
+<p>But the other said:</p>
+
+<p>"Get out of my way, I am hurrying home."</p>
+
+<p>They quarrelled for some time. A third Peasant saw
+them and said:</p>
+
+<p>"If you are in a hurry, back up!"</p>
+
+<h3>THE PEASANT AND THE HORSE</h3>
+
+<p>A Peasant went to town to fetch some oats for his
+Horse. He had barely left the village, when the Horse
+began to turn around, toward the house. The Peasant
+struck the Horse with his whip. She went on, and kept
+thinking about the Peasant:</p>
+
+<p>"Whither is that fool driving me? He had better go
+home."</p>
+
+<p>Before reaching town, the Peasant saw that the Horse
+trudged along through the mud with difficulty, so he
+turned her on the pavement; but the Horse began to turn
+back from the street. The Peasant gave the Horse the
+whip, and jerked at the reins; she went on the pavement,
+and thought:</p>
+
+<p>"Why has he turned me on the pavement? It will
+only break my hoofs. It is rough underfoot."</p>
+
+<p>The Peasant went to the shop, bought the oats, and
+drove home. When he came home, he gave the Horse
+some oats. The Horse ate them and thought:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How stupid men are! They are fond of exercising
+their wits on us, but they have less sense than we. What
+did he trouble himself about? He drove me somewhere.
+No matter how far we went, we came home in the end.
+So it would have been better if we had remained at home
+from the start: he could have been sitting on the oven,
+and I eating oats."</p>
+
+<h3>THE TWO HORSES</h3>
+
+<p>Two Horses were drawing their carts. The Front
+Horse pulled well, but the Hind Horse kept stopping all
+the time. The load of the Hind Horse was transferred
+to the front cart; when all was transferred, the Hind
+Horse went along with ease, and said to the Front Horse:</p>
+
+<p>"Work hard and sweat! The more you try, the harder
+they will make you work."</p>
+
+<p>When they arrived at the tavern, their master said:</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I feed two Horses, and haul with one
+only? I shall do better to give one plenty to eat, and to
+kill the other: I shall at least have her hide."</p>
+
+<p>So he did.</p>
+
+<h3>THE AXE AND THE SAW</h3>
+
+<p>Two Peasants went to the forest to cut wood. One of
+them had an axe, and the other a saw. They picked out
+a tree, and began to dispute. One said that the tree had
+to be chopped, while the other said that it had to be sawed
+down.</p>
+
+<p>A third Peasant said:</p>
+
+<p>"I will easily make peace between you: if the axe is
+sharp, you had better chop it; but if the saw is sharp you
+had better saw it."</p>
+
+<p>He took the axe, and began to chop it; but the axe
+was so dull that it was not possible to cut with it. Then
+he took the saw; the saw was worthless, and did not
+saw. So he said:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Stop quarrelling awhile; the axe does not chop, and
+the saw does not saw. First grind your axe and file your
+saw, and then quarrel."</p>
+
+<p>But the Peasants grew angrier still at one another, because
+one had a dull axe, and the other a dull saw. And
+they came to blows.</p>
+
+<h3>THE DOGS AND THE COOK</h3>
+
+<p>A Cook was preparing a dinner. The Dogs were lying
+at the kitchen door. The Cook killed a calf and threw
+the guts out into the yard. The Dogs picked them up
+and ate them, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"He is a good Cook: he cooks well."</p>
+
+<p>After awhile the Cook began to clean pease, turnips,
+and onions, and threw out the refuse. The Dogs made
+for it; but they turned their noses up, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Our Cook has grown worse: he used to cook well,
+but now he is no longer any good."</p>
+
+<p>But the Cook paid no attention to the Dogs, and continued
+to fix the dinner in his own way. The family,
+and not the Dogs, ate the dinner, and praised it.</p>
+
+<h3>THE HARE AND THE HARRIER</h3>
+
+<p>A Hare once said to a Harrier:</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you bark when you run after us? You
+would catch us easier, if you ran after us in silence.
+With your bark you only drive us against the hunter:
+he hears where we are running; and he rushes out with
+his gun and kills us, and does not give you anything."</p>
+
+<p>The Harrier said:</p>
+
+<p>"That is not the reason why I bark. I bark because,
+when I scent your odour, I am angry, and happy because
+I am about to catch you; I do not know why, but I cannot
+keep from barking."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>THE OAK AND THE HAZELBUSH</h3>
+
+<p>An old Oak dropped an acorn under a Hazelbush. The
+Hazelbush said to the Oak:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you not enough space under your own branches?
+Drop your acorns in an open space. Here I am myself
+crowded by my shoots, and I do not drop my nuts to the
+ground, but give them to men."</p>
+
+<p>"I have lived for two hundred years," said the Oak,
+"and the Oakling which will sprout from that acorn will
+live just as long."</p>
+
+<p>Then the Hazelbush flew into a rage, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"If so, I will choke your Oakling, and he will not live
+for three days."</p>
+
+<p>The Oak made no reply, but told his son to sprout out
+of that acorn. The acorn got wet and burst, and clung
+to the ground with his crooked rootlet, and sent up a
+sprout.</p>
+
+<p>The Hazelbush tried to choke him, and gave him no
+sun. But the Oakling spread upwards and grew stronger
+in the shade of the Hazelbush. A hundred years passed.
+The Hazelbush had long ago dried up, but the Oak from
+that acorn towered to the sky and spread his tent in all
+directions.</p>
+
+<h3>THE HEN AND THE CHICKS</h3>
+
+<p>A Hen hatched some Chicks, but did not know how to
+take care of them. So she said to them:</p>
+
+<p>"Creep back into your shells! When you are inside
+your shells, I will sit on you as before, and will take care
+of you."</p>
+
+<p>The Chicks did as they were ordered and tried to creep
+into their shells, but were unable to do so, and only
+crushed their wings. Then one of the Chicks said to his
+mother:</p>
+
+<p>"If we are to stay all the time in our shells, you ought
+never to have hatched us."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>THE CORN-CRAKE AND HIS MATE</h3>
+
+<p>A Corn-crake had made a nest in the meadow late in
+the year, and at mowing time his Mate was still sitting
+on her eggs. Early in the morning the peasants came to
+the meadow, took off the coats, whetted their scythes,
+and started one after another to mow down the grass and
+to put it down in rows. The Corn-crake flew up to see
+what the mowers were doing. When he saw a peasant
+swing his scythe and cut a snake in two, he rejoiced and
+flew back to his Mate and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't fear the peasants! They have come to cut the
+snakes to pieces; they have given us no rest for quite
+awhile."</p>
+
+<p>But his Mate said:</p>
+
+<p>"The peasants are cutting the grass, and with the grass
+they are cutting everything which is in their way,&mdash;the
+snakes, and the Corn-crake's nest, and the Corn-crake's
+head. My heart forebodes nothing good: but I cannot
+carry away the eggs, nor fly from the nest, for fear of
+chilling them."</p>
+
+<p>When the mowers came to the nest of the Corn-crake,
+one of the peasants swung his scythe and cut off the head
+of the Corn-crake's Mate, and put the eggs in his bosom
+and gave them to his children to play with.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE COW AND THE BILLY GOAT</h3>
+
+<p>An old woman had a Cow and a Billy Goat. The two
+pastured together. At milking the Cow was restless.
+The old woman brought out some bread and salt, and
+gave it to the Cow, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Stand still, motherkin; take it, take it! I will bring
+you some more, only stand still."</p>
+
+<p>On the next evening the Goat came home from the
+field before the Cow, and spread his legs, and stood in
+front of the old woman. The old woman wanted to strike<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+him with the towel, but he stood still, and did not stir.
+He remembered that the woman had promised the Cow
+some bread if she would stand still. When the woman
+saw that he would not budge, she picked up a stick, and
+beat him with it.</p>
+
+<p>When the Goat went away, the woman began once
+more to feed the Cow with bread, and to talk to her.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no honesty in men," thought the Goat. "I
+stood still better than the Cow, and was beaten for it."</p>
+
+<p>He stepped aside, took a run, hit against the milk-pail,
+spilled the milk, and hurt the old woman.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE FOX'S TAIL</h3>
+
+<p>A Man caught a Fox, and asked her:</p>
+
+<p>"Who has taught you Foxes to cheat the dogs with
+your tails?"</p>
+
+<p>The Fox asked: "How do you mean, to cheat? We
+do not cheat the dogs, but simply run from them as fast
+as we can."</p>
+
+<p>The Man said:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you do cheat them with your tails. When the
+dogs catch up with you and are about to clutch you, you
+turn your tails to one side; the dogs turn sharply after
+the tail, and then you run in the opposite direction."</p>
+
+<p>The Fox laughed, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"We do not do so in order to cheat the dogs, but in
+order to turn around; when a dog is after us, and we see
+that we cannot get away straight ahead, we turn to one
+side, and in order to do that suddenly, we have to swing
+the tail to the other side, just as you do with your arms,
+when you have to turn around. That is not our invention;
+God himself invented it when He created us, so that
+the dogs might not be able to catch all the Foxes."</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="STORIES_FOR_CHILDREN" id="STORIES_FOR_CHILDREN"></a>STORIES FOR CHILDREN<br />
+1869-1872</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38-39]</a><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="big center">STORIES FOR CHILDREN</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_FOUNDLING" id="THE_FOUNDLING"></a>THE FOUNDLING</h2>
+
+
+<p>A poor woman had a daughter by the name of Másha.
+Másha went in the morning to fetch water, and saw at the
+door something wrapped in rags. When she touched
+the rags, there came from it the sound of "Ooah, ooah,
+ooah!" Másha bent down and saw that it was a tiny, red-skinned
+baby. It was crying aloud: "Ooah, ooah!"</p>
+
+<p>Másha took it into her arms and carried it into the
+house, and gave it milk with a spoon. Her mother said:</p>
+
+<p>"What have you brought?"</p>
+
+<p>"A baby. I found it at our door."</p>
+
+<p>The mother said:</p>
+
+<p>"We are poor as it is; we have nothing to feed the
+baby with; I will go to the chief and tell him to take
+the baby."</p>
+
+<p>Másha began to cry, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, the child will not eat much; leave it here!
+See what red, wrinkled little hands and fingers it has!"</p>
+
+<p>Her mother looked at them, and she felt pity for the
+child. She did not take the baby away. Másha fed and
+swathed the child, and sang songs to it, when it went to
+sleep.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_PEASANT_AND_THE_CUCUMBERS" id="THE_PEASANT_AND_THE_CUCUMBERS"></a>THE PEASANT AND THE CUCUMBERS</h2>
+
+
+<p>A peasant once went to the gardener's, to steal cucumbers.
+He crept up to the cucumbers, and thought:</p>
+
+<p>"I will carry off a bag of cucumbers, which I will sell;
+with the money I will buy a hen. The hen will lay eggs,
+hatch them, and raise a lot of chicks. I will feed the
+chicks and sell them; then I will buy me a young sow,
+and she will bear a lot of pigs. I will sell the pigs, and
+buy me a mare; the mare will foal me some colts. I
+will raise the colts, and sell them. I will buy me a house,
+and start a garden. In the garden I will sow cucumbers,
+and will not let them be stolen, but will keep a sharp
+watch on them. I will hire watchmen, and put them in
+the cucumber patch, while I myself will come on them,
+unawares, and shout: 'Oh, there, keep a sharp lookout!'"</p>
+
+<p>And this he shouted as loud as he could. The watchmen
+heard it, and they rushed out and beat the peasant.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_FIRE" id="THE_FIRE"></a>THE FIRE</h2>
+
+
+<p>During harvest-time the men and women went out to
+work. In the village were left only the old and the very
+young. In one hut there remained a grandmother with
+her three grandchildren.</p>
+
+<p>The grandmother made a fire in the oven, and lay down
+to rest herself. Flies kept alighting on her and biting
+her. She covered her head with a towel and fell asleep.
+One of the grandchildren, Másha (she was three years
+old), opened the oven, scraped some coals into a potsherd,
+and went into the vestibule. In the vestibule lay sheaves:
+the women were getting them bound.</p>
+
+<p>Másha brought the coals, put them under the sheaves,
+and began to blow. When the straw caught fire, she was
+glad; she went into the hut and took her brother Kiryúsha
+by the arm (he was a year and a half old, and had
+just learned to walk), and brought him out, and said to
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"See, Kiryúsha, what a fire I have kindled."</p>
+
+<p>The sheaves were already burning and crackling. When
+the vestibule was filled with smoke, Másha became frightened
+and ran back into the house. Kiryúsha fell over
+the threshold, hurt his nose, and began to cry; Másha
+pulled him into the house, and both hid under a bench.</p>
+
+<p>The grandmother heard nothing, and did not wake.
+The elder boy, Ványa (he was eight years old), was in the
+street. When he saw the smoke rolling out of the vestibule,
+he ran to the door, made his way through the smoke
+into the house, and began to waken his grandmother;
+but she was dazed from her sleep, and, forgetting the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+children, rushed out and ran to the farmyards to call the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Másha was sitting under the bench
+and keeping quiet; but the little boy cried, because he had
+hurt his nose badly. Ványa heard his cry, looked under
+the bench, and called out to Másha:</p>
+
+<p>"Run, you will burn!"</p>
+
+<p>Másha ran to the vestibule, but could not pass for the
+smoke and fire. She turned back. Then Ványa raised a
+window and told her to climb through it. When she got
+through, Ványa picked up his brother and dragged him
+along. But the child was heavy and did not let his
+brother take him. He cried and pushed Ványa. Ványa
+fell down twice, and when he dragged him up to the window,
+the door of the hut was already burning. Ványa
+thrust the child's head through the window and wanted to
+push him through; but the child took hold of him with
+both his hands (he was very much frightened) and would
+not let them take him out. Then Ványa cried to Másha:</p>
+
+<p>"Pull him by the head!" while he himself pushed him
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>And thus they pulled him through the window and
+into the street.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_OLD_HORSE" id="THE_OLD_HORSE"></a>THE OLD HORSE</h2>
+
+
+<p>In our village there was an old, old man, Pímen Timoféich.
+He was ninety years old. He was living at the
+house of his grandson, doing no work. His back was
+bent: he walked with a cane and moved his feet
+slowly.</p>
+
+<p>He had no teeth at all, and his face was wrinkled. His
+nether lip trembled; when he walked and when he talked,
+his lips smacked, and one could not understand what he
+was saying.</p>
+
+<p>We were four brothers, and we were fond of riding.
+But we had no gentle riding-horses. We were allowed to
+ride only on one horse,&mdash;the name of that horse was
+Raven.</p>
+
+<p>One day mamma allowed us to ride, and all of us went
+with the valet to the stable. The coachman saddled Raven
+for us, and my eldest brother was the first to take a
+ride. He rode for a long time; he rode to the threshing-floor
+and around the garden, and when he came back, we
+shouted:</p>
+
+<p>"Now gallop past us!"</p>
+
+<p>My elder brother began to strike Raven with his feet
+and with the whip, and Raven galloped past us.</p>
+
+<p>After him, my second brother mounted the horse. He,
+too, rode for quite awhile, and he, too, urged Raven on
+with the whip and galloped up the hill. He wanted to
+ride longer, but my third brother begged him to let him
+ride at once.</p>
+
+<p>My third brother rode to the threshing-floor, and around
+the garden, and down the village, and raced up-hill to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+stable. When he rode up to us Raven was panting, and
+his neck and shoulders were dark from sweat.</p>
+
+<p>When my turn came, I wanted to surprise my brothers and
+to show them how well I could ride, so I began to
+drive Raven with all my might, but he did not want to
+get away from the stable. And no matter how much I
+beat him, he would not run, but only shied and turned
+back. I grew angry at the horse, and struck him as hard
+as I could with my feet and with the whip. I tried to
+strike him in places where it would hurt most; I broke
+the whip and began to strike his head with what was left
+of the whip. But Raven would not run. Then I turned
+back, rode up to the valet, and asked him for a stout
+switch. But the valet said to me:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ride any more, sir! Get down! What use is
+there in torturing the horse?"</p>
+
+<p>I felt offended, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"But I have not had a ride yet. Just watch me gallop!
+Please, give me a good-sized switch! I will heat
+him up."</p>
+
+<p>Then the valet shook his head, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sir, you have no pity; why should you heat him
+up? He is twenty years old. The horse is worn out;
+he can barely breathe, and is old. He is so very old!
+Just like Pímen Timoféich. You might just as well sit
+down on Timoféich's back and urge him on with a switch.
+Well, would you not pity him?"</p>
+
+<p>I thought of Pímen, and listened to the valet's words.
+I climbed down from the horse and, when I saw how his
+sweaty sides hung down, how he breathed heavily through
+his nostrils, and how he switched his bald tail, I understood
+that it was hard for the horse. Before that I
+used to think that it was as much fun for him as
+for me. I felt so sorry for Raven that I began to kiss
+his sweaty neck and to beg his forgiveness for having
+beaten him.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Since then I have grown to be a big man, and I always
+am careful with the horses, and always think of Raven
+and of Pímen Timoféitch whenever I see anybody torture
+a horse.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="HOW_I_LEARNED_TO_RIDE" id="HOW_I_LEARNED_TO_RIDE"></a>HOW I LEARNED TO RIDE</h2>
+
+
+<p>When I was a little fellow, we used to study every day,
+and only on Sundays and holidays went out and played
+with our brothers. Once my father said:</p>
+
+<p>"The children must learn to ride. Send them to the
+riding-school!"</p>
+
+<p>I was the youngest of the brothers, and I asked:</p>
+
+<p>"May I, too, learn to ride?"</p>
+
+<p>My father said:</p>
+
+<p>"You will fall down."</p>
+
+<p>I began to beg him to let me learn, and almost cried.
+My father said:</p>
+
+<p>"All right, you may go, too. Only look out! Don't
+cry when you fall off. He who does not once fall down
+from a horse will not learn to ride."</p>
+
+<p>When Wednesday came, all three of us were taken to
+the riding-school. We entered by a large porch, and from
+the large porch went to a smaller one. Beyond the porch
+was a very large room: instead of a floor it had sand.
+And in this room were gentlemen and ladies and just such
+boys as we. That was the riding-school. The riding-school
+was not very light, and there was a smell of horses,
+and you could hear them snap whips and call to the
+horses, and the horses strike their hoofs against the
+wooden walls. At first I was frightened and could not
+see things well. Then our valet called the riding-master,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Give these boys some horses: they are going to learn
+how to ride."</p>
+
+<p>The master said:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"All right!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he looked at me, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"He is very small, yet."</p>
+
+<p>But the valet said:</p>
+
+<p>"He promised not to cry when he falls down."</p>
+
+<p>The master laughed and went away.</p>
+
+<p>Then they brought three saddled horses, and we took off
+our cloaks and walked down a staircase to the riding-school.
+The master was holding a horse by a cord, and
+my brothers rode around him. At first they rode at a
+slow pace, and later at a trot. Then they brought
+a pony. It was a red horse, and his tail was cut off.
+He was called Ruddy. The master laughed, and said
+to me:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, young gentleman, get on your horse!"</p>
+
+<p>I was both happy and afraid, and tried to act in such
+a manner as not to be noticed by anybody. For a long
+time I tried to get my foot into the stirrup, but could not
+do it because I was too small. Then the master raised
+me up in his hands and put me on the saddle. He said:</p>
+
+<p>"The young master is not heavy,&mdash;about two pounds
+in weight, that is all."</p>
+
+<p>At first he held me by my hand, but I saw that my
+brothers were not held, and so I begged him to let go of
+me. He said:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you not afraid?"</p>
+
+<p>I was very much afraid, but I said that I was not. I
+was so much afraid because Ruddy kept dropping his
+ears. I thought he was angry at me. The master said:</p>
+
+<p>"Look out, don't fall down!" and let go of me. At
+first Ruddy went at a slow pace, and I sat up straight.
+But the saddle was sleek, and I was afraid I would slip
+off. The master asked me:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, are you fast in the saddle?"</p>
+
+<p>I said:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If so, go at a slow trot!" and the master clicked his
+tongue.</p>
+
+<p>Ruddy started at a slow trot, and began to jog me.
+But I kept silent, and tried not to slip to one side. The
+master praised me:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a fine young gentleman, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>I was very glad to hear it.</p>
+
+<p>Just then the master's friend went up to him and
+began to talk with him, and the master stopped looking
+at me.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I felt that I had slipped a little to one side
+on my saddle. I wanted to straighten myself up, but
+was unable to do so. I wanted to call out to the master
+to stop the horse, but I thought it would be a disgrace if
+I did it, and so kept silence. The master was not looking
+at me and Ruddy ran at a trot, and I slipped still more to
+one side. I looked at the master and thought that he
+would help me, but he was still talking with his friend,
+and without looking at me kept repeating:</p>
+
+<p>"Well done, young gentleman!"</p>
+
+<p>I was now altogether to one side, and was very much
+frightened. I thought that I was lost; but I felt
+ashamed to cry. Ruddy shook me up once more, and I
+slipped off entirely and fell to the ground. Then Ruddy
+stopped, and the master looked at the horse and saw that
+I was not on him. He said:</p>
+
+<p>"I declare, my young gentleman has dropped off!" and
+walked over to me.</p>
+
+<p>When I told him that I was not hurt, he laughed and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"A child's body is soft."</p>
+
+<p>I felt like crying. I asked him to put me again on
+the horse, and I was lifted on the horse. After that I
+did not fall down again.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we rode twice a week in the riding-school, and I
+soon learned to ride well, and was not afraid of anything.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_WILLOW" id="THE_WILLOW"></a>THE WILLOW</h2>
+
+
+<p>During Easter week a peasant went out to see whether
+the ground was all thawed out.</p>
+
+<p>He went into the garden and touched the soil with a
+stick. The earth was soft. The peasant went into the
+woods; here the catkins were already swelling on the
+willows. The peasant thought:</p>
+
+<p>"I will fence my garden with willows; they will grow
+up and will make a good hedge!"</p>
+
+<p>He took his axe, cut down a dozen willows, sharpened
+them at the end, and stuck them in the ground.</p>
+
+<p>All the willows sent up sprouts with leaves, and underground
+let out just such sprouts for roots; and some of
+them took hold of the ground and grew, and others did
+not hold well to the ground with their roots, and died
+and fell down.</p>
+
+<p>In the fall the peasant was glad at the sight of his
+willows: six of them had taken root. The following
+spring the sheep killed two willows by gnawing at them,
+and only two were left. Next spring the sheep nibbled
+at these also. One of them was completely ruined, and
+the other came to, took root, and grew to be a tree. In
+the spring the bees just buzzed in the willow. In swarming
+time the swarms were often put out on the willow,
+and the peasants brushed them in. The men and women
+frequently ate and slept under the willow, and the children
+climbed on it and broke off rods from it.</p>
+
+<p>The peasant that had set out the willow was long dead,
+and still it grew. His eldest son twice cut down its
+branches and used them for fire-wood. The willow kept<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+growing. They trimmed it all around, and cut it down
+to a stump, but in the spring it again sent out twigs,
+thinner ones than before, but twice as many as ever, as is
+the case with a colt's forelock.</p>
+
+<p>And the eldest son quit farming, and the village was
+given up, but the willow grew in the open field. Other
+peasants came there, and chopped the willow, but still it
+grew. The lightning struck it; but it sent forth side
+branches, and it grew and blossomed. A peasant wanted
+to cut it down for a block, but he gave it up, it was too
+rotten. It leaned sidewise, and held on with one side
+only; and still it grew, and every year the bees came
+there to gather the pollen.</p>
+
+<p>One day, early in the spring, the boys gathered under
+the willow, to watch the horses. They felt cold, so they
+started a fire. They gathered stubbles, wormwood, and
+sticks. One of them climbed on the willow and broke
+off a lot of twigs. They put it all in the hollow of the
+willow and set fire to it. The tree began to hiss and its
+sap to boil, and the smoke rose and the tree burned; its
+whole inside was smudged. The young shoots dried up,
+the blossoms withered.</p>
+
+<p>The children drove the horses home. The scorched
+willow was left all alone in the field. A black raven
+flew by, and he sat down on it, and cried:</p>
+
+<p>"So you are dead, old smudge! You ought to have
+died long ago!"</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="BULKA" id="BULKA"></a>BÚLKA</h2>
+
+
+<p>I had a small bulldog. He was called Búlka. He
+was black; only the tips of his front feet were white.
+All bulldogs have their lower jaws longer than the upper,
+and the upper teeth come down behind the nether teeth,
+but Búlka's lower jaw protruded so much that I could
+put my finger between the two rows of teeth. His face
+was broad, his eyes large, black, and sparkling; and his
+teeth and incisors stood out prominently. He was as
+black as a negro. He was gentle and did not bite, but
+he was strong and stubborn. If he took hold of a thing,
+he clenched his teeth and clung to it like a rag, and it
+was not possible to tear him off, any more than as though
+he were a lobster.</p>
+
+<p>Once he was let loose on a bear, and he got hold of the
+bear's ear and stuck to him like a leech. The bear struck
+him with his paws and squeezed him, and shook him
+from side to side, but could not tear himself loose from
+him, and so he fell down on his head, in order to crush
+Búlka; but Búlka held on to him until they poured cold
+water over him.</p>
+
+<p>I got him as a puppy, and raised him myself. When
+I went to the Caucasus, I did not want to take him along,
+and so went away from him quietly, ordering him to be
+shut up. At the first station I was about to change the
+relay, when suddenly I saw something black and shining
+coming down the road. It was Búlka in his brass collar.
+He was flying at full speed toward the station. He
+rushed up to me, licked my hand, and stretched himself
+out in the shade under the cart. His tongue stuck out a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+whole hand's length. He now drew it in to swallow the
+spittle, and now stuck it out again a whole hand's length.
+He tried to breathe fast, but could not do so, and his
+sides just shook. He turned from one side to the other,
+and struck his tail against the ground.</p>
+
+<p>I learned later that after I had left he had broken a
+pane, jumped out of the window, and followed my track
+along the road, and thus raced twenty versts through the
+greatest heat.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="BULKA_AND_THE_WILD_BOAR" id="BULKA_AND_THE_WILD_BOAR"></a>BÚLKA AND THE WILD BOAR</h2>
+
+
+<p>Once we went into the Caucasus to hunt the wild boar,
+and Búlka went with me. The moment the hounds
+started, Búlka rushed after them, following their sound,
+and disappeared in the forest. That was in the month of
+November; the boars and sows are then very fat.</p>
+
+<p>In the Caucasus there are many edible fruits in the
+forests where the boars live: wild grapes, cones, apples,
+pears, blackberries, acorns, wild plums. And when all
+these fruits get ripe and are touched by the frost, the
+boars eat them and grow fat.</p>
+
+<p>At that time a boar gets so fat that he cannot run from
+the dogs. When they chase him for about two hours, he
+makes for the thicket and there stops. Then the hunters
+run up to the place where he stands, and shoot him.
+They can tell by the bark of the hounds whether the boar
+has stopped, or is running. If he is running, the hounds
+yelp, as though they were beaten; but when he stops,
+they bark as though at a man, with a howling sound.</p>
+
+<p>During that chase I ran for a long time through the
+forest, but not once did I cross a boar track. Finally I
+heard the long-drawn bark and howl of the hounds, and
+ran up to that place. I was already near the boar. I
+could hear the crashing in the thicket. The boar was
+turning around on the dogs, but I could not tell by the
+bark that they were not catching him, but only circling
+around him. Suddenly I heard something rustle behind
+me, and I saw that it was Búlka. He had evidently
+strayed from the hounds in the forest and had lost his
+way, and now was hearing their barking and making for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+them, like me, as fast as he could. He ran across a
+clearing through the high grass, and all I could see of
+him was his black head and his tongue clinched between
+his white teeth. I called him back, but he did not look
+around, and ran past me and disappeared in the thicket.
+I ran after him, but the farther I went, the more and
+more dense did the forest grow. The branches kept
+knocking off my cap and struck me in the face, and the
+thorns caught in my garments. I was near to the barking,
+but could not see anything.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I heard the dogs bark louder, and something
+crashed loudly, and the boar began to puff and snort. I
+immediately made up my mind that Búlka had got up
+to him and was busy with him. I ran with all my might
+through the thicket to that place. In the densest part of
+the thicket I saw a dappled hound. She was barking and
+howling in one spot, and within three steps from her
+something black could be seen moving around.</p>
+
+<p>When I came nearer, I could make out the boar, and I
+heard Búlka whining shrilly. The boar grunted and made
+for the hound; the hound took her tail between her legs
+and leaped away. I could see the boar's side and head.
+I aimed at his side and fired. I saw that I had hit him.
+The boar grunted and crashed through the thicket away
+from me. The dogs whimpered and barked in his track;
+I tried to follow them through the undergrowth. Suddenly
+I saw and heard something almost under my feet.
+It was Búlka. He was lying on his side and whining.
+Under him there was a puddle of blood. I thought the
+dog was lost; but I had no time to look after him, I continued
+to make my way through the thicket. Soon I saw
+the boar. The dogs were trying to catch him from behind,
+and he kept turning, now to one side, and now to
+another. When the boar saw me, he moved toward me.
+I fired a second time, almost resting the barrel against
+him, so that his bristles caught fire, and the boar groaned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+and tottered, and with his whole cadaver dropped heavily
+on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>When I came up, the boar was dead, and only here and
+there did his body jerk and twitch. Some of the dogs,
+with bristling hair, were tearing his belly and legs, while
+the others were lapping the blood from his wound.</p>
+
+<p>Then I thought of Búlka, and went back to find him.
+He was crawling toward me and groaning. I went up to
+him and looked at his wound. His belly was ripped
+open, and a whole piece of his guts was sticking out of
+his body and dragging on the dry leaves. When my companions
+came up to me, we put the guts back and sewed
+up his belly. While we were sewing him up and sticking
+the needle through his skin, he kept licking my hand.</p>
+
+<p>The boar was tied up to the horse's tail, to pull him out
+of the forest, and Búlka was put on the horse, and thus
+taken home. Búlka was sick for about six weeks, and
+got well again.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="PHEASANTS" id="PHEASANTS"></a>PHEASANTS</h2>
+
+
+<p>Wild fowls are called pheasants in the Caucasus. There
+are so many of them that they are cheaper there than
+tame chickens. Pheasants are hunted with the "hobby,"
+by scaring up, and from under dogs. This is the way
+they are hunted with the "hobby." They take a piece of
+canvas and stretch it over a frame, and in the middle of
+the frame they make a cross piece. They cut a hole in the
+canvas. This frame with the canvas is called a hobby.
+With this hobby and with the gun they start out at dawn
+to the forest. The hobby is carried in front, and through
+the hole they look out for the pheasants. The pheasants
+feed at daybreak in the clearings. At times it is a whole
+brood,&mdash;a hen with all her chicks, and at others a cock
+with his hen, or several cocks together.</p>
+
+<p>The pheasants do not see the man, and they are not
+afraid of the canvas and let the hunter come close to
+them. Then the hunter puts down the hobby, sticks his
+gun through the rent, and shoots at whichever bird he
+pleases.</p>
+
+<p>This is the way they hunt by scaring up. They let a
+watch-dog into the forest and follow him. When the dog
+finds a pheasant, he rushes for it. The pheasant flies on
+a tree, and then the dog begins to bark at it. The hunter
+follows up the barking and shoots the pheasant in the
+tree. This chase would be easy, if the pheasant alighted
+on a tree in an open place, or if it sat still, so that it
+might be seen. But they always alight on dense trees,
+in the thicket, and when they see the hunter they hide
+themselves in the branches. And it is hard to make one's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+way through the thicket to the tree on which a pheasant
+is sitting, and hard to see it. So long as the dog alone
+barks at it, it is not afraid: it sits on a branch and preens
+and flaps its wings at the dog. But the moment it sees a
+man, it immediately stretches itself out along a bough, so
+that only an experienced hunter can tell it, while an inexperienced
+one will stand near by and see nothing.</p>
+
+<p>When the Cossacks steal up to the pheasants, they pull
+their caps over their faces and do not look up, because a
+pheasant is afraid of a man with his gun, but more still
+of his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>This is the way they hunt from under dogs. They take
+a setter and follow him to the forest. The dog scents the
+place where the pheasants have been feeding at daybreak,
+and begins to make out their tracks. No matter how the
+pheasants may have mixed them up, a good dog will
+always find the last track, that takes them out from the
+spot where they have been feeding. The farther the dog
+follows the track, the stronger will the scent be, and thus
+he will reach the place where the pheasant sits or walks
+about in the grass in the daytime. When he comes near
+to where the bird is, he thinks that it is right before him,
+and starts walking more cautiously so as not to frighten
+it, and will stop now and then, ready to jump and catch it.
+When the dog comes up very near to the pheasant, it flies
+up, and the hunter shoots it.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="MILTON_AND_BULKA" id="MILTON_AND_BULKA"></a>MILTON AND BÚLKA</h2>
+
+
+<p>I bought me a setter to hunt pheasants with. The
+name of the dog was Milton. He was a big, thin, gray,
+spotted dog, with long lips and ears, and he was very
+strong and intelligent. He did not fight with Búlka. No
+dog ever tried to get into a fight with Búlka. He needed
+only to show his teeth, and the dogs would take their
+tails between their legs and slink away.</p>
+
+<p>Once I went with Milton to hunt pheasants. Suddenly
+Búlka ran after me to the forest. I wanted to drive
+him back, but could not do so; and it was too far for me
+to take him home. I thought he would not be in my
+way, and so walked on; but the moment Milton scented
+a pheasant in the grass and began to search for it, Búlka
+rushed forward and tossed from side to side. He tried
+to scare up the pheasant before Milton. He heard something
+in the grass, and jumped and whirled around; but
+he had a poor scent and could not find the track himself,
+but watched Milton, to see where he was running. The
+moment Milton started on the trail, Búlka ran ahead of
+him. I called Búlka back and beat him, but could not
+do a thing with him. The moment Milton began to search,
+he darted forward and interfered with him.</p>
+
+<p>I was already on the point of going home, because I
+thought that the chase was spoiled; but Milton found a
+better way of cheating Búlka. This is what he did: the
+moment Búlka rushed ahead of him, he gave up the trail
+and turned in another direction, pretending that he was
+searching there. Búlka rushed there where Milton was,
+and Milton looked at me and wagged his tail and went<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+back to the right trail. Búlka again ran up to Milton and
+rushed past him, and again Milton took some ten steps to
+one side and cheated Búlka, and again led me straight;
+and so he cheated Búlka all the way and did not let him
+spoil the chase.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_TURTLE" id="THE_TURTLE"></a>THE TURTLE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Once I went with Milton to the chase. Near the forest
+he began to search. He straightened out his tail, pricked
+his ears, and began to sniff. I fixed the gun and followed
+him. I thought that he was looking for a partridge, hare,
+or pheasant. But Milton did not make for the forest, but
+for the field. I followed him and looked ahead of me.
+Suddenly I saw what he was searching for. In front of
+him was running a small turtle, of the size of a cap. Its
+bare, dark gray head on a long neck was stretched out like
+a pestle; the turtle in walking stretched its bare legs far
+out, and its back was all covered with bark.</p>
+
+<p>When it saw the dog, it hid its legs and head and let
+itself down on the grass so that only its shell could be
+seen. Milton grabbed it and began to bite at it, but could
+not bite through it, because the turtle has just such a shell
+on its belly as it has on its back, and has only openings
+in front, at the back, and at the sides, where it puts forth
+its head, its legs, and its tail.</p>
+
+<p>I took the turtle away from Milton, and tried to see how
+its back was painted, and what kind of a shell it had, and
+how it hid itself. When you hold it in your hands
+and look between the shell, you can see something black
+and alive inside, as though in a cellar. I threw away the
+turtle, and walked on, but Milton would not leave it, and
+carried it in his teeth behind me. Suddenly Milton
+whimpered and dropped it. The turtle had put forth its
+foot inside of his mouth, and had scratched it. That
+made him so angry that he began to bark; he grasped it
+once more and carried it behind me. I ordered Milton to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+throw it away, but he paid no attention to me. Then I
+took the turtle from him and threw it away. But he did
+not leave it. He hurriedly dug a hole near it; when the
+hole was dug, he threw the turtle into it and covered it
+up with dirt.</p>
+
+<p>The turtles live on land and in the water, like snakes
+and frogs. They breed their young from eggs. These
+eggs they lay on the ground, and they do not hatch them,
+but the eggs burst themselves, like fish spawn, and the
+turtles crawl out of them. There are small turtles, not
+larger than a saucer, and large ones, seven feet in length
+and weighing seven hundredweights. The large turtles
+live in the sea.</p>
+
+<p>One turtle lays in the spring hundreds of eggs. The
+turtle's shells are its ribs. Men and other animals have
+each rib separate, while the turtle's ribs are all grown together
+into a shell. But the main thing is that with all
+the animals the ribs are inside the flesh, while the turtle
+has the ribs on the outside, and the flesh beneath them.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="BULKA_AND_THE_WOLF" id="BULKA_AND_THE_WOLF"></a>BÚLKA AND THE WOLF</h2>
+
+
+<p>When I left the Caucasus, they were still fighting there,
+and in the night it was dangerous to travel without a
+guard.</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to leave as early as possible, and so did not
+lie down to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>My friend came to see me off, and we sat the whole
+evening and night in the village street, in front of my
+cabin.</p>
+
+<p>It was a moonlit night with a mist, and so bright that
+one could read, though the moon was not to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of the night we suddenly heard a pig
+squealing in the yard across the street. One of us cried:
+"A wolf is choking the pig!"</p>
+
+<p>I ran into the house, grasped a loaded gun, and ran
+into the street. They were all standing at the gate of
+the yard where the pig was squealing, and cried to me:
+"Here!" Milton rushed after me,&mdash;no doubt he thought
+that I was going out to hunt with the gun; but Búlka
+pricked his short ears, and tossed from side to side, as
+though to ask me whom he was to clutch. When I ran
+up to the wicker fence, I saw a beast running straight
+toward me from the other side of the yard. That was
+the wolf. He ran up to the fence and jumped on it. I
+stepped aside and fixed my gun. The moment the wolf
+jumped down from the fence to my side, I aimed, almost
+touching him with the gun, and pulled the trigger; but
+my gun made "Click" and did not go off. The Wolf did
+not stop, but ran across the street.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Milton and Búlka made for him. Milton was near to
+the wolf, but was afraid to take hold of him; and no
+matter how fast Búlka ran on his short legs, he could
+not keep up with him. We ran as fast as we could after
+the wolf, but both the wolf and the dogs disappeared from
+sight. Only at the ditch, at the end of the village, did
+we hear a low barking and whimpering, and saw the dust
+rise in the mist of the moon and the dogs busy with the
+wolf. When we ran up to the ditch, the wolf was no
+longer there, and both dogs returned to us with raised tails
+and angry faces. Búlka snarled and pushed me with his
+head: evidently he wanted to tell me something, but did
+not know how.</p>
+
+<p>We examined the dogs, and found a small wound on
+Búlka's head. He had evidently caught up with the
+wolf before he got to the ditch, but had not had a chance
+to get hold of him, while the wolf snapped at him and
+ran away. It was a small wound, so there was no danger.</p>
+
+<p>We returned to the cabin, and sat down and talked
+about what had happened. I was angry because the gun
+had missed fire, and thought of how the wolf would have
+remained on the spot, if the gun had shot. My friend
+wondered how the wolf could have crept into the yard.
+An old Cossack said that there was nothing remarkable
+about it, because that was not a wolf, but a witch who
+had charmed my gun. Thus we sat and kept talking.
+Suddenly the dogs darted off, and we saw the same wolf
+in the middle of the street; but this time he ran so fast
+when he heard our shout that the dogs could not catch
+up with him.</p>
+
+<p>After that the old Cossack was fully convinced that it
+was not a wolf, but a witch; but I thought that it was
+a mad wolf, because I had never seen or heard of such
+a thing as a wolf's coming back toward the people, after it
+had been driven away.</p>
+
+<p>In any case I poured some powder on Búlka's wound,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+and set it on fire. The powder flashed up and burned out
+the sore spot.</p>
+
+<p>I burned out the sore with powder, in order to burn
+away the poisonous saliva, if it had not yet entered the
+blood. But if the saliva had already entered the blood, I
+knew that the blood would carry it through the whole
+body, and then it would not be possible to cure him.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="WHAT_HAPPENED_TO_BULKA_IN_PYATIGORSK" id="WHAT_HAPPENED_TO_BULKA_IN_PYATIGORSK"></a>WHAT HAPPENED TO BÚLKA IN PYATIGÓRSK</h2>
+
+
+<p>From the Cossack village I did not travel directly to
+Russia, but first to Pyatigórsk, where I stayed two
+months. Milton I gave away to a Cossack hunter, and
+Búlka I took along with me to Pyatigórsk.</p>
+
+<p>Pyatigórsk [in English, Five-Mountains] is called so
+because it is situated on Mount Besh-tau. And besh
+means in Tartar "five," and tau "mountain." From
+this mountain flows a hot sulphur stream. It is as hot as
+boiling water, and over the spot where the water flows
+from the mountain there is always a steam as from a
+samovár.</p>
+
+<p>The whole place, on which the city stands, is very
+cheerful. From the mountain flow the hot springs, and
+at the foot of the mountain is the river Podkúmok. On
+the slopes of the mountain are forests; all around the city
+are fields, and in the distance are seen the mountains of
+the Caucasus. On these the snow never melts, and they
+are always as white as sugar. One large mountain,
+Elbrus, is like a white loaf of sugar; it can be seen from
+everywhere when the weather is clear. People come to
+the hot springs to be cured, and over them there are arbours
+and awnings, and all around them are gardens with
+walks. In the morning the music plays, and people
+drink the water, or bathe, or stroll about.</p>
+
+<p>The city itself is on the mountain, but at the foot of it
+there is a suburb. I lived in that suburb in a small
+house. The house stood in a yard, and before the windows
+was a small garden, and in the garden stood the
+landlord's beehives, not in hollow stems, as in Russia, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+in round, plaited baskets. The bees are there so gentle
+that in the morning I used to sit with Búlka in that
+garden, amongst the beehives.</p>
+
+<p>Búlka walked about between the hives, and sniffed, and
+listened to the bees' buzzing; he walked so softly among
+them that he did not interfere with them, and they did
+not bother him.</p>
+
+<p>One morning I returned home from the waters, and sat
+down in the garden to drink coffee. Búlka began to
+scratch himself behind his ears, and made a grating noise
+with his collar. The noise worried the bees, and so I
+took the collar off. A little while later I heard a strange
+and terrible noise coming from the city. The dogs
+barked, howled, and whimpered, people shouted, and the
+noise descended lower from the mountain and came
+nearer and nearer to our suburb.</p>
+
+<p>Búlka stopped scratching himself, put his broad head
+with its white teeth between his fore legs, stuck out his
+tongue as he wished, and lay quietly by my side. When
+he heard the noise he seemed to understand what it was.
+He pricked his ears, showed his teeth, jumped up, and
+began to snarl. The noise came nearer. It sounded as
+though all the dogs of the city were howling, whimpering,
+and barking. I went to the gate to see what it was, and
+my landlady came out, too. I asked her:</p>
+
+<p>"What is this?"</p>
+
+<p>She said:</p>
+
+<p>"The prisoners of the jail are coming down to kill the
+dogs. The dogs have been breeding so much that the
+city authorities have ordered all the dogs in the city to
+be killed."</p>
+
+<p>"So they would kill Búlka, too, if they caught him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, they are not allowed to kill dogs with collars."</p>
+
+<p>Just as I was speaking, the prisoners were coming up
+to our house. In front walked the soldiers, and behind
+them four prisoners in chains. Two of the prisoners had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+in their hands long iron hooks, and two had clubs. In
+front of our house, one of the prisoners caught a watch-dog
+with his hook and pulled it up to the middle of the
+street, and another began to strike it with the club.</p>
+
+<p>The little dog whined dreadfully, but the prisoners
+shouted and laughed. The prisoner with the hook turned
+over the dog, and when he saw that it was dead, he
+pulled out the hook and looked around for other dogs.</p>
+
+<p>Just then Búlka rushed headlong at that prisoner, as
+though he were a bear. I happened to think that he was
+without his collar, so I shouted: "Búlka, back!" and
+told the prisoners not to strike the dog. But the prisoner
+laughed when he saw Búlka, and with his hook
+nimbly struck him and caught him by his thigh. Búlka
+tried to get away; but the prisoner pulled him up toward
+him and told the other prisoner to strike him. The other
+raised his club, and Búlka would have been killed, but he
+jerked, and broke the skin at the thigh and, taking his
+tail between his legs, flew, with the red sore on his body,
+through the gate and into the house, and hid himself
+under my bed.</p>
+
+<p>He was saved because the skin had broken in the spot
+where the hook was.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="BULKAS_AND_MILTONS_END" id="BULKAS_AND_MILTONS_END"></a>BÚLKA'S AND MILTON'S END</h2>
+
+
+<p>Búlka and Milton died at the same time. The old
+Cossack did not know how to get along with Milton.
+Instead of taking him out only for birds, he went with
+him to hunt wild boars. And that same fall a tusky boar
+ripped him open. Nobody knew how to sew him up, and
+so he died.</p>
+
+<p>Búlka, too, did not live long after the prisoners had
+caught him. Soon after his salvation from the prisoners
+he began to feel unhappy, and started to lick everything
+that he saw. He licked my hands, but not as formerly
+when he fawned. He licked for a long time, and pressed
+his tongue against me, and then began to snap. Evidently
+he felt like biting my hand, but did not want to
+do so. I did not give him my hand. Then he licked my
+boot and the foot of a table, and then he began to snap at
+these things. That lasted about two days, and on the
+third he disappeared, and no one saw him or heard of
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He could not have been stolen or run away from me.
+This happened six weeks after the wolf had bitten him.
+Evidently the wolf had been mad. Búlka had gone mad,
+and so went away. He had what hunters call the rabies.
+They say that this madness consists in this, that the mad
+animal gets cramps in its throat. It wants to drink and
+cannot, because the water makes the cramps worse. And
+so it gets beside itself from pain and thirst, and begins to
+bite. Evidently Búlka was beginning to have these
+cramps when he started to lick and then to bite my
+hand and the foot of the table.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I went everywhere in the neighbourhood and asked
+about Búlka, but could not find out what had become of
+him, or how he had died. If he had been running about
+and biting, as mad dogs do, I should have heard of him.
+No doubt he ran somewhere into a thicket and there died
+by himself.</p>
+
+<p>The hunters say that when an intelligent dog gets the
+rabies, he runs to the fields and forests, and there tries to
+find the herb which he needs, and rolls in the dew, and
+gets cured. Evidently Búlka never got cured. He never
+came back.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_GRAY_HARE" id="THE_GRAY_HARE"></a>THE GRAY HARE</h2>
+
+
+<p>A gray hare was living in the winter near the village.
+When night came, he pricked one ear and listened; then
+he pricked his second ear, moved his whiskers, sniffed,
+and sat down on his hind legs. Then he took a leap or
+two over the deep snow, and again sat down on his hind
+legs, and looked around him. Nothing could be seen but
+snow. The snow lay in waves and glistened like sugar.
+Over the hare's head hovered a frost vapour, and through
+this vapour could be seen the large, bright stars.</p>
+
+<p>The hare had to cross the highway, in order to come to
+a threshing-floor he knew of. On the highway the runners
+could be heard squeaking, and the horses snorting,
+and seats creaking in the sleighs.</p>
+
+<p>The hare again stopped near the road. Peasants were
+walking beside the sleighs, and the collars of their caftans
+were raised. Their faces were scarcely visible.
+Their beards, moustaches, and eyelashes were white.
+Steam rose from their mouths and noses. Their horses
+were sweaty, and the hoarfrost clung to the sweat.
+The horses jostled under their arches, and dived in and
+out of snow-drifts. The peasants ran behind the horses
+and in front of them, and beat them with their whips.
+Two peasants walked beside each other, and one of them
+told the other how a horse of his had once been stolen.</p>
+
+<p>When the carts passed by, the hare leaped across the
+road and softly made for the threshing-floor. A dog saw
+the hare from a cart. He began to bark and darted after
+the hare. The hare leaped toward the threshing-floor
+over the snow-drifts, which held him back; but the dog<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+stuck fast in the snow after the tenth leap, and stopped.
+Then the hare, too, stopped and sat up on his hind legs,
+and then softly went on to the threshing-floor.</p>
+
+<p>On his way he met two other hares on the sowed winter
+field. They were feeding and playing. The hare
+played awhile with his companions, dug away the frosty
+snow with them, ate the wintergreen, and went on.</p>
+
+<p>In the village everything was quiet; the fires were out.
+All one could hear was a baby's cry in a hut and the
+crackling of the frost in the logs of the cabins. The
+hare went to the threshing-floor, and there found some
+companions. He played awhile with them on the
+cleared floor, ate some oats from the open granary,
+climbed on the kiln over the snow-covered roof, and
+across the wicker fence started back to his ravine.</p>
+
+<p>The dawn was glimmering in the east; the stars grew
+less, and the frost vapours rose more densely from the
+earth. In the near-by village the women got up, and
+went to fetch water; the peasants brought the feed from
+the barn; the children shouted and cried. There were
+still more carts going down the road, and the peasants
+talked aloud to each other.</p>
+
+<p>The hare leaped across the road, went up to his old
+lair, picked out a high place, dug away the snow, lay with
+his back in his new lair, dropped his ears on his back, and
+fell asleep with open eyes.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="GOD_SEES_THE_TRUTH_BUT_DOES_NOT_TELL" id="GOD_SEES_THE_TRUTH_BUT_DOES_NOT_TELL"></a>GOD SEES THE TRUTH, BUT DOES NOT TELL
+AT ONCE</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the city of Vladímir there lived a young merchant,
+Aksénov by name. He had two shops and a house.</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov was a light-complexioned, curly-headed, fine-looking
+man and a very jolly fellow and good singer. In
+his youth Aksénov had drunk much, and when he was
+drunk he used to become riotous, but when he married
+he gave up drinking, and that now happened very rarely
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>One day in the summer Aksénov went to the Nízhni-Nóvgorod
+fair. As he bade his family good-bye, his wife
+said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Iván Dmítrievich, do not start to-day! I have had a
+bad dream about you."</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov laughed, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you afraid that I might go on a spree at the
+fair?"</p>
+
+<p>His wife said:</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what I am afraid of, but I had a bad
+dream: I dreamed that you came to town, and when you
+took off your cap I saw that your head was all gray."</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"That means that I shall make some profit. If I
+strike a good bargain, you will see me bring you some
+costly presents."</p>
+
+<p>And he bade his family farewell, and started.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of his journey he met a merchant whom
+he knew, and they stopped together in a hostelry for the
+night. They drank their tea together, and lay down to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+sleep in two adjoining rooms. Aksénov did not like
+to sleep long; he awoke in the middle of the night and,
+as it was easier to travel when it was cool, wakened his
+driver and told him to hitch the horses. Then he went
+to the "black" hut, paid his bill, and went away.</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 446px;">
+<a href="images/i_088.jpg">
+<img src="images/i_088_s.jpg" width="446" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+<span class="caption">"'Whose knife is this?'"<br />
+<i>Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>When he had gone about forty versts, he again stopped
+to feed the horses and to rest in the vestibule of a hostelry.
+At dinner-time he came out on the porch, and
+ordered the samovár to be prepared for him. He took
+out his guitar and began to play. Suddenly a tróyka
+with bells drove up to the hostelry, and from the cart
+leaped an officer with two soldiers, and he went up to
+Aksénov, and asked him who he was and where he came
+from.</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov told him everything as it was, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Would you not like to drink tea with me?"</p>
+
+<p>But the officer kept asking him questions:</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you stay last night? Were you alone, or
+with a merchant? Did you see the merchant in the
+morning? Why did you leave so early in the morning?"</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov wondered why they asked him about all that;
+he told them everything as it was, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you ask me this? I am not a thief, nor a
+robber. I am travelling on business of my own, and you
+have nothing to ask me about."</p>
+
+<p>Then the officer called the soldiers, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am the chief of the rural police, and I ask you this,
+because the merchant with whom you passed last night
+has been found with his throat cut. Show me your
+things, and you look through them!"</p>
+
+<p>They entered the house, took his valise and bag, and
+opened them and began to look through them. Suddenly
+the chief took a knife out of the bag, and cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"Whose knife is this?"</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov looked, and saw that they had taken out a
+blood-stained knife from his bag, and he was frightened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+"How did the blood get on the knife?"</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov wanted to answer, but could not pronounce
+a word.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I do not know&mdash;I&mdash;the knife&mdash;is not mine!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the chief said:</p>
+
+<p>"In the morning the merchant was found in his bed
+with his throat cut. No one but you could have done
+it. The house was locked from within, and there was no
+one in the house but you. Here is the bloody knife in
+your bag, and your face shows your guilt. Tell me,
+how did you kill him, and how much money did you rob
+him of?"</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov swore that he had not done it; that he had
+not seen the merchant after drinking tea with him; that
+he had with him his own eight thousand; that the knife
+was not his. But his voice faltered, his face was pale,
+and he trembled from fear, as though he were guilty.</p>
+
+<p>The chief called in the soldiers, told them to bind him
+and to take him to the cart. When he was rolled into
+the cart with his legs tied, he made the sign of the cross
+and began to cry. They took away his money and
+things, and sent him to jail to the nearest town. They
+sent to Vladímir to find out what kind of a man Aksénov
+was, and all the merchants and inhabitants of Vladímir
+testified to the fact that Aksénov had drunk and caroused
+when he was young, but that he was a good man. Then
+they began to try him. He was tried for having killed
+the Ryazán merchant and having robbed him of twenty
+thousand roubles.</p>
+
+<p>The wife was grieving for her husband and did not
+know what to think. Her children were still young, and
+one was still at the breast. She took them all and went
+with them to the town where her husband was kept in
+prison. At first she was not admitted, but later she implored
+the authorities, and she was taken to her husband.
+When she saw him in prison garb and in chains, together<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+with murderers, she fell to the ground and could not
+come to for a long time. Then she placed her children
+about her, sat down beside him, and began to tell him
+about house matters, and to ask him about everything
+which had happened. He told her everything. She said:</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I do?"</p>
+
+<p>He said:</p>
+
+<p>"We must petition the Tsar. An innocent man cannot
+be allowed to perish."</p>
+
+<p>His wife said that she had already petitioned the Tsar,
+but that the petition had not reached him. Aksénov said
+nothing, and only lowered his head. Then his wife said:</p>
+
+<p>"You remember the dream I had about your getting
+gray. Indeed, you have grown gray from sorrow. If you
+had only not started then!"</p>
+
+<p>And she looked over his hair, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Iván, my darling, tell your wife the truth: did you
+not do it?"</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov said, "And you, too, suspect me!" and covered
+his face with his hands, and began to weep.</p>
+
+<p>Then a soldier came, and told his wife that she must
+leave with her children. And Aksénov for the last time
+bade his family farewell.</p>
+
+<p>When his wife had left, Aksénov thought about what
+they had been talking of. When he recalled that his
+wife had also suspected him and had asked him whether
+he had killed the merchant, he said to himself: "Evidently
+none but God can know the truth, and He alone
+must be asked, and from Him alone can I expect mercy."
+And from that time on Aksénov no longer handed in petitions
+and stopped hoping, but only prayed to God.</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov was sentenced to be beaten with the knout,
+and to be sent to hard labour. And it was done.</p>
+
+<p>He was beaten with the knout, and later, when the
+knout sores healed over, he was driven with other convicts
+to Siberia.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In Siberia, Aksénov passed twenty-six years at hard
+labour. His hair turned white like snow, and his beard
+grew long, narrow, and gray. All his mirth went away.
+He stooped, began to walk softly, spoke little, never
+laughed, and frequently prayed to God.</p>
+
+<p>In the prison Aksénov learned to make boots, and with
+the money which he earned he bought himself the
+"Legends of the Holy Martyrs," and read them while it
+was light in the prison; on holidays he went to the prison
+church and read the Epistles, and sang in the choir,&mdash;his
+voice was still good. The authorities were fond of
+Aksénov for his gentleness, and his prison comrades
+respected him and called him "grandfather" and "God's
+man." When there were any requests to be made of the
+authorities, his comrades always sent him to speak for
+them, and when the convicts had any disputes between
+themselves, they came to Aksénov to settle them.</p>
+
+<p>No one wrote Aksénov letters from his home, and he did
+not know whether his wife and children were alive, or not.</p>
+
+<p>Once they brought some new prisoners to the prison.
+In the evening the old prisoners gathered around the new
+men, and asked them from what town they came, or from
+what village, and for what acts they had been sent up.
+Aksénov, too, sat down on the bed-boards near the new
+prisoners and, lowering his head, listened to what they
+were saying. One of the new prisoners was a tall, sound-looking
+old man of about sixty years of age, with a gray,
+clipped beard. He was telling them what he had been
+sent up for:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, brothers, I have come here for no crime at all.
+I had unhitched a driver's horse from the sleigh. I was
+caught. They said, 'You stole it.' And I said, 'I only
+wanted to get home quickly, for I let the horse go. Besides,
+the driver is a friend of mine. I am telling you the
+truth.'&mdash;'No,' they said, 'you have stolen it.' But they
+did not know what I had been stealing, or where I had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+been stealing. There were crimes for which I ought to
+have been sent up long ago, but they could not convict
+me, and now I am here contrary to the law. 'You are
+lying,&mdash;you have been in Siberia, but you did not make
+a long visit there&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you come from?" asked one of the prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>"I am from the city of Vladímir, a burgher of that
+place. My name is Makár, and by my father Seménovich."</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov raised his head, and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Seménovich, have you not heard in Vladímir about
+the family of Merchant Aksénov? Are they alive?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have heard about them! They are rich merchants,
+even though their father is in Siberia. He is as
+much a sinner as I, I think. And you, grandfather, what
+are you here for?"</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov did not like to talk of his misfortune. He
+sighed, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"For my sins have I passed twenty-six years at hard
+labour."</p>
+
+<p>Makár Seménovich said:</p>
+
+<p>"For what sins?"</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov said, "No doubt, I deserved it," and did not
+wish to tell him any more; but the other prison people
+told the new man how Aksénov had come to be in
+Siberia. They told him how on the road some one had
+killed a merchant and had put the knife into his bag, and
+he thus was sentenced though he was innocent.</p>
+
+<p>When Makár Seménovich heard that, he looked at
+Aksénov, clapped his knees with his hands, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"What a marvel! What a marvel! But you have grown
+old, grandfather!"</p>
+
+<p>He was asked what he was marvelling at, and where
+he had seen Aksénov, but Makár Seménovich made no
+reply, and only said:</p>
+
+<p>"It is wonderful, boys, where we were fated to meet!"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And these words made Aksénov think that this man
+might know something about who had killed the merchant.
+He said:</p>
+
+<p>"Seménovich, have you heard before this about that
+matter, or have we met before?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I have heard. The earth is full of rumours.
+That happened a long time ago: I have forgotten what I
+heard," said Makár Seménovich.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe you have heard who killed the merchant?"
+asked Aksénov.</p>
+
+<p>Makár Seménovich laughed and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose he was killed by the man in whose bag the
+knife was found. Even if somebody stuck that knife into
+that bag, he was not caught, so he is no thief. And how
+could the knife have been put in? Was not the bag
+under your head? You would have heard him."</p>
+
+<p>The moment Aksénov heard these words, he thought
+that that was the man who had killed the merchant. He
+got up and walked away. All that night Aksénov could
+not fall asleep. He felt sad, and had visions: now he saw
+his wife such as she had been when she bade him farewell
+for the last time, as he went to the fair. He saw her, as
+though she was alive, and he saw her face and eyes, and
+heard her speak to him and laugh. Then he saw his
+children such as they had been then,&mdash;just as little,&mdash;one
+of them in a fur coat, the other at the breast. And
+he thought of himself, such as he had been then,&mdash;gay
+and young; he recalled how he had been sitting on the
+porch of the hostelry, where he was arrested, and had
+been playing the guitar, and how light his heart had been
+then. And he recalled the pillory, where he had been
+whipped, and the executioner, and the people all around,
+and the chains, and the prisoners, and his prison life of
+the last twenty-six years, and his old age. And such
+gloom came over him that he felt like laying hands on
+himself.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And all that on account of that evil-doer!" thought
+Aksénov.</p>
+
+<p>And such a rage fell upon him against Makár Seménovich,
+that he wanted to have his revenge upon him, even
+if he himself were to be ruined by it. He said his prayers
+all night long, but could not calm himself. In the daytime
+he did not walk over to Makár Seménovich, and did
+not look at him.</p>
+
+<p>Thus two weeks passed. At night Aksénov could not
+sleep, and he felt so sad that he did not know what to do
+with himself.</p>
+
+<p>Once, in the night, he walked all over the prison, and
+saw dirt falling from underneath one bedplace. He stopped
+to see what it was. Suddenly Makár Seménovich jumped
+up from under the bed and looked at Aksénov with a
+frightened face. Aksénov wanted to pass on, so as not to
+see him; but Makár took him by his arm, and told him
+that he had dug a passage way under the wall, and that
+he each day carried the dirt away in his boot-legs and
+poured it out in the open, whenever they took the convicts
+out to work. He said:</p>
+
+<p>"Keep quiet, old man,&mdash;I will take you out, too.
+And if you tell, they will whip me, and I will not forgive
+you,&mdash;I will kill you."</p>
+
+<p>When Aksénov saw the one who had done him evil, he
+trembled in his rage, and pulled away his arm, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I have no reason to get away from here, and there is
+no sense in killing me,&mdash;you killed me long ago. And
+whether I will tell on you or not depends on what God will
+put into my soul."</p>
+
+<p>On the following day, when the convicts were taken
+out to work, the soldiers noticed that Makár Seménovich
+was pouring out the dirt, and so they began to search in
+the prison, and found the hole. The chief came to the
+prison and began to ask all who had dug the hole. Everybody
+denied it. Those who knew had not seen Makár<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+Seménovich, because they knew that for this act he would
+be whipped half-dead. Then the chief turned to Aksénov.
+He knew that Aksénov was a just man, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Old man, you are a truthful man, tell me before God
+who has done that."</p>
+
+<p>Makár Seménovich stood as though nothing had happened
+and looked at the chief, and did not glance at
+Aksénov. Aksénov's arms and lips trembled, and he could
+not utter a word for long time. He thought: "If I
+protect him, why should I forgive him, since he has ruined
+me? Let him suffer for my torments! And if I tell on
+him, they will indeed whip him to death. And suppose
+that I have a wrong suspicion against him. Will that
+make it easier for me?"</p>
+
+<p>The chief said once more:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, old man, speak, tell the truth! Who has been
+digging it?"</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov looked at Makár Seménovich, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot tell, your Honour. God orders me not to
+tell. And I will not tell. Do with me as you please,&mdash;you
+have the power."</p>
+
+<p>No matter how much the chief tried, Aksénov would
+not say anything more. And so they did not find out
+who had done the digging.</p>
+
+<p>On the following night, as Aksénov lay down on the
+bed-boards and was just falling asleep, he heard somebody
+come up to him and sit down at his feet. He looked in
+the darkness and recognized Makár. Aksénov said:</p>
+
+<p>"What more do you want of me? What are you
+doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>Makár Seménovich was silent. Aksénov raised himself,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want? Go away, or I will call the
+soldier."</p>
+
+<p>Makár bent down close to Aksénov, and said to him in
+a whisper:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 406px;">
+<a href="images/i_100.jpg">
+<img src="images/i_100_s.jpg" width="406" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+<span class="caption">&quot;&#39;God will forgive you&#39;&quot;<br />
+<i>Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+<p>"Iván Dmítrievich, forgive me!"</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov said:</p>
+
+<p>"For what shall I forgive you?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was I who killed the merchant and put the knife
+into your bag. I wanted to kill you, too, but they made
+a noise in the yard, so I put the knife into your bag and
+climbed through the window."</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov was silent and did not know what to say.
+Makár Seménovich slipped down from the bed, made a
+low obeisance, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Iván Dmítrievich, forgive me, forgive me for God's
+sake! I will declare that it was I who killed the merchant,&mdash;you
+will be forgiven. You will return home."</p>
+
+<p>Aksénov said:</p>
+
+<p>"It is easy for you to speak so, but see how I have
+suffered! Where shall I go now? My wife has died,
+my children have forgotten me. I have no place to go
+to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Makár Seménovich did not get up from the floor. He
+struck his head against the earth, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Iván Dmítrievich, forgive me! When they whipped
+me with the knout I felt better than now that I am looking
+at you. You pitied me, and did not tell on me.
+Forgive me, for Christ's sake! Forgive me, the accursed
+evil-doer!" And he burst out into tears.</p>
+
+<p>When Aksénov heard Makár Seménovich crying, he
+began to weep himself, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"God will forgive you. Maybe I am a hundred times
+worse than you!"</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly a load fell off from his soul. And he no
+longer pined for his home, and did not wish to leave the
+prison, but only thought of his last hour.</p>
+
+<p>Makár Seménovich did not listen to Aksénov, but declared
+his guilt. When the decision came for Aksénov
+to leave,&mdash;he was dead.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="HUNTING_WORSE_THAN_SLAVERY" id="HUNTING_WORSE_THAN_SLAVERY"></a>HUNTING WORSE THAN SLAVERY</h2>
+
+
+<p>We were hunting bears. My companion had a chance
+to shoot at a bear: he wounded him, but only in a soft
+spot. A little blood was left on the snow, but the bear
+got away.</p>
+
+<p>We met in the forest and began to discuss what to do:
+whether to go and find that bear, or to wait two or three
+days until the bear should lie down again.</p>
+
+<p>We asked the peasant bear drivers whether we could
+now surround the bear. An old bear driver said:</p>
+
+<p>"No, we must give the bear a chance to calm himself.
+In about five days it will be possible to surround him,
+but if we go after him now he will only be frightened
+and will not lie down."</p>
+
+<p>But a young bear driver disputed with the old man,
+and said that he could surround him now.</p>
+
+<p>"Over this snow," he said, "the bear cannot get away
+far,&mdash;he is fat. He will lie down to-day again. And if
+he does not, I will overtake him on snow-shoes."</p>
+
+<p>My companion, too, did not want to surround the bear
+now, and advised waiting.</p>
+
+<p>But I said:</p>
+
+<p>"What is the use of discussing the matter? Do as
+you please, but I will go with Demyán along the track.
+If we overtake him, so much is gained; if not,&mdash;I have
+nothing else to do to-day anyway, and it is not yet late."</p>
+
+<p>And so we did.</p>
+
+<p>My companions went to the sleigh, and back to the
+village, but Demyán and I took bread with us, and
+remained in the woods.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When all had left us, Demyán and I examined our
+guns, tucked our fur coats over our belts, and followed
+the track.</p>
+
+<p>It was fine weather, chilly and calm. But walking on
+snow-shoes was a hard matter: the snow was deep and
+powdery.</p>
+
+<p>The snow had not settled in the forest, and, besides,
+fresh snow had fallen on the day before, so that the
+snow-shoes sunk half a foot in the snow, and in places
+even deeper.</p>
+
+<p>The bear track could be seen a distance away. We
+could see the way the bear had walked, for in spots
+he had fallen in the snow to his belly and had swept the
+snow aside. At first we walked in plain sight of the track,
+through a forest of large trees; then, when the track
+went into a small pine wood, Demyán stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"We must now give up the track," he said. "He will, no
+doubt, lie down here. He has been sitting on his
+haunches,&mdash;you can see it by the snow. Let us go
+away from the track, and make a circle around him.
+But we must walk softly and make no noise, not even
+cough, or we shall scare him."</p>
+
+<p>We went away from the track, to the left. We walked
+about five hundred steps and there we again saw the
+track before us. We again followed the track, and this
+took us to the road. We stopped on the road and began
+to look around, to see in what direction the bear had
+gone. Here and there on the road we could see the
+bear's paws with all the toes printed on the snow, while
+in others we could see the tracks of a peasant's bast shoes.
+He had, evidently, gone to the village.</p>
+
+<p>We walked along the road. Demyán said to me:</p>
+
+<p>"We need not watch the road; somewhere he will
+turn off the road, to the right or to the left,&mdash;we shall
+see in the snow. Somewhere he will turn off,&mdash;he will
+not go to the village."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We walked thus about a mile along the road; suddenly
+we saw the track turn off from the road. We looked at
+it, and see the wonder! It was a bear's track, but leading
+not from the road to the woods, but from the woods
+to the road: the toes were turned to the road. I said:</p>
+
+<p>"That is another bear."</p>
+
+<p>Demyán looked at it, and thought awhile.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, "that is the same bear, only he has
+begun to cheat. He left the road backwards."</p>
+
+<p>We followed the track, and so it was. The bear had
+evidently walked about ten steps backwards from the
+road, until he got beyond a fir-tree, and then he had
+turned and gone on straight ahead. Demyán stopped,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Now we shall certainly fall in with him. He has no
+place but this swamp to lie down in. Let us surround
+him."</p>
+
+<p>We started to surround him, going through the dense
+pine forest. I was getting tired, and it was now much
+harder to travel. Now I would strike against a juniper-bush,
+and get caught in it; or a small pine-tree would
+get under my feet; or the snow-shoes would twist, as I
+was not used to them; or I would strike a stump or a
+block under the snow. I was beginning to be worn out.
+I took off my fur coat, and the sweat was just pouring
+down from me. But Demyán sailed along as in a boat.
+It looked as though the snow-shoes walked under him of
+their own accord. He neither caught in anything, nor
+did his shoes turn on him.</p>
+
+<p>And he even threw my fur coat over his shoulders,
+and kept urging me on.</p>
+
+<p>We made about three versts in a circle, and walked
+past the swamp. Demyán suddenly stopped in front
+of me, and waved his hand. I walked over to him.
+Demyán bent down, and pointed with his hand, and
+whispered to me:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you see, a magpie is chattering on a windfall: the
+bird is scenting the bear from a distance. It is he."</p>
+
+<p>We walked to one side, made another verst, and again
+hit the old trail. Thus we had made a circle around the
+bear, and he was inside of it. We stopped. I took off
+my hat and loosened my wraps: I felt as hot as in a
+bath, and was as wet as a mouse. Demyán, too, was all
+red, and he wiped his face with his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "we have done our work, sir, so we
+may take a rest."</p>
+
+<p>The evening glow could be seen through the forest.
+We sat down on the snow-shoes to rest ourselves. We
+took the bread and salt out of the bags; first I ate a little
+snow, and then the bread. The bread tasted to me better
+than any I had eaten in all my life. We sat awhile; it
+began to grow dark. I asked Demyán how far it was to
+the village.</p>
+
+<p>"About twelve versts. We shall reach it in the night;
+but now we must rest. Put on your fur coat, sir, or you
+will catch a cold."</p>
+
+<p>Demyán broke off some pine branches, knocked down
+the snow, made a bed, and we lay down beside each
+other, with our arms under our heads. I do not remember
+how I fell asleep. I awoke about two hours later.
+Something crashed.</p>
+
+<p>I had been sleeping so soundly that I forgot where I
+was. I looked around me: what marvel was that?
+Where was I? Above me were some white chambers,
+and white posts, and on everything glistened white tinsel.
+I looked up: there was a white, checkered cloth, and
+between the checks was a black vault in which burned
+fires of all colours. I looked around, and I recalled that
+we were in the forest, and that the snow-covered trees
+had appeared to me as chambers, and that the fires were
+nothing but the stars that flickered between the branches.</p>
+
+<p>In the night a hoarfrost had fallen, and there was hoarfrost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+on the branches, and on my fur coat, and Demyán
+was all covered with hoarfrost, and hoarfrost fell from
+above. I awoke Demyán. We got up on our snow-shoes
+and started. The forest was quiet. All that could be
+heard was the sound we made as we slid on our snow-shoes
+over the soft snow, or when a tree would crackle
+from the frost, and a hollow sound would pass through
+the whole woods. Only once did something living stir
+close to us and run away again. I thought it was the
+bear. We walked over to the place from where the noise
+had come, and we saw hare tracks. The young aspens
+were nibbled down. The hares had been feeding on them.</p>
+
+<p>We came out to the road, tied the snow-shoes behind us,
+and walked down the road. It was easy to walk. The
+snow-shoes rattled and rumbled over the beaten road; the
+snow creaked under our boots; the cold hoarfrost stuck to
+our faces like down. And the stars seemed to run toward
+us along the branches: they would flash, and go out
+again,&mdash;just as though the sky were walking round and
+round.</p>
+
+<p>My companion was asleep,&mdash;I awoke him. We told
+him how we had made a circle around the bear, and told
+the landlord to collect the drivers for the morning. We
+ate our supper and lay down to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>I was so tired that I could have slept until dinner, but
+my companion woke me. I jumped up and saw that my
+companion was all dressed and busy with his gun.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Demyán?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has been in the forest for quite awhile. He has
+investigated the circle, and has been back to take the
+drivers out."</p>
+
+<p>I washed myself, put on my clothes, and loaded my
+guns. We seated ourselves in the sleigh, and started.</p>
+
+<p>There was a severe frost, the air was calm, and the sun
+could not be seen: there was a mist above, and the hoarfrost
+was settling.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We travelled about three versts by the road, and reached
+the forest. We saw a blue smoke in a hollow, and peasants,
+men and women, were there with clubs.</p>
+
+<p>We climbed out of the sleigh and went up to the people.
+The peasants were sitting and baking potatoes, and joking
+with the women.</p>
+
+<p>Demyán was with them. The people got up, and
+Demyán took them away to place them in our last night's
+circuit. The men and women stretched themselves out
+in single file,&mdash;there were thirty of them and they could
+be seen only from the belt up,&mdash;and went into the
+woods; then my companion and I followed their tracks.</p>
+
+<p>Though they had made a path, it was hard to walk;
+still, we could not fall, for it was like walking between
+two walls.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we walked for half a verst. I looked up, and
+there was Demyán running to us from the other side on
+snow-shoes, and waving his hand for us to come to him.</p>
+
+<p>We went up to him, and he showed us where to stand.
+I took up my position and looked around.</p>
+
+<p>To the left of me was a tall pine forest. I could see
+far through it, and beyond the trees I saw the black spot
+of a peasant driver. Opposite me was a young pine
+growth, as tall as a man's stature. In this pine growth
+the branches were hanging down and stuck together from
+the snow. The path through the middle of the pine grove
+was covered with snow. This path was leading toward
+me. To the right of me was a dense pine forest, and
+beyond the pine grove there was a clearing. And on
+this clearing I saw Demyán place my companion.</p>
+
+<p>I examined my two guns and cocked them, and began
+to think where to take up a stand. Behind me, about
+three steps from me, there was a pine-tree. "I will stand
+by that pine, and will lean the other gun against it." I
+made my way to that pine, walking knee-deep in snow.
+I tramped down a space of about four feet each way, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+there took my stand. One gun I took into my hands, and
+the other, with hammers raised, I placed against the tree.
+I unsheathed my dagger and put it back in the scabbard,
+to be sure that in case of need it would come out easily.</p>
+
+<p>I had hardly fixed myself, when Demyán shouted from
+the woods:</p>
+
+<p>"Start it now, start it!"</p>
+
+<p>And as Demyán shouted this, the peasants in the circuit
+cried, each with a different tone of voice: "Come
+now! OO-oo-oo!" and the women cried, in their thin
+voices: "Ai! Eekh!"</p>
+
+<p>The bear was in the circle. Demyán was driving him.
+In the circuit the people shouted, and only my companion
+and I stood still, did not speak or move, and waited for
+the bear. I stood, and looked, and listened, and my heart
+went pitapat. I was clutching my gun and trembling.
+Now, now he will jump out, I thought, and I will aim
+and shoot, and he will fall&mdash; Suddenly I heard to the
+left something tumbling through the snow, only it was
+far away. I looked into the tall pine forest: about fifty
+steps from me, behind the trees, stood something large and
+black. I aimed and waited. I thought it might come
+nearer. I saw it move its ears and turn around. Now I
+could see the whole of him from the side. It was a huge
+beast. I aimed hastily. Bang! I heard the bullet strike
+the tree. Through the smoke I saw the bear make back
+for the cover and disappear in the forest. "Well," I
+thought, "my business is spoiled: he will not run up to
+me again; either my companion will have a chance to
+shoot at him, or he will go through between the peasants,
+but never again toward me." I reloaded the gun, and
+stood and listened. The peasants were shouting on all
+sides, but on the right, not far from my companion, I
+heard a woman yell, "Here he is! Here he is! Here he
+is! This way! This way! Oi, oi, oi! Ai, ai, ai!"</p>
+
+<p>There was the bear, in full sight. I was no longer expecting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+the bear to come toward me, and so looked to the
+right toward my companion. I saw Demyán running
+without the snow-shoes along the path, with a stick in his
+hand, and going up to my companion, sitting down near
+him, and pointing with the stick at something, as though
+he were aiming. I saw my companion raise his gun and
+aim at where Demyán was pointing. Bang! he fired
+it off.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," I thought, "he has killed him." But I saw
+that my companion was not running toward the bear.
+"Evidently he missed him, or did not strike him right.
+He will get away," I thought, "but he will not come
+toward me."</p>
+
+<p>What was that? Suddenly I heard something in front
+of me: somebody was flying like a whirlwind, and scattering
+the snow near by, and panting. I looked ahead of
+me, but he was making headlong toward me along the path
+through the dense pine growth. I could see that he was
+beside himself with fear. When he was within five steps
+of me I could see the whole of him: his chest was black
+and his head was enormous, and of a reddish colour. He
+was flying straight toward me, and scattering the snow in
+all directions. I could see by the bear's eyes that he did
+not see me and in his fright was rushing headlong. He
+was making straight for the pine where I was standing.
+I raised my gun, and shot, but he came still nearer. I
+saw that I had not hit him: the bullet was carried past
+him. He heard nothing, plunged onward, and did not
+see me. I bent down the gun, almost rested it against
+his head. Bang! This time I hit him, but did not
+kill him.</p>
+
+<p>He raised his head, dropped his ears, showed his teeth,&mdash;and
+straight toward me. I grasped the other gun; but
+before I had it in my hand, he was already on me, knocked
+me down, and flew over me. "Well," I thought, "that is
+good, he will not touch me." I was just getting up, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+I felt something pressing against me and holding me
+down. In his onrush he ran past me, but he turned
+around and rushed against me with his whole breast.
+I felt something heavy upon me, something warm over
+my face, and I felt him taking my face into his jaws. My
+nose was already in his mouth, and I felt hot, and smelled
+his blood. He pressed my shoulders with his paws, and
+I could not stir. All I could do was to pull my head out
+of his jaws and press it against my breast, and I turned
+my nose and eyes away. But he was trying to get
+at my eyes and nose. I felt him strike the teeth of his
+upper jaw into my forehead, right below the hair, and
+the lower jaw into the cheek-bones below the eyes, and he
+began to crush me. It was as though my head were cut
+with knives. I jerked and pulled out my head, but he
+chawed and chawed and snapped at me like a dog. I
+would turn my head away, and he would catch it again.
+"Well," I thought, "my end has come." Suddenly I felt
+lighter. I looked up, and he was gone: he had jumped
+away from me, and was running now.</p>
+
+<p>When my companion and Demyán saw that the bear
+had knocked me into the snow, they dashed for me. My
+companion wanted to get there as fast as possible, but lost
+his way; instead of running on the trodden path, he ran
+straight ahead, and fell down. While he was trying to
+get out of the snow, the bear was gnawing at me. Demyán
+ran up to me along the path, without a gun, just with
+the stick which he had in his hands, and he shouted,
+"He is eating up the gentleman! He is eating up the
+gentleman!" And he kept running and shouting, "Oh,
+you wretched beast! What are you doing? Stop! Stop!"</p>
+
+<p>The bear listened to him, stopped, and ran away.
+When I got up, there was much blood on the snow, just
+as though a sheep had been killed, and over my eyes the
+flesh hung in rags. While the wound was fresh I felt no
+pain.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My companion ran up to me, and the peasants gathered
+around me. They looked at my wounds, and washed
+them with snow. I had entirely forgotten about the
+wounds, and only asked, "Where is the bear? Where
+has he gone?"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly we heard, "Here he is! Here he is!" We
+saw the bear running once more against us. We grasped
+our guns, but before we fired he ran past us. The bear
+was mad: he wanted to bite me again, but when he saw
+so many people he became frightened. We saw by the
+track that the bear was bleeding from the head. We
+wanted to follow him up, but my head hurt me, and so
+we drove to town to see a doctor.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor sewed up my wounds with silk, and they
+began to heal.</p>
+
+<p>A month later we went out again to hunt that bear;
+but I did not get the chance to kill him. The bear would
+not leave the cover, and kept walking around and around
+and roaring terribly. Demyán killed him. My shot had
+crushed his lower jaw and knocked out a tooth.</p>
+
+<p>This bear was very large, and he had beautiful black
+fur. I had the skin stuffed, and it is lying now in my
+room. The wounds on my head have healed, so that one
+can scarcely see where they were.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_PRISONER_OF_THE_CAUCASUS" id="A_PRISONER_OF_THE_CAUCASUS"></a>A PRISONER OF THE CAUCASUS</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p>A certain gentleman was serving as an officer in the
+Caucasus. His name was Zhilín.</p>
+
+<p>One day he received a letter from home. His old
+mother wrote to him:</p>
+
+<p>"I have grown old, and I should like to see my darling
+son before my death. Come to bid me farewell and bury
+me, and then, with God's aid, return to the service. I
+have also found a bride for you: she is bright and pretty
+and has property. If you take a liking to her, you can
+marry her, and stay here for good."</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín reflected: "Indeed, my old mother has grown
+feeble; perhaps I shall never see her again. I must go;
+and if the bride is a good girl, I may marry her."</p>
+
+<p>He went to the colonel, got a furlough, bade his companions
+good-bye, treated his soldiers to four buckets of
+vódka, and got himself ready to go.</p>
+
+<p>At that time there was a war in the Caucasus. Neither
+in the daytime, nor at night, was it safe to travel on the
+roads. The moment a Russian walked or drove away
+from a fortress, the Tartars either killed him or took him
+as a prisoner to the mountains. It was a rule that a
+guard of soldiers should go twice a week from fortress to
+fortress. In front and in the rear walked soldiers, and
+between them were other people.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the summer. The carts gathered at daybreak
+outside the fortress, and the soldiers of the convoy came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+out, and all started. Zhilín rode on horseback, and his
+cart with his things went with the caravan.</p>
+
+<p>They had to travel twenty-five versts. The caravan
+proceeded slowly; now the soldiers stopped, and now a
+wheel came off a cart, or a horse stopped, and all had to
+stand still and wait.</p>
+
+<p>The sun had already passed midday, but the caravan
+had made only half the distance. It was dusty and hot;
+the sun just roasted them, and there was no shelter: it
+was a barren plain, with neither tree nor bush along the
+road.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín rode out ahead. He stopped and waited for the
+caravan to catch up with him. He heard them blow
+the signal-horn behind: they had stopped again.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín thought: "Why can't I ride on, without the
+soldiers? I have a good horse under me, and if I run
+against Tartars, I will gallop away. Or had I better not
+go?"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped to think it over. There rode up to him
+another officer, Kostylín, with a gun, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let us ride by ourselves, Zhilín! I cannot stand it
+any longer: I am hungry, and it is so hot. My shirt
+is dripping wet."</p>
+
+<p>Kostylín was a heavy, stout man, with a red face, and
+the perspiration was just rolling down his face. Zhilín
+thought awhile and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Is your gun loaded?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, we will go, but on one condition, that we
+do not separate."</p>
+
+<p>And so they rode ahead on the highway. They rode
+through the steppe, and talked, and looked about them.
+They could see a long way off.</p>
+
+<p>When the steppe came to an end, the road entered a
+cleft between two mountains. So Zhilín said:</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to ride up the mountain to take a look;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+for here they may leap out on us from the mountain
+without our seeing them."</p>
+
+<p>But Kostylín said:</p>
+
+<p>"What is the use of looking? Let us ride on!"</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín paid no attention to him.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, "you wait here below, and I will take
+a look up there."</p>
+
+<p>And he turned his horse to the left, up-hill. The
+horse under Zhilín was a thoroughbred (he had paid a
+hundred roubles for it when it was a colt, and had himself
+trained it), and it carried him up the slope as though
+on wings. The moment he reached the summit, he saw
+before him a number of Tartars on horseback, about
+eighty fathoms away. There were about thirty of them.
+When he saw them, he began to turn back; and the
+Tartars saw him, and galloped toward him, and on the
+ride took their guns out of the covers. Zhilín urged his
+horse down-hill as fast as its legs would carry him, and
+he shouted to Kostylín:</p>
+
+<p>"Take out the gun!" and he himself thought about
+his horse: "Darling, take me away from here! Don't
+stumble! If you do, I am lost. If I get to the gun, they
+shall not catch me."</p>
+
+<p>But Kostylín, instead of waiting, galloped at full speed
+toward the fortress, the moment he saw the Tartars. He
+urged the horse on with the whip, now on one side, and
+now on the other. One could see through the dust only
+the horse switching her tail.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín saw that things were bad. The gun had disappeared,
+and he could do nothing with a sword. He turned
+his horse back to the soldiers, thinking that he might get
+away. He saw six men crossing his path. He had a
+good horse under him, but theirs were better still, and
+they crossed his path. He began to check his horse: he
+wanted to turn around; but the horse was running at
+full speed and could not be stopped, and he flew straight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+toward them. He saw a red-bearded Tartar on a gray
+horse, who was coming near to him. He howled and
+showed his teeth, and his gun was against his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," thought Zhilín, "I know you devils. When
+you take one alive, you put him in a hole and beat him
+with a whip. I will not fall into your hands alive&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Though Zhilín was not tall, he was brave. He drew
+his sword, turned his horse straight against the Tartar,
+and thought:</p>
+
+<p>"Either I will knock his horse off its feet, or I will
+strike the Tartar with my sword."</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín got within a horse's length from him, when they
+shot at him from behind and hit the horse. The horse
+dropped on the ground while going at full speed, and fell
+on Zhilín's leg.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to get up, but two stinking Tartars were
+already astride of him. He tugged and knocked down
+the two Tartars, but three more jumped down from their
+horses and began to strike him with the butts of their
+guns. Things grew dim before his eyes, and he tottered.
+The Tartars took hold of him, took from their saddles
+some reserve straps, twisted his arms behind his back, tied
+them with a Tartar knot, and fastened him to the saddle.
+They knocked down his hat, pulled off his boots, rummaged
+all over him, and took away his money and his watch, and
+tore all his clothes.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín looked back at his horse. The dear animal was
+lying just as it had fallen down, and only twitched its
+legs and did not reach the ground with them; in its head
+there was a hole, and from it the black blood gushed and
+wet the dust for an ell around.</p>
+
+<p>A Tartar went up to the horse, to pull off the saddle.
+The horse was struggling still, and so he took out his
+dagger and cut its throat. A whistling sound came from
+the throat, and the horse twitched, and was dead.</p>
+
+<p>The Tartars took off the saddle and the trappings.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+The red-bearded Tartar mounted his horse, and the others
+seated Zhilín behind him. To prevent his falling off, they
+attached him by a strap to the Tartar's belt, and they rode
+off to the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín was sitting back of the Tartar, and shaking and
+striking with his face against the stinking Tartar's back.
+All he saw before him was the mighty back, and the muscular
+neck, and the livid, shaved nape of his head underneath
+his cap. Zhilín's head was bruised, and the blood
+was clotted under his eyes. And he could not straighten
+himself on the saddle, nor wipe off his blood. His arms
+were twisted so badly that his shoulder bones pained
+him.</p>
+
+<p>They rode for a long time from one mountain to another,
+and forded a river, and came out on a path, where they
+rode through a ravine.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín wanted to take note of the road on which they
+were travelling, but his eyes were smeared with blood, and
+he could not turn around.</p>
+
+<p>It was getting dark. They crossed another stream and
+rode up a rocky mountain. There was an odour of smoke,
+and the dogs began to bark. They had come to a native
+village. The Tartars got down from their horses; the
+Tartar children gathered around Zhilín, and screamed, and
+rejoiced, and aimed stones at him.</p>
+
+<p>The Tartar drove the boys away, took Zhilín down
+from his horse, and called a labourer. There came a
+Nogay, with large cheek-bones; he wore nothing but a
+shirt. The shirt was torn and left his breast bare. The
+Tartar gave him a command. The labourer brought the
+stocks,&mdash;two oak planks drawn through iron rings, and
+one of these rings with a clasp and lock.</p>
+
+<p>They untied Zhilín's hands, put the stocks on him, and
+led him into a shed: they pushed him in and locked the
+door. Zhilín fell on the manure pile. He felt around in
+the darkness for a soft spot, and lay down there.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 452px;">
+<a href="images/i_120.jpg">
+<img src="images/i_120_s.jpg" width="452" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+<span class="caption">&quot;They rode off to the mountains&quot;<br />
+<i>Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>Zhilín lay awake nearly the whole night. The nights
+were short. He saw through a chink that it was getting
+light. He got up, made the chink larger, and looked
+out.</p>
+
+<p>Through the chink Zhilín saw the road: it went down-hill;
+on the right was a Tartar cabin, and near it two
+trees. A black dog lay on the threshold, and a goat
+strutted about with her kids, which were jerking their
+little tails. He saw a young Tartar woman coming up
+the hill; she wore a loose coloured shirt and pantaloons
+and boots, and her head was covered with a caftan, and
+on her head there was a large tin pitcher with water. She
+walked along, jerking her back, and bending over, and by
+the hand she led a young shaven Tartar boy in nothing
+but his shirt. The Tartar woman went into the cabin
+with the water, and out came the Tartar of the day before,
+with the red beard, wearing a silk half-coat, a silver
+dagger on a strap, and shoes on his bare feet. On his
+head there was a tall, black sheepskin hat, tilted backwards.
+He came out, and he stretched himself and
+smoothed his red beard. He stood awhile, gave the
+labourer an order, and went away.</p>
+
+<p>Then two boys rode by, taking the horses to water.
+The muzzles of the horses were wet. Then there ran out
+some other shaven boys, in nothing but their shirts, with
+no trousers; they gathered in a crowd, walked over to the
+shed, picked up a stick, and began to poke it through
+the chink. When Zhilín shouted at the children, they
+screamed and started to run back, so that their bare knees
+glistened in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín wanted to drink,&mdash;his throat was all dried up.
+He thought: "If they would only come to see me!" He
+heard them open the shed. The red Tartar came in, and
+with him another, black-looking fellow, of smaller stature.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+His eyes were black and bright, his cheeks ruddy, his
+small beard clipped; his face looked jolly, and he kept
+laughing all the time. This swarthy fellow was dressed
+even better: he had on a silk half-coat, of a blue colour,
+embroidered with galloons. In his belt there was a large
+silver dagger; his slippers were of red morocco and also
+embroidered with silver. Over his thin slippers he wore
+heavier shoes. His cap was tall, of white astrakhan.</p>
+
+<p>The red Tartar came in. He said something, as though
+scolding, and stopped. He leaned against the door-post,
+dangled his dagger, and like a wolf looked furtively at
+Zhilín. But the swarthy fellow&mdash;swift, lively, walking
+around as though on springs&mdash;went up straight to
+Zhilín, squatted down, showed his teeth, slapped him on
+the shoulder, began to rattle off something in his language,
+winked with his eyes, clicked his tongue, and kept
+repeating: "Goot Uruss! Goot Uruss!"</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín did not understand a thing and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Give me to drink, give me water to drink!"</p>
+
+<p>The swarthy fellow laughed. "Goot Uruss!" he kept
+rattling off.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín showed with his lips and hands that he wanted
+something to drink.</p>
+
+<p>The swarthy fellow understood what he wanted,
+laughed out, looked through the door, and called some
+one: "Dina!"</p>
+
+<p>In came a thin, slender little girl, of about thirteen
+years of age, who resembled the swarthy man very much.
+Evidently she was his daughter. Her eyes, too, were
+black and bright, and her face was pretty. She wore a
+long blue shirt, with broad sleeves and without a belt.
+The skirt, the breast, and the sleeves were trimmed with
+red. On her legs were pantaloons, and on her feet
+slippers, with high-heeled shoes over them; on her neck
+she wore a necklace of Russian half-roubles. Her head
+was uncovered; her braid was black, with a ribbon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+through it, and from the ribbon hung small plates and a
+Russian rouble.</p>
+
+<p>Her father gave her a command. She ran away, and
+came back and brought a small tin pitcher. She gave
+him the water, and herself squatted down, bending up in
+such a way that her shoulders were below her knees.
+She sat there, and opened her eyes, and looked at Zhilín
+drinking, as though he were some animal.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín handed her back the pitcher. She jumped away
+like a wild goat. Even her father laughed. He sent her
+somewhere else. She took the pitcher and ran away;
+she brought some fresh bread on a round board, and again
+sat down, bent over, riveted her eyes on him, and kept
+looking.</p>
+
+<p>The Tartars went away and locked the door.</p>
+
+<p>After awhile the Nogay came to Zhilín, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Ai-da, master, ai-da!"</p>
+
+<p>He did not know any Russian, either. All Zhilín
+could make out was that he should follow him.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín started with the stocks, and he limped and could
+not walk, so much did the stocks pull his legs aside.
+Zhilín went out with the Nogay. He saw a Tartar
+village of about ten houses, and a church of theirs, with a
+small tower. Near one house stood three horses, all
+saddled. Boys were holding the reins. From the house
+sprang the swarthy Tartar, and he waved his hand for
+Zhilín to come up. He laughed all the while, and talked
+in his language, and disappeared through the door.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín entered the house. It was a good living-room,&mdash;the
+walls were plastered smooth with clay.
+Along the front wall lay coloured cushions, and at the
+sides hung costly rugs; on the rugs were guns, pistols,
+swords,&mdash;all in silver. By one wall there was a small
+stove, on a level with the floor. The floor was of dirt and
+as clean as a threshing-floor, and the whole front corner
+was carpeted with felt; and over the felt lay rugs, and on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+the rugs cushions. On these rugs sat the Tartars, in
+their slippers without their outer shoes: there were the
+swarthy fellow, the red Tartar, and three guests. At
+their backs were feather cushions, and before them, on
+a round board, were millet cakes and melted butter in a
+bowl, and Tartar beer, "buza," in a small pitcher. They
+were eating with their hands, and their hands were all
+greasy from the butter.</p>
+
+<p>The swarthy man jumped up and ordered Zhilín to be
+placed to one side, not on a rug, but on the bare floor; he
+went back to his rug, and treated his guests to millet
+cakes and buza. The labourer placed Zhilín where he
+had been ordered, himself took off his outer shoes, put
+them at the door, where stood the other shoes, and sat
+down on the felt next to the masters. He looked at
+them as they ate, and wiped off his spittle.</p>
+
+<p>The Tartars ate the cakes. Then there came a Tartar
+woman, in a shirt like the one the girl had on, and
+in pantaloons, and with a kerchief over her head. She
+carried away the butter and the cakes, and brought a
+small wash-basin of a pretty shape, and a pitcher with
+a narrow neck. The Tartars washed their hands, then
+folded them, knelt down, blew in every direction, and said
+their prayers. Then one of the Tartar guests turned to
+Zhilín, and began to speak in Russian:</p>
+
+<p>"You," he said, "were taken by Kazi-Muhammed," and
+he pointed to the red Tartar, "and he gave you to Abdul-Murat."
+He pointed to the swarthy man. "Abdul-Murat
+is now your master."</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín kept silence. Then Abdul-Murat began to speak.
+He pointed to Zhilín, and laughed, and kept repeating:</p>
+
+<p>"Soldier Uruss! Goot Uruss!"</p>
+
+<p>The interpreter said:</p>
+
+<p>"He wants you to write a letter home that they may
+send a ransom for you. When they send it, you will be
+set free."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Zhilín thought awhile and said:</p>
+
+<p>"How much ransom does he want?"</p>
+
+<p>The Tartars talked together; then the interpreter
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Three thousand in silver."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Zhilín, "I cannot pay that."</p>
+
+<p>Abdul jumped up, began to wave his hands and to talk
+to Zhilín, thinking that he would understand him. The
+interpreter translated. He said:</p>
+
+<p>"How much will you give?"</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín thought awhile, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Five hundred roubles."</p>
+
+<p>Then the Tartars began to talk a great deal, all at
+the same time. Abdul shouted at the red Tartar.
+He was so excited that the spittle just spirted from his
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>But the red Tartar only scowled and clicked his tongue.</p>
+
+<p>They grew silent, and the interpreter said:</p>
+
+<p>"The master is not satisfied with five hundred roubles.
+He has himself paid two hundred for you. Kazi-Muhammed
+owed him a debt. He took you for that debt.
+Three thousand roubles, nothing less will do. And if
+you do not write, you will be put in a hole and beaten
+with a whip."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," thought Zhilín, "it will not do to show that I
+am frightened; that will only be worse." He leaped to
+his feet, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell that dog that if he is going to frighten me, I
+will not give him a penny, and I will refuse to write.
+I have never been afraid of you dogs, and I never
+will be."</p>
+
+<p>The interpreter translated, and all began to speak at
+the same time.</p>
+
+<p>They babbled for a long time; then the swarthy Tartar
+jumped up and walked over to Zhilín:</p>
+
+<p>"Uruss," he said, "dzhigit, dzhigit Uruss!"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dzhigit in their language means a "brave." And he
+laughed; he said something to the interpreter, and the
+interpreter said:</p>
+
+<p>"Give one thousand roubles!"</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín stuck to what he had said:</p>
+
+<p>"I will not give more than five hundred. And if you
+kill me, you will get nothing."</p>
+
+<p>The Tartars talked awhile and sent the labourer somewhere,
+and themselves kept looking now at Zhilín and
+now at the door. The labourer came, and behind him
+walked a fat man; he was barefoot and tattered; he, too,
+had on the stocks.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín just shouted, for he recognized Kostylín. He,
+too, had been caught. They were placed beside each
+other. They began to talk to each other, and the Tartars
+kept silence and looked at them. Zhilín told what had
+happened to him; and Kostylín told him that his horse
+had stopped and his gun had missed fire, and that the
+same Abdul had overtaken and captured him.</p>
+
+<p>Abdul jumped up, and pointed to Kostylín, and said
+something. The interpreter translated it, and said that
+both of them belonged to the same master, and that the
+one who would first furnish the money would be the first
+to be released.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you," he said, "are a cross fellow, but your
+friend is meek; he has written a letter home, and they
+will send five thousand roubles. He will be fed well,
+and will not be insulted."</p>
+
+<p>So Zhilín said:</p>
+
+<p>"My friend may do as he pleases; maybe he is rich,
+but I am not. As I have said, so will it be. If you
+want to, kill me,&mdash;you will not gain by it,&mdash;but more
+than five hundred will I not give."</p>
+
+<p>They were silent for awhile. Suddenly Abdul jumped
+up, fetched a small box, took out a pen, a piece of paper,
+and some ink, put it all before Zhilín, slapped him on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+shoulder, and motioned for him to write. He agreed to
+the five hundred.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait awhile," Zhilín said to the interpreter. "Tell
+him that he has to feed us well, and give us the proper
+clothes and shoes, and keep us together,&mdash;it will be jollier
+for us,&mdash;and take off the stocks." He looked at the
+master and laughed. The master himself laughed. He
+listened to the interpreter, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I will give you the best of clothes,&mdash;a Circassian
+mantle and boots,&mdash;you will be fit to marry. We will
+feed you like princes. And if you want to stay together,
+you may live in the shed. But the stocks cannot be
+taken off, for you will run away. For the night we will
+take them off."</p>
+
+<p>He ran up to Zhilín, and tapped him on the shoulder:</p>
+
+<p>"You goot, me goot!"</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín wrote the letter, but he did not address it right.
+He thought he would run away.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín and Kostylín were taken back to the shed.
+They brought for them maize straw, water in a pitcher,
+bread, two old mantles, and worn soldier boots. They
+had evidently been pulled off dead soldiers. For the
+night the stocks were taken off, and they were locked in
+the barn.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>Zhilín and his companion lived thus for a whole month.
+Their master kept laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"You, Iván, goot, me, Abdul, goot!"</p>
+
+<p>But he did not feed them well. All he gave them to
+eat was unsalted millet bread, baked like pones, or entirely
+unbaked dough.</p>
+
+<p>Kostylín wrote home a second letter. He was waiting
+for the money to come, and felt lonesome. He sat for
+days at a time in the shed counting the days before the
+letter would come, or he slept. But Zhilín knew that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+his letter would not reach any one, and so he did not write
+another.</p>
+
+<p>"Where," he thought, "is my mother to get so much
+money? As it is, she lived mainly by what I sent her.
+If she should collect five hundred roubles, she would be
+ruined in the end. If God grants it, I will manage to
+get away from here."</p>
+
+<p>And he watched and thought of how to get away.</p>
+
+<p>He walked through the village and whistled, or he sat
+down somewhere to work with his hands, either making a
+doll from clay, or weaving a fence from twigs. Zhilín
+was a great hand at all kinds of such work.</p>
+
+<p>One day he made a doll, with a nose, and hands, and
+legs, in a Tartar shirt, and put the doll on the roof. The
+Tartar maidens were going for water. His master's
+daughter, Dina, saw the doll, and she called up the Tartar
+girls. They put down their pitchers, and looked, and
+laughed. Zhilín took down the doll and gave it to them.
+They laughed, and did not dare take it. He left the doll,
+and went back to the shed to see what they would do.</p>
+
+<p>Dina ran up, looked around, grasped the doll, and ran
+away with it.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, at daybreak, he saw Dina coming out
+with the doll in front of the house. The doll was all
+dressed up in red rags, and she was rocking the doll and
+singing to it in her fashion. The old woman came out.
+She scolded her, took the doll away from her and broke
+it, and sent Dina to work.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín made another doll, a better one than before,
+and he gave it to Dina. One day Dina brought him a
+small pitcher. She put it down, herself sat down and
+looked at him, and laughed, as she pointed to the pitcher.</p>
+
+<p>"What is she so happy about?" thought Zhilín.</p>
+
+<p>He took the pitcher and began to drink. He thought
+it was water, but, behold, it was milk. He drank the
+milk, and said:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is good!"</p>
+
+<p>Dina was very happy.</p>
+
+<p>"Good, Iván, good!" and she jumped up, clapped her
+hands, took away the pitcher, and ran off.</p>
+
+<p>From that time she brought him milk every day on the
+sly. The Tartars make cheese-cakes from goat milk, and
+dry them on the roofs,&mdash;and so she brought him those
+cakes also. One day the master killed a sheep, so she
+brought him a piece of mutton in her sleeve. She would
+throw it down and run away.</p>
+
+<p>One day there was a severe storm, and for an hour the
+rain fell as though from a pail. All the streams became
+turbid. Where there was a ford, the water was now
+eight feet deep, and stones were borne down. Torrents
+were running everywhere, and there was a roar in the
+mountains. When the storm was over, streams were
+coming down the village in every direction. Zhilín asked
+his master to let him have a penknife, and with it he cut
+out a small axle and little boards, and made a wheel, and
+to each end of the wheel he attached a doll.</p>
+
+<p>The girls brought him pieces of material, and he dressed
+the dolls: one a man, the other a woman. He fixed them
+firmly, and placed the wheel over a brook. The wheel
+began to turn, and the dolls to jump.</p>
+
+<p>The whole village gathered around it; boys, girls,
+women, and men came, and they clicked with their
+tongues:</p>
+
+<p>"Ai, Uruss! Ai, Iván!"</p>
+
+<p>Abdul had a Russian watch, but it was broken. He
+called Zhilín, showed it to him, and clicked his tongue.
+Zhilín said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me have it! I will fix it!"</p>
+
+<p>He took it to pieces with a penknife; then he put it
+together, and gave it back to him. The watch was running
+now.</p>
+
+<p>The master was delighted. He brought his old half-coat,&mdash;it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+was all in rags,&mdash;and made him a present of
+it. What could he do but take it? He thought it would
+be good enough to cover himself with in the night.</p>
+
+<p>After that the rumour went abroad that Zhilín was a
+great master. They began to come to him from distant
+villages: one, to have him fix a gun-lock or a pistol,
+another, to set a clock a-going. His master brought him
+tools,&mdash;pinchers, gimlets, and files.</p>
+
+<p>One day a Tartar became sick: they sent to Zhilín, and
+said, "Go and cure him!" Zhilín did not know anything
+about medicine. He went, took a look at him, and
+thought, "Maybe he will get well by himself." He went
+to the barn, took some water and sand, and mixed it. In
+the presence of the Tartars he said a charm over the
+water, and gave it to him to drink. Luckily for him,
+the Tartar got well.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín began to understand their language. Some of the
+Tartars got used to him. When they needed him, they
+called, "Iván, Iván!" but others looked at him awry, as
+at an animal.</p>
+
+<p>The red Tartar did not like Zhilín. Whenever he saw
+him, he frowned and turned away, or called him names.
+There was also an old man; he did not live in the village,
+but came from farther down the mountain. Zhilín saw
+him only when he came to the mosque, to pray to God.
+He was a small man; his cap was wrapped with a white
+towel. His beard and moustache were clipped, and they
+were as white as down; his face was wrinkled and as red
+as a brick. His nose was hooked, like a hawk's beak, and
+his eyes were gray and mean-looking; of teeth he had
+only two tusks. He used to walk in his turban, leaning
+on a crutch, and looking around him like a wolf. Whenever
+he saw Zhilín, he grunted and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>One day Zhilín went down-hill, to see where the old
+man was living. He walked down the road, and saw a
+little garden, with a stone fence, and inside the fence were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+cherry and apricot trees, and stood a hut with a flat roof.
+He came closer to it, and he saw beehives woven from
+straw, and bees were swarming around and buzzing. The
+old man was kneeling, and doing something to a hive.
+Zhilín got up higher, to get a good look, and made a noise
+with his stocks. The old man looked around and shrieked;
+he pulled the pistol out from his belt and fired at Zhilín.
+He had just time to hide behind a rock.</p>
+
+<p>The old man went to the master to complain about
+Zhilín. The master called up Zhilín, and laughed, and
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you go to the old man?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not done him any harm," he said. "I just
+wanted to see how he lives."</p>
+
+<p>The master told the old man that. But the old man
+was angry, and hissed, and rattled something off; he
+showed his teeth and waved his hand threateningly at
+Zhilín.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín did not understand it all; but he understood
+that the old man was telling his master to kill all the
+Russians, and not to keep them in the village. The old
+man went away.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín asked his master what kind of a man that old
+Tartar was. The master said:</p>
+
+<p>"He is a big man! He used to be the first dzhigit: he
+killed a lot of Russians, and he was rich. He had three
+wives and eight sons. All of them lived in the same village.
+The Russians came, destroyed the village, and
+killed seven of his sons. One son was left alive, and he
+surrendered himself to the Russians. The old man went
+and surrendered himself, too, to the Russians. He stayed
+with them three months, found his son there, and killed
+him, and then he ran away. Since then he has stopped
+fighting. He has been to Mecca, to pray to God, and that
+is why he wears the turban. He who has been to Mecca
+is called a Hadji and puts on a turban. He has no use<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+for you fellows. He tells me to kill you; but I cannot
+kill you,&mdash;I have paid for you; and then, Iván, I like
+you. I not only have no intention of killing you, but I
+would not let you go back, if I had not given my word to
+you." He laughed as he said that, and added in Russian:
+"You, Iván, good, me, Abdul, good!"</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<p>Zhilín lived thus for a month. In the daytime he
+walked around the village and made things with his hands,
+and when night came, and all was quiet in the village, he
+began to dig in the shed. It was difficult to dig on account
+of the rocks, but he sawed the stones with the file,
+and made a hole through which he meant to crawl later.
+"First I must find out what direction to go in," he
+thought; "but the Tartars will not tell me anything."</p>
+
+<p>So he chose a time when his master was away; he
+went after dinner back of the village, up-hill, where
+he could see the place. But when his master went away,
+he told his little boy to keep an eye on Zhilín and to
+follow him everywhere. So the boy ran after Zhilín, and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go! Father said that you should not go there.
+I will call the people!"</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín began to persuade him.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not want to go far," he said; "I just want to
+walk up the mountain: I want to find an herb with which
+to cure you people. Come with me; I cannot run away
+with the stocks. To-morrow I will make you a bow and
+arrows."</p>
+
+<p>He persuaded the boy, and they went together. As
+he looked up the mountain, it looked near, but with the
+stocks it was hard to walk; he walked and walked, and
+climbed the mountain with difficulty. Zhilín sat down
+and began to look at the place. To the south of the shed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+there was a ravine, and there a herd of horses was grazing,
+and in a hollow could be seen another village. At that
+village began a steeper mountain, and beyond that mountain
+there was another mountain. Between the mountains
+could be seen a forest, and beyond it again the mountains,
+rising higher and higher. Highest of all, there were
+white mountains, capped with snow, just like sugar loaves.
+And one snow mountain stood with its cap above all the
+rest. To the east and the west there were just such
+mountains; here and there smoke rose from villages in
+the clefts.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he thought, "that is all their side."</p>
+
+<p>He began to look to the Russian side. At his feet was
+a brook and his village, and all around were little gardens.
+At the brook women were sitting,&mdash;they looked as small
+as dolls,&mdash;and washing the linen. Beyond the village
+and below it there was a mountain, and beyond that, two
+other mountains, covered with forests; between the two
+mountains could be seen an even spot, and on that plain,
+far, far away, it looked as though smoke were settling.
+Zhilín recalled where the sun used to rise and set when
+he was at home in the fortress. He looked down there,&mdash;sure
+enough, that was the valley where the Russian
+fortress ought to be. There, then, between those two
+mountains, he had to run.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was beginning to go down. The snow-capped
+mountains changed from white to violet; it grew dark in
+the black mountains; vapour arose from the clefts, and
+the valley, where our fortress no doubt was, gleamed in the
+sunset as though on fire. Zhilín began to look sharply,&mdash;something
+was quivering in the valley, like smoke rising
+from chimneys. He was sure now that it must be the
+Russian fortress.</p>
+
+<p>It grew late; he could hear the mullah call; the flock
+was being driven, and the cows lowed. The boy said to
+him, "Come!" but Zhilín did not feel like leaving.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They returned home. "Well," thought Zhilín, "now I
+know the place, and I must run." He wanted to run that
+same night. The nights were dark,&mdash;the moon was on
+the wane. Unfortunately the Tartars returned toward
+evening. At other times they returned driving cattle before
+them, and then they were jolly. But this time they
+did not drive home anything, but brought back a dead
+Tartar, a red-haired companion of theirs. They came
+back angry, and all gathered to bury him. Zhilín, too,
+went out to see. They wrapped the dead man in linen,
+without putting him in a coffin, and carried him under
+the plane-trees beyond the village, and placed him on the
+grass. The mullah came, and the old men gathered around
+him, their caps wrapped with towels, and took off their
+shoes and seated themselves in a row on their heels, in
+front of the dead man.</p>
+
+<p>At their head was the mullah, and then three old men
+in turbans, sitting in a row, and behind them other Tartars.
+They sat, and bent their heads, and kept silence. They
+were silent for quite awhile. Then the mullah raised
+his head, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Allah!" (That means "God.") He said that one
+word, and again they lowered their heads and kept silence
+for a long time; they sat without stirring. Again the
+mullah raised his head:</p>
+
+<p>"Allah!" and all repeated, "Allah!" and again they
+were silent. The dead man lay on the grass, and did
+not stir, and they sat about him like the dead. Not one
+of them stirred. One could hear only the leaves on the
+plane-tree rustling in the breeze. Then the mullah said
+a prayer, and all got up, lifted the dead body, and carried
+it away. They took it to a grave,&mdash;not a simple grave,
+but dug under like a cave. They took the dead man under
+his arms and by his legs, bent him over, let him down
+softly, pushed him under in a sitting posture, and fixed
+his arms on his body.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A Nogay dragged up a lot of green reeds; they bedded
+the grave with it, then quickly filled it with dirt, levelled
+it up, and put a stone up straight at the head of it. They
+tramped down the earth, and again sat down in a row
+near the grave. They were silent for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>"Allah, Allah, Allah!" They sighed and got up.</p>
+
+<p>A red-haired Tartar distributed money to the old men;
+then he got up, took a whip, struck himself three times on
+his forehead, and went home.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning Zhilín saw the red Tartar take a mare out
+of the village, and three Tartars followed him. They went
+outside the village; then the red-haired Tartar took off
+his coat, rolled up his sleeves,&mdash;he had immense arms,&mdash;and
+took out his dagger and whetted it on a steel. The
+Tartars jerked up the mare's head, and the red-haired man
+walked over to her, cut her throat, threw her down, and
+began to flay her,&mdash;to rip the skin open with his fists.
+Then came women and girls, and they began to wash the
+inside and the entrails. Then they chopped up the mare
+and dragged the flesh to the house. And the whole village
+gathered at the house of the red-haired Tartar to celebrate
+the dead man's wake.</p>
+
+<p>For three days did they eat the horse-flesh, drink buza,
+and remember the dead man. On the fourth day Zhilín
+saw them get ready to go somewhere for a dinner. They
+brought horses, dressed themselves up, and went away,&mdash;about
+ten men, and the red Tartar with them; Abdul was
+the only one who was left at home. The moon was just
+beginning to increase, and the nights were still dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," thought Zhilín, "to-night I must run," and he
+told Kostylín so. But Kostylín was timid.</p>
+
+<p>"How can we run? We do not know the road."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it."</p>
+
+<p>"But we cannot reach it in the night."</p>
+
+<p>"If we do not, we shall stay for the night in the woods.
+I have a lot of cakes with me. You certainly do not mean<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+to stay. It would be all right if they sent the money;
+but suppose they cannot get together so much. The Tartars
+are mean now, because the Russians have killed one
+of theirs. I understand they want to kill us now."</p>
+
+<p>Kostylín thought awhile:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let us go!"</p>
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+<p>Zhilín crept into the hole and dug it wider, so that
+Kostylín could get through; and then they sat still and
+waited for everything to quiet down in the village.</p>
+
+<p>When all grew quiet, Zhilín crawled through the hole
+and got out. He whispered to Kostylín to crawl out.
+Kostylín started to come out, but he caught a stone with
+his foot, and it made a noise. Now their master had a
+dappled watch-dog, and he was dreadfully mean; his name
+was Ulyashin. Zhilín had been feeding him before. When
+Ulyashin heard the voice, he began to bark and rushed
+forward, and with him other dogs. Zhilín gave a low
+whistle and threw a piece of cake to the dog, and the
+dog recognized him and wagged his tail and stopped
+barking.</p>
+
+<p>The master heard it, and he called out from the hut,
+"Hait, hait, Ulyashin!"</p>
+
+<p>But Zhilín was scratching Ulyashin behind his ears; so
+the dog was silent and rubbed against his legs and wagged
+his tail.</p>
+
+<p>They sat awhile around the corner. All was silent;
+nothing could be heard but the sheep coughing in the hut
+corner, and the water rippling down the pebbles. It was
+dark; the stars stood high in the heaven; the young moon
+shone red above the mountain, and its horns were turned
+upward. In the clefts the mist looked as white as milk.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín got up and said to his companion:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, my friend, let us start!"</p>
+
+<p>They started. They had made but a few steps, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+they heard the mullah sing out on the roof: "Allah besmillah!
+Ilrakhman!" That meant that the people were
+going to the mosque. They sat down again, hiding behind
+a wall. They sat for a long time, waiting for the people
+to pass by. Again everything was quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, with God's aid!" They made the sign of the
+cross, and started. They crossed the yard and went down-hill
+to the brook; they crossed the brook and walked
+down the ravine. The mist was dense and low on the
+ground, and overhead the stars were, oh, so visible. Zhilín
+saw by the stars in what direction they had to go. In
+the mist it felt fresh, and it was easy to walk, only the
+boots were awkward, they had worn down so much. Zhilín
+took off his boots and threw them away, and marched on
+barefoot. He leaped from stone to stone, and kept watching
+the stars. Kostylín began to fall behind.</p>
+
+<p>"Walk slower," he said. "The accursed boots,&mdash;they
+have chafed my feet."</p>
+
+<p>"Take them off! You will find it easier without
+them."</p>
+
+<p>Kostylín walked barefoot after that; but it was only
+worse: he cut his feet on the rocks, and kept falling behind.
+Zhilín said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"If you bruise your feet, they will heal up; but if they
+catch you; they will kill you,&mdash;so it will be worse."</p>
+
+<p>Kostylín said nothing, but he groaned as he walked.
+They walked for a long time through a ravine. Suddenly
+they heard dogs barking. Zhilín stopped and looked
+around; he groped with his hands and climbed a hill.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," he said, "we have made a mistake,&mdash;we have
+borne too much to the right. Here is a village,&mdash;I saw
+it from the mountain; we must go back and to the left,
+and up the mountain. There must be a forest here."</p>
+
+<p>But Kostylín said:</p>
+
+<p>"Wait at least awhile! Let me rest: my feet are all
+blood-stained."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, friend, they will heal up! Jump more
+lightly,&mdash;like this!"</p>
+
+<p>And Zhilín ran back, and to the left, up the mountain
+into the forest. Kostylín kept falling behind and groaning.
+Zhilín hushed him, and walked on.</p>
+
+<p>They got up the mountain, and there, indeed, was a
+forest. They went into the forest, and tore all the clothes
+they had against the thorns. They struck a path in the
+forest, and followed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!" Hoofs were heard tramping on the path.
+They stopped to listen. It was the sound of a horse's
+hoofs. They started, and again it began to thud. They
+stopped, and it, too, stopped. Zhilín crawled up to it, and
+saw something standing in the light on the road. It was
+not exactly a horse, and again it was like a horse with
+something strange above it, and certainly not a man. He
+heard it snort. "What in the world is it?" Zhilín gave
+a light whistle, and it bolted away from the path, so that
+he could hear it crash through the woods: the branches
+broke off, as though a storm went through them.</p>
+
+<p>Kostylín fell down in fright. But Zhilín laughed and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"That is a stag. Do you hear him break the branches
+with his horns? We are afraid of him, and he is afraid
+of us."</p>
+
+<p>They walked on. The Pleiades were beginning to settle,&mdash;it
+was not far from morning. They did not know
+whether they were going right, or not. Zhilín thought
+that that was the path over which they had taken him,
+and that he was about ten versts from his own people;
+still there were no certain signs, and, besides, in the night
+nothing could be made out. They came out on a clearing.
+Kostylín sat down, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do as you please, but I will not go any farther! My
+feet refuse to move."</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín begged him to go on.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, "I cannot walk on."</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín got angry, spit out in disgust, and scolded him.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I will go by myself,&mdash;good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>Kostylín got up and walked on. They walked about
+four versts. The mist grew denser in the forest, and nothing
+could be seen in front of them, and the stars were
+quite dim.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly they heard a horse tramping in front of them.
+They could hear the horse catch with its hoofs in the
+stones. Zhilín lay down on his belly, and put his ear to
+the ground to listen.</p>
+
+<p>"So it is, a rider is coming this way!"</p>
+
+<p>They ran off the road, sat down in the bushes, and
+waited. Zhilín crept up to the road, and saw a Tartar on
+horseback, driving a cow before him, and mumbling something
+to himself. The Tartar passed by them. Zhilín
+went back to Kostylín.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, with God's help, he is gone. Get up, and let
+us go!"</p>
+
+<p>Kostylín tried to get up, but fell down.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot, upon my word, I cannot. I have no
+strength."</p>
+
+<p>The heavy, puffed-up man was in a perspiration, and as
+the cold mist in the forest went through him and his feet
+were all torn, he went all to pieces. Zhilín tried to get him
+up, but Kostylín cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it hurts!"</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín was frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't shout so! You know that the Tartar is not far
+off,&mdash;he will hear you." But he thought: "He is, indeed,
+weak, so what shall I do with him? It will not do to
+abandon my companion."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "get up, get on my back, and I will
+carry you, if you cannot walk."</p>
+
+<p>He took Kostylín on his back, put his hands on Kostylín's
+legs, walked out on the road, and walked on.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Only be sure," he said, "and do not choke me with
+your hands, for Christ's sake. Hold on to my shoulders!"</p>
+
+<p>It was hard for Zhilín: his feet, too, were blood-stained,
+and he was worn out. He kept bending down, straightening
+up Kostylín, and throwing him up, so that he might
+sit higher, and dragged him along the road.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently the Tartar had heard Kostylín's shout. Zhilín
+heard some one riding from behind and calling in his language.
+Zhilín made for the brush. The Tartar pulled
+out his gun and fired; he screeched in his fashion, and
+rode back along the road.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Zhilín, "we are lost, my friend! That
+dog will collect the Tartars and they will start after us.
+If we cannot make another three versts, we are lost."
+But he thought about Kostylín: "The devil has tempted
+me to take this log along. If I had been alone, I should
+have escaped long ago."</p>
+
+<p>Kostylín said:</p>
+
+<p>"Go yourself! Why should you perish for my sake?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I will not go,&mdash;it will not do to leave a comrade."</p>
+
+<p>He took him once more on his shoulders, and held on
+to him. Thus they walked another verst. The woods
+extended everywhere, and no end was to be seen. The
+mist was beginning to lift, and rose in the air like little
+clouds, and the stars could not be seen. Zhilín was worn
+out.</p>
+
+<p>They came to a little spring by the road; it was lined
+with stones. Zhilín stopped and put down Kostylín.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me rest," he said, "and get a drink! We will eat
+our cakes. It cannot be far now."</p>
+
+<p>He had just got down to drink, when he heard the
+tramping of horses behind them. Again they rushed to
+the right, into the bushes, down an incline, and lay down.</p>
+
+<p>They could hear Tartar voices. The Tartars stopped
+at the very spot where they had left the road. They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+talked awhile, then they made a sound, as though sicking
+dogs. Something crashed through the bushes, and a
+strange dog made straight for them. It stopped and
+began to bark.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Tartars came down,&mdash;they, too, were strangers.
+They took them, bound them, put them on their
+horses, and carried them off.</p>
+
+<p>They travelled about three versts, when they were met
+by Abdul, the prisoners' master, and two more Tartars.
+They talked with each other, and the prisoners were put
+on the other horses and taken back to the village.</p>
+
+<p>Abdul no longer laughed, and did not speak one word
+with them.</p>
+
+<p>They were brought to the village at daybreak, and were
+placed in the street. The children ran up and beat them
+with stones and sticks, and screamed.</p>
+
+<p>The Tartars gathered in a circle, and the old man from
+down-hill came, too. They talked together. Zhilín saw
+that they were sitting in judgment on them, discussing
+what to do with them. Some said that they ought to be
+sent farther into the mountains, but the old man said that
+they should be killed. Abdul disputed with them and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"I have paid money for them, and I will get a ransom
+for them."</p>
+
+<p>But the old man said:</p>
+
+<p>"They will not pay us anything; they will only give
+us trouble. It is a sin to feed Russians. Kill them, and
+that will be the end of it."</p>
+
+<p>They all went their way. The master walked over to
+Zhilín and said:</p>
+
+<p>"If the ransom does not come in two weeks, I will
+beat you to death. And if you try to run again I will kill
+you like a dog. Write a letter, and write it well!"</p>
+
+<p>Paper was brought to them, and they wrote the letters.
+The stocks were put on them, and they were taken back<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+of the mosque. There was a ditch there, about twelve
+feet in depth,&mdash;and into this ditch they were let down.</p>
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+<p>They now led a very hard life. The stocks were not
+taken off, and they were not let out into the wide world.
+Unbaked dough was thrown down to them, as to dogs, and
+water was let down to them in a pitcher. There was a
+stench in the ditch, and it was close and damp. Kostylín
+grew very ill, and swelled, and had a breaking out on his
+whole body; and he kept groaning all the time, or he
+slept. Zhilín was discouraged: he saw that the situation
+was desperate. He did not know how to get out of it.</p>
+
+<p>He began to dig, but there was no place to throw the
+dirt in; the master saw it, and threatened to kill him.</p>
+
+<p>One day he was squatting in the ditch, and thinking of
+the free world, and he felt pretty bad. Suddenly a cake
+fell down on his knees, and a second, and some cherries.
+He looked up,&mdash;it was Dina. She looked at him,
+laughed, and ran away. Zhilín thought: "Maybe Dina
+will help me."</p>
+
+<p>He cleaned up a place in the ditch, scraped up some
+clay, and began to make dolls. He made men, horses,
+and dogs. He thought: "When Dina comes I will throw
+them to her."</p>
+
+<p>But on the next day Dina did not come. Zhilín heard
+the tramping of horses; somebody rode by, and the Tartars
+gathered at the mosque; they quarrelled and shouted,
+and talked about the Russians. And he heard the old
+man's voice. He could not make out exactly what it was,
+but he guessed that the Russians had come close to the village,
+and that the Tartars were afraid that they might
+come to the village, and they did not know what to do
+with the prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>They talked awhile and went away. Suddenly he heard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+something rustle above him. He looked up; Dina was
+squatting down, and her knees towered above her head;
+she leaned over, and her necklace hung down and dangled
+over the ditch. Her little eyes glistened like stars. She
+took two cheese-cakes out of her sleeve and threw them
+down to him. Zhilín said to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Why have you not been here for so long? I have
+made you some toys. Here they are!"</p>
+
+<p>He began to throw one after the other to her, but she
+shook her head, and did not look at them.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not want them," she said. She sat awhile in
+silence, and said; "Iván, they want to kill you!" She
+pointed with her hand to her neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Who wants to kill me?"</p>
+
+<p>"My father,&mdash;the old men tell him to. I am sorry
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>So Zhilín said:</p>
+
+<p>"If you pity me, bring me a long stick!"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, to say that she could not. He
+folded his hands, and began to beg her:</p>
+
+<p>"Dina, if you please! Dear Dina, bring it to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot," she said. "The people are at home, and
+they would see me."</p>
+
+<p>And she went away.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín was sitting there in the evening, and thinking
+what would happen. He kept looking up. The stars
+could be seen, and the moon was not yet up. The mullah
+called, and all grew quiet. Zhilín was beginning to fall
+asleep; he thought the girl would be afraid.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly some clay fell on his head. He looked up
+and saw a long pole coming down at the end of the ditch.
+It tumbled, and descended, and came down into the
+ditch. Zhilín was happy; he took hold of it and let it
+down,&mdash;it was a stout pole. He had seen it before on his
+master's roof.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up: the stars were shining high in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+heavens, and over the very ditch Dina's eyes glistened in
+the darkness. She bent her face over the edge of the
+ditch, and whispered: "Iván, Iván!" and waved her
+hands in front of her face, as much as to say: "Speak
+softly!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" asked Zhilín.</p>
+
+<p>"They are all gone. There are two only at the house."</p>
+
+<p>So Zhilín said:</p>
+
+<p>"Kostylín, come, let us try for the last time; I will
+give you a lift."</p>
+
+<p>Kostylín would not even listen.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, "I shall never get away from here.
+Where should I go, since I have no strength to turn
+around?"</p>
+
+<p>"If so, good-bye! Do not think ill of me!"</p>
+
+<p>He kissed Kostylín.</p>
+
+<p>He took hold of the pole, told Dina to hold on to it,
+and climbed up. Two or three times he slipped down:
+the stocks were in his way. Kostylín held him up, and
+he managed to get on. Dina pulled him by the shirt
+with all her might, and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín took the pole, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Take it to where you found it, for if they see it, they
+will beat you."</p>
+
+<p>She dragged the pole away, and Zhilín went down-hill.
+He crawled down an incline, took a sharp stone, and tried
+to break the lock of the stocks. But the lock was a
+strong one, and he could not break it. He heard some
+one running down the hill, leaping lightly. He thought
+it was Dina. Dina ran up, took a stone, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me do it!"</p>
+
+<p>She knelt down and tried to break it; but her arms
+were as thin as rods,&mdash;there was no strength in them.
+She threw away the stone, and began to weep. Zhilín
+again worked on the lock, and Dina squatted near him,
+and held on to his shoulder. Zhilín looked around; on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+the left, beyond the mountain, he saw a red glow,&mdash;the
+moon was rising.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he thought, "before the moon is up I must
+cross the ravine and get to the forest."</p>
+
+<p>He got up, threw away the stone, and, though in the
+stocks, started to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Dina dear! I will remember you all my
+life."</p>
+
+<p>Dina took hold of him; she groped all over him, trying
+to find a place to put the cakes. He took them from her.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," he said, "you are a clever girl. Who
+will make dolls for you without me?" And he patted
+her on the head.</p>
+
+<p>Dina began to cry. She covered her eyes with her
+hands, and ran up-hill like a kid. In the darkness he
+could hear the ornaments in the braid striking against
+her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín made the sign of the cross, took the lock of his
+fetters in his hand, that it might not clank, and started
+down the road, dragging his feet along, and looking at the
+glow, where the moon was rising. He recognized the
+road. By the straight road it would be about eight
+versts. If he only could get to the woods before the
+moon was entirely out! He crossed a brook,&mdash;and it
+was getting light beyond the mountain. He walked
+through the ravine; he walked and looked, but the moon
+was not yet to be seen. It was getting brighter, and on
+one side of the ravine everything could be seen more and
+more clearly. The shadow was creeping down the mountain,
+up toward him.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín walked and kept in the shade. He hurried on,
+but the moon was coming out faster still; the tops of the
+trees on the right side were now in the light. As he
+came up to the woods, the moon came out entirely from
+behind the mountains, and it grew bright and white as in
+the daytime. All the leaves could be seen on the trees.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+The mountains were calm and bright; it was as though
+everything were dead. All that could be heard was the
+rippling of a brook below.</p>
+
+<p>He reached the forest,&mdash;he came across no men.
+Zhilín found a dark spot in the woods and sat down to
+rest himself.</p>
+
+<p>He rested, and ate a cake. He found a stone, and
+began once more to break down the lock. He bruised
+his hands, but did not break the lock. He got up, and
+walked on. He marched about a verst, but his strength
+gave out,&mdash;his feet hurt him so. He would make ten
+steps and then stop. "What is to be done?" he thought.
+"I will drag myself along until my strength gives out
+entirely. If I sit down, I shall not be able to get up. I
+cannot reach the fortress, so, when day breaks, I will lie
+down in the forest for the day, and at night I will move
+on."</p>
+
+<p>He walked the whole night. He came across two Tartars
+only, but he heard them from afar, and so hid behind
+a tree.</p>
+
+<p>The moon was beginning to pale, and Zhilín had not
+yet reached the edge of the forest.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he thought, "I will take another thirty steps,
+after which I will turn into the forest, where I will sit
+down."</p>
+
+<p>He took the thirty steps, and there he saw that the
+forest came to an end. He went to the edge of it, and
+there it was quite light. Before him lay the steppe and
+the fortress, as in the palm of the hand, and to the left,
+close by at the foot of the mountain, fires were burning
+and going out, and the smoke was spreading, and men
+were near the camp-fires.</p>
+
+<p>He took a sharp look at them: the guns were glistening,&mdash;those
+were Cossacks and soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín was happy. He collected his last strength and
+walked down-hill. And he thought: "God forfend that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+a Tartar rider should see me in the open! Though it is
+not far off, I should not get away."</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had he thought so, when, behold, on a
+mound stood three Tartars, not more than 150 fathoms
+away. They saw him, and darted toward him. His
+heart just sank in him. He waved his arms and shouted
+as loud as he could:</p>
+
+<p>"Brothers! Help, brothers!"</p>
+
+<p>Our men heard him, and away flew the mounted Cossacks.
+They started toward him, to cut off the Tartars.</p>
+
+<p>The Cossacks had far to go, but the Tartars were near.
+And Zhilín collected his last strength, took the stocks in
+his hand, and ran toward the Cossacks. He was beside
+himself, and he made the sign of the cross, and shouted:</p>
+
+<p>"Brothers! Brothers! Brothers!"</p>
+
+<p>There were about fifteen Cossacks.</p>
+
+<p>The Tartars were frightened, and they stopped before
+they reached him. And Zhilín ran up to the Cossacks.</p>
+
+<p>The Cossacks surrounded him, and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you? Where do you come from?"</p>
+
+<p>But Zhilín was beside himself, and he wept, and muttered:</p>
+
+<p>"Brothers! Brothers!"</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers ran out, and surrounded Zhilín: one gave
+him bread, another gruel, a third vódka; one covered him
+with a cloak, another broke off the lock.</p>
+
+<p>The officers heard of it, and took him to the fortress.
+The soldiers were happy, and his companions came to see
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Zhilín told them what had happened, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"So I have been home, and got married! No, evidently
+that is not my fate."</p>
+
+<p>And he remained in the service in the Caucasus. Not
+till a month later was Kostylín ransomed for five thousand.
+He was brought back more dead than alive.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="ERMAK" id="ERMAK"></a>ERMÁK</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the reign of Iván Vasílevich the Terrible there were
+the rich merchants, the Stroganóvs, and they lived in
+Perm, on the river Káma. They heard that along the
+river Káma, in a circle of 140 versts, there was good
+land: the soil had not been ploughed for centuries, the
+forests had not been cut down for centuries. In the
+forests were many wild animals, and along the river fish
+lakes, and no one was living on that land, but only Tartars
+passed through it.</p>
+
+<p>The Stroganóvs wrote a letter to the Tsar:</p>
+
+<p>"Give us this land, and we will ourselves build towns
+there and gather people and settle them there, and will
+not allow the Tartars to pass through it."</p>
+
+<p>The Tsar agreed to it, and gave them the land. The
+Stroganóvs sent out clerks to gather people. And there
+came to them a large number of roving people. Whoever
+came received from the Stroganóvs land, forest, and
+cattle, and no tenant pay was collected. All they had to
+do was to live and, in case of need, to go out in mass to
+fight the Tartars. Thus the land was settled by the
+Russian people.</p>
+
+<p>About twenty years passed. The Stroganóvs grew richer
+yet, and that land, 140 versts around, was not enough for
+them. They wanted to have more land still. About
+one hundred versts from them were high mountains, the
+Ural Mountains, and beyond them, they had heard, there
+was good land, and to that land there was no end. This
+land was ruled by a small Siberian prince, Kuchum by
+name. In former days Kuchum had sworn allegiance to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+the Russian Tsar, but later he began to rebel, and he
+threatened to destroy Stroganóv's towns.</p>
+
+<p>So the Stroganóvs wrote to the Tsar:</p>
+
+<p>"You have given us land, and we have conquered it
+and turned it over to you; now the thievish Tsarling
+Kuchum is rebelling against you, and wants to take that
+land away and ruin us. Command us to take possession
+of the land beyond the Ural Mountains; we will conquer
+Kuchum, and will bring all his land under your rule."</p>
+
+<p>The Tsar assented, and wrote back:</p>
+
+<p>"If you have sufficient force, take the land away from
+Kuchum. Only do not entice many people away from
+Russia."</p>
+
+<p>When the Stroganóvs got that letter from the Tsar,
+they sent out clerks to collect more people. And they
+ordered them to persuade mostly the Cossacks from the
+Vólga and the Don to come. At that time many Cossacks
+were roving along the Vólga and the Don. They
+used to gather in bands of two, three, or six hundred men,
+and to select an atamán, and to row down in barges, to
+capture ships and rob them, and for the winter they
+stayed in little towns on the shore.</p>
+
+<p>The clerks arrived at the Vólga, and there they asked
+who the famous Cossacks of that region were. They
+were told:</p>
+
+<p>"There are many Cossacks. It is impossible to live
+for them. There is Míshka Cherkáshenin, and Sarý-Azmán;
+but there is no fiercer one than Ermák Timoféich,
+the atamán. He has a thousand men, and not only
+the merchants and the people are afraid of him, but even
+the Tsarian army does not dare to cope with him."</p>
+
+<p>And the clerks went to Ermák the atamán, and began
+to persuade him to go to the Stroganóvs. Ermák received
+the clerks, listened to their speeches, and promised to
+come with his people about the time of the Assumption
+of the Blessed Virgin.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Near the holiday of the Assumption there came to the
+Stroganóvs six hundred Cossacks, with their atamán,
+Ermák Timoféich. At first Stroganóv sent them against
+the neighbouring Tartars. The Cossacks annihilated them.
+Then, when nothing was doing, the Cossacks roved in the
+neighbourhood and robbed.</p>
+
+<p>So Stroganóv sent for Ermák, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I will not keep you any longer, if you are going to be
+so wanton."</p>
+
+<p>But Ermák said:</p>
+
+<p>"I do not like it myself, but I cannot control my
+people, they are spoiled. Give us work to do!"</p>
+
+<p>So Stroganóv said:</p>
+
+<p>"Go beyond the Ural and fight Kuchum, and take
+possession of his land. The Tsar will reward you for it."</p>
+
+<p>And he showed the Tsar's letter to Ermák. Ermák
+rejoiced, and collected his men, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You are shaming me before my master,&mdash;you are
+robbing without reason. If you do not stop, he will drive
+you away, and where will you go then? At the Vólga
+there is a large Tsarian army; we shall be caught, and
+then we shall suffer for our old misdeeds. But if you
+feel lonesome, here is work for you."</p>
+
+<p>And he showed them the Tsar's letter, in which it said
+that Stroganóv had been permitted to conquer land beyond
+the Ural. The Cossacks had a consultation, and agreed
+to go. Ermák went to Stroganóv, and they began to
+deliberate how they had best go.</p>
+
+<p>They discussed how many barges they needed, how
+much grain, cattle, guns, powder, lead, how many captive
+Tartar interpreters, and how many foreigners as masters
+of gunnery.</p>
+
+<p>Stroganóv thought:</p>
+
+<p>"Though it may cost me much, I must give them
+everything or else they will stay here and will ruin
+me."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Stroganóv agreed to everything, gathered what was
+needed, and fitted out Ermák and the Cossacks.</p>
+
+<p>On the 1st of September the Cossacks rowed with
+Ermák up the river Chúsovaya on thirty-two barges, with
+twelve men in each. For four days they rowed up the
+river, and then they turned into Serébryanaya River.
+Beyond that point it was impossible to navigate. They
+asked the guides, and learned that from there they had
+to cross the mountains and walk overland about two
+hundred versts, and then the rivers would begin again.
+The Cossacks stopped, built a town, and unloaded all their
+equipment; they abandoned the boats, made carts, put
+everything upon them, and started overland, across the
+mountains. All those places were covered with forest,
+and nobody was living there. They marched for about
+ten days, and struck the river Zharóvnya. Here they
+stopped again, and made themselves boats. They loaded
+them, and rowed down the river. They rowed five days,
+and then came more cheerful places,&mdash;meadows, forests,
+lakes. There was a plenty of fish and of animals, and
+animals that had not been scared by hunters. They
+rowed another day, and sailed into the river Túra. Along
+the Túra they came on Tartar people and towns.</p>
+
+<p>Ermák sent some Cossacks to take a look at a town,
+to see what it was like, and whether there was any considerable
+force in it. Twenty Cossacks went there, and
+they frightened all the Tartars, and seized the whole
+town, and captured all the cattle. Some of the Tartars
+they killed, and others they brought back alive.</p>
+
+<p>Ermák asked the Tartars through his interpreters what
+kind of people they were, and under whose rule they were
+living. The Tartars said that they were in the Siberian
+kingdom, and that their king was Kuchum.</p>
+
+<p>Ermák let the Tartars go, but three of the more intelligent
+he took with him, to show him the road.</p>
+
+<p>They rowed on. The farther they rowed, the larger<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+did the river grow; and the farther they went, the better
+did the places become.</p>
+
+<p>They met more and more people; only they were not
+strong men. And all the towns that were near the river
+the Cossacks conquered.</p>
+
+<p>In one town they captured a large number of Tartars
+and one old man who was held in respect. They asked
+him what kind of a man he was. He said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am Tauzik, a servant of my king, Kuchum, who
+has made me a commander in this town."</p>
+
+<p>Ermák asked Tauzik about his king; how far his city
+of Sibír was; whether Kuchum had a large force; whether
+he had much wealth. Tauzik told him everything. He
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Kuchum is the first king in the world. His city of
+Sibír is the largest city in the world. In that city," he
+said, "there are as many people and as many cattle as
+there are stars in the heaven. There is no counting his
+force, and not all the kings of the world can conquer
+him."</p>
+
+<p>But Ermák said:</p>
+
+<p>"We Russians have come here to conquer your king
+and to take his city, and to put it into the hands of the
+Russian Tsar. We have a large force. Those who have
+come with me are only the advance-guard; those that
+are rowing down behind us in barges are numberless, and
+all of them have guns. Our guns pierce trees, not like
+your bows and arrows. Just look!"</p>
+
+<p>And Ermák fired at a tree, and pierced it, and the
+Cossacks began to shoot on all sides. Tauzik in fright
+fell on his knees. Ermák said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Go to your King Kuchum and tell him what you
+have seen! Let him surrender, and if he does not, we
+will destroy him."</p>
+
+<p>And he dismissed Tauzik.</p>
+
+<p>The Cossacks rowed on. They sailed into the river<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+Toból, and were getting nearer to the city of Sibír. They
+sailed up to the small river Babasán, and there they saw
+a small town on its bank, and around the town a large
+number of Tartars.</p>
+
+<p>They sent an interpreter to the Tartars, to find out
+what kind of people they were. The interpreter returned,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"That is Kuchum's army that has gathered there. The
+leader of that army is Kuchum's own son-in-law, Mametkul.
+He has commanded me to tell you that you must
+return, or else he will destroy you."</p>
+
+<p>Ermák gathered his Cossacks, landed on the bank, and
+began to shoot at the Tartars. The moment the Tartars
+heard the shooting, they began to run. The Cossacks ran
+after them, and killed some, and captured others. Mametkul
+barely escaped.</p>
+
+<p>The Cossacks sailed on. They sailed into a broad, rapid
+river, the Irtýsh. Down Irtýsh River they sailed for a
+day, and came to a fair town, and there they stopped. The
+Cossacks went to the town. As they were coming near,
+the Tartars began to shoot their arrows, and they wounded
+three Cossacks. Then Ermák sent an interpreter to
+tell the Tartars that they must surrender the town, or
+else they would all be killed. The interpreter went, and
+he returned, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Here lives Kuchum's servant, Atik Murza Kachara.
+He has a large force, and he says that he will not surrender
+the town."</p>
+
+<p>Ermák gathered the Cossacks, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Boys, if we do not take this town, the Tartars will rejoice,
+and will not let us pass on. The more we strike
+them with terror, the easier will it be. Land all, and
+attack them all at once!"</p>
+
+<p>So they did. There were many Tartars there, and they
+were brave.</p>
+
+<p>When the Cossacks rushed at them, the Tartars began<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+to shoot their arrows. They covered the Cossacks with
+them. Some were killed, and some wounded.</p>
+
+<p>The Cossacks became enraged, and when they got to
+the Tartars, they killed all they could lay their hands on.</p>
+
+<p>In this town the Cossacks found much property,&mdash;cattle,
+rugs, furs, and honey. They buried the dead, rested
+themselves, took away much property, and sailed on. They
+did not sail far, when they saw on the shore, like a city,
+an endless number of troops, and the whole army surrounded
+by a ditch and the ditch protected by timber.
+The Cossacks stopped. They deliberated. Ermák gathered
+a circle about him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, boys, what shall we do?"</p>
+
+<p>The Cossacks were frightened. Some said that they
+ought to sail past, while others said that they ought to go
+back.</p>
+
+<p>And they looked gloomy and began to scold Ermák.
+They said:</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you bring us here? Already a few of ours
+have been killed, and many have been wounded; and all
+of us will perish here."</p>
+
+<p>They began to weep.</p>
+
+<p>But Ermák said to his sub-atamán, Iván Koltsó:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Ványa, what do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>And Koltsó said:</p>
+
+<p>"What do I think? If they do not kill us to-day, they
+will to-morrow; and if not to-morrow, we shall die anyway
+on the oven. In my opinion, we ought to go out on
+the shore and rush in a body against the Tartars. Maybe
+God will give us victory."</p>
+
+<p>Ermák said:</p>
+
+<p>"You are a brave man, Ványa! That is what must be
+done. Oh, you boys! You are not Cossacks, but old
+women. All you are good for is to catch sturgeon and
+frighten Tartar women. Can't you see for yourselves? If
+we turn back we shall be destroyed; and if we stay here,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+they will destroy us. How can we go back? After a
+little work, it will come easier. Listen, boys! My
+father had a strong mare. Down-hill she would pull
+and on an even place she would pull. But when it came
+to going up-hill, she became stubborn and turned back,
+thinking that it would be easier. But my father took a
+club and belaboured her with it. She twisted and tugged
+and broke the whole cart. My father unhitched her from
+the cart and gave her a terrible whacking. If she had
+pulled the cart, she would have suffered no torment. So
+it is with us, boys. There is only one thing left for us
+to do, and that is to make straight for the Tartars."</p>
+
+<p>The Cossacks laughed, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Timoféich, you are evidently more clever than we are.
+You have no business to ask us fools. Take us where
+you please. A man does not die twice, and one death
+cannot be escaped."</p>
+
+<p>And Ermák said:</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, boys! This is what we shall do. They have
+not yet seen us all. Let us divide into three parts. Those
+in the middle will march straight against them, and the
+other two divisions will surround them on the right and
+on the left. When the middle detachment begins to walk
+toward them, they will think that we are all there, and so
+they will leap forward. Then we will strike them from
+the sides. That's the way, boys! If we beat these, we
+shall not have to be afraid of anybody. We shall ourselves
+be kings."</p>
+
+<p>And so they did. When the middle detachment with
+Ermák advanced, the Tartars screamed and leaped forward;
+then they were attacked by Iván Koltsó on the right, and
+by Meshcheryákov the atamán on the left. The Tartars
+were frightened, and ran. The Cossacks killed a great
+many of them. After that nobody dared to oppose Ermák.
+And thus he entered the very city of Sibír. And there
+Ermák settled down as though he were a king.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then kinglets came to see Ermák, to bow to him. Tartars
+began to settle down in Sibír, and Kuchum and his
+son-in-law Mametkul were afraid to go straight at him, but
+kept going around in a circle, wondering how they might
+destroy him.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring, during high water, the Tartars came
+running to Ermák, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Mametkul is again going against you: he has gathered
+a large army, and is making a stand near the river Vagáy."</p>
+
+<p>Ermák made his way over rivers, swamps, brooks, and
+forests, stole up with his Cossacks, rushed against Mametkul,
+killed a large number of Tartars, and took Mametkul
+alive and brought him to Sibír. After that there were
+only a few unruly Tartars left, and Ermák went that
+summer against those that had not yet surrendered; and
+along the Irtýsh and the Ob Ermák conquered so much
+land that one could not march around it in two months.</p>
+
+<p>When Ermák had conquered all that land, he sent a
+messenger to the Stroganóvs, and a letter:</p>
+
+<p>"I have taken Kuchum's city," he said, "and have
+captured Mametkul, and have brought all the people here
+under my rule. Only I have lost many Cossacks. Send
+people to us that we may feel more cheerful. There is no
+end to the wealth in this country."</p>
+
+<p>He sent to them many costly furs,&mdash;fox, marten, and
+sable furs.</p>
+
+<p>Two years passed after that. Ermák was still holding
+Sibír, but no aid came from Russia, and few Russians
+were left with Ermák.</p>
+
+<p>One day the Tartar Karacha sent a messenger to
+Ermák, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"We have surrendered to you, but now the Nogays are
+oppressing us. Send your brave men to aid us! We
+shall together conquer the Nogays. And we swear to
+you that we shall not insult your brave men."</p>
+
+<p>Ermák believed their oath, and sent forty men under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+Iván Koltsó. When these forty men came there, the
+Tartars rushed against them and killed them, so there
+were still fewer Cossacks left.</p>
+
+<p>Another time some Bukhara merchants sent word to
+Ermák that they were on their way to the city of Sibír
+with goods, but that Kuchum had taken his stand with
+an army and would not let them pass through.</p>
+
+<p>Ermák took with him fifty men and went out to clear
+the road for the Bukhara merchants. He came to the
+Irtýsh River, but did not find the Bukharans. He remained
+there over night. It was a dark night, and it
+rained. The Cossacks had just lain down to sleep, when
+suddenly the Tartars rushed out and threw themselves on
+the sleepy men and began to strike them down. Ermák
+jumped up and began to fight. He was wounded in the
+hand. He ran toward the river. The Tartars after him.
+He threw himself into the river. That was the last time he was seen.
+His body was not recovered, and no one found out how
+he died.</p>
+
+<p>The following year came the Tsar's army, and the
+Tartars were pacified.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="NATURAL_SCIENCE_STORIES" id="NATURAL_SCIENCE_STORIES"></a>NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES<br />
+1869-1872</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="big center">NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="STORIES_FROM_PHYSICS" id="STORIES_FROM_PHYSICS"></a>STORIES FROM PHYSICS</h2>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_MAGNET" id="THE_MAGNET"></a>THE MAGNET</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p>In olden days there was a shepherd whose name was
+Magnes. Magnes lost a sheep. He went to the mountains
+to find it. He came to a place where there were
+barren rocks. He walked over these rocks, and felt that
+his boots were sticking to them. He touched them with
+his hand, but they were dry and did not stick to his hand.
+He started to walk again, and again his boots stuck to
+the rocks. He sat down, took off one of his boots, took it
+into his hand, and touched the rocks with it.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever he touched them with his skin, or with the
+sole of his boot, they did not stick; but when he touched
+them with the nails, they did stick.</p>
+
+<p>Magnes had a cane with an iron point.</p>
+
+<p>He touched a rock with the wood; it did not stick;
+he touched it with the iron end, and it stuck so that he
+could not pull it off.</p>
+
+<p>Magnes looked at the stone, and he saw that it looked
+like iron, and he took pieces of that stone home with him.
+Since then that rock has been known, and has been called
+Magnet.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>Magnet is found in the earth with iron ore. Where
+there is magnet in the ore, the iron is of the best quality.
+The magnet resembles iron.</p>
+
+<p>If you put a piece of iron on a magnet, the iron itself
+begins to attract other iron. And if you put a steel
+needle on a magnet, and hold it thus for awhile, the
+needle will become a magnet, and will attract iron. If
+two magnets are brought together at their ends, one side
+will turn away from the other, while the other sides will
+be attracted.</p>
+
+<p>If a magnetic rod is broken in two, each half will
+attract at one end, and will turn away at the other end.
+Cut it again, and the same will happen; cut it again, as
+often as you please, and still the same will happen: equal
+ends will turn away from each other, while opposite ends
+will be attracted, as though the magnet were pushing
+away at one end, and pulling in at the other. No matter
+how you may break it, it will be as though there were a
+bump at one end, and a saucer at the other. Whichever
+way you put them together,&mdash;a bump and a saucer will
+meet, but a bump and a bump, or a saucer and a saucer
+will not.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>If you magnetize a needle (holding it for awhile over
+a magnet), and attach it in the middle to a pivot in such
+a way that it can move freely around, and let it loose, it
+will turn with one end toward midday (south), and with
+the other toward midnight (north).</p>
+
+<p>When the magnet was not known, people did not sail
+far out to sea. When they went out far into the sea, so
+that land was not to be seen, they could tell only by the
+stars and the sun where they had to sail. But when it
+was dark, and the sun or stars could not be seen, they did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+not know which way to sail. And a ship was borne by
+the winds and carried on rocks and wrecked.</p>
+
+<p>So long as the magnet was not known, they did not
+sail far from the shore; but when the magnet was discovered,
+they made a magnetic needle on a pivot, so that
+it should move around freely. By this needle they could
+tell in which direction to sail. With the magnetic needle
+they began to sail farther away from the shores, and since
+then they have discovered many new seas.</p>
+
+<p>On ships there is always a magnetic needle (compass),
+and there is a measuring-rope with knots at the stern of
+a ship. This rope is fixed in such a way that when it
+unrolls, they can tell how far the ship has travelled. And
+thus, in sailing in a boat, they always know in what spot
+it is, whether far from the shore, and in what direction it
+is sailing.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="MOISTURE" id="MOISTURE"></a>MOISTURE</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p>Why does a spider sometimes make a close cobweb,
+and sit in the very middle of its nest, and at other times
+leave its nest and start a new spider-web?</p>
+
+<p>The spider makes its cobweb according to the weather,
+both the present and the future weather. Looking at a
+spider, you can tell what kind of weather it is going to
+be: if it sits tightly in the middle of the cobweb and
+does not come out, it means that it is going to rain. If
+it leaves the nest and makes new cobwebs, it is going to
+clear off.</p>
+
+<p>How can the spider know in advance what weather it
+is going to be?</p>
+
+<p>The spider's senses are so fine that as soon as the moisture
+begins to gather in the air,&mdash;though we do not yet
+feel it, and for us the weather is clear,&mdash;for the spider it
+is already raining.</p>
+
+<p>Just as a naked man will feel the moisture, when a
+man in his clothes does not, so it is already raining for a
+spider, while for us it is only getting ready to rain.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>Why do the doors swell in the winter and close badly,
+while in the summer they shrink and close well?</p>
+
+<p>Because in the fall and winter the wood is saturated
+with water, like a sponge, and spreads out, while in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+summer the water comes out as a vapour, and the wood
+shrinks.</p>
+
+<p>Why does soft wood, like aspen, swell more, and oak
+less?</p>
+
+<p>Because in the hard wood, in the oak, the empty places
+are smaller, and the water cannot gather there, while in
+the soft wood in the aspen, there are larger empty places,
+and the water can gather there. In rotten wood these
+empty places are still larger, and so rotten wood swells
+most and shrinks most.</p>
+
+<p>Beehives are made out of the softest and rottenest
+wood; the very best are made from rotten willow wood.
+Why? Because the air passes through the rotten wood,
+and in such a hive the bees feel better.</p>
+
+<p>Why do boards warp?</p>
+
+<p>Because they dry unevenly. If you place a damp
+board with one side toward the stove, the water will leave
+it, and the board will contract on that side and will pull
+the other side along; but the damp side cannot contract,
+because it is full of water, and so the whole board will be
+bent.</p>
+
+<p>To keep the floors from warping, the dry boards are
+cut into small pieces, and these pieces are boiled in water.
+When all the water is boiled out of them, they are glued
+together, and then they never warp (parquetry).</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DIFFERENT_CONNECTION_OF_PARTICLES" id="THE_DIFFERENT_CONNECTION_OF_PARTICLES"></a>THE DIFFERENT CONNECTION OF PARTICLES</h2>
+
+
+<p>Why are cart bolsters cut and wheel naves turned not
+from oak, but from birch? Bolsters and naves have to
+be strong, and oak is not more expensive than birch.</p>
+
+<p>Because oak splits lengthwise, and birch does not split,
+but ravels out.</p>
+
+<p>Because, though oak is more firmly connected than
+birch, it is connected in such a way that it splits lengthwise,
+while birch does not.</p>
+
+<p>Why are wheels and runners bent from oak and elm,
+and not from birch and linden?</p>
+
+<p>Because, when oak and elm are steamed in a bath,
+they bend and do not break, while birch and linden ravel
+in every direction.</p>
+
+<p>This is again for the same reason, that is, that the particles
+of the wood in the oak and in the birch are differently
+connected.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CRYSTALS" id="CRYSTALS"></a>CRYSTALS</h2>
+
+
+<p>If you pour salt into water and stir it, the salt will begin
+to melt and will entirely disappear; but if you pour
+more and still more salt into it, the salt will in the end
+not dissolve, and no matter how much you may stir after
+that, the salt will remain as a white powder. The water
+is saturated with the salt and cannot receive any more.
+But heat the water and it will receive more; and the
+salt which did not dissolve in the cold water, will melt in
+hot water. But pour in more salt, even the hot water
+will not receive it. And if you heat the water still more,
+the water will pass away in steam, and more of the salt
+will be left.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, for everything which dissolves in the water
+there is a measure after which the water will not dissolve
+any more. Of anything, more will be dissolved in hot
+than in cold water, and in each case, when it is saturated,
+it will not receive any more. The thing will be left, but
+the water will go away in steam.</p>
+
+<p>If the water is saturated with saltpetre powder, and
+then more saltpetre is added, and all is heated and is allowed
+to cool off without being stirred, the superfluous
+saltpetre will not settle as a powder at the bottom of the
+water, but will all gather in little six-edged columns, and
+will settle at the bottom and at the sides, one column
+near another. If the water is saturated with saltpetre
+powder and is put in a warm place, the water will go
+away in vapours, and the superfluous saltpetre will again
+gather in six-edged columns.</p>
+
+<p>If water is saturated with simple salt and heated, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+is allowed to pass away in vapour, the superfluous salt will
+not settle as powder, but as little cubes. If the water is
+saturated both with salt and saltpetre, the superfluous salt
+and saltpetre will not mix, but will settle each in its own
+way: the saltpetre in columns, and the salt in cubes.</p>
+
+<p>If water is saturated with lime, or with some other salt,
+and anything else, each thing will settle in its own way,
+when the water passes away in vapour: one in three-edged
+columns, another in eight-edged columns, a third in bricks,
+a fourth in little stars,&mdash;each in its own way. These
+figures are different in each solid thing. At times these
+forms are as large as a hand,&mdash;such stones are found in
+the ground. At times these forms are so small that they
+cannot be made out with the naked eye; but in each
+thing there is its own form.</p>
+
+<p>If, when the water is saturated with saltpetre, and little
+figures are forming in it, a corner be broken off one of
+these little figures with a needle, new pieces of saltpetre
+will come up and will fix the broken end as it ought to
+be,&mdash;into a six-edged column. The same will happen to
+salt and to any other thing. All the tiny particles turn
+around and attach themselves with the right side to each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>When ice freezes, the same takes place.</p>
+
+<p>A snowflake flies, and no figure is seen in it; but the
+moment it settles on anything dark and cold, on cloth, on
+fur,&mdash;you can make out its figure; you will see a little
+star, or a six-cornered little board. On the windows the
+steam does not freeze in any form whatever, but always
+as a star.</p>
+
+<p>What is ice? It is cold, solid water. When liquid
+water becomes solid, it forms itself into figures and the
+heat leaves it. The same takes place with saltpetre:
+when it changes from a liquid into solid figures, the heat
+leaves it. The same is true of salt, of melted cast-iron,
+when it changes from a liquid into a solid. Whenever a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+thing changes from a liquid into a solid, heat leaves it,
+and it forms figures. And when it changes from a solid
+to a liquid it takes up heat, and the cold leaves it, and its
+figures are dissolved.</p>
+
+<p>Bring in melted iron and let it cool off; bring in hot
+dough and let it cool off; bring in slacked lime and let it
+cool off,&mdash;and it will be warm. Bring in ice and let
+it melt,&mdash;and it will grow cold. Bring in saltpetre, salt,
+or any other thing that dissolves in the water, and melt it
+in the water, and it will grow cold. In order to freeze
+ice-cream, they put salt in the water.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="INJURIOUS_AIR" id="INJURIOUS_AIR"></a>INJURIOUS AIR</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the village of Nikólskoe, the people went on a holiday
+to mass. In the manor yard were left the cow-tender,
+the elder, and the groom. The cow-tender went to the
+well for water. The well was in the yard itself. She
+pulled out the bucket, but could not hold it. The bucket
+pulled away from her, struck the side of the well, and tore
+the rope. The cow-tender returned to the hut and said
+to the elder:</p>
+
+<p>"Aleksándr! Climb down into the well,&mdash;I have
+dropped the bucket into it."</p>
+
+<p>Aleksándr said:</p>
+
+<p>"You have dropped it, so climb down yourself."</p>
+
+<p>The cow-tender said that she did not mind fetching it
+herself, if he would let her down.</p>
+
+<p>The elder laughed at her, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let us go! You have an empty stomach now,
+so I shall be able to hold you up, for after dinner I could
+not do it."</p>
+
+<p>The elder tied a stick to a rope, and the woman sat
+astride it, took hold of the rope, and began to climb down
+into the well, while the elder turned the well-wheel. The
+well was about twenty feet deep, and there was less than
+three feet of water in it. The elder let her down slowly,
+and kept asking:</p>
+
+<p>"A little more?"</p>
+
+<p>And the cow-tender cried from below:</p>
+
+<p>"Just a little more!"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the elder felt the rope give way: he called
+the cow-tender, but she did not answer. The elder looked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+into the well, and saw the cow-tender lying with her head
+in the water, and with her feet in the air. The elder
+called for help, but there was nobody near by; only the
+groom came. The elder told him to hold the wheel, and
+he himself pulled out the rope, sat down on the stick,
+and went down into the well.</p>
+
+<p>The moment the groom let the elder down to the water,
+the same thing happened to the elder. He let go of the
+rope and fell head foremost upon the woman. The groom
+began to cry, and ran to church to call the people. Mass
+was over, and people were walking home. All the
+men and women rushed to the well. They gathered
+around it, and everybody holloaed, but nobody knew what
+to do. The young carpenter Iván made his way through
+the crowd, took hold of the rope, sat down on the stick,
+and told them to let him down. Iván tied himself to the
+rope with his belt. Two men let him down, and the rest
+looked into the well, to see what would become of Iván.
+Just as he was getting near the water, he dropped his
+hands from the rope, and would have fallen down head
+foremost, if the belt had not held him. All shouted,
+"Pull him out!" and Iván was pulled out.</p>
+
+<p>He hung like dead down from the belt, and his head
+was drooping and beating against the sides of the well.
+His face was livid. They took him off the rope and put
+him down on the ground. They thought that he was
+dead; but he suddenly drew a deep breath, began to
+rattle, and soon revived.</p>
+
+<p>Others wanted to climb down, but an old peasant said
+that they could not go down because there was bad air in
+the well, and that that bad air killed people. Then the
+peasants ran for hooks and began to pull out the elder
+and the woman. The elder's mother and wife cried at the
+well, and others tried to quiet them; in the meantime
+the peasants put down the hooks and tried to get out the
+dead people. Twice they got the elder half-way up by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+his clothes; but he was heavy, and his clothes tore and
+he fell down. Finally they stuck two hooks into him
+and pulled him out. Then they pulled out the cow-tender.
+Both were dead and did not revive.</p>
+
+<p>Then, when they examined the well, they found that
+indeed there was bad air down in the well.</p>
+
+<p>This air is so heavy that neither man nor any animal
+can live in it. They let down a cat into the well, and the
+moment she reached the place where the bad air was,
+she died. Not only can no animal live there, even no
+candle will burn in it. They let down a candle, and the
+moment it reached that spot, it went out.</p>
+
+<p>There are places underground where that air gathers,
+and when a person gets into one of those places, he dies
+at once. For this purpose they have lamps in the mines,
+and before a man goes down to such a place, they let
+down the lamp. If it goes out, no man can go there;
+then they let down fresh air until the lamp will burn.</p>
+
+<p>Near the city of Naples there is one such cave. There
+is always about three feet of bad air in it on the ground,
+but above it the air is good. A man can walk through
+the cave, and nothing will happen to him, but a dog will
+die the moment it enters.</p>
+
+<p>Where does this bad air come from? It is made of
+the same good air that we breathe. If you gather a lot
+of people in one place, and close all the doors and windows,
+so that no fresh air can get in, you will get the
+same kind of an air as in the well, and people will die.</p>
+
+<p>One hundred years ago, during a war, the Hindoos captured
+146 Englishmen and shut them up in a cave underground,
+where the air could not get in.</p>
+
+<p>After the captured Englishmen had been there a few
+hours they began to die, and toward the end of the night
+123 had died, and the rest came out more dead than
+alive, and ailing. At first the air had been good in the
+cave; but when the captives had inhaled all the good air,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+and no fresh air came in, it became bad, just like what
+was in the well, and they died.</p>
+
+<p>Why does the good air become bad when many people
+come together?</p>
+
+<p>Because, when people breathe, they take in good air
+and breathe out bad air.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="HOW_BALLOONS_ARE_MADE" id="HOW_BALLOONS_ARE_MADE"></a>HOW BALLOONS ARE MADE</h2>
+
+
+<p>If you take a blown-up bladder under water and let go
+of it, it will fly up to the surface of the water and will
+swim on it. Just so, when water is boiled in a pot, it
+becomes light at the bottom, over the fire,&mdash;it is turned
+into a gas; and when a little of that water-gas is collected
+it goes up as a bubble. First comes up one bubble, then
+another, and when the whole water is heated, the
+bubbles come up without stopping. Then the water
+boils.</p>
+
+<p>Just as the bubbles leap to the surface, full of vapoury
+water, because they are lighter than water, just so will a
+bladder which is filled with hydrogen, or with hot air,
+rise, because hot air is lighter than cold air, and hydrogen
+is lighter than any other gases.</p>
+
+<p>Balloons are made with hydrogen or with hot air.
+With hydrogen they are made as follows: They make a
+large bladder, attach it by ropes to posts, and fill it with
+hydrogen. The moment the ropes are untied, the balloon
+flies up in the air, and keeps flying up until it gets
+beyond the air which is heavier than hydrogen. When it
+gets up into the light air, it begins to swim in it like a
+bladder on the surface of the water.</p>
+
+<p>With hot air balloons are made like this: They make
+a large empty ball, with a neck below, like an upturned
+pitcher, and to the mouth of it they attach a bunch of
+cotton, and that cotton is soaked with spirits, and lighted.
+The fire heats the air in the balloon, and makes it lighter
+than the cold air, and the balloon is drawn upward, like
+the bladder in the water. And the balloon will fly up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+until it comes to the air which is lighter than the hot air
+in the balloon.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly one hundred years ago two Frenchmen, the
+brothers Montgolfier, invented the air balloons. They
+made a balloon of canvas and paper and filled it with hot
+air,&mdash;the balloon flew. Then they made another, a larger
+balloon, and tied under the balloon a sheep, a cock, and a
+duck, and let it off. The balloon rose and came down
+safely. Then they attached a little basket under the
+balloon, and a man seated himself in it. The balloon
+flew so high that it disappeared from view; it flew away,
+and came down safely. Then they thought of filling a
+balloon with hydrogen, and began to fly higher and faster.</p>
+
+<p>In order to fly with a balloon, they attach a basket
+under the balloon, and in this basket two, three, and even
+eight persons are seated, and they take with them food
+and drink.</p>
+
+<p>In order to rise and come down as one pleases, there is
+a valve in the balloon, and the man who is flying with it
+can pull a rope and open or close the valve. If the balloon
+rises too high, and the man who is flying wants to come
+down, he opens the valve,&mdash;the gas escapes, the balloon
+is compressed, and begins to come down. Then there are
+always bags with sand in the balloon. When a bag with
+sand is thrown out, the balloon gets lighter, and it flies
+up. If the one who is flying wants to get down, but sees
+that it is not what he wants below him,&mdash;either a river
+or a forest,&mdash;he throws out the sand from the bags, and
+the balloon grows lighter and rises again.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="GALVANISM" id="GALVANISM"></a>GALVANISM</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was once a learned Italian, Galvani. He had an
+electric machine, and he showed his students what electricity
+was. He rubbed the glass hard with silk with
+something smeared over it, and then he approached to the
+glass a brass knob which was attached to the glass, and a
+spark flew across from the glass to the brass knob. He
+explained to them that the same kind of a spark came
+from sealing-wax and amber. He showed them that
+feathers and bits of paper were now attracted, and now
+repelled, by electricity, and explained to them the reason
+of it. He did all kinds of experiments with electricity,
+and showed them all to his students.</p>
+
+<p>Once his wife grew ill. He called a doctor and asked
+him how to cure her. The doctor told him to prepare a
+frog soup for her. Galvani gave order to have edible
+frogs caught. They caught them for him, killed them,
+and left them on his table.</p>
+
+<p>Before the cook came after the frogs, Galvani kept on
+showing the electric machine to his students, and sending
+sparks through it.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he saw the dead frogs jerk their legs on the
+table. He watched them, and saw that every time when
+he sent a spark through the machine, the frogs jerked
+their legs. Galvani collected more frogs, and began to
+experiment with them. And every time he sent a spark
+through the machine, the dead frogs moved their legs as
+though they were alive.</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to Galvani that live frogs moved their legs
+because electricity passed through them. Galvani knew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+that there was electricity in the air; that it was more
+noticeable in the amber and glass, but that it was also in
+the air, and that thunder and lightning came from the
+electricity in the air.</p>
+
+<p>So he tried to discover whether the dead frogs would
+not move their legs from the electricity in the air. For
+this purpose he took the frogs, skinned them, chopped off
+their heads, and hung them on brass hooks on the roof,
+beneath an iron gutter. He thought that as soon as there
+should be a storm, and the air should be filled with electricity,
+it would pass by the brass rod to the frogs, and
+they would begin to move.</p>
+
+<p>But the storm passed several times, and the frogs did
+not move. Galvani was just taking them down, and as
+he did so a frog's leg touched the iron gutter, and it
+jerked. Galvani took down the frogs and made the following
+experiment: he tied to the brass hook an iron
+wire, and touched the leg with the wire, and it jerked.</p>
+
+<p>So Galvani decided that the animals lived because
+there was electricity in them, and that the electricity
+jumped from the brain to the flesh, and that made the
+animals move. Nobody had at that time tried this matter
+and they did not know any better, and so they all
+believed Galvani. But at that time another learned man,
+Volta, experimented in his own way, and proved to everybody
+that Galvani was mistaken. He tried touching the
+frog differently from what Galvani had done, not with a
+copper hook with an iron wire, but either with a copper
+hook and a copper wire, or an iron hook and an iron wire,&mdash;and
+the frogs did not move. The frogs moved only
+when Volta touched them with an iron wire that was
+connected with a copper wire.</p>
+
+<p>Volta thought that the electricity was not in the dead
+frog but in the iron and copper. He experimented and
+found it to be so: whenever he brought together the iron
+and the copper, there was electricity; and this electricity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+made the dead frogs jerk their legs. Volta tried to produce
+electricity differently from what it had been produced
+before. Before that they used to get electricity by
+rubbing glass or sealing-wax. But Volta got electricity
+by uniting iron and copper. He tried to connect iron and
+copper and other metals, and by the mere combination of
+metals, silver, platinum, zinc, lead, iron, he produced electric
+sparks.</p>
+
+<p>After Volta they tried to increase electricity by pouring
+all kinds of liquids&mdash;water and acids&mdash;between
+the metals. These liquids made the electricity more
+powerful, so that it was no longer necessary, as before, to
+rub in order to produce it; it is enough to put pieces of
+several metals in a bowl and fill it with a liquid, and
+there will be electricity in that bowl, and the sparks will
+come from the wires.</p>
+
+<p>When this kind of electricity was discovered, people
+began to apply it: they invented a way of gold and silver
+plating by means of electricity, and electric light,
+and a way to transmit signs from place to place over a
+long distance by means of electricity.</p>
+
+<p>For this purpose pieces of different metals are placed
+in jars, and liquids are poured into them. Electricity is
+collected in these jars, and is transferred by means of
+wires to the place where it is wanted, and from that
+place the wire is put into the ground. The electricity
+runs through the ground back to the jars, and rises from
+the earth by means of the other wire; thus the electricity
+keeps going around and around, as in a ring,&mdash;from the
+wire into the ground, and along the ground, and up the
+wire, and again through the earth. Electricity can travel
+in either direction, just as one wants to send it: it can
+first go along the wire and return through the earth, or
+first go through the earth, and then return through the
+wire. Above the wire, in the place where the signs are
+given, there is attached a magnetic hand, and that hand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+turns in one direction, when the electricity is allowed
+to pass through the wire and back through the earth,
+and in another direction, when the electricity is sent
+through the earth and back through the wire. Along this
+hand there are certain signs, and by means of these signs
+they write from one place to another on the telegraph.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_SUNS_HEAT" id="THE_SUNS_HEAT"></a>THE SUN'S HEAT</h2>
+
+
+<p>Go out in the winter on a calm, frosty day into the
+field, or into the woods, and look about you and listen:
+all around you is snow, the rivers are frozen, dry grass
+blades stick out of the grass, the trees are bare,&mdash;nothing
+is moving.</p>
+
+<p>Look in the summer: the rivers are running and rippling,
+in every puddle the frogs croak and plunge in; the
+birds fly from place to place, and whistle, and sing; the
+flies and the gnats whirl around and buzz; the trees and
+the grass grow and wave to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>Freeze a pot with water, and it will become as hard
+as a rock. Put the frozen pot on the fire: the ice
+will begin to break, and melt, and move; the water will
+begin to stir, and bubbles will rise; then, when it begins
+to boil, it whirls about and makes a noise. The same
+happens in the world from the heat. Without heat
+everything is dead; with the heat everything moves and
+lives. If there is little heat, there is little motion; with
+more heat, there is more motion; with much heat, there
+is much motion; with very much heat, there is also very
+much motion.</p>
+
+<p>Where does the heat in the world come from? The
+heat comes from the sun.</p>
+
+<p>In winter the sun travels low, to one side, and its
+beams do not fall straight upon the earth, and nothing
+moves. The sun begins to travel higher above our heads,
+and begins to shine straight down upon the earth, and
+everything is warmed up in the world, and begins to stir.</p>
+
+<p>The snow settles down; the ice begins to melt on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+rivers; the water comes down from the mountains; the
+vapours rise from the water to the clouds, and rain begins
+to fall. Who does it all?&mdash;The sun. The seeds swell, and
+let out rootlets; the rootlets take hold of the ground; old
+roots send up new shoots, and the trees and the grass
+begin to grow. Who has done that?&mdash;The sun.</p>
+
+<p>The bears and moles get up; the flies and bees awaken;
+the gnats are hatched, and the fish come out from their eggs,
+when it is warm. Who has done it all?&mdash;The sun.</p>
+
+<p>The air gets warmed up in one place, and rises, and in
+its place comes colder air,&mdash;and there is a wind. Who
+has done that?&mdash;The sun.</p>
+
+<p>The clouds rise and begin to gather and to scatter,&mdash;and
+the lightning flashes. Who has made that fire?&mdash;The
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>The grass, the grain, the fruits, the trees grow up;
+animals find their food, men eat their fill, and gather food
+and fuel for the winter; they build themselves houses,
+railways, cities. Who has prepared it all?&mdash;The sun.</p>
+
+<p>A man has built himself a house. What has he made
+it of? Of timbers. The timbers were cut out of trees,
+but the trees are made to grow by the sun.</p>
+
+<p>The stove is heated with wood. Who has made the
+wood to grow?&mdash;The sun.</p>
+
+<p>Man eats bread, or potatoes. Who has made them
+grow?&mdash;The sun. Man eats meat. Who has made the
+animals, the birds to grow?&mdash;The grass. But the grass
+is made to grow by the sun.</p>
+
+<p>A man builds himself a house from brick and lime.
+The bricks and the lime are burnt by wood. The wood
+has been prepared by the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Everything that men need, that is for their use,&mdash;all
+that is prepared by the sun, and on all that goes much
+sun's heat. The reason that men need bread is because
+the sun has produced it, and because there is much sun's
+heat in it. Bread warms him who eats it.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The reason that wood and logs are needed is because
+there is much heat in them. He who buys wood for the
+winter, buys sun's heat; and in the winter he burns
+the wood whenever he wants it, and lets the sun's heat
+into his room.</p>
+
+<p>When there is heat, there is motion. No matter what
+motion it may be,&mdash;it all comes from heat, either directly
+from the sun's heat, or from the heat which the sun has
+prepared in the coal, the wood, the bread, and the grass.</p>
+
+<p>Horses and oxen pull, men work,&mdash;who moves them?&mdash;Heat.
+Where does the heat come from?&mdash;From the
+food. And the food has been prepared by the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Watermills and windmills turn around and grind. Who
+moves them?&mdash;Wind and water. And who drives the
+wind?&mdash;Heat. And who drives the water?&mdash;Again heat.
+Heat raises the water in the shape of vapour, and without
+this the water would not be falling down. A machine
+works,&mdash;it is moved by steam. And who makes steam?&mdash;Wood.
+And in the wood is the sun's heat.</p>
+
+<p>Heat makes motion, and motion makes heat. And both
+heat and motion are from the sun.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="STORIES_FROM_ZOOLOGY" id="STORIES_FROM_ZOOLOGY"></a>STORIES FROM ZOOLOGY</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_OWL_AND_THE_HARE" id="THE_OWL_AND_THE_HARE"></a>THE OWL AND THE HARE</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was dusk. The owls began to fly through the forest
+to find some prey.</p>
+
+<p>A large hare leaped out on a clearing and began to
+smooth out his fur. An old owl looked at the hare, and
+seated himself on a branch; but a young owl said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you not catch the hare?"</p>
+
+<p>The old owl said:</p>
+
+<p>"He is too much for me: if I get caught in him, he will
+drag me into the woods."</p>
+
+<p>But the young owl said:</p>
+
+<p>"I will stick one claw into his body, and with the other
+I will clutch a tree."</p>
+
+<p>The young owl made for the hare, and stuck one claw
+into his back so that all his talons entered the flesh, and
+the other claw it got ready to push into the tree. The
+hare yanked the owl, while the owl held on to the tree,
+and thought, "He will not get away." The hare darted
+forward and tore the owl. One claw was left in the tree,
+and the other in the hare's back.</p>
+
+<p>The next year a hunter killed that hare, and wondered
+how the owl's talons had grown into the hare's back.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="HOW_THE_WOLVES_TEACH_THEIR_WHELPS" id="HOW_THE_WOLVES_TEACH_THEIR_WHELPS"></a>HOW THE WOLVES TEACH THEIR WHELPS</h2>
+
+
+<p>I was walking along the road, and heard a shout behind
+me. It was the shepherd boy who was shouting.
+He was running through the field, and pointing to something.</p>
+
+<p>I looked, and saw two wolves running through the
+field: one was full-grown, and the other a whelp. The
+whelp was carrying a dead lamb on his shoulders, and
+holding on to one of its legs with its teeth. The old wolf
+was running behind. When I saw the wolves, I ran after
+them with the shepherd, and we began to shout. In response
+to our cries came peasants with dogs.</p>
+
+<p>The moment the old wolf saw the dogs and the people,
+he ran up to the whelp, took the lamb away from him,
+threw it over his back, and both wolves ran as fast as they
+could, and disappeared from view.</p>
+
+<p>Then the boy told what had happened: the large wolf
+had leaped out from the ravine, had seized the lamb, killed
+it, and carried it off.</p>
+
+<p>The whelp ran up to him and grasped the lamb. The
+old wolf let the whelp carry the lamb, while he himself
+ran slowly beside him.</p>
+
+<p>Only when there was danger, did the old wolf stop his
+teaching and himself take the lamb.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="HARES_AND_WOLVES" id="HARES_AND_WOLVES"></a>HARES AND WOLVES</h2>
+
+
+<p>The hares feed at night on tree bark; the field hares
+eat the winter rye and the grass, and the threshing-floor
+hares eat the grain in the granary. Through the night
+the hares make a deep, visible track through the snow.
+The hares are hunted by men, and dogs, and wolves, and
+foxes, and ravens, and eagles. If a hare walked straight
+ahead, he would be easily caught in the morning by his
+tracks; but God has made a hare timid, and his timidity
+saves him.</p>
+
+<p>A hare goes at night fearlessly through the forests and
+fields, making straight tracks; but as soon as morning
+comes and his enemies wake up, and he hears the bark of
+dogs, or the squeak of sleighs, or the voice of peasants, or
+the crashing of a wolf through the forest, he begins to
+toss from side to side in his fear. He jumps forward,
+gets frightened at something, and runs back on his track.
+He hears something again, and he leaps at full speed to
+one side and runs away from his old track. Again something
+makes a noise, and the hare turns back, and again
+leaps to one side. When it is daylight, he lies down.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning the hunters try to follow the hare
+tracks, and they get mixed up on the double tracks and
+long leaps, and marvel at the hare's cunning. But the
+hare did not mean to be cunning. He is merely afraid of
+everything.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_SCENT" id="THE_SCENT"></a>THE SCENT</h2>
+
+
+<p>Man sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, smells
+with his nose, tastes with his mouth, and feels with his
+fingers. One man's eyes see better, another man's see
+worse. One hears from a distance, and another is deaf.
+One has keen senses and smells a thing from a distance,
+while another smells at a rotten egg and does not perceive
+it. One can tell a thing by the touch, and another cannot
+tell by touch what is wood and what paper. One will
+take a substance in his mouth and will find it sweet, while
+another will swallow it without making out whether it is
+bitter or sweet.</p>
+
+<p>Just so the different senses differ in strength in the
+animals. But with all the animals the sense of smell is
+stronger than in man.</p>
+
+<p>When a man wants to recognize a thing, he looks at it,
+listens to the noise that it makes, now and then smells at
+it, or tastes it; but, above all, a man has to feel a thing,
+to recognize it.</p>
+
+<p>But nearly all animals more than anything else need to
+smell a thing. A horse, a wolf, a dog, a cow, a bear do
+not know a thing until they smell it.</p>
+
+<p>When a horse is afraid of anything, it snorts,&mdash;it
+clears its nose so as to scent better, and does not stop being
+afraid until it has smelled the object well.</p>
+
+<p>A dog frequently follows its master's track, but when
+it sees him, it does not recognize him and begins to bark,
+until it smells him and finds out that that which has looked
+so terrible is its master.</p>
+
+<p>Oxen see other oxen stricken down, and hear them roar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+in the slaughter-house, but still do not understand what is
+going on. But an ox or a cow need only find a spot
+where there is ox blood, and smell it, and it will understand
+and will roar and strike with its feet, and cannot be
+driven off the spot.</p>
+
+<p>An old man's wife had fallen ill; he went himself to
+milk the cow. The cow snorted,&mdash;she discovered that it
+was not her mistress, and would not give him any milk.
+The mistress told her husband to put on her fur coat and
+kerchief,&mdash;and the cow gave milk; but the old man threw
+open the coat, and the cow scented him, and stopped
+giving milk.</p>
+
+<p>When hounds follow an animal's trail, they never run
+on the track itself, but to one side, about twenty paces
+from it. When an inexperienced hunter wants to show
+the dog the scent, and sticks its nose on the track, it will
+always jump to one side. The track itself smells so strong
+to the dog that it cannot make out on the track whether
+the animal has run ahead or backward. It runs to one
+side, and then only discovers in what direction the scent
+grows stronger, and so follows the animal. The dog does
+precisely what we do when somebody speaks very loud
+in our ears; we step a distance away, and only then do
+we make out what is being said. Or, if anything we are
+looking at is too close, we step back and only then make
+it out.</p>
+
+<p>Dogs recognize each other and make signs to each other
+by means of their scent.</p>
+
+<p>The scent is more delicate still in insects. A bee flies
+directly to the flower that it wants to reach; a worm
+crawls to its leaf; a bedbug, a flea, a mosquito scents a
+man a hundred thousand of its steps away.</p>
+
+<p>If the particles which separate from a substance and
+enter our noses are small, how small must be those
+particles that reach the organ of smell of the insects!</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="TOUCH_AND_SIGHT" id="TOUCH_AND_SIGHT"></a>TOUCH AND SIGHT</h2>
+
+
+<p>Twist the forefinger over the middle finger and touch
+a small ball with them, so that it may roll between the
+two fingers, and shut your eyes. You will think that
+there are two balls. Open your eyes,&mdash;and you will see
+that it is one ball. The fingers have deceived you, but
+the eyes correct you.</p>
+
+<p>Look (best of all sidewise) at a good, clean mirror,&mdash;you
+will think that it is a window or a door, and that
+there is something behind it. Touch it with a finger,&mdash;and
+you will see that it is a mirror. The eyes have
+deceived you, but the fingers correct you.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_SILKWORM" id="THE_SILKWORM"></a>THE SILKWORM</h2>
+
+
+<p>I had some old mulberry-trees in my garden. My
+grandfather had planted them. In the fall I was given
+a dram of silkworm eggs, and was advised to hatch them
+and raise silkworms. These eggs are dark gray and so
+small that in that dram I counted 5,835 of them. They
+are smaller than the tiniest pin-head. They are quite
+dead; only when you crush them do they crack.</p>
+
+<p>The eggs had been lying around on my table, and I
+had almost forgotten about them.</p>
+
+<p>One day, in the spring, I went into the orchard and
+noticed the buds swelling on the mulberry-trees, and where
+the sun beat down, the leaves were out. I thought of the
+silkworm eggs, and took them apart at home and gave
+them more room. The majority of the eggs were no
+longer dark gray, as before, but some were light gray,
+while others were lighter still, with a milky shade.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, I looked at the eggs, and saw that
+some of the worms had hatched out, while other eggs
+were quite swollen. Evidently they felt in their shells
+that their food was ripening.</p>
+
+<p>The worms were black and shaggy, and so small that
+it was hard to see them. I looked at them through a
+magnifying-glass, and saw that in the eggs they lay curled
+up in rings, and when they came out they straightened
+themselves out. I went to the garden for some mulberry
+leaves; I got about three handfuls of leaves, which I put
+on my table, and began to fix a place for the worms, as I
+had been taught to do.</p>
+
+<p>While I was fixing the paper, the worms smelled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+their food and started to crawl toward it. I pushed
+it away, and began to entice the worms to a leaf, and
+they made for it, as dogs make for a piece of meat, crawling
+after the leaf over the cloth of the table and across
+pencils, scissors, and papers. Then I cut off a piece of
+paper, stuck holes through it with a penknife, placed
+the leaf on top of it, and with the leaf put it down on
+the worms. The worms crawled through the holes,
+climbed on the leaf, and started to eat.</p>
+
+<p>When the other worms hatched out, I again put a piece
+of paper with a leaf on them, and all crawled through the
+holes and began to eat. The worms gathered on each
+leaf and nibbled at it from its edges. Then, when they
+had eaten everything, they crawled on the paper and
+looked for more food. Then I put on them new sheets
+of perforated paper with mulberry leaves upon them, and
+they crawled over to the new food.</p>
+
+<p>They were lying on my shelf, and when there was no leaf,
+they climbed about the shelf, and came to its very edge,
+but they never fell down, though they are blind. The
+moment a worm comes to an edge, it lets out a web from
+its mouth before descending, and then it attaches itself
+to it and lets itself down; it hangs awhile in the air, and
+watches, and if it wants to get down farther, it does so,
+and if not, it pulls itself up by its web.</p>
+
+<p>For days at a time the worms did nothing but eat. I
+had to give them more and more leaves. When a new
+leaf was brought, and they transferred themselves to it,
+they made a noise as though a rain were falling on leaves,&mdash;that
+was when they began to eat the new leaf.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the older worms lived for five days. They had
+grown very large and began to eat ten times as much as
+ever. On the fifth day, I knew, they would fall asleep,
+and waited for that to happen. Toward evening, on the
+fifth day, one of the older worms stuck to the paper and
+stopped eating and stirring.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The whole next day I watched it for a long time. I
+knew that worms moulted several times, because they
+grew up and found it close in their old hide, and so put
+on a new one.</p>
+
+<p>My friend and I watched it by turns. In the evening
+my friend called out:</p>
+
+<p>"It has begun to undress itself,&mdash;come!"</p>
+
+<p>I went up to him, and saw that the worm had stuck
+with its old hide to the paper, had torn a hole at the
+mouth, thrust forth its head, and was writhing and working
+to get out, but the old shirt held it fast. I watched
+it for a long time as it writhed and could not get out, and
+I wanted to help it. I barely touched it with my nail,
+but soon saw that I had done something foolish. Under
+my nail there was something liquid, and the worm died.
+At first I thought that it was blood, but later I learned
+that the worm has a liquid mass under its skin, so that the
+shirt may come off easier. With my nail I no doubt
+disturbed the new shirt, for, though the worm crawled
+out, it soon died.</p>
+
+<p>The other worms I did not touch. All of them came
+out of their shirts in the same manner; only a few died,
+and nearly all came out safely, though they struggled
+hard for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>After shedding their skins, the worms began to eat
+more voraciously, and more leaves were devoured. Four
+days later they again fell asleep, and again crawled out
+of their skins. A still larger quantity of leaves was now
+consumed by them, and they were now a quarter of an
+inch in length. Six days later they fell asleep once more,
+and once more came out in new skins, and now were very
+large and fat, and we had barely time to get leaves ready
+for them.</p>
+
+<p>On the ninth day the oldest worms quit eating entirely
+and climbed up the shelves and rods. I gathered them
+in and gave them fresh leaves, but they turned their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+heads away from them, and continued climbing. Then I
+remembered that when the worms get ready to roll up
+into larvæ, they stop eating and climb upward.</p>
+
+<p>I left them alone, and began to watch what they would
+do.</p>
+
+<p>The eldest worms climbed to the ceiling, scattered
+about, crawled in all directions, and began to draw out
+single threads in various directions. I watched one of
+them. It went into a corner, put forth about six threads
+each two inches long, hung down from them, bent over
+in a horseshoe, and began to turn its head and let out a
+silk web which began to cover it all over. Toward evening
+it was covered by it as though in a mist; the worm
+could scarcely be seen. On the following morning the
+worm could no longer be seen; it was all wrapped in
+silk, and still it spun out more.</p>
+
+<p>Three days later it finished spinning, and quieted down.
+Later I learned how much web it had spun in those three
+days. If the whole web were to be unravelled, it would
+be more than half a mile in length, seldom less. And if
+we figure out how many times the worm has to toss its
+head in these three days in order to let out all the web,
+it will appear that in these three days the worm tosses its
+head 300,000 times. Consequently, it makes one turn a
+second, without stopping. But after the work, when we
+took down a few cocoons and broke them open, we found
+inside the worms all dried up and white, looking like
+pieces of wax.</p>
+
+<p>I knew that from these larvæ with their white, waxen
+bodies would come butterflies; but as I looked at them,
+I could not believe it. None the less I went to look at
+them on the twentieth day, to see what had become of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>On the twentieth day, I knew, there was to be a change.
+Nothing was to be seen, and I was beginning to think
+that something was wrong, when suddenly I noticed that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+the end of one of the cocoons grew dark and moist. I
+thought that it had probably spoiled, and wanted to
+throw it away. But then I thought that perhaps it began
+that way, and so I watched to see what would happen.
+And, indeed, something began to move at the wet end.
+For a long time I could not make out what it was. Later
+there appeared something like a head with whiskers. The
+whiskers moved. Then I noticed a leg sticking out
+through the hole, then another, and the legs scrambled to
+get out of the cocoon. It came out more and more, and
+I saw a wet butterfly. When all six legs scrambled out,
+the back jumped out, too, and the butterfly crawled out
+and stopped. When it dried it was white; it straightened
+its wings, flew away, circled around, and alighted
+on the window.</p>
+
+<p>Two days later the butterfly on the window-sill laid
+eggs in a row, and stuck them fast. The eggs were
+yellow. Twenty-five butterflies laid eggs. I collected
+five thousand eggs. The following year I raised more
+worms, and had more silk spun.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="STORIES_FROM_BOTANY" id="STORIES_FROM_BOTANY"></a>STORIES FROM BOTANY</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_APPLE-TREE" id="THE_APPLE-TREE"></a>THE APPLE-TREE</h2>
+
+
+<p>I set out two hundred young apple-trees, and for three
+years I dug around them in the spring and the fall, and
+in winter wrapped them with straw against the hares.
+On the fourth year, when the snow melted, I went to
+take a look at my apple-trees. They had grown stouter
+during the winter: the bark was glossy and filled with
+sap; all the branches were sound, and at all the tips and
+axils there were pea-shaped flower-buds. Here and there
+the buds were bursting, and the purple edges of the flower-leaves
+could be seen. I knew that all the buds would be
+blossoms and fruit, and I was delighted as I looked at the
+apple-trees. But when I took off the wrapping from the
+first tree, I saw that down at the ground the bark was
+nibbled away, like a white ring, to the very wood. The
+mice had done that. I unwrapped a second tree, and the
+same had happened there. Of the two hundred trees not
+one was unharmed. I smeared pitch and wax on the
+nibbled spots; but when the trees were all in bloom, the
+blossoms at once fell off; there came out small leaves,
+and they, too, dropped off. The bark became wrinkled
+and black. Out of the two hundred apple-trees only nine
+were left. On these nine trees the bark had not been
+gnawed through all around, but strips of bark were left
+on the white ring. On the strips, where the bark held<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+together, there grew out knots, and, although the trees
+suffered, they lived. All the rest were ruined; below the
+rings there came out shoots, but they were all wild.</p>
+
+<p>The bark of the tree is like the arteries in man: through
+the arteries the blood goes to the whole body, and through
+the bark the sap goes along the tree and reaches the
+branches, leaves, and flowers. The whole inside of a tree
+may be taken out, as is often the case with old willows,
+and yet the tree will live so long as the bark is alive;
+but when the bark is ruined, the tree is gone. If a man's
+arteries are cut through, he will die, in the first place,
+because the blood will flow out, and in the second, because
+the blood will not be distributed through the body.</p>
+
+<p>Even thus a birch dries up when the children bore a
+hole into it, in order to drink its sap, and all the sap flows
+out of it.</p>
+
+<p>Just so the apple-trees were ruined because the mice
+gnawed the bark all around, and the sap could not rise
+from the roots to the branches, leaves, and flowers.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_OLD_POPLAR" id="THE_OLD_POPLAR"></a>THE OLD POPLAR</h2>
+
+
+<p>For five years our garden was neglected. I hired
+labourers with axes and shovels, and myself began to work
+with them in the garden. We cut out and chopped out
+all the dry branches and wild shoots, and the superfluous
+trees and bushes. The poplars and bird-cherries grew
+ranker than the rest and choked the other trees. A poplar
+grows out from the roots, and it cannot be dug out,
+but the roots have to be chopped out underground.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the pond there stood an enormous poplar, two
+men's embraces in circumference. About it there was a
+clearing, and this was all overgrown with poplar shoots.
+I ordered them to be cut out: I wanted the spot to look
+more cheerful, but, above all, I wanted to make it easier
+for the old poplar, because I thought that all those young
+trees came from its roots, and were draining it of its sap.
+When we cut out these young poplars, I felt sorry as I
+saw them chop out the sap-filled roots underground, and
+as all four of us pulled at the poplar that had been cut
+down, and could not pull it out. It held on with all its
+might, and did not wish to die. I thought that, no doubt,
+they had to live, since they clung so much to life. But
+it was necessary to cut them down, and so I did it. Only
+later, when nothing could be done, I learned that they
+ought not to have been cut down.</p>
+
+<p>I thought that the shoots were taking the sap away
+from the old poplar, but it turned out quite differently.
+When I was cutting them down, the old poplar was
+already dying. When the leaves came out, I saw (it
+grew from two boughs) that one bough was bare; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+that same summer it dried up completely. The tree had
+been dying for quite awhile, and the tree knew it, so it
+tried to give its life to the shoots.</p>
+
+<p>That was the reason why they grew so fast. I wanted
+to make it easier for the tree, and only killed all its
+children.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_BIRD-CHERRY" id="THE_BIRD-CHERRY"></a>THE BIRD-CHERRY</h2>
+
+
+<p>A bird-cherry grew out on a hazel bush path and
+choked the bushes. I deliberated for a long time whether
+I had better cut down the bird-cherry, or not. This bird-cherry
+grew not as a bush, but as a tree, about six inches
+in diameter and thirty feet high, full of branches and
+bushy, and all besprinkled with bright, white, fragrant
+blossoms. You could smell it from a distance. I should
+not have cut it down, but one of the labourers (to whom
+I had before given the order to cut down the bird-cherry)
+had begun to chop it without me. When I came, he had
+already cut in about three inches, and the sap splashed
+under the axe whenever it struck the same cut. "It cannot
+be helped,&mdash;apparently such is its fate," I thought,
+and I picked up an axe myself and began to chop it with
+the peasant.</p>
+
+<p>It is a pleasure to do any work, and it is a pleasure to
+chop. It is a pleasure to let the axe enter deeply in a
+slanting line, and then to chop out the chip by a straight
+stroke, and to chop farther and farther into the tree.</p>
+
+<p>I had entirely forgotten the bird-cherry, and was thinking
+only of felling it as quickly as possible. When I got
+tired, I put down my axe and with the peasant pressed
+against the tree and tried to make it fall. We bent it:
+the tree trembled with its leaves, and the dew showered
+down upon us, and the white, fragrant petals of the blossoms
+fell down.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time something seemed to cry,&mdash;the middle
+of the tree creaked; we pressed against it, and it was
+as though something wept, there was a crash in the middle,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+and the tree tottered. It broke at the notch and, swaying,
+fell with its branches and blossoms into the grass. The
+twigs and blossoms trembled for awhile after the fall, and
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a fine tree!" said the peasant. "I am mightily
+sorry for it!"</p>
+
+<p>I myself felt so sorry for it that I hurried away to the
+other labourers.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="HOW_TREES_WALK" id="HOW_TREES_WALK"></a>HOW TREES WALK</h2>
+
+
+<p>One day we were cleaning an overgrown path on a hillock
+near the pond. We cut down a lot of brier bushes,
+willows, and poplars,&mdash;then came the turn of a bird-cherry.
+It was growing on the path, and it was so old
+and stout that it could not be less than ten years old.
+And yet I knew that five years ago the garden had been
+cleaned. I could not understand how such an old bird-cherry
+could have grown out there. We cut it down and
+went farther. Farther away, in another thicket, there
+grew a similar bird-cherry, even stouter than the first. I
+looked at its root, and saw that it grew under an old
+linden. The linden with its branches choked it, and it
+had stretched out about twelve feet in a straight line, and
+only then came out to the light, raised its head, and began
+to blossom.</p>
+
+<p>I cut it down at the root, and was surprised to find it
+so fresh, while the root was rotten. After we had cut
+it down, the peasants and I tried to pull it off; but no
+matter how much we jerked at it, we were unable to drag
+it away: it seemed to have stuck fast. I said:</p>
+
+<p>"Look whether it has not caught somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>A workman crawled under it, and called out:</p>
+
+<p>"It has another root; it is out on the path!"</p>
+
+<p>I walked over to him, and saw that it was so.</p>
+
+<p>Not to be choked by the linden, the bird-cherry had
+gone away from underneath the linden out on the path,
+about eight feet from its former root. The root which I
+had cut down was rotten and dry, but the new one was
+fresh. The bird-cherry had evidently felt that it could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+not exist under the linden, so it had stretched out, dropped
+a branch to the ground, made a root of that branch, and
+left the other root. Only then did I understand how the
+first bird-cherry had grown out on the road. It had evidently
+done the same,&mdash;only it had had time to give up
+the old root, and so I had not found it.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DECEMBRISTS" id="THE_DECEMBRISTS"></a>THE DECEMBRISTS<br />
+Fragments of a Novel<br />
+1863-1878</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center big">THE DECEMBRISTS<br />
+A Novel</p>
+
+
+<h2>FIRST FRAGMENT</h2>
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p>This happened not long ago, in the reign of Alexander
+II., in our days of civilization, progress, questions, regeneration
+of Russia, and so forth, and so forth; at a time
+when the victorious Russian army was returning from
+Sevastopol, surrendered to the enemy; when all of Russia
+celebrated the annihilation of the Black Sea fleet, and
+white-stoned Moscow received and congratulated with this
+happy event the remainders of the crews of that fleet,
+offering them a good Russian cup of vódka, and bread and
+salt, according to the good Russian custom, and bowing
+down to their feet. It was that time when Russia, in the
+person of far-sighted virgin politicians, lamented the shattered
+dream of a Te Deum in the Cathedral of St. Sophia,
+and the loss of two great men, so painful for the country,
+who had perished during the war (one, who had been
+carried away by the desire to celebrate the Te Deum in
+the above-mentioned cathedral at the earliest time possible,
+and who fell in the fields of Wallachia, but who, at least,
+left two squadrons of hussars in the same fields, and the
+other, an unappreciated man, who had distributed tea,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+other people's money, and bed-sheets to the wounded,
+without stealing any of these things); that time, when on
+all sides, in all branches of human activities, great men&mdash;generals,
+administrators, economists, writers, orators,
+and simply great men, without any especial calling or
+purpose&mdash;sprang up in Russia like mushrooms; that
+time, when, at the jubilee of a Moscow actor, there appeared
+the public opinion, confirmed by a toast, which
+began to rebuke all the criminals,&mdash;when menacing
+commissions galloped south from St. Petersburg, to convict
+and punish the evil-doers of the commissariat,&mdash;when
+in all the cities dinners with speeches were given
+to the heroes of Sevastopol, and when to them, with arms
+and legs torn off, toasts were drunk, on meeting them on
+the bridges and on the highways; that time, when oratorical
+talents developed so rapidly in the nation that a certain
+dram-shopkeeper everywhere and upon all occasions
+wrote and printed and recited by rote at dinners such
+strong speeches, that the guardians of the peace had to
+take repressive measures against the dram-shopkeeper's
+eloquence,&mdash;when in the very English club a special
+room was set aside for the discussion of public matters,&mdash;when
+periodicals sprang up under the most diversified
+standards,&mdash;periodicals that evolved European principles
+on a European basis, but with a Russian world conception,
+and periodicals on an exclusively Russian basis, but
+with a European world conception,&mdash;when suddenly
+there appeared so many periodicals that all names seemed
+to be exhausted,&mdash;"The Messenger," and "The Word,"
+and "The Speaker," and "The Observer," and "The Star,"
+and "The Eagle," and many more, and, in spite of it, there
+appeared ever new names; that time, when the constellation
+of philosophic writers made its appearance to prove
+that science was national, and not national, and non-national,
+and so forth, and the constellation of artistic
+writers, who described a grove, and the sunrise, and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+storm, and the love of a Russian maiden, and the indolence
+of a certain official, and the bad conduct of many
+officials; that time, when on all sides appeared questions
+(as in the year '56 they called every concourse of circumstances,
+of which no one could make any sense), questions
+of cadet corps, universities, censorship, oral judicature,
+finance, banking, police, emancipation, and many more:&mdash;everybody
+tried to discover ever new questions, everybody
+tried to solve them, wrote, read, spoke, made projects,
+wanted to mend everything, destroy, change, and all
+Russians, like one man, were in indescribable ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>That is a state of affairs which has been twice repeated
+in the Russia of the nineteenth century,&mdash;the first time,
+when in the year '12 we repulsed Napoleon I., and the second
+time, when in the year '56 we were repulsed by Napoleon
+III. Great, unforgettable time of the regeneration
+of the Russian people! Like the Frenchman who said
+that he has not lived who has not lived through the great
+French Revolution, I venture to say that he who has not
+lived through the year '56 in Russia does not know
+what life is. The writer of these lines not only lived
+through that time, but was one of the actors of that
+period. Not only did he pass several weeks in one of the
+blindages of Sevastopol, but he also wrote a work on
+the Crimean War, which brought him great fame, and in
+which he described clearly and minutely how the soldiers
+fired their guns from the bastions, how the wounds were
+dressed at the ambulance, and how they buried people in
+the cemetery. Having achieved these deeds, the writer
+of these lines arrived in the centre of the empire,&mdash;a
+rocket establishment,&mdash;where he cut the laurels for his
+deeds. He saw the transports of the two capitals and of
+the whole nation, and experienced in his person to what
+extent Russia knew how to reward real deserts. The
+mighty of this world sought his friendship, pressed his
+hands, gave him dinners, urged him to come to their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+houses, and, in order to learn the details of the war from
+him, informed him of their own sentimentalities. Consequently
+the writer of these lines can appreciate that great
+and memorable time. But that is another matter.</p>
+
+<p>At that very time, two vehicles on wheels and a sleigh
+were standing at the entrance of the best Moscow hotel.
+A young man ran through the door, to find out about
+quarters. In one of the vehicles sat an old man with two
+ladies. He was talking about the condition of Blacksmith
+Bridge in the days of the French. It was the
+continuation of a conversation started as they entered
+Moscow, and now the old man with the white beard, in
+his unbuttoned fur coat, calmly continued his conversation
+in the vehicle, as though he intended to stay in it overnight.
+His wife and daughter listened to him, but kept
+looking at the door with some impatience. The young
+man emerged from the door with the porter and room
+servant.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Sergyéy," asked the mother, thrusting her emaciated
+face out into the glare of the lamplight.</p>
+
+<p>Either because it was his habit, or because he did not
+wish the porter to take him for a lackey on account of
+the short fur coat which he wore, Sergyéy replied in
+French that there were rooms to be had, and opened the
+carriage door. The old man looked for a moment at his
+son, and again turned to the dark corner of the vehicle,
+as though nothing else concerned him:</p>
+
+<p>"There was no theatre then."</p>
+
+<p>"Pierre!" said his wife, lifting her cloak; but he continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Chalmé was in Tverskáya Street&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Deep in the vehicle could be heard a youthful, sonorous
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa, step out! You are forgetting where we are."</p>
+
+<p>The old man only then seemed to recall that they had
+arrived, and looked around him.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do step out!"</p>
+
+<p>He pulled his cap down, and submissively passed
+through the door. The porter took him under his arm,
+but, seeing that the old man was walking well, he at once
+offered his services to the lady. Judging from the sable
+cloak, and from the time it took for her to emerge, and
+from the way she pressed down on his arm, and from the
+way she, leaning on her son's arm, walked straight toward
+the porch, without looking to either side, Natálya
+Nikoláevna, his wife, seemed to the porter to be an important
+personage. He did not even separate the young
+lady from the maids, who climbed out from the other
+vehicle; like them, she carried a bundle and a pipe, and
+walked behind. He recognized her only by her laughing
+and by her calling the old man father.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that way, father,&mdash;to the right!" she said, taking
+hold of the sleeve of his sheepskin coat. "To the
+right."</p>
+
+<p>On the staircase there resounded, through the noise of
+the steps, the doors, and the heavy breathing of the
+elderly lady, the same laughter which had been heard in
+the vehicle, and about which any one who heard it
+thought: "How excellently she laughs,&mdash;I just envy
+her."</p>
+
+<p>Their son, Sergyéy, had attended to all the material
+conditions on the road, and, though he lacked knowledge
+of the matter, he had attended to it with the energy and
+self-satisfying activity which are characteristic of twenty-five
+years of age. Some twenty times, and apparently for
+no important reason, he ran down to the sleigh in his
+greatcoat, and ran up-stairs again, shivering in the cold
+and taking two or three steps at a time with his long,
+youthful legs. Natálya Nikoláevna asked him not to
+catch a cold, but he said that it was all right, and continued
+to give orders, slamming doors, and walking, and,
+when it seemed that only the servants and peasants had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+to be attended to, he several times walked through all
+the rooms, leaving the drawing-room by one door, and
+coming in through another, as though he were looking
+for something else to do.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, papa, will you be driven to the bath-house?
+Shall I find out?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>His papa was deep in thought and, it seemed, was not
+at all conscious of where he was. He did not answer at
+once. He heard the words, but did not comprehend
+them. Suddenly he comprehended.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, yes. Find out, if you please, at Stone
+Bridge."</p>
+
+<p>The head of the family walked through the rooms with
+hasty, agitated steps, and seated himself in a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we must decide what to do, how to arrange
+matters," he said. "Help along, children, lively! Like
+good fellows, drag things around, put them up, and to-morrow
+we shall send Serézha with a note to sister
+Márya Ivánovna, to the Nikítins, or we shall go there ourselves.
+Am I right, Natásha? But now, fix things!"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow is Sunday. I hope, Pierre, that first of all
+you will go to mass," said his wife, kneeling in front of a
+trunk and opening it.</p>
+
+<p>"That is so, it is Sunday! We shall by all means all
+of us go to the Cathedral of the Assumption. Thus will
+our return begin. O Lord! When I think of the day
+when I was for the last time in the Cathedral of the Assumption!
+Do you remember, Natásha? But that is
+another matter."</p>
+
+<p>And the head of the family rose quickly from the chair,
+on which he had just seated himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we must settle down!"</p>
+
+<p>And without doing anything, he kept walking from one
+room to another.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, shall we drink tea? Or are you tired, and
+do you want to rest?"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," replied his wife, taking something out from
+the trunk. "You wanted to go to the bath-house, did
+you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;in my day it was near Stone Bridge. Serézha,
+go and find out whether there is still a bath-house near
+Stone Bridge. This room here Serézha and I shall occupy.
+Serézha! Will you be comfortable here?"</p>
+
+<p>But Serézha had gone to find out about the bath-house.</p>
+
+<p>"No, that will not do," he continued. "You will not
+have a straight passage to the drawing-room. What do
+you think, Natásha?"</p>
+
+<p>"Calm yourself, Pierre, everything will come out all
+right," Natásha said, from another room, where peasants
+were bringing in things.</p>
+
+<p>But Pierre was still under the influence of that ecstatic
+mood which the arrival had evoked in him.</p>
+
+<p>"Look there,&mdash;don't mix up Serézha's things! You
+have thrown his snow-shoes down in the drawing-room."
+And he himself picked them up and with great care, as
+though the whole future order of the quarters depended
+upon it, leaned them against the door-post and tried to
+make them stand there. But the snow-shoes did not stick
+to it, and, the moment Pierre walked away from them,
+fell with a racket across the door. Natálya Nikoláevna
+frowned and shuddered, but, seeing the cause of the fall,
+she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Sónya, darling, pick them up!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pick them up, darling," repeated the husband, "and I
+will go to the landlord, or else you will never get done.
+I must talk things over with him."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better send for him, Pierre. Why should
+you trouble yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>Pierre assented.</p>
+
+<p>"Sónya, bring him here, what do you call him? M.
+Cavalier, if you please. Tell him that we want to speak
+about everything."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Chevalier, papa," said Sónya, ready to go out.</p>
+
+<p>Natálya Nikoláevna, who was giving her commands in
+a soft voice, and was softly stepping from room to room,
+now with a box, now with a pipe, now with a pillow,
+imperceptibly finding places for a mountain of baggage, in
+passing Sónya, had time to whisper to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Do not go yourself, but send a man!"</p>
+
+<p>While a man went to call the landlord, Pierre used his
+leisure, under the pretext of aiding his consort, in crushing
+a garment of hers and in stumbling against an empty
+box. Steadying himself with his hand against the wall,
+the Decembrist looked around with a smile; but Sónya
+was looking at him with such smiling eyes that she
+seemed to be waiting for permission to laugh. He readily
+granted her that permission, and himself burst out into
+such a good-natured laugh that all those who were in the
+room, his wife, the maids, and the peasants, laughed with
+him. This laughter animated the old man still more.
+He discovered that the divan in the room for his wife and
+daughter was not standing very conveniently for them,
+although they affirmed the opposite, and asked him to
+calm himself. Just as he was trying with his own hands
+to help a peasant to change the position of that piece of
+furniture, the landlord, a Frenchman, entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>"You sent for me," the landlord asked sternly and, in
+proof of his indifference, if not contempt, slowly drew out
+his handkerchief, slowly unfolded it, and slowly cleared
+his nose.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my dear sir," said Peter Ivánovich, stepping up
+toward him, "you see, we do not know ourselves how
+long we are going to stay here, I and my wife&mdash;" and
+Peter Ivánovich, who had the weakness of seeing a neighbour
+in every man, began to expound his plans and affairs
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>M. Chevalier did not share that view of people and
+was not interested in the information communicated to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+him by Peter Ivánovich, but the good French which
+Peter Ivánovich spoke (the French language, as is known,
+is something like rank in Russia) and his lordly manner
+somewhat raised the landlord's opinion about the newcomers.</p>
+
+<p>"What can I do for you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>This question did not embarrass Peter Ivánovich. He
+expressed his desire to have rooms, tea, a samovár, supper,
+dinner, food for the servants, in short, all those things for
+which hotels exist, and when M. Chevalier, marvelling at
+the innocence of the old man, who apparently imagined
+that he was in the Trukhmén steppe, or supposed that all
+these things would be given him without pay, informed
+him that he could have all those things, Peter Ivánovich
+was in ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>"Now that is nice! Very nice! And so we shall get
+things all fixed. Well, then please&mdash;" but he felt embarrassed
+to be speaking all the time about himself, and he
+began to ask M. Chevalier about his family and his business.
+When Sergyéy Petróvich returned to the room, he
+did not seem to approve of his father's address; he observed
+the landlord's dissatisfaction, and reminded his father
+of the bath. But Peter Ivánovich was interested in the
+question of how a French hotel could be run in Moscow
+in the year '56, and of how Madame Chevalier
+passed her time. Finally the landlord himself bowed
+and asked him whether he was not pleased to order anything.</p>
+
+<p>"We will have tea, Natásha. Yes? Tea, then, if you
+please! We will have some other talks, my dear monsieur!
+What a charming man!"</p>
+
+<p>"And the bath, papa?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, then we shall have no tea."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the only result from the conversation with the
+newly arrived guests was taken from the landlord. But
+Peter Ivánovich was now proud and happy of his arrangements.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+The drivers, who came to ask a <i>pourboire</i>, vexed
+him, because Serézha had no change, and Peter Ivánovich
+was on the point of sending once more for the landlord,
+but the happy thought that others, too, ought to be happy
+on that evening helped him out of that predicament. He
+took two three-rouble bills, and, sticking one bill into the
+hand of one of the drivers, he said, "This is for you"
+(Peter Ivánovich was in the habit of saying "you" to all
+without exception, unless to a member of his family);
+"and this is for you," he said, transferring the other bill
+from the palm of his hand to that of the driver, in some
+such manner as people do when paying a doctor for a
+visit. After attending to all these things, he was taken
+to the bath-house.</p>
+
+<p>Sónya, who was sitting on the divan, put her hand
+under her head and burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how nice it is, mamma! Oh, how nice!"</p>
+
+<p>Then she placed her feet on the divan, stretched herself,
+adjusted herself, and fell into the sound, calm sleep
+of a healthy girl of eighteen years of age, after six weeks
+on the road. Natálya Nikoláevna, who was still busy
+taking out things in her sleeping-room, heard, no doubt
+with her maternal ear, that Sónya was not stirring, and
+went out to take a look at her. She took a pillow and,
+raising the girl's reddened, dishevelled head with her large
+white hand, placed her on the pillow. Sónya drew a
+deep, deep sigh, shrugged her shoulders, and put her head
+on the pillow, without saying "<i>Merci</i>," as though that had
+all been done of its own accord.</p>
+
+<p>"Not on that bed, not on that, Gavrílovna, Kátya,"
+Natálya Nikoláevna immediately turned to the maids who
+were making a bed, and with one hand, as though in
+passing, she adjusted the straying hair of her daughter.
+Without stopping and without hurrying, Natálya Nikoláevna
+dressed herself, and upon the arrival of her husband
+and her son everything was ready: the trunks were no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+longer in the rooms; in Pierre's sleeping-room everything
+was arranged as it had been for several decades in
+Irkútsk: the morning-gown, the pipe, the tobacco-pouch,
+the sugared water, the Gospel, which he read at night,
+and even the image stuck to the rich wall-paper in the
+rooms of Chevalier, who never used such adornments,
+but on that evening they appeared in all the rooms of
+the third division of the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Having dressed herself, Natálya Nikoláevna adjusted
+her collar and cuffs, which, in spite of the journey, were
+still clean, combed herself, and seated herself opposite the
+table. Her beautiful black eyes gazed somewhere into
+the distance: she looked and rested herself. She seemed
+to be resting, not from the unpacking alone, nor from the
+road, nor from the oppressive years,&mdash;she seemed to be
+resting from her whole life, and the distance into which
+she was gazing, and in which she saw living and beloved
+faces, was that rest which she was wishing for. Whether
+it was an act of love, which she had done for her husband,
+or the love which she had experienced for her children
+when they were young, or whether it was a heavy loss, or
+a peculiarity of her character,&mdash;everyone who looked at
+that woman could not help seeing that nothing could be
+expected from her, that she had long ago given all of herself
+to life, and that nothing was left of her. All that
+there was left was something worthy of respect, something
+beautiful and sad, as a reminiscence, as the moonlight.
+She could not be imagined otherwise than surrounded by
+all the comforts of life. It was impossible for her ever to
+be hungry, or to eat eagerly, or to have on soiled clothes,
+or to stumble, or to forget to clear her nose. It was a
+physical impossibility. Why it was so, I do not know,
+but every motion of hers was dignity, grace, gentleness
+toward all those who could enjoy her sight.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sie pflegen und weben<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Himmlische Rosen ins irdische Leben."<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>She knew those verses and loved them, but was not
+guided by them. All her nature was an expression of
+that thought; all her life was this one unconscious weaving
+of invisible roses in the lives of those with whom she
+came in contact. She had followed her husband to Siberia
+only because she loved him; she had not thought
+what she could do for him, and instinctively had done
+everything. She had made his bed, had put away his
+things, had prepared his dinner and his tea, and, above all,
+had always been where he was, and no woman could have
+given more happiness to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>In the drawing-room the samovár was boiling on the
+round table. Natálya Nikoláevna sat near it. Sónya
+wrinkled her face and smiled under her mother's hand,
+which was tickling her, when father and son, with wrinkled
+finger-tips and glossy cheeks and foreheads (the
+father's bald spot was particularly glistening), with fluffy
+white and black hair, and with beaming countenances,
+entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>"It has grown brighter since you have come in," said
+Natálya Nikoláevna. "O Lord, how white you are!"</p>
+
+<p>She had been saying that each Saturday, for several
+decades, and each Saturday Pierre experienced bashfulness
+and delight, whenever he heard that. They seated
+themselves at the table; there was an odour of tea and
+of the pipe, and there were heard the voices of the parents,
+the children, and the servants, who received their cups
+in the same room. They recalled everything funny that
+had happened on the road, admired Sónya's hair-dressing,
+and laughed. Geographically they were all transferred a
+distance of five thousand versts, into an entirely different,
+strange milieu, but morally they were that evening still
+at home, just such as the peculiar, long, solitary family
+life had made them to be. It will not be so to-morrow.
+Peter Ivánovich seated himself near the samovár, and
+lighted his pipe. He was not in a cheerful mood.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"So here we are," he said, "and I am glad that we shall
+not see any one to-night; this is the last evening we
+shall pass with the family," and he washed these words
+down with a large mouthful of tea.</p>
+
+<p>"Why the last, Pierre?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Because the eaglets have learned to fly, and
+they have to make their own nests, and from here they
+will fly each in a different direction&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense!" said Sónya, taking his glass from
+him, and smiling at him, as she smiled at everything.
+"The old nest is good enough!"</p>
+
+<p>"The old nest is a sad nest; the old man did not know
+how to make it,&mdash;he was caught in a cage, and in the
+cage he reared his young ones, and was let out only when
+his wings no longer would hold him up. No, the eaglets
+must make their nests higher up, more auspiciously, nearer
+to the sun; that is what they are his children for, that his
+example might serve them; but the old one will look on,
+so long as he is not blind, and will listen, when he becomes
+blind&mdash; Pour in some rum, more, more&mdash;enough!"</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see who is going to leave," replied Sónya,
+casting a cursory glance at her mother, as though she
+felt uneasy speaking in her presence. "We shall see who
+is going to leave," she continued. "I am not afraid for
+myself, neither am I for Serézha." (Serézha was walking
+up and down in the room, thinking of how clothes would be
+ordered for him to-morrow, and wondering whether he had
+better go to the tailor, or send for him; he was not interested
+in Sónya's conversation with his father.) Sónya
+began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter? What?" asked her father.</p>
+
+<p>"You are younger than we, papa. Much younger, indeed,"
+she said, again bursting out into a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!" said the old man, and his austere wrinkles
+formed themselves into a gentle, and yet contemptuous,
+smile.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Natálya Nikoláevna bent away from the samovár
+which prevented her seeing her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Sónya is right. You are still sixteen years old,
+Pierre. Serézha is younger in feelings, but you are
+younger in soul. I can foresee what he will do, but you
+will astound me yet."</p>
+
+<p>Whether he recognized the justice of this remark, or
+was flattered by it, he did not know what reply to make,
+and only smoked in silence, drank his tea, and beamed
+with his eyes. But Serézha, with characteristic egoism
+of youth, interested in what was said about him, entered
+into the conversation and affirmed that he was really old,
+that his arrival in Moscow and the new life, which was
+opening before him, did not gladden him in the least, and
+that he calmly reflected on the future and looked forward
+toward it.</p>
+
+<p>"Still, it is the last evening," repeated Peter Ivánovich.
+"It will not be again to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>And he poured a little more rum into his glass. He
+sat for a long time at the tea-table, with an expression as
+though he wished to say many things, but had no hearers.
+He moved up the rum toward him, but his daughter softly
+carried away the bottle.</p>
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>When M. Chevalier, who had been up-stairs to look
+after his guests, returned to his room and gave the benefit
+of his observations on the newcomers to his life companion,
+in laces and a silk garment, who in Parisian fashion was
+sitting back of the counter, several habitual visitors of the
+establishment were sitting in the room. Serézha, who
+had been down-stairs, had taken notice of that room and
+of its visitors. If you have been in Moscow, you have,
+no doubt, noticed that room yourself.</p>
+
+<p>If you, a modest man who do not know Moscow, have
+missed a dinner to which you are invited, or have made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+a mistake in your calculations, imagining that the hospitable
+Muscovites would invite you to dinner, or simply
+wish to dine in the best restaurant, you enter the lackeys'
+room. Three or four lackeys jump up: one of them
+takes off your fur coat and congratulates you on the occasion
+of the New Year, or of the Butter-week, or of your
+arrival, or simply remarks that you have not called for a
+long while, though you have never been in that establishment
+before.</p>
+
+<p>You enter, and the first thing that strikes your eyes is
+a table set, as you in the first moment imagine, with an
+endless quantity of palatable dishes. But that is only
+an optical illusion, for the greater part of that table is
+occupied by pheasants in feather, raw lobsters, boxes with
+perfume and pomatum, and bottles with cosmetics and
+candy. Only at the very edge, if you look well, will you
+find the vódka and a piece of bread with butter and
+sardines, under a wire globe, which is quite useless in
+Moscow in the month of December, even though it is
+precisely such as those which are used in Paris. Then,
+beyond the table, you see the room, where behind a counter
+sits a Frenchwoman, of extremely repulsive exterior, but
+wearing the cleanest of gloves and a most exquisite,
+fashionable gown. Near the Frenchwoman you will see
+an officer in unbuttoned uniform, taking a dram of vódka,
+a civilian reading a newspaper, and somebody's military
+or civilian legs lying on a velvet chair, and you will
+hear French conversation, and more or less sincere, loud
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>If you wish to know what is going on in that room, I
+should advise you not to enter within, but only to look in,
+as though merely passing by to take a sandwich. Otherwise
+you will feel ill at ease from the interrogative silence
+and glances, and you will certainly take your tail between
+your legs and skulk away to one of the tables in the
+large hall, or to the winter garden. Nobody will keep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+you from doing so. These tables are for everybody, and
+there, in your solitude, you may call Dey a garçon
+and order as many truffles as you please. The room with
+the Frenchwoman, however, exists for the select, golden
+Moscow youth, and it is not so easy to find your way
+among the select as you imagine.</p>
+
+<p>On returning to this room, M. Chevalier told his wife
+that the gentleman from Siberia was dull, but that his
+son and daughter were fine people, such as could be raised
+only in Siberia.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought just to see the daughter! She is a little
+rose-bush!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, this old man is fond of fresh-looking women,"
+said one of the guests, who was smoking a cigar. (The
+conversation, of course, was carried on in French, but I
+render it in Russian, as I shall continue to do in this
+story.)</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am very fond of them!" replied M. Chevalier.
+"Women are my passion. Do you not believe me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear, Madame Chevalier?" shouted a stout
+officer of Cossacks, who owed a big bill in the institution
+and was fond of chatting with the landlord.</p>
+
+<p>"He shares my taste," said M. Chevalier, patting the
+stout man on his epaulet.</p>
+
+<p>"And is this Siberian young lady really pretty?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Chevalier folded his fingers and kissed them.</p>
+
+<p>After that the conversation between the guests became
+confidential and very jolly. They were talking about the
+stout officer; he smiled as he listened to what they were
+saying about him.</p>
+
+<p>"How can one have such perverted taste!" cried one,
+through the laughter. "Mlle. Clarisse! You know,
+Strúgov prefers such of the women as have chicken
+calves."</p>
+
+<p>Though Mlle. Clarisse did not understand the salt of
+that remark, she behind her counter burst out into a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+laughter as silvery as her bad teeth and advanced years
+permitted.</p>
+
+<p>"Has the Siberian lady turned him to such thoughts?"
+and she laughed more heartily still. M. Chevalier himself
+roared with laughter, as he said:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ce vieux coquin</i>," patting the officer of Cossacks on
+his head and shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"But who are they, those Siberians? Mining proprietors
+or merchants?" one of the gentlemen asked,
+during a pause in the laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Nikíta, ask ze passport from ze chentleman zat as
+come," said M. Chevalier.</p>
+
+<p>"We, Alexander, ze Autocrat&mdash;" M. Chevalier began
+to read the passport, which had been brought in the meantime,
+but the officer of Cossacks tore it out of his hands,
+and his face expressed surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess who it is," he said, "for you all know him by
+reputation."</p>
+
+<p>"How can we guess? Show it to us! Well, Abdel
+Kader, ha, ha, ha! Well, Cagliostro&mdash; Well, Peter III.&mdash;ha,
+ha, ha, ha!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, read it!"</p>
+
+<p>The officer of Cossacks unfolded the paper and read
+the name of him who once had been Prince Peter Ivánovich,
+and the family name which everybody knows and
+pronounces with a certain respect and pleasure, when
+speaking of a person bearing that name, as of a near and
+familiar person. We shall call him Labázov. The officer
+of Cossacks had a dim recollection that this Peter Labázov
+had been something important in the year '25, and that
+he had been sent to hard labour,&mdash;but what he had been
+famous for, he did not exactly know. But of the others
+not one knew anything about him, and they replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, the famous prince," just as they would have
+said, "Of course, he is famous!" about Shakespeare, who
+had written the "Æneid." But they recognized him from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+the explanations of the stout officer, who told them that
+he was a brother of Prince Iván, an uncle of the Chíkins,
+of Countess Prut, in short, the well-known&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He must be very rich, if he is a brother of Prince
+Iván," remarked one of the young men, "if the fortune
+has been returned to him. It has been returned to
+some."</p>
+
+<p>"What a lot of exiles are returning nowadays!" remarked
+another. "Really, fewer seem to have been sent
+away, than are returning now. Zhikínski, tell us that
+story of the 18th!" he turned to an officer of sharp-shooters,
+who had the reputation of being a good story-teller.</p>
+
+<p>"Do tell it!"</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place, it is a true story, and happened
+here, at Chevalier's, in the large hall. Three Decembrists
+came to have their dinner. They were sitting at one
+table, eating, drinking, talking. Opposite them sat down
+a gentleman of respectable mien, of about the same
+age, and he listened to their talking about Siberia. He
+asked them something, they exchanged a few words,
+began to converse, and it turned out that he, too, was
+from Siberia.</p>
+
+<p>"'And do you know Nerchínsk?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Indeed I do, I lived there.'</p>
+
+<p>"'And do you know Tatyána Ivánovna?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course I do!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Permit me to ask you,&mdash;were you, too, exiled?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, I had the misfortune to suffer, and you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'We are all exiles of the 14th of December. It is
+strange that we should not know you, if you, too, were
+exiled for the 14th. Permit me to know your name!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Fédorov.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Also for the 14th?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, for the 18th.'</p>
+
+<p>"'For the 18th?'</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'For the 18th of September, for a gold watch. I
+was falsely accused of having stolen it, and I suffered,
+though innocent.'"</p>
+
+<p>All of them rolled in laughter, except the story-teller,
+who with a most serious face looked at the outstretched
+hearers and swore that it was a true story.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the story one of the young men got up and
+went to the club. He passed through the halls which
+were filled with tables at which old men were playing
+whist; turned into the "infernal region," where the
+famous "Puchin" had begun his game against the "company;"
+stood for awhile near one of the billiard-tables,
+where, holding on to the cushion, a distinguished old
+man was fumbling around and with difficulty striking a
+ball; looked into the library, where a general, holding a
+newspaper a distance away from him, was reading it
+slowly above his glasses, and a registered young man
+turned the leaves of one periodical after another, trying
+to make no noise; and finally seated himself on a divan
+in the billiard-room, near some young people who were
+playing pyramids, and who were as much gilded as he
+was.</p>
+
+<p>It was a day of dinners, and there were there many
+gentlemen who always frequented the club. Among
+them was Iván Vavílovich Pákhtin. He was a man of
+about forty years of age, of medium stature, fair-complexioned,
+with broad shoulders and hips, with a bare
+head, and a glossy, happy, clean-shaven face. He was
+not playing at pyramids, but had just sat down beside
+Prince D&mdash;&mdash;, with whom he was on "thou" terms, and
+had accepted a glass of champagne which had been
+offered to him. He had located himself so comfortably
+after the dinner, having quietly unbuckled his trousers at
+the back, that it looked as though he could sit there all
+his life, smoking a cigar, drinking champagne, and feeling
+the proximity of princes, counts, and the children of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+ministers. The news of the arrival of the Labázovs
+interfered with his calm.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going, Pákhtin," said a minister's son,
+having noticed during the game that Pákhtin had got up,
+pulled his waistcoat down, and emptied his champagne in
+a large gulp.</p>
+
+<p>"Syévernikov has invited me," said Pákhtin, feeling a
+restlessness in his legs. "Well, will you go there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anastásya, Anastásya, please unlock the door for me."
+That was a well-known gipsy-song, which was in vogue
+at that time.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps. And you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where shall I, an old married man, go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well!"</p>
+
+<p>Pákhtin, smiling, went to the glass hall, to join Syévernikov.
+He was fond of having his last word appear
+to be a joke. And so it came out at that time, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how is the countess's health?" he asked, walking
+over to Syévernikov, who had not called him at all,
+but who, according to Pákhtin's surmise, should more
+than any one else learn of the arrival of the Labázovs.
+Syévernikov had somehow been mixed up with the affair
+of the 14th, and was a friend of the Decembrists. The
+countess's health was much better, and Pákhtin was very
+glad to hear it.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Labázov has arrived; he is staying at
+Chevalier's."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say so! We are old friends. How glad I
+am! How glad! The poor old fellow must have grown
+old. His wife wrote to my wife&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Syévernikov did not finish saying what it was she
+had written, because his partners, who were playing without
+trumps, had made some mistake. While speaking
+with Iván Pávlovich, he kept an eye on them, and now
+he leaned forward with his whole body against the table,
+and, thumping it with his hands, he tried to prove that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+they ought to have played from the seven. Iván Pávlovich
+got up and, going up to another table, in the middle
+of a conversation informed another worthy gentleman of
+his bit of news, again got up, and repeated the same at a
+third table. The worthy gentlemen were all glad to hear
+of the arrival of the Labázovs, so that, upon returning to
+the billiard-room, Iván Pávlovich, who at first had had
+his misgivings about whether he had to rejoice in the
+return of the Labázovs, or not, no longer started with an
+introduction about the ball, about an article in the <i>Messenger</i>,
+about health, or weather, but approached everybody
+directly with the enthusiastic announcement of the
+safe return of the famous Decembrist.</p>
+
+<p>The old man, who was still vainly endeavouring to hit
+the white ball with his cue, would, in Pákhtin's opinion,
+be very much delighted to hear the news. He went up
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you playing well, your Excellency?" he said,
+just as the old man stuck his cue into the marker's red
+waistcoat, wishing to indicate that it had to be chalked.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Excellency" was not said, as you might think,
+from a desire of being subservient (no, that was not the
+fashion in '56). Iván Pávlovich was in the habit of calling
+the old man by his name and patronymic, but this
+was said partly as a joke on men who spoke that way,
+partly in order to hint that he knew full well to whom
+he was talking, and yet was taking liberties, and partly
+in truth: altogether it was a very delicate jest.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just learned that Peter Labázov has returned.
+Straight from Siberia, with his whole family."</p>
+
+<p>These words Pákhtin pronounced just as the old man
+again missed his ball, for such was his bad luck.</p>
+
+<p>"If he has returned as cracked as he went away, there
+is no cause for rejoicing," gruffly said the old man, who
+was irritated by his incomprehensible failure.</p>
+
+<p>This statement vexed Iván Pávlovich, and again he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+was at a loss whether there was any cause for rejoicing at
+Labázov's return, and, in order fully to settle his doubt,
+he directed his steps to a room, where generally assembled
+the clever people, who knew the meaning and value
+of each thing, and, in short, knew everything. Iván
+Pávlovich was on the same footing of friendship with
+the frequenters of the intellectual room as with the
+gilded youths and with the dignitaries. It is true, he
+had no special place of his own in the intellectual room,
+but nobody was surprised to see him enter and seat himself
+on a divan. They were just discussing in what year
+and upon what occasion there had taken place a quarrel
+between two Russian journalists. Waiting for a moment
+of silence, Iván Pávlovich communicated his bit of news,
+not as something joyous, nor as an unimportant event,
+but as though part of the conversation. But immediately,
+from the way the "intellectuals" (I use the word
+"intellectuals" as a name for the frequenters of the
+"intellectual" room) received the news and began to
+discuss it, Iván Pávlovich understood that it belonged
+there, and that only there would it receive such an elaboration
+as to enable him to carry it farther and <i>savoir à
+quoi s'en tenir</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Labázov was the only one who was wanting," said
+one of the intellectuals; "now all the living Decembrists
+have returned to Russia."</p>
+
+<p>"He was one of the herd of the famous&mdash;" said Pákhtin,
+still with an inquisitive glance, prepared to make that
+quotation both jocular and serious.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, Labázov was one of the most remarkable men
+of that time," began an intellectual. "In 1819 he was
+an ensign of the Seménovski regiment, and was sent
+abroad with messages to Duke Z&mdash;&mdash;. Then he returned
+and in the year '24 was received in the First Masonic
+lodge. The Masons of that time used all to gather at
+the house of D&mdash;&mdash; and at his house. He was very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+rich. Prince Zh&mdash;&mdash;, Fédor D&mdash;&mdash;, Iván P&mdash;&mdash;, those
+were his nearest friends. Then his uncle, Prince Visarión,
+to remove the young man from that society, took him to
+Moscow."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, Nikoláy Stepánovich," another intellectual
+interrupted him, "it seems to me that that happened in
+the year '23, because Visarión Labázov was appointed a
+commander of the Third Corps in '24, and was then in
+Warsaw. He had offered him an adjutantship, and after
+his refusal, he was removed. However, pardon me for
+interrupting you."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. Proceed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Proceed! You ought to know that better than I, and,
+besides, your memory and knowledge have been sufficiently
+attested here."</p>
+
+<p>"In Moscow he against his uncle's will left the army,"
+continued the one whose memory and knowledge had
+been attested, "and there he gathered around him a
+second society, of which he was the progenitor and the
+heart, if it be possible so to express it. He was rich,
+handsome, clever, educated; they say he was exceedingly
+amiable. My aunt used to tell me that she did not know
+a more bewitching man. Here he married Miss Krínski, a
+few months before the revolt broke out."</p>
+
+<p>"The daughter of Nikoláy Krínski, the one of Borodinó
+fame, you know," somebody interrupted him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes. Her immense fortune he still possesses,
+but his own paternal estate passed over to his younger
+brother, Prince Iván, who is now Ober-Hof-Kaffermeister"
+(he gave him some such name) "and was a minister."</p>
+
+<p>"The best thing is what he did for his brother," continued
+the narrator. "When he was arrested, there was
+one thing which he succeeded in destroying, and that
+was his brother's letters and documents."</p>
+
+<p>"Was his brother mixed up in it, too?"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The narrator did not say "Yes," but compressed his
+lips and gave a significant wink.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, during all the inquests Peter Labázov kept
+denying everything which concerned his brother, and so
+suffered more than the rest. But the best part of it is that
+Prince Iván got all the property, and never sent a penny
+to his brother."</p>
+
+<p>"They say that Peter Labázov himself declined it,"
+remarked one of the hearers.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but he declined it only because Prince Iván
+wrote him before the coronation, excusing himself and
+saying that if he had not taken it, it would have been
+confiscated, and that he had children and debts, and that
+now he was unable to return it to him. Peter Labázov
+replied to him in two lines: 'Neither I nor my heirs
+have any right, nor can have any right, to the property
+legally appropriated by you.' That was all. How was
+that? And Prince Iván swallowed it, and in delight
+locked up that document with the notes in a safe, and
+showed it to no one."</p>
+
+<p>One of the peculiarities of the intellectual room was
+that its visitors knew, whenever they wanted to know,
+everything that was taking place in the world, no matter
+how secret the event might have been.</p>
+
+<p>"Still it is a question," said a new interlocutor, "whether
+it was just to deprive the children of Prince Iván of the
+property, with which they have grown up and have been
+educated, and to which they thought they had a right."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the conversation was transferred to an abstract
+sphere, which did not interest Pákhtin.</p>
+
+<p>He felt the necessity of communicating the news to
+fresh people, and so he rose and, speaking to the right
+and to the left, walked from one hall to another. One
+of his fellow officers stopped him to give him the news of
+Labázov's arrival.</p>
+
+<p>"Who does not know that?" replied Iván Pávlovich,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+with a calm smile, turning to the exit. The news had
+had time to complete its circle, and was again returning
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing else to do in the club, and he went
+to an evening party. It was not a special entertainment,
+but a salon where guests were received any evening.
+There were there eight ladies, and one old colonel, and all
+found it terribly dull. Pákhtin's firm gait alone and his
+smiling face cheered the ladies and maidens. And the
+news was the more appropriate, since the old Countess
+Fuks and her daughter were present in the salon. When
+Pákhtin told nearly word for word what he had heard in
+the intellectual room, Madame Fuks, shaking her head
+and marvelling at her old age, began to recall how she
+used to go out together with Natásha Krínski, the present
+Princess Labázov.</p>
+
+<p>"Her marriage is a very romantic story, and all that
+happened under my eyes. Natásha was almost engaged
+to Myátlin, who was later killed in a duel with Debras.
+Just then Prince Peter arrived in Moscow, fell in love
+with her, and proposed to her. But her father, who
+wanted Myátlin very much,&mdash;they were, in general,
+afraid of Labázov because he was a Mason,&mdash;refused
+him. The young man continued to see her at balls, everywhere,
+and became friendly with Myátlin, whom he begged
+to decline. Myátlin agreed to do so, and he persuaded
+her to elope. She, too, agreed, but the last repentance&mdash;&mdash;"
+(the conversation was taking place in French),
+"and she went to her father and said that everything was
+ready for the elopement, and she could leave him, but
+hoped for his magnanimity. And, indeed, her father forgave
+her,&mdash;everybody begged for her,&mdash;and gave his
+consent. Thus the wedding was celebrated, and it was a
+jolly wedding! Who of us thought that a year later she
+would follow him to Siberia! She, an only daughter,
+the most beautiful, the richest woman of that time. Emperor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+Alexander always used to notice her at balls, and
+had danced with her so often. Countess G&mdash;&mdash; gave a
+<i>bal costumé</i>,&mdash;I remember it as though it were to-day,&mdash;and
+she was a Neapolitan maid, oh, so charming! Whenever
+he came to Moscow, he used to ask, '<i>que fait la
+belle Napolitaine</i>?' And suddenly this woman, in such
+a condition (she bore a child on the way), did not stop
+for a moment to think, without preparing anything, without
+collecting her things, just as she was, when they took
+him, followed him a distance of five thousand versts."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what a remarkable woman!" said the hostess.</p>
+
+<p>"Both he and she were remarkable people," said another
+lady. "I have been told,&mdash;I don't know whether it is
+true,&mdash;that wherever they worked in the mines in Siberia,
+or whatever it is called, the convicts, who were with them,
+improved in their presence."</p>
+
+<p>"But she has never worked in the mines," Pákhtin corrected
+her.</p>
+
+<p>How much that year '56 meant! Three years before
+no one had been thinking of the Labázovs, and if any
+one recalled them, it was with that unaccountable feeling
+of dread with which one speaks of one lately dead; but
+now they vividly recalled all the former relations, all the
+beautiful qualities, and each lady was making a plan for
+getting the monopoly of the Labázovs, in order to treat
+the other guests to them.</p>
+
+<p>"Their son and their daughter have come with them,"
+said Pákhtin.</p>
+
+<p>"If they are only as handsome as their mother used to
+be," said Countess Fuks. "Still, their father, too, was
+very, very handsome."</p>
+
+<p>"How could they educate their children there?" asked
+the hostess.</p>
+
+<p>"They say, nicely. They say that the young man is
+as nice, as amiable, and as cultured as though he had been
+brought up in Paris."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I predict great success to that young person," said a
+homely spinster. "All those Siberian ladies have something
+pleasantly trivial about them, which everybody,
+however, likes."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," said another spinster.</p>
+
+<p>"Here we have another rich prospective bride," said a
+third spinster.</p>
+
+<p>The old colonel, of German origin, who had come to
+Moscow three years before, in order to marry a rich girl,
+decided as quickly as possible, before the young people
+knew anything about it, to present himself and propose.
+But the spinsters and ladies thought almost the same
+about the young Siberian.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt that is the one I am destined to marry,"
+thought a spinster who had been going out for eight
+years.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt it was for the best that that stupid officer
+of the Chevalier Guards did not propose to me. I should
+certainly have been unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they will again grow yellow with envy, if this
+one, too, falls in love with me," thought a young and
+pretty lady.</p>
+
+<p>We hear much about the provincialism of small towns,&mdash;but
+there is nothing worse than the provincialism of
+the upper classes. There are no new persons there, and
+society is prepared to receive all kinds of new persons, if
+they should make their appearance; but they are rarely,
+very rarely, recognized as belonging to their circle and
+accepted, as was the case with the Labázovs, and the sensation
+produced by them is stronger than in a provincial
+town.</p>
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>"This is Moscow, white-stoned Mother Moscow," said
+Peter Ivánovich, rubbing his eyes in the morning, and
+listening to the tolling of the bells which was proceeding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+from Gazette Lane. Nothing so vividly resurrects the past
+as sounds, and these sounds of the Moscow bells, combined
+with the sight of a white wall opposite the window, and
+with the rumbling of wheels, so vividly reminded him not
+only of the Moscow which he had known thirty-five
+years before, but also of the Moscow with the Kremlin,
+with the palaces, with Iván the bell, and so forth, which
+he had been carrying in his heart, that he experienced a
+childish joy at being a Russian, and in Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>There appeared the Bukhara morning-gown, wide open
+over the broad chest with its chintz shirt, the pipe with
+its amber, the lackey with soft manners, tea, the odour of
+tobacco; a loud male voice was heard in Chevalier's apartments;
+there resounded the morning kisses, and the
+voices of daughter and son, and the Decembrist was as
+much at home as in Irkútsk, and as he would have been
+in New York or in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>No matter how much I should like to present to my
+readers the Decembrist hero above all foibles, I must confess,
+for truth's sake, that Peter Ivánovich took great
+pains in shaving and combing himself, and in looking at
+himself in the mirror. He was dissatisfied with the garments,
+which had been made in Siberia with little elegance,
+and two or three times he buttoned and unbuttoned his
+coat.</p>
+
+<p>But Natálya Nikoláevna entered the drawing-room,
+rustling with her black moire gown, with mittens and with
+ribbons in her cap, which, though not according to the
+latest fashion, were so arranged that, far from making her
+appear <i>ridicule</i>, they made her look <i>distinguée</i>. For this
+ladies have a special sixth sense and perspicacity, which
+cannot be compared to anything.</p>
+
+<p>Sónya, too, was so dressed that, although she was two
+years behind in fashion, she could not be reproached in
+any way. On her mother everything was dark and simple,
+and on the daughter bright and cheerful.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Serézha had just awakened, and so they went by themselves
+to mass. Father and mother sat in the back seat,
+and their daughter was opposite them. Vasíli climbed on
+the box, and the hired carriage took them to the Kremlin.
+When they got out of the carriage, the ladies adjusted
+their robes, and Peter Ivánovich took the arm of his
+Natálya Nikoláevna, and, throwing back his head, walked
+up to the door of the church. Many people, merchants,
+officers, and everybody else, could not make out what
+kind of people they were.</p>
+
+<p>Who was that old man with his old sunburnt, and
+still unblanched face, with the large, straight work
+wrinkles of a peculiar fold, different from the wrinkles
+acquired in the English club, with snow-white hair and
+beard, with a good, proud glance and energetic movements?
+Who was that tall lady with that determined
+gait, and those weary, dimmed, large, beautiful eyes?
+Who was that fresh, stately, strong young lady, neither
+fashionable, nor timid? Merchants? No, no merchants.
+Germans? No, no Germans. Gentlefolk? No, they are
+different,&mdash;they are distinguished people. Thus thought
+those who saw them in church, and for some reason
+more readily and cheerfully made way for them than for
+men in thick epaulets. Peter Ivánovich bore himself just
+as majestically as at the entrance, and prayed quietly,
+with reserve, and without forgetting himself. Natálya
+Nikoláevna glided down on her knees, took out a handkerchief,
+and wept much during the cherubical song.
+Sónya seemed to be making an effort over herself in
+order to pray. Devotion did not come to her, but she
+did not look around, and diligently made the signs of the
+cross.</p>
+
+<p>Serézha stayed at home, partly because he had overslept
+himself, partly because he did not like to stand
+through a mass, which made his legs faint,&mdash;a matter he
+was unable to understand, since it was a mere trifle for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+him to walk forty miles on snow-shoes, whereas standing
+through twelve pericopes was the greatest physical torture
+for him,&mdash;but chiefly because he felt that more
+than anything he needed a new suit of clothes. He
+dressed himself and went to Blacksmith Bridge. He had
+plenty of money. His father had made it a rule, ever
+since his son had passed his twenty-first year, to let him
+have as much money as he wished. It lay with him to
+leave his parents entirely without money.</p>
+
+<p>How sorry I am for the 250 roubles which he threw
+away in Kuntz's shop of ready-made clothes! Any one
+of the gentlemen who met Serézha would have been only
+too happy to show him around, and would have regarded
+it as a piece of happiness to go with him to get his
+clothes made. But, as it was, he was a stranger in the
+crowd, and, making his way in his cap along Blacksmith
+Bridge, he went to the end, without looking into the
+shops, opened the door, and came out from it in a cinnamon-coloured
+half-dress coat, which was tight (though at
+that time they wore wide coats), and in loose black trousers
+(though they wore tight trousers), and in a flowery
+atlas waistcoat, which not one of the gentlemen, who
+were in Chevalier's special room, would have allowed
+their lackeys to wear, and bought a number of other a
+things; on the other hand, Kuntz marvelled at the young
+man's slender waist, the like of which, as he explained to
+everybody, he had never seen. Serézha knew that he
+had a beautiful waist, and he was very much flattered by
+the praise of a stranger, such as Kuntz was.</p>
+
+<p>He came out with 250 roubles less, but was dressed
+badly, in fact so badly that his apparel two days later
+passed over into Vasíli's possession and always remained
+a disagreeable memory for Serézha.</p>
+
+<p>At home he went down-stairs, seated himself in the
+large hall, looking now and then into the sanctum, and
+ordered a breakfast of such strange dishes that the servant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+in the kitchen had to laugh. Then he asked for a
+periodical, and pretended to be reading. When the servant,
+encouraged by the inexperience of the young man,
+addressed some questions to him, Serézha said, "Go to
+your place!" and blushed. But he said this so proudly
+that the servant obeyed. Mother, father, and daughter,
+upon returning home, found his clothes excellent.</p>
+
+<p>Do you remember that joyous sensation of childhood,
+when you were dressed up for your name-day and taken
+to mass, and when, upon returning with a holiday expression
+in your clothes, upon your countenance, and in your
+soul, you found toys and guests at home? You knew
+that on that day there would be no classes, that even the
+grown-ups celebrated on that day, and that that was a
+day of exceptions and pleasures for the whole house; you
+knew that you alone were the cause of that holiday, and
+that you would be forgiven, no matter what you might do,
+and you were surprised to see that the people in the
+streets did not celebrate along with your home folk, and
+the sounds were more audible, and the colours brighter,&mdash;in
+short, a name-day sensation. It was a sensation of
+that kind that Peter Ivánovich experienced on his return
+from church.</p>
+
+<p>Pákhtin's solicitude of the evening before did not pass
+in vain: instead of toys Peter Ivánovich found at home
+several visiting-cards of distinguished Muscovites, who, in
+the year '56, regarded it as their peremptory duty to show
+every attention possible to a famous exile, whom they
+would under no consideration have wished to see three
+years before. In the eyes of Chevalier, the porter, and
+the servants of the hotel, the appearance of carriages asking
+for Peter Ivánovich, on that one morning increased
+their respect and subserviency tenfold.</p>
+
+<p>All those were name-day toys for Peter Ivánovich.
+No matter how much tried in life, how clever a man may
+be, the expression of respect from people respected by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+large number of men is always agreeable. Peter Ivánovich
+felt light of heart when Chevalier, bowing, offered
+to change his apartments and asked him to order anything
+he might need, and assured him that he regarded
+Peter Ivánovich's visit as a piece of luck, and
+when, examining the visiting-cards and throwing them
+into a vase, he called out the names of Count S&mdash;&mdash;,
+Prince D&mdash;&mdash;, and so forth.</p>
+
+<p>Natálya Nikoláevna said that she would not receive
+anybody and that she would go at once to the house of
+Márya Ivánovna, to which Peter Ivánovich consented,
+though he wished very much to talk to some of the visitors.</p>
+
+<p>Only one visitor managed to get through before the refusal
+to meet him. That was Pákhtin. If this man had
+been asked why he went away from the Prechístenka to
+go to Gazette Lane, he would have been unable to give
+any excuse, except that he was fond of everything new
+and remarkable, and so had come to see Peter Ivánovich,
+as something rare. One would think that, coming to see
+a stranger for no other reason than that, he would have
+been embarrassed. But the contrary was true. Peter
+Ivánovich and his son and Sónya Petróvna became embarrassed.
+Natálya Nikoláevna was too much of a
+<i>grande dame</i> to become embarrassed for any reason whatever.
+The weary glance of her beautiful black eyes was
+calmly lowered on Pákhtin. But Pákhtin was refreshing,
+self-contented, and gaily amiable, as always. He was a
+friend of Márya Ivánovna's.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Natálya Nikoláevna.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a friend,&mdash;the difference of our years,&mdash;but she
+has always been kind to me."</p>
+
+<p>Pákhtin was an old admirer of Peter Ivánovich's,&mdash;he
+knew his companions. He hoped that he could be
+useful to the newcomers. He would have appeared
+the previous evening, but could not find the time, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+begged to be excused, and sat down and talked for a long
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I must tell you, I have found many changes in
+Russia since then," Peter Ivánovich said, in reply to a
+question.</p>
+
+<p>The moment Peter Ivánovich began to speak, you
+ought to have seen with what respectful attention Pákhtin
+received every word that flew out of the mouth of the
+distinguished old man, and how after each sentence, at
+times after a word, Pákhtin with a nod, a smile, or a
+motion of his eyes gave him to understand that he had
+received and accepted the memorable sentence or word.</p>
+
+<p>The weary glance approved of that man&oelig;uvre. Sergyéy
+Petróvich seemed to be afraid lest his father's
+conversation should not be weighty enough, corresponding
+to the attention of the hearer. Sónya Petróvna, on the
+contrary, smiled that imperceptible self-satisfied smile
+which people smile who have caught a man's ridiculous
+side. It seemed to her that nothing was to be got from
+him, that he was a "shyúshka," as she and her brother
+nicknamed a certain class of people.</p>
+
+<p>Peter Ivánovich declared that during his journey he
+had seen enormous changes, which gave him pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no comparison, the masses&mdash;the peasants&mdash;stand
+so much higher now, have so much greater consciousness
+of their dignity," he said, as though repeating
+some old phrases. "I must say that the masses have
+always interested me most. I am of the opinion that the
+strength of Russia does not lie in us, but in the masses,"
+and so forth.</p>
+
+<p>Peter Ivánovich with characteristic zeal evolved his
+more or less original ideas in regard to many important
+subjects. We shall hear more of them in fuller form.
+Pákhtin was melting for joy, and fully agreed with him
+in everything.</p>
+
+<p>"You must by all means meet the Aksátovs. Will you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+permit me to introduce them to you, prince? You know
+they have permitted him to publish his periodical. To-morrow,
+they say, the first number will appear. I have
+also read his remarkable article on the consistency of the
+theory of science in the abstract. Remarkably interesting.
+Another article, the history of Servia in the eleventh
+century, of that famous general Karbovánets, is also very
+interesting. Altogether an enormous step."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed," said Peter Ivánovich. But he was apparently
+not interested in all these bits of information; he
+did not even know the names and merits of all those men
+whom Pákhtin quoted as universally known.</p>
+
+<p>But Natálya Nikoláevna, without denying the necessity
+of knowing all these men and conditions, remarked in
+justification of her husband that Pierre received his periodicals
+very late. He read entirely too much.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa, shall we not go to aunty?" asked Sónya, upon
+coming in.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall, but we must have our breakfast. Won't
+you have anything?"</p>
+
+<p>Pákhtin naturally declined, but Peter Ivánovich, with
+the hospitality characteristic of every Russian and of him
+in particular, insisted that Pákhtin should eat and drink
+something. He himself emptied a wine-glass of vódka
+and a tumbler of Bordeaux. Pákhtin noticed that as he
+was filling his glass, Natálya accidentally turned away
+from it, and the son cast a peculiar glance on his father's
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>After the wine, Peter Ivánovich, in response to Pákhtin's
+questions about what his opinion was in respect to
+the new literature, the new tendency, the war, the peace
+(Pákhtin had a knack of uniting the most diversified subjects
+into one senseless but smooth conversation), in response
+to these questions Peter Ivánovich at once replied
+with one general <i>profession de foi</i>, and either under the
+influence of the wine, or of the subject of the conversation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+he became so excited that tears appeared in his eyes, and
+Pákhtin, too, was in ecstasy, and himself became tearful,
+and without embarrassment expressed his conviction that
+Peter Ivánovich was now in advance of all the foremost
+men and should become the head of all the parties. Peter
+Ivánovich's eyes became inflamed,&mdash;he believed what
+Pákhtin was telling him,&mdash;and he would have continued
+talking for a long time, if Sónya Petróvna had not schemed
+to get Natálya Nikoláevna to put on her mantilla, and
+had not come herself to raise Peter Ivánovich from his
+seat. He poured out the rest of the wine into a glass,
+but Sónya Petróvna drank it.</p>
+
+<p>"What is this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not had any yet, papa, pardon."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let us go to Márya Ivánovna's. You will excuse
+us, Monsieur Pákhtin."</p>
+
+<p>And Peter Ivánovich left the room, carrying his head
+high. In the vestibule he met a general, who had come
+to call on his old acquaintance. They had not seen each
+other for thirty-five years. The general was toothless and
+bald.</p>
+
+<p>"How fresh you still are!" he said. "Evidently Siberia
+is better than St. Petersburg. These are your family,&mdash;introduce
+me to them! What a fine fellow your son
+is! So to dinner to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, by all means."</p>
+
+<p>On the porch they met the famous Chikháev, another
+old acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you find out that I had arrived?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be a shame for Moscow if it did not know it.
+It is a shame that you were not met at the barrier. Where
+do you dine? No doubt with your sister, Márya Ivánovna.
+Very well, I shall be there myself."</p>
+
+<p>Peter Ivánovich always had the aspect of a proud man
+for one who could not through that exterior make out the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+expression of unspeakable goodness and impressionableness;
+but just then even Márya Nikoláevna was delighted
+to see his unwonted dignity, and Sónya Petróvna smiled
+with her eyes, as she looked at him. They arrived at the
+house of Márya Ivánovna. Márya Ivánovna was Peter
+Ivánovich's godmother and ten years his senior. She was
+an old maid.</p>
+
+<p>Her history, why she did not get married, and how she
+had passed her youth, I will tell some time later.</p>
+
+<p>She had lived uninterruptedly for forty years in Moscow.
+She had neither much intelligence, nor great
+wealth, and she did not think much of connections,&mdash;on
+the contrary; and there was not a man who did not
+respect her. She was so convinced that everybody ought
+to respect her that everybody actually respected her.
+There were some young liberals from the university who
+did not recognize her power, but these gentlemen made a
+bold front only in her absence. She needed only to enter
+the drawing-room with her royal gait, to say something in
+her calm manner, to smile her kindly smile, and they were
+vanquished. Her society consisted of everybody. She
+looked upon all of Moscow as her home folk, and treated
+them as such. She had friends mostly among the young
+people and clever men, but women she did not like. She
+had also dependents, whom our literature has for some
+reason included with the Hungarian woman and with
+generals in one common class for contempt; but Márya
+Ivánovna considered it better for Skópin, who had been
+ruined in cards, and Madame Byéshev, whom her husband
+had driven away, to be living with her than in misery,
+and so she kept them.</p>
+
+<p>But the two great passions in Márya Ivánovna's present
+life were her two brothers. Peter Ivánovich was her
+idol. Prince Iván was hateful to her. She had not
+known that Peter Ivánovich had arrived; she had attended
+mass, and was just finishing her coffee.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the table sat the vicar of Moscow, Madame Byéshev,
+and Skópin. Márya Ivánovna was telling them
+about young Count V&mdash;&mdash;, the son of P&mdash;&mdash; Z&mdash;&mdash;, who
+had returned from Sevastopol, and with whom she was in
+love. (She had some passion all the time.) He was to
+dine with her on that day. The vicar got up and bowed
+himself out. Márya Ivánovna did not keep him,&mdash;she
+was a freethinker in this respect: she was pious, but had
+no use for monks and laughed at the ladies that ran after
+them, and boldly asserted that in her opinion monks were
+just such men as we sinful people, and that it was better
+to find salvation in the world than in a monastery.</p>
+
+<p>"Give the order not to receive anybody, my dear," she
+said, "I will write to Pierre. I cannot understand why
+he is not coming. No doubt, Natálya Nikoláevna is ill."</p>
+
+<p>Márya Ivánovna was of the opinion that Natálya Nikoláevna
+did not like her and was her enemy. She could
+not forgive her because it was not she, his sister, who had
+given up her property and had followed him to Siberia,
+but Natálya Nikoláevna, and because her brother had
+definitely declined her offer when she got ready to go
+with him. After thirty-five years she was beginning to
+believe that Natálya Nikoláevna was the best woman in
+the world and his guardian angel; but she was envious,
+and it seemed all the time to her that she was not a
+good woman.</p>
+
+<p>She got up, took a few steps in the parlour, and was
+on the point of entering the cabinet when the door
+opened, and Madame Byéshev's wrinkled, grayish face,
+expressing joyous terror, was thrust through the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Márya Ivánovna, prepare yourself," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"A letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, something better&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But before she had a chance to finish, a man's loud
+voice was heard in the antechamber:</p>
+
+<p>"Where is she? Go, Natásha."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He!" muttered Márya Ivánovna, walking with long,
+firm steps toward her brother. She met them all as
+though she had last seen them the day before.</p>
+
+<p>"When didst thou arrive? Where have you stopped?
+How have you come,&mdash;in a carriage?" Such were the
+questions which Márya Ivánovna put, walking with them
+to the drawing-room and not hearing the answers, and
+looking with large eyes, now upon one, and now upon
+another. Madame Byéshev was surprised at this calm,
+even indifference, and did not approve of it. They all
+smiled; the conversation died down, and Márya Ivánovna
+looked silently and seriously at her brother.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you?" asked Peter Ivánovich, taking her
+hand, and smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Peter Ivánovich said "you" to her, though she had said
+"thou." Márya Ivánovna once more looked at his gray
+beard, his bald head, his teeth, his wrinkles, his eyes, his
+sunburnt face, and recognized all that.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is my Sónya."</p>
+
+<p>But she did not look around.</p>
+
+<p>"What a stup&mdash;" her voice faltered, and she took hold
+of his bald head with her large white hands. "What a
+stupid you are," she had intended to say, "not to have
+prepared me," but her shoulders and breast began to
+tremble, her old face twitched, and she burst out into
+sobs, pressing to her breast his bald head, and repeating:
+"What a stupid you are not to have prepared me!"</p>
+
+<p>Peter Ivánovich no longer appeared as such a great
+man to himself, not so important as he had appeared on
+Chevalier's porch. His back was resting against a chair,
+but his head was in his sister's arms, his nose was
+pressed against her corset, his nose was tickled, his hair
+dishevelled, and there were tears in his eyes. But he felt
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>When this outburst of joyous tears was over, Márya
+Ivánovna understood what had happened and believed it,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+and began to examine them all. But several times during
+the course of the day, whenever she recalled what he had
+been then, and what she had been, and what they were
+now, and whenever the past misfortunes, and past joys
+and loves, vividly rose in her imagination, she was again
+seized by emotion, and got up and repeated: "What a
+stupid you are, Pierre, what a stupid not to have prepared
+me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you not come straight to me? I should
+have found room for you," said Márya Ivánovna. "At
+least, stay to dinner. You will not feel lonesome, Sergyéy,&mdash;a
+young, brave Sevastopol soldier is dining here
+to-day. Do you not know Nikoláy Mikháylovich's son?
+He is a writer,&mdash;has written something nice. I have
+not read it, but they praise it, and he is a dear fellow,&mdash;I
+shall send for him. Chikháev, too, wanted to come. He
+is a babbler,&mdash;I do not like him. Has he already called on
+you? Have you seen Nikíta? That is all nonsense.
+What do you intend to do? How are you, how is your
+health, Natálya? What are you going to do with this
+young fellow, and with this beauty?"</p>
+
+<p>But the conversation somehow did not flow.</p>
+
+<p>Before dinner Natálya Nikoláevna went with the
+children to an old aunt; brother and sister were left
+alone, and he began to tell her of his plans.</p>
+
+<p>"Sónya is a young lady, she has to be taken out; consequently,
+we are going to live in Moscow," said Márya
+Ivánovna.</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"Serézha has to serve."</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"You are still as crazy as ever."</p>
+
+<p>But she was just as fond of the crazy man.</p>
+
+<p>"First we must stay here, then go to the country, and
+show everything to the children."</p>
+
+<p>"It is my rule not to interfere in family matters," said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+Márya Ivánovna, after calming down from her agitation,
+"and not to give advice. A young man has to serve,
+that I have always thought, and now more than ever.
+You do not know, Pierre, what these young men nowadays
+are. I know them all: there, Prince Dmítri's son is
+all ruined. Their own fault. I am not afraid of anybody,
+I am an old woman. It is not good." And she
+began to talk about the government. She was dissatisfied
+with it for the excessive liberty which was given to everything.
+"The one good thing they have done was to let
+you out. That is good."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre began to defend it, but Márya Ivánovna was not
+Pákhtin: they could come to no terms. She grew excited.</p>
+
+<p>"What business have you to defend it? You are just
+as senseless as ever, I see."</p>
+
+<p>Peter Ivánovich grew silent, with a smile which showed
+that he did not surrender, but that he did not wish to
+quarrel with Márya Ivánovna.</p>
+
+<p>"You are smiling. We know that. You do not wish
+to discuss with me, a woman," she, said, merrily and
+kindly, and casting a shrewd, intelligent glance at her
+brother, such as could not be expected from her old, large-featured
+face. "You could not convince me, my friend.
+I am ending my three score and ten. I have not been a
+fool all that time, and have seen a thing or two. I have
+read none of your books, and I never will. There is only
+nonsense in them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how do you like my children? Serézha?"
+Peter Ivánovich said, with the same smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, wait!" his sister replied, with a threatening
+gesture. "Don't switch me off on your children! We
+shall have time to talk about them. Here is what I
+wanted to tell you. You are a senseless man, as senseless
+as ever, I see it in your eye. Now they are going to
+carry you in their arms. Such is the fashion. You are
+all in vogue now. Yes, yes, I see by your eyes that you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+are as senseless as ever," she added, in response to his
+smile. "Keep away, I implore you in the name of Jesus
+Christ our Lord, from those modern liberals. God knows
+what they are up to. I know it will not end well. Our
+government is silent just now, but when it comes later to
+showing up the nails, you will recall my words. I am
+afraid lest you should get mixed up in things again. Give
+it up! It is all nonsense. You have children."</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently you do not know me, Márya Ivánovna,"
+said her brother.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, all right, we shall see. Either I do not
+know you, or you do not know yourself. I just told you
+what I had on my heart, and if you will listen to me, well
+and good. Now we can talk about Serézha. What kind
+of a lad is he?" She wanted to say, "I do not like him
+very much," but she only said: "He resembles his mother
+remarkably: they are like two drops of water. Sónya is
+you all over,&mdash;I like her very much, very much&mdash;so
+sweet and open. She is a dear. Where is she, Sónya?
+Yes, I forgot."</p>
+
+<p>"How shall I tell you? Sónya will make a good wife
+and a good mother, but my Serézha is clever, very clever,&mdash;nobody
+will take that from him. He studied well,&mdash;a
+little lazy. He is very fond of the natural sciences.
+We have been fortunate: we had an excellent, excellent
+teacher. He wants to enter the university,&mdash;to attend
+lectures on the natural sciences, chemistry&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Márya Ivánovna scarcely listened when her brother
+began to speak of the natural sciences. She seemed to
+feel sad, especially when he mentioned chemistry. She
+heaved a deep sigh and replied directly to that train of
+thoughts which the natural sciences evoked in her.</p>
+
+<p>"If you knew how sorry I am for them, Pierre," she
+said, with sincere, calm, humble sadness. "So sorry, so
+sorry. A whole life before them. Oh, how much they
+will suffer yet!"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, we must hope that they will be more fortunate
+than we."</p>
+
+<p>"God grant it, God grant it! It is hard to live, Pierre!
+Take this one advice from me, my dear: don't philosophize!
+What a stupid you are, Pierre, oh, what a stupid!
+But I must attend to matters. I have invited a lot of
+people, but how am I going to feed them?" She flared
+up, turned away, and rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p>"Call Tarás!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is the old man still with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; why, he is a boy in comparison with me."</p>
+
+<p>Tarás was angry and clean, but he undertook to get
+everything done.</p>
+
+<p>Soon Natálya Nikoláevna and Sónya, agleam with cold
+and happiness, and rustling in their dresses, entered the
+room; Serézha was still out, attending to some purchases.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me get a good look at her!"</p>
+
+<p>Márya Ivánovna took her face. Natálya Nikoláevna
+began to tell something.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>THE DECEMBRISTS</p>
+
+<p>SECOND FRAGMENT</p>
+
+<p>(Variant of the First Chapter)</p>
+
+<p>The litigation "about the seizure in the Government of
+Pénza, County of Krasnoslobódsk, by the landed proprietor
+and ex-lieutenant of the Guards, Iván Apýkhtin, of
+four thousand desyatínas of land from the neighbouring
+Crown peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha," was through
+the solicitude of the peasants' representative, Iván Mirónov,
+decided in the court of the first instance&mdash;the
+County Court&mdash;in favour of the peasants, and the enormous
+parcel of land, partly in forest, and partly in ploughings
+which had been broken by Apýkhtin's serfs, in the
+year 1815 returned into the possession of the peasants,
+and they in the year 1816 sowed in this land and harvested.</p>
+
+<p>The winning of this irregular case by the peasants
+surprised all the neighbours and even the peasants themselves.
+This success of theirs could be explained only
+on the supposition that Iván Petróvich Apýkhtin, a very
+meek, peaceful man, who was opposed to litigations and
+was convinced of the righteousness of this matter, had
+taken no measures against the action of the peasants.
+On the other hand, Iván Mirónov, the peasants' representative,
+a dry, hook-nosed, literate peasant, who had been
+a township elder and had acted in the capacity of collector
+of taxes, had collected fifty kopeks from each peasant,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+which money he cleverly applied in the distribution
+of presents, and had very shrewdly conducted the whole
+affair.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after the decision handed down by the
+County Court, Apýkhtin, seeing the danger, gave a power
+of attorney to the shrewd manumitted serf, Ilyá Mitrofánov,
+who appealed to the higher court against the decision
+of the County Court. Ilyá Mitrofánov managed the
+affair so shrewdly that, in spite of all the cunning of
+the peasants' representative, Iván Mirónov, in spite of the
+considerable presents distributed by him to the members
+of the higher court, the case was retried in the Government
+Court in favour of the proprietor, and the land was
+to go back to him from the peasants, of which fact their
+representative was duly informed.</p>
+
+<p>The representative, Iván Mirónov, told the peasants at
+the meeting of the Commune that the gentleman in the
+Government capital had pulled the proprietor's leg and
+had "mixed up" the whole business, so that they wanted
+to take the land back again, but that the proprietor would
+not be successful, because he had a petition all written up
+to be sent to the Senate, and that then the land would be
+for ever confirmed to the peasants; all they had to do
+was to collect a rouble from each soul. The peasants
+decided to collect the money and again to entrust the
+whole matter to Iván Mirónov. When Mirónov had all
+the money in his hands, he went to St. Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>When, in the year 1817, during Passion-week,&mdash;it
+fell late that year,&mdash;the time came to plough the ground,
+the Izlegóshcha peasants began to discuss at a meeting
+whether they ought to plough the land under litigation
+during that year, or not; and, although Apýkhtin's clerk
+had come to see them during Lent with the order that
+they should not plough the land and should come to some
+agreement with him in regard to the rye already planted
+in what had been the doubtful, and now was Apýkhtin's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+land, the peasants, for the very reason that the winter
+crop had been sowed on the debatable land, and because
+Apýkhtin, in his desire to avoid being unfair to them,
+wished to arbitrate the matter with them, decided to
+plough the land under litigation and to take possession
+of it before touching any other fields.</p>
+
+<p>On the very day when the peasants went out to plough,
+which was Maundy Thursday, Iván Petróvich Apýkhtin,
+who had been preparing himself for communion during
+the Passion-week, went to communion, and early in the
+morning drove to the church in the village of Izlegóshcha,
+of which he was a parishioner, and there he, without
+knowing anything about the matter, amicably chatted with
+the church elder. Iván Petróvich had been to confession
+the night before, and had attended vigils at home;
+in the morning he had himself read the Rules, and at
+eight o'clock had left the house. They waited for him
+with the mass. As he stood at the altar, where he usually
+stood, Iván Petróvich rather reflected than prayed, which
+made him dissatisfied with himself.</p>
+
+<p>Like many people of that time, and, so far as that goes,
+of all times, he was not quite clear in matters of religion.
+He was past fifty years of age; he never omitted carrying
+out any rite, attended church, and went to communion
+once a year; in talking to his only daughter, he instructed
+her in the articles of faith; but, if he had been asked
+whether he really believed, he would not have known
+what to reply.</p>
+
+<p>On that day more than on any other, he felt meek of
+spirit, and, standing at the altar, he, instead of praying,
+thought of how strangely everything was constructed in
+the world: there he was, almost an old man, taking the
+communion for perhaps the fortieth time in his life, and
+he knew that everybody, all his home folk and all the
+people in the church, looked at him as a model and took
+him for an example, and he felt himself obliged to act as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+an example in matters of religion, whereas he himself did
+not know anything, and soon, very soon, he would die, and
+even if he were killed he could not tell whether that in
+which he was showing an example to others was true.
+And it also seemed strange to him how every one considered&mdash;that
+he saw&mdash;old people to be firm and to
+know what was necessary and what not (thus he always
+thought about old men), and there he was old and positively
+failed to know, and was just as frivolous as he had
+been twenty years before; the only difference was that
+formerly he did not conceal it, while now he did. Just
+as in his childhood it had occurred to him during the
+service that he might crow like a cock, even so now all
+kinds of foolish things passed through his mind, and he,
+the old man, reverentially bent his head, touching the
+flagstones of the church with the old knuckles of his
+hands, and Father Vasíli was evidently timid in celebrating
+mass in his presence, and incited to zeal by his zeal.</p>
+
+<p>"If they only knew what foolish things are running
+through my head! But that is a sin, a sin; I must pray,"
+he said to himself, when the service commenced; and,
+trying to catch the meaning of the responses, he began to
+pray. Indeed, he soon transferred himself in feeling
+to the prayer and thought of his sins and of everything
+which he regretted.</p>
+
+<p>A respectable-looking old man, bald-headed, with thick
+gray hair, dressed in a fur coat with a new white patch
+on one-half of his back, stepping evenly with his out-toeing
+bast shoes, went up to the altar, bowed low to him,
+tossed his hair, and went beyond the altar to place some
+tapers. This was the church elder, Iván Fedótov, one of
+the best peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha. Iván
+Petróvich knew him. The sight of this stern, firm face
+led Iván Petróvich to a new train of thoughts. He was
+one of those peasants who wanted to take the land away
+from him, and one of the best and richest married farmers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+who needed the land, who could manage it, and had the
+means to work it. His stern aspect, ceremonious bow,
+and measured gait, and the exactness of his wearing-apparel,&mdash;the
+leg-rags fitted his legs like stockings and
+the laces crossed each other symmetrically on either leg,&mdash;all
+his appearance seemed to express rebuke and enmity
+on account of the land.</p>
+
+<p>"I have asked forgiveness of my wife, of Mánya" (his
+daughter), "of the nurse, of my valet, Volódya, but it is
+his forgiveness that I ought to ask for, and I ought to
+forgive him," thought Iván Petróvich, and he decided
+that after matins he would ask Iván Fedótov to forgive
+him.</p>
+
+<p>And so he did.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>There were but few people in church. The country
+people were in the habit of going to communion in the
+first and in the fourth week. Now there were only forty
+men and women present, who had not had time to go to
+communion before, a few old peasant women, the church
+servants, and the manorial people of the Apýkhtins and
+his rich neighbours, the Chernýshevs. There was also
+there an old woman, a relative of the Chernýshevs, who
+was living with them, and a deacon's widow, whose son
+the Chernýshevs, in the goodness of their hearts, had
+educated and made a man of, and who now was serving
+as an official in the Senate. Between the matins and the
+mass there were even fewer people left in the church.
+There were left two beggar women, who were sitting in
+the corner and conversing with each other and looking at
+Iván Petróvich with the evident desire to congratulate
+him and talk with him, and two lackeys,&mdash;one his own,
+in livery, and the other, Chernýshev's, who had come
+with the old woman. These two were also whispering
+in an animated manner to each other, just as Iván Petróvich
+came out from the altar-place; when they saw him,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+they grew silent. There was also a woman in a tall
+head-gear with a pearl face-ornament and in a white fur
+coat, with which she covered up a sick child, who was
+crying, and whom she was attempting to quiet; and another,
+a stooping old woman, also in a head-gear, but with
+a woollen face-ornament and a white kerchief, which
+was tied in the fashion of old women, and in a gray
+gathered coat with an iris-design on the back, who,
+kneeling in the middle of the church, and turning to an
+old image between two latticed windows, over which hung
+a new scarf with red edges, was praying so fervently,
+solemnly, and impassionately that one could not fail
+directing one's attention to her.</p>
+
+<p>Before reaching the elder, who, standing at the little
+safe, was kneading over the remnants of some tapers into
+one piece of wax, Iván Petróvich stopped to take a look
+at the praying woman. The old woman was praying well.
+She knelt as straight as it was possible to kneel in
+front of the image; all the members of her body were
+mathematically symmetrical; her feet behind her pressed
+with the tips of her bast shoes at the same angle against
+the stone floor; her body was bent back, to the extent
+to which her stooping shoulders permitted her to do so;
+her hands were quite regularly placed below her abdomen;
+her head was thrown back, and her face, with an expression
+of bashful commiseration, wrinkled, and with a dim
+glance, was turned straight toward the image with the
+scarf. Having remained in an immobile position for a
+minute or less,&mdash;evidently a definite space of time,&mdash;she
+heaved a deep sigh and, taking her right hand away,
+swung it above her head-gear, touched the crown of her
+head with folded fingers, and made ample crosses by
+carrying her hand down again to her abdomen and to her
+shoulders; then she swayed back and dropped her head
+on her hands, which were placed evenly on the floor, and
+again raised herself, and repeated the same.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now she is praying," Iván Petróvich thought, as he
+looked at her. "She does it differently from us sinners:
+this is faith, though I know that she is praying to her
+own image, or to her scarf, or to her adornment on the
+image, just like the rest of them. All right. What of
+it?" he said to himself, "every person has his own faith:
+she prays to her image, and I consider it necessary to beg
+the peasant's forgiveness."</p>
+
+<p>And he walked over to the elder, instinctively scrutinizing
+the church in order to see who was going to see his
+deed, which both pleased and shamed him. It was disagreeable
+to him, because the old beggar women would
+see it, and more disagreeable still, because Míshka, his
+lackey, would see it. In the presence of Míshka,&mdash;he
+knew how wide-awake and shrewd he was,&mdash;he felt that
+he should not have the strength to walk up to Iván Fedótov.
+He beckoned to Míshka to come up to him.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it you wish?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go, my dear, and bring me the rug from the carriage,
+for it is too damp here for my feet."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>When Míshka went away, Iván Petróvich at once went
+up to Iván Fedótov. Iván Fedótov was disconcerted,
+like a guilty person, at the approach of the gentleman.
+Timidity and hasty motions formed a queer contradiction
+to his austere face and curly steel-gray hair and beard.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wish a dime taper?" he said, raising the
+desk, and now and then casting his large, beautiful eyes
+upon the master.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I do not want a taper, Iván. I ask you to forgive
+me for Christ's sake, if I have in any way offended you.
+Forgive me, for Christ's sake," Iván Petróvich repeated,
+with a low bow.</p>
+
+<p>Iván Fedótov completely lost his composure and began
+to move restlessly, but when he comprehended it all, he
+smiled a gentle smile:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"God forgives," he said. "It seems to me, I have received
+no offence from you. God will forgive you,&mdash;I
+have not been offended by you," he hastened to repeat.</p>
+
+<p>"Still&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"God will forgive you, Iván Petróvich. So you want
+two dime tapers?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, two."</p>
+
+<p>"He is an angel, truly, an angel. He begs even a
+base peasant to forgive him. O Lord, true angels,"
+muttered the deacon's widow, in an old black capote
+and black kerchief. "Truly, we ought to understand
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Paramónovna!" Iván Petróvich turned to her.
+"Are you getting ready for communion, too? You, too,
+must forgive me, for Christ's sake."</p>
+
+<p>"God will forgive you, sir, angel, merciful benefactor!
+Let me kiss your hand!"</p>
+
+<p>"That will do, that will do, you know I do not like
+that," said Iván Petróvich, smiling, and going away from
+the altar.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The mass, as always, did not take long to celebrate in
+the parish of Izlegóshcha, the more so since there were
+few communicants. Just as, after the Lord's Prayer, the
+regal doors were closed, Iván Petróvich looked through
+the north door, to call Míshka to take off his fur coat.
+When the priest saw that motion, he angrily beckoned to
+the deacon, and the deacon almost ran out to call in the
+lackey. Iván Petróvich was in a pretty good humour,
+but this subserviency and expression of respect from the
+priest who was celebrating mass again soured him entirely;
+his thin, bent, shaven lips were bent still more
+and his kindly eyes were lighted up by sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>"He acts as though I were his general," he thought,
+and immediately he thought of the words of the German
+tutor, whom he had once taken to the altar to attend a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+Russian divine service, and who had made him laugh
+and had angered his wife, when he said, "<i>Der Pop war
+ganz böse, dass ich ihm Alles nachgesehen hatte</i>." He
+also recalled the answer of the young Turk that there was
+no God, because he had eaten up the last piece of him.
+"And here I am going to communion," he thought, and,
+frowning, he made a low obeisance.</p>
+
+<p>He took off his bear-fur coat, and in his blue dress
+coat with bright buttons and in his tall white neckerchief
+and waistcoat, and tightly fitting trousers, and heelless,
+sharp-toed boots, went with his soft, modest, and light
+gait to make his obeisances to the large images. Here
+he again met that same obsequiousness from the other
+communicants, who gave up their places to him.</p>
+
+<p>"They act as though they said, '<i>Après vous, s'il en
+reste</i>,'" he thought, awkwardly making side obeisances;
+this awkwardness was due to the fact that he was trying
+to find that mean in which there would be neither disrespect,
+nor hypocrisy. Finally the doors were opened. He
+said the prayer after the priest, repeating the words, "As
+a robber;" his neckerchief was covered with the chalice
+cloth, and he received his communion and the lukewarm
+water in the ancient dipper, having put new silver twenty-kopek
+pieces on ancient plates; after hearing the last
+prayers, he kissed the cross and, putting on his fur coat
+left the church, receiving congratulations and experiencing
+the pleasant sensation of having everything over. As he
+left the church, he again fell in with Iván Fedótov.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, thank you!" he replied to his congratulations.
+"Well, are you going to plough soon?"</p>
+
+<p>"The boys have gone out, the boys have," replied Iván
+Fedótov, more timidly even than before. He supposed
+that Iván Petróvich knew whither the Izlegóshcha peasants
+had gone out to plough. "It is damp, though.
+Damp it is. It is early yet, early it is."</p>
+
+<p>Iván Petróvich went up to his parents' monument,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+bowed to it, and went back to be helped into his six-in-hand
+with an outrider.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, thank God," he said to himself, swaying on the
+soft, round springs and looking at the vernal sky with the
+scattering clouds, at the bared earth and the white spots
+of unmelted snow, and at the tightly braided tail of a side
+horse, and inhaling the fresh spring air, which was particularly
+pleasant after the air in the church.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God that I have been through the communion,
+and thank God that I now may take a pinch of snuff."
+And he took out his snuff-box and for a long time held
+the pinch between his fingers, smiling and, without letting
+the pinch out of the hand, raising his cap in response
+to the low bows of the people on the way, especially of the
+women, who were washing the tables and chairs in front
+of their houses, just as the carriage at a fast trot of the
+large horses of the six-in-hand plashed and clattered
+through the mud of the street of the village of Izlegóshcha.</p>
+
+<p>Iván Petróvich held the pinch of snuff, anticipating the
+pleasure of snuffing, not only down the whole village, but
+even until they got out of a bad place at the foot of a hill,
+toward which the coachman descended not without anxiety:
+he held up the reins, seated himself more firmly,
+and shouted to the outrider to go over the ice. When
+they went around the bridge, over the bed of the river, and
+scrambled out of the breaking ice and mud, Iván Petróvich,
+looking at two plovers that rose from the hollow, took the
+snuff and, feeling chilly, put on his glove, wrapped himself
+in his fur coat, plunged his chin into the high neckerchief,
+and said to himself, almost aloud, "Glorious!" which he
+was in the habit of saying secretly to himself whenever
+he felt well.</p>
+
+<p>In the night snow had fallen, and when Iván Petróvich
+had driven to church the snow had not yet disappeared,
+but was soft; now, though there was no sun, it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+all melted from the moisture, and on the highway, on
+which he had to travel for three versts before turning
+into Chirakóvo, the snow was white only in last year's
+grass, which grew in parallel lines along the ruts; but on
+the black road the horses splashed through the viscous
+mud. The good, well-fed, large horses of his own stud
+had no difficulty in pulling the carriage, and it just rolled
+over the grass, where it left black marks, and over the
+mud, without being at all detained. Iván Petróvich was
+having pleasant reveries; he was thinking of his home,
+his wife, and his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Mánya will meet me at the porch, and with delight.
+She will see such holiness in me! She is a strange,
+sweet girl, but she takes everything too much to heart.
+The rôle of importance and of knowing everything that
+is going on in this world, which I must play before her,
+is getting to be too serious and ridiculous. If she knew
+that I am afraid of her!" he thought. "Well, Káto," (his
+wife) "will no doubt be in good humour to-day, she will
+purposely be in good humour, and we shall have a fine
+day. It will not be as it was last week on account of the
+Próshkin women. What a remarkable creature! How
+afraid of her I am! What is to be done? She does
+not like it herself." And he recalled a famous anecdote
+about a calf. A proprietor, having quarrelled with his
+wife, was sitting at a window, when he saw a frisky calf:
+"I should like to get you married!" he said. And Iván
+Petróvich smiled again, according to his custom solving
+every difficulty and every perplexity by a joke, which
+generally was directed against himself.</p>
+
+<p>At the third verst, near a chapel, the outrider bore to
+the left, into a cross-road, and the coachman shouted to
+him for having turned in so abruptly that the centre
+horses were struck by the shaft; and the carriage almost
+glided all the way down-hill. Before reaching the house,
+the outrider looked back at the coachman and pointed to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+something; the coachman looked back at the lackey, and
+indicated something to him. And all of them looked in
+the same direction.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you looking at?" asked Iván Petróvich.</p>
+
+<p>"Geese," said Míshka.</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>Though he strained his vision, he could not see them.</p>
+
+<p>"There they are. There is the forest, and there is the
+cloud, so be pleased to look between the two."</p>
+
+<p>Iván Petróvich could not see anything.</p>
+
+<p>"It is time for them. Why, it is less than a week to
+Annunciation."</p>
+
+<p>"That's so."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, go on!"</p>
+
+<p>Near a puddle, Míshka jumped down from the footboard
+and tested the road, again climbed up, and the
+carriage safely drove on the pond dam in the garden,
+ascended the avenue, drove past the cellar and the
+laundry, from which water was falling, and nimbly
+rolled up and stopped at the porch. The Chernýshev
+calash had just left the yard. From the house at once
+ran the servants: gloomy old Danílych with the side
+whiskers, Nikoláy, Míshka's brother, and the boy Pavlúshka;
+and after them came a girl with large black eyes
+and red arms, which were bared above the elbow, and
+with just such a bared neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Márya Ivánovna, Márya Ivánovna! Where are you
+going? Your mother will be worried. You will have
+time," was heard the voice of fat Katerína behind her.</p>
+
+<p>But the girl paid no attention to her; just as her father
+had expected her to do, she took hold of his arm and
+looked at him with a strange glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, papa, have you been to communion?" she asked,
+as though in dread.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You look as though you were afraid that I
+am such a sinner that I could not receive the communion."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The girl was apparently offended by her father's jest at
+such a solemn moment. She heaved a sigh and, following
+him, held his hand, which she kissed.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Young Chernýshev. He is in the drawing-room."</p>
+
+<p>"Is mamma up? How is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma feels better to-day. She is sitting down-stairs."</p>
+
+<p>In the passage room Iván Petróvich was met by nurse
+Evprakséya, clerk Andréy Ivánovich, and a surveyor, who
+was living at the house, in order to lay out some land.
+All of them congratulated Iván Petróvich. In the drawing-room
+sat Luíza Kárlovna Trugóni, for ten years a
+friend of the house, an emigrant governess, and a young
+man of sixteen years, Chernýshev, with his French tutor.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>THE DECEMBRISTS</p>
+
+<p>THIRD FRAGMENT</p>
+
+<p>(Variant of the First Chapter)</p>
+
+<p>On the 2d of August, 1817, the sixth department of
+the Directing Senate handed down a decision in the debatable
+land case between the economic peasants of the
+village of Izlegóshcha and Chernýshev, which was in
+favour of the peasants and against Chernýshev. This
+decision was an unexpected and important calamitous
+event for Chernýshev. The case had lasted five years.
+It had been begun by the attorney of the rich village
+of Izlegóshcha with its three thousand inhabitants, and
+was won by the peasants in the County Court; but when,
+with the advice of lawyer Ilyá Mitrofánov, a manorial
+servant bought of Prince Saltykóv, Prince Chernýshev
+carried the case to the Government, he won it and
+besides, the Izlegóshcha peasants were punished by having
+six of them, who had insulted the surveyor, put in
+jail.</p>
+
+<p>After that, Prince Chernýshev, with his good-natured
+and merry carelessness, entirely acquiesced, the more so
+since he knew full well that he had not "appropriated"
+any land of the peasants, as was said in the petition of
+the peasants. If the land was "appropriated," his father
+had done it, and since then more than forty years had
+passed. He knew that the peasants of the village of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+Izlegóshcha were getting along well without that land,
+had no need of it, and lived on terms of friendship with
+him, and was unable to understand why they had become
+so infuriated against him. He knew that he never offended
+and never wished to offend any one, that he lived
+in peace with everybody, and that he never wished to do
+otherwise, and so could not believe that any one should
+think of offending him. He hated litigations, and so did
+not defend his case in the Senate, in spite of the advice
+and earnest solicitations of his lawyer, Ilyá Mitrofánov;
+by allowing the time for the appeal to lapse, he lost the
+case in the Senate, and lost it in such a way that he was
+confronted with complete ruin. By the decree of the Senate
+he not only was to be deprived of five thousand desyatínas
+of land, but also, for the illegal tenure of that land,
+was to be mulcted to the amount of 107,000 roubles in
+favour of the peasants.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Chernýshev had eight thousand souls, but all
+the estates were mortgaged and he had large debts, so that
+this decree of the Senate ruined him with his whole large
+family. He had a son and five daughters. He thought
+of his case when it was too late to attend to it in the Senate.
+According to Ilyá Mitrofánov's words there was but
+one salvation, and that was, to petition the sovereign and
+to transfer the case to the Imperial Council. To obtain
+this it was necessary in person to approach one of the ministers
+or a member of the Council, or, better still, the emperor
+himself. Taking all that into consideration, Prince
+Grigóri Ivánovich in the fall of the year 1817 with his
+whole family left his beloved estate of Studénets, where
+he had lived so long without leaving it, and went to Moscow.
+He started for Moscow, and not for St. Petersburg,
+because in the fall of that year the emperor with his
+whole court, with all the highest dignitaries, and with part
+of the Guards, in which the son of Grigóri Ivánovich was
+serving, was to arrive in Moscow to lay the corner-stone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+of the Church of the Saviour in commemoration of the
+liberation of Russia from the French invasion.</p>
+
+<p>In August, immediately after receiving the terrible
+news of the decree of the Senate, Prince Grigóri Ivánovich
+got ready to go to Moscow. At first the majordomo
+was sent away to fix the prince's own house on the Arbát;
+then was sent out a caravan with furniture, servants,
+horses, carriages, and provisions. In September the prince
+with his whole family travelled in seven carriages, drawn
+by his own horses, and, after arriving in Moscow, settled
+in his house. Relatives, friends, visitors from the province
+and from St. Petersburg began to assemble in Moscow
+in the month of September. The Moscow life, with its
+entertainments, the arrival of his son, the débuts of his
+daughters, and the success of his eldest daughter, Aleksándra,
+the only blonde among all the brunettes of the
+Chernýshevs, so much occupied and diverted the prince's
+attention that, in spite of the fact that here in Moscow he
+was spending everything which would be left to him after
+paying all he owed, he forgot his affair and was annoyed
+and tired whenever Ilyá Mitrofánov talked of it, and undertook
+nothing for the success of his case.</p>
+
+<p>Iván Mirónovich Baúshkin, the chief attorney of the
+peasants, who had conducted the case against the prince
+with so much zeal in the Senate, who knew all the approaches
+to the secretaries and departmental chiefs, and
+who had so skilfully distributed the ten thousand roubles,
+collected from the peasants, in the shape of presents, now
+himself brought his activity to an end and returned to
+the village, where, with the money collected for him as a
+reward and with what was left of the presents, he bought
+himself a grove from a neighbouring proprietor and built
+there a hut and an office. The case was finished in the
+court of the highest instance, and everything would now
+proceed of its own accord.</p>
+
+<p>The only ones of those concerned in the case who could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+not forget it were the six peasants who were passing
+their seventh month in jail, and their families that were
+left without their heads. But nothing could be done in
+the matter. They were imprisoned in Krasnoslobódsk,
+and their families tried to get along as well as they could.
+Nobody could be invoked in the case. Iván Mirónovich
+himself said that he could not take it up, because it was
+not a communal, nor a civil, but a criminal case. The
+peasants were in prison, and nobody paid any attention to
+them; but one family, that of Mikhaíl Gerásimovich, particularly
+his wife Tíkhonovna, could not get used to the
+idea that the precious old man, Gerásimovich, was sitting
+in prison with a shaven head. Tíkhonovna could not rest
+quiet. She begged Mirónovich to take the case, but he
+declined it. Then she decided to go herself to pray to
+God for the old man. She had made a vow the year before
+that she would go on a pilgrimage to a saint, and had
+delayed it for another year only because she had had no
+time and did not wish to leave the house to the young
+daughters-in-law. Now that the misfortune had happened
+and Gerásimovich was put into jail, she recalled her vow;
+she turned her back on her house and, together with the
+deacon's wife of the same village, got ready to go on the
+pilgrimage.</p>
+
+<p>First they went to the county seat to see her old man
+in the prison and to take him some shirts; from there
+they went through the capital of the Government to Moscow.
+On her way Tíkhonovna told the deacon's wife of
+her sorrow, and the latter advised her to petition the emperor
+who, it was said, was to be in Pénza, telling her of
+various cases of pardon granted by him.</p>
+
+<p>When the pilgrims arrived in Pénza, they heard that
+there was there, not the emperor, but his brother Grand
+Duke Nikoláy Pávlovich. When he came out of the
+cathedral, Tíkhonovna pushed herself forward, dropped
+down on her knees, and began to beg for her husband.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+The grand duke was surprised, the governor was angry,
+and the old woman was taken to the lockup. The next
+day she was let out and she proceeded to Tróitsa. In
+Tróitsa she went to communion and confessed to Father
+Paísi. At the confession she told him of her sorrow, and
+repented having petitioned the brother of the Tsar. Father
+Paísi told her that there was no sin in that and
+that there was no sin in petitioning the Tsar even in a
+just case, and dismissed her. In Khótkov she called on
+the blessed abbess, and she ordered her to petition the
+Tsar himself.</p>
+
+<p>On their way back, Tíkhonovna and the deacon's
+wife stopped in Moscow to see the saints. Here
+she heard that the Tsar was there, and she thought
+that it was evidently God's command that she should
+petition the Tsar. All that had to be done was to write
+the petition.</p>
+
+<p>In Moscow the pilgrims stopped in a hostelry. They
+begged permission to stay there overnight; they were
+allowed to do so. After supper the deacon's wife lay
+down on the oven, and Tíkhonovna, placing her wallet
+under her head, lay down on a bench and fell asleep. In
+the morning, before daybreak, Tíkhonovna got up, woke
+the deacon's wife, and went out. The innkeeper spoke
+to her just as she walked into the yard.</p>
+
+<p>"You are up early, granny," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Before we get there, it will be time for matins," Tíkhonovna
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>"God be with you, granny!"</p>
+
+<p>"Christ save you!" said Tíkhonovna, and the pilgrims
+went to the Kremlin.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>After standing through the matins and the mass, and
+having kissed the relics, the old women, with difficulty
+making their way, arrived at the house of the Chernýshevs.
+The deacon's wife said that the old lady had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+given her an urgent invitation to stop at her house, and
+had ordered that all pilgrims should be received.</p>
+
+<p>"There we shall find a man who will write the petition,"
+said the deacon's wife, and the pilgrims started to
+blunder through the streets and ask their way. The deacon's
+wife had been there before, but had forgotten where
+it was. Two or three times they were almost crushed,
+and people shouted at them and scolded them. Once a
+policeman took the deacon's wife by the shoulder and,
+giving her a push, forbade her to walk through the street
+on which they were, and directed them through a forest of
+lanes. Tíkhonovna did not know that they were driven
+off the Vozdvízhenka for the very reason that through
+that street was to drive the Tsar, of whom she was thinking
+all the time, and to whom she intended to give the
+petition.</p>
+
+<p>The deacon's wife walked, as always, heavily and complainingly,
+while Tíkhonovna, as usual, walked lightly
+and briskly, with the gait of a young woman. At the
+gate the pilgrims stopped. The deacon's wife did not
+recognize the house: there was there a new hut which
+she had not seen before; but on scanning the well with
+the pumps in the corner of the yard, she recognized it all.
+The dogs began to bark and made for the women with
+the staffs.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mind them, aunties, they will not touch you.
+Away there, accursed ones!" the janitor shouted to the
+dogs, raising the broom on them. "They are themselves
+from the country, and just see them bark at country people!
+Come this way! You will stick in the mud,&mdash;God
+has not given any frost yet."</p>
+
+<p>But the deacon's wife, frightened by the dogs, and muttering
+in a whining tone, sat down on a bench near the
+gate and asked the janitor to take her by. Tíkhonovna
+made her customary bow to the janitor and, leaning on
+her crutch and spreading her feet, which were tightly covered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+with leg-rags, stopped near her, looking as always
+calmly in front of her and waiting for the janitor to come
+up to them.</p>
+
+<p>"Whom do you want?" the janitor asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not recognize us, dear man? Is not your
+name Egór?" asked the deacon's wife. "We are coming
+back from the saints, and so are calling on her Serenity."</p>
+
+<p>"You are from Izlegóshcha," said the janitor. "You
+are the wife of the old deacon,&mdash;of course. All right,
+all right. Go to the house! Everybody is received here,&mdash;nobody
+is refused. And who is this one?"</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to Tíkhonovna.</p>
+
+<p>"From Izlegóshcha, Gerásimovich's wife,&mdash;used to be
+Fadyéev's,&mdash;I suppose you know her?" said Tíkhonovna.
+"I myself am from Izlegóshcha."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! They say your husband has been put
+into jail."</p>
+
+<p>Tíkhonovna made no reply; she only sighed and with
+a strong motion threw her wallet and fur coat over her
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>The deacon's wife asked whether the old lady was at
+home and, hearing that she was, asked him to announce
+them to her. Then she asked about her son, who was an
+official and, thanks to the prince's influence, was serving
+in St. Petersburg. The janitor could not give her any
+information about him and directed them over a walk,
+which crossed the yard, to the servants' house. The
+old women went into the house, which was full of people,&mdash;women,
+children, both old and young,&mdash;all of them
+manorial servants, and prayed turning to the front corner.
+The deacon's wife was at once recognized by the laundress
+and the old lady's maid, and she was at once surrounded
+and overwhelmed with questions: they took off
+her wallet, placed her at the table, and offered her something
+to eat. In the meantime Tíkhonovna, having
+made the sign of the cross to the images and saluted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+everybody, was standing at the door, waiting to be invited
+in. At the very door, in front of the first window, sat an
+old man, making boots.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, granny! Don't stand up. Sit down here,
+and take off your wallet," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"There is not enough room to turn around as it is.
+Take her to the 'black' room," said a woman.</p>
+
+<p>"This comes straight from Madame Chalmé," said a
+young lackey, pointing to the iris design on Tíkhonovna's
+peasant coat, "and the pretty stockings and shoes."</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to her leg-rags and bast shoes, which were
+new, as she had specially put them on for Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>"Parásha, you ought to have such."</p>
+
+<p>"If you are to go to the 'black' room, all right; I will
+take you there." And the old man stuck in his awl and
+got up; but, on seeing a little girl, he called her to take
+the old woman to the black room.</p>
+
+<p>Tíkhonovna not only paid no attention to what was
+being said in her presence and of her, but did not even
+look or listen. From the time that she entered the house,
+she was permeated with the feeling of the necessity of
+working for God and with the other feeling, which had
+entered her soul, she did not know when, of the necessity
+of handing the petition. Leaving the clean servant room,
+she walked over to the deacon's wife and, bowing, said to
+her:</p>
+
+<p>"Mother Paramónovna, for Christ's sake do not forget
+about my affair! See whether you can't find a man."</p>
+
+<p>"What does that woman need?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has suffered insult, and people have advised her
+to hand a petition to the Tsar."</p>
+
+<p>"Take her straight to the Tsar!" said the jesting
+lackey.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you fool, you rough fool," said the old shoemaker.
+"I will teach you a lesson with this last, then you will
+know how to grin at old people."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The lackey began to scold, but the old man, paying no
+attention to him, took Tíkhonovna to the black room.</p>
+
+<p>Tíkhonovna was glad that she was sent out of the
+baking-room, and was taken to the black, the coachmen's
+room. In the baking-room everything looked clean, and
+the people were all clean, and Tíkhonovna did not feel at
+ease there. The black coachmen's room was more like
+the inside of a peasant house, and Tíkhonovna was more
+at home there. The black hut was a dark pine building,
+twenty by twenty feet, with a large oven, bed places,
+and hanging-beds, and a newly paved, dirt-covered floor.
+When Tíkhonovna entered the room, there were there the
+cook, a white, ruddy-faced, fat, manorial woman, with
+the sleeves of her chintz dress rolled up, who with difficulty
+was moving a pot in the oven with an oven-fork;
+then a young, small coachman, who was learning to play
+the balaláyka; an old man with an unshaven, soft white
+beard, who was sitting on a bed place with his bare feet
+and, holding a skein of silk between his lips, was sewing
+on some fine, good material, and a shaggy-haired, swarthy
+young man, in a shirt and blue trousers, with a coarse
+face, who, chewing bread, was sitting on a bench at the
+oven and leaning his head on both his arms, which were
+steadied against his knees.</p>
+
+<p>Barefoot Nástka with sparkling eyes ran into the room
+with her lithe, bare feet, in front of the old woman, jerking
+open the door, which stuck fast from the steam within,
+and squeaking in her thin voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Aunty Marína, Simónych sends this old woman, and
+says that she should be fed. She is from our parts: she
+has been with Paramónovna to worship the saints. Paramónovna
+is having tea.&mdash;Vlásevna has sent for her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The garrulous little girl would have gone on talking
+for quite awhile yet; the words just poured forth from
+her and, apparently, it gave her pleasure to hear her own
+voice. But Marína, who was in a perspiration, and who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+had not yet succeeded in pushing away the pot with the
+beet soup, which had caught in the hearth, shouted angrily
+at her:</p>
+
+<p>"Stop your babbling! What old woman am I to feed
+now? I have enough to do to feed our own people.
+Shoot you!" she shouted to the pot, which came very near
+falling down, as she removed it from the spot where it
+was caught.</p>
+
+<p>But when she was satisfied in regard to the pot, she
+looked around and, seeing trim Tíkhonovna with her wallet
+and correct peasant attire, making the sign of the cross
+and bowing low toward the front corner, felt ashamed of
+her words and, as though regaining her consciousness after
+the cares which had worn her out, she put her hand to her
+breast, where beneath the collar-bone buttons clasped
+her dress, and examined it to see whether it was buttoned,
+and then put her hands to her head to fasten the knot
+of the kerchief, which covered her greasy hair, and took
+up an attitude, leaning against the oven-fork and waiting
+for the salute of the trim old woman. Tíkhonovna made
+her last low obeisance to God, and turned around and
+saluted in three directions.</p>
+
+<p>"God aid you, good day!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"You are welcome, aunty!" said the tailor.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, granny, take off your wallet! Sit down
+here," said the cook, pointing to a bench where sat the
+shaggy-haired man. "Move a little, can't you? Are you
+stuck fast?"</p>
+
+<p>The shaggy man, scowling more angrily still, rose,
+moved away, and, continuing to chew, riveted his eyes
+on the old woman. The young coachman made a bow
+and, stopping his playing, began to tighten the strings of
+his balaláyka, looking now at the old woman, and now at
+the tailor, not knowing how to treat the old woman,&mdash;whether
+respectfully, as he thought she ought to be
+treated, because the old woman wore the same kind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+of attire that his grandmother and mother wore at home
+(he had been taken from the village to be an outrider), or
+making fun of her, as he wished to do and as seemed
+to him to accord with his present condition, his blue coat
+and his boots. The tailor winked with one eye and
+seemed to smile, drawing the silk to one side of his
+mouth, and looked on. Marína started to put in another
+pot, but, even though she was busy working, she kept
+looking at the old woman, while she briskly and nimbly
+took off her wallet and, trying not to disturb any one, put
+it under the bench. Nástka ran up to her and helped
+her, by taking away the boots, which were lying in her
+way under the bench.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Pankrát," she turned to the gloomy man, "I
+will put the boots here. Is it all right?"</p>
+
+<p>"The devil take them! Throw them into the oven, if
+you wish," said the gloomy man, throwing them into
+another corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Nástka, you are a clever girl," said the tailor. "A
+pilgrim has to be made comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>"Christ save you, girl! That is nice," said Tíkhonovna.
+"I am afraid I have put you out, dear man," she said,
+turning to Pankrát.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Pankrát.</p>
+
+<p>Tíkhonovna sat down on the bench, having taken off
+her coat and carefully folded it, and began to take off her
+footgear. At first she untied the laces, which she had
+taken special care in twisting smooth for her pilgrimage;
+then she carefully unwrapped the white lambskin leg-rags
+and, carefully rubbing them soft, placed them on her
+wallet. Just as she was working on her other foot,
+another of awkward Marína's pots got caught and spilled
+over, and she again started to scold somebody, catching
+the pot with the fork.</p>
+
+<p>"The hearth is evidently burned out, grandfather. It
+ought to be plastered," said Tíkhonovna.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"When are you going to plaster it? The chimney
+never cools off: twice a day you have to bake bread; one
+set is taken out, and the other is started."</p>
+
+<p>In response to Marína's complaint about the bread-baking
+and the burnt-out hearth, the tailor defended the
+ways of the Chernýshev house and said that they had
+suddenly arrived in Moscow, that the hut was built and
+the oven put up in three weeks, and that there were
+nearly one hundred servants who had to be fed.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, lots of cares. A large establishment,"
+Tíkhonovna confirmed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Whence does God bring you?" the tailor turned to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>And Tíkhonovna, continuing to take off her foot-gear,
+at once told him where she came from, whither she had
+gone, and how she was going home. She did not say
+anything about the petition. The conversation never
+broke off. The tailor found out everything about the old
+woman, and the old woman heard all about awkward,
+pretty Marína. She learned that Marína's husband was
+a soldier, and she was made a cook; that the tailor was
+making caftans for the driving coachmen; that the
+stewardess's errand girl was an orphan, and that shaggy-haired,
+gloomy Pankrát was a servant of the clerk, Iván
+Vasílevich.</p>
+
+<p>Pankrát left the room, slamming the door. The tailor
+told her that he was a gruff peasant, but that on that
+day he was particularly rude because the day before he
+had smashed the clerk's knickknacks on the window, and
+that he was going to be flogged to-day in the stable. As
+soon as Iván Vasílevich should come, he would be flogged.
+The little coachman was a peasant lad, who had been
+made an outrider, and now that he was grown he had
+nothing to do but attend to the horses, and strum the
+balaláyka. But he was not much of a hand at it.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="ON_POPULAR_EDUCATION" id="ON_POPULAR_EDUCATION"></a>ON POPULAR EDUCATION<br />
+1875</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center big">ON POPULAR EDUCATION</p>
+
+
+<p>I suppose each of us has had more than one occasion
+to come in contact with monstrous, senseless phenomena,
+and to find back of these phenomena put forward some
+important principle, which overshadowed those phenomena,
+so that in our youthful and even maturer years we
+began to doubt whether it was true that those phenomena
+were monstrous, and whether we were not mistaken.
+And having been unable to convince ourselves that monstrous
+phenomena might be good, or that the protection
+of an important principle was illegitimate, or that the
+principle was only a word, we remained in regard to those
+phenomena in an ambiguous, undecided condition.</p>
+
+<p>In such a state I was, and I assume many of us are,
+in respect to the principle of "development" which obfuscates
+pedagogy, in its connection with the rudiments.
+But popular education is too near to my heart, and I have
+busied myself too much with it, to remain too long in
+indecision. The monstrous phenomena of the imaginary
+development I could not call good, nor could I be persuaded
+that the development of the pupil was bad, and
+so I began to inquire what that development was. I do
+not consider it superfluous to communicate the deductions
+to which I have been led during the study of this matter.</p>
+
+<p>To define what is understood by the word "development,"
+I shall take the manuals of Messrs. Bunákov and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+Evtushévski, as being new works, which combine all the
+latest deductions of German pedagogy, intended as guides
+for the teachers in the popular schools, and selected by
+the advocates of the sound method as manuals in their
+schools.</p>
+
+<p>In discussing what is to form the foundation for a
+choice of this or that method for the teaching of reading,
+Mr. Bunákov says:</p>
+
+<p>"No, an opinion about the method of construction
+based on such near-sighted and flimsy foundations (that
+is, on experience) will be too doubtful. Only the theoretical
+substratum, based on the study of human nature,
+can make the judgments in this sphere firm and independent
+of all casualties, and to a considerable degree
+guard them against gross errors. Consequently for the
+final choice of the best method of teaching the rudiments,
+it is necessary first of all to stand on theoretic soil, on
+the basis of previous considerations, the general conditions
+of which give to this or that method the actual right to
+be called satisfactory from the pedagogical standpoint.
+These conditions are: (1) It has to be a method which is
+capable of developing the child's mental powers, so that
+the acquisition of the rudiments may be obtained together
+with the development and the strengthening of the reasoning
+powers. (2) It must introduce into the instruction
+the child's personal interest, so that the matter be
+furthered by this interest, and not by dulling violence.
+(3) It must represent in itself the process of self-instruction,
+inciting, supporting, and directing the child's self-activity.
+(4) It must be based on the impressions of
+hearing, as of the sense which serves for the acquisition
+of language. (5) It has to combine analysis with synthesis,
+beginning with the dismemberment of the complex
+whole into simple principles, and passing over to the composition
+of a complex whole out of the simple principles."</p>
+
+<p>So this is what the method of instruction is to be based<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+upon. I will remark, not for contradiction, but for the
+sake of simplicity and clearness, that the last two statements
+are quite superfluous, because without the union of
+analysis and synthesis there can be not only no instruction,
+but also no other activity of the mind, and every
+instruction, except that of the deaf and dumb, is based
+on the sense of hearing. These two conditions are put
+down only for beauty's sake and for the obscuration of
+the style, so common in pedagogical treatises, and so have
+no meaning whatever. The first three at first sight
+appear quite true as a programme. Everybody, of course,
+would like to know how the method is secured that will
+"develop," that will "introduce into the instruction the
+pupil's personal interest," and that will "represent the
+process of self-instruction."</p>
+
+<p>But to the questions as to why this method combines
+all those qualities you will find an answer neither in the
+books of Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski, nor in any
+other pedagogical work of the founders of this school of
+pedagogy, unless they be those hazy discussions of this
+nature, such as that every instruction must be based on
+the union of analysis and synthesis, and by all means
+on the sense of hearing, and so forth; or you will find, as
+in Mr. Evtushévski's book, expositions about how in man
+are formed impressions, sensations, representations, and
+concepts, and you will find the rule that "it is necessary
+to start from the object and lead the pupil up to the idea,
+and not start with the idea, which has no point of contact
+in his consciousness," and so forth. After such discussions
+there always follows the conclusion that therefore
+the method advocated by the pedagogue gives that exclusive
+real development which it was necessary to find.</p>
+
+<p>After the above-cited definition of what a good method
+ought to be, Mr. Bunákov explains how children ought
+to be educated, and, having given an exposition of all the
+methods, which in my opinion and experience lead to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+results which are diametrically opposite to development,
+he says frankly and definitely:</p>
+
+<p>"From the standpoint of the above-mentioned fundamental
+principles for estimating the value of the satisfactoriness
+of the methods of rudimentary instruction, the
+method which we have just elucidated in its general
+features presents the following plastic qualities and peculiarities:
+(1) As a sound method it wholly preserves the
+characteristic peculiarities of all sound method,&mdash;it starts
+from the impressions of hearing, at once establishing the
+regular relation to language, and only later adds to them
+the impressions of sight, thus clearly distinguishing sound,
+matter, and the letter, its representation. (2) As a method
+which unites reading with writing it begins with decomposition
+and passes over to composition, combining analysis
+with synthesis. (3) As a method which passes
+over to the study of words and sounds from the study
+of objects it proceeds along a natural path, coöperates
+with the regular formation of concepts and ideas, and
+acts in a developing way on all the sides of the child's
+nature: it incites the children to be observant, to group
+their observations, to render them orally; it develops the
+external senses, mind, imagination, memory, the gift of
+speech, concentration, self-activity, the habit of work, the
+respect for order. (4) As a method which provides ample
+work to all the mental powers of the child, it introduces
+into instruction the personal interest, rousing in children
+willingness and love of work, and transforming it into a
+process of self-instruction."</p>
+
+<p>This is precisely what Mr. Evtushévski does; but why
+it is all so remains inexplicable to him who is looking for
+actual reasons and does not become entangled in such
+words as psychology, didactics, methodics, heuristics. I
+advise all those who have no inclination for philosophy
+and therefore have no desire to verify all those deductions
+of the pedagogues not to be embarrassed by these words<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+and to be assured that a thing which is not clear cannot
+be the basis of anything, least of all of such an important
+and simple thing as popular education.</p>
+
+<p>All the pedagogues of this school, especially the Germans,
+the founders of the school, start with the false idea
+that those philosophical questions which have remained
+as questions for all the philosophers from Plato to Kant,
+have been definitely settled by them. They are settled
+so definitely that the process of the acquisition by man
+of impressions, sensations, concepts, ratiocinations, has
+been analyzed by them down to its minutest details, and
+the component parts of what we call the soul or the
+essence of man have been dissected and divided into parts
+by them, and that, too, in such a thorough manner that
+on this firm basis can go up the faultless structure of the
+science of pedagogy. This fancy is so strange that I do
+not regard it as necessary to contradict it, more especially
+as I have done so in my former pedagogical essays. All
+I will say is that those philosophical considerations which
+the pedagogues of this school put at the basis of their
+theory not only fail to be absolutely correct, not only
+have nothing in common with real philosophy, but even
+lack a clear, definite expression with which the majority
+of the pedagogues might agree.</p>
+
+<p>But, perchance, the theory of the pedagogues of the
+new school, in spite of its unsuccessful references to philosophy,
+has some value in itself. And so we will examine
+it, to see what it consists in. Mr. Bunákov says:</p>
+
+<p>"To these little savages (that is, the pupils) must be
+imparted the main order of school instruction, and into
+their consciousness must be introduced such initial concepts
+as they will have to come in contact with from
+the start, during the first lessons of drawing, reading,
+writing, and every elementary instruction, such as: the
+right side and the left, to the right&mdash;to the left, up&mdash;down,
+near by&mdash;around, in front&mdash;in back, close by&mdash;in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+the distance, before&mdash;behind, above&mdash;below, fast&mdash;slow,
+softly&mdash;aloud, and so forth. No matter how
+simple these concepts may be, I know from practice that
+even city children, from well-to-do families, are frequently,
+when they come to the elementary schools, unable to distinguish
+the right side from the left. I assume that there
+is no need of expatiating on the necessity of explaining
+such concepts to village children, for any one who has had
+to deal with village schools knows this as well as I do."</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Evtushévski says:</p>
+
+<p>"Without entering into the broad field of the debatable
+question about the innate ability of man, we only see that
+the child can have no innate concepts and ideas about
+real things,&mdash;they have to be formed, and on the skill
+with which they are formed by the educator and teacher
+depends both their regularity and their permanency. In
+watching the development of the child's soul one has to
+be much more cautious than in attending to his body. If
+the food for the body and the various bodily exercises are
+carefully chosen both as regards their quantity and their
+quality, in conformity with the man's growth, so much
+more cautious have we to be in the choice of food and
+exercises for the mind. A badly placed foundation will
+precariously support what is fastened to it."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bunákov advises that ideas be imparted as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"The teacher may begin a conversation such as he
+deems fit: one will ask every pupil for his name; another
+about what is going on outside; a third about where each
+comes from, where he lives, what is going on at home,&mdash;and
+then he may pass over to the main subject. 'Where
+are you sitting now? Why did you come here? What are
+we going to do in this room? Yes, we are going to study
+in this room,&mdash;so let us call it a class-room. See
+what there is under your feet, below you. Look, but
+do not say anything. The one I will tell to speak shall
+answer. Tell me, what do you see under your feet? Repeat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+everything we have found out and have said about
+this room: in what room are we sitting? What are the
+parts of the room? What is there on the walls? What
+is standing on the floor?'</p>
+
+<p>"The teacher from the start establishes the order which
+is necessary for the success of his work: each pupil is
+to answer only when asked to do so; all the others are to
+listen and should be able to repeat the words of the teacher
+and of their companions; the desire to answer, when the
+teacher directs a question to everybody, is to be expressed
+by raising the left hand; the words are to be pronounced
+neither in a hurry, nor by drawing them out, but loudly,
+distinctly, and correctly. To obtain this latter result the
+teacher gives them a living example by his loud, correct,
+distinct enunciation, showing them in practice the difference
+between soft and loud, distinct and correct, slow and
+fast. The teacher should see to it that all the children
+take part in the work, by having somebody's question
+answered or repeated, now by one, now by another, and
+now by the whole class at once, but especially by rousing
+the indifferent, inattentive, and playful children: the first
+he must enliven by frequent questions, the second he
+must cause to concentrate themselves on the subject of
+the common work, and the third he must curb. During
+the first period the children ought to answer in full, that
+is, by repeating the question: 'We are sitting in the
+class-room' (and not in brief, 'In the class-room'); 'Above,
+over my head, I see the ceiling;' 'On the left I see three
+windows,' and so forth."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Evtushévski advises that in this way be begun all
+the lessons on numbers from 1 to 10, of which there are
+to be 120, and which are to be continued through the year.</p>
+
+<p>"One. The teacher shows the pupils a cube, and asks:
+'How many cubes have I?' and taking several cubes into
+the other hand, he asks, 'And how many are there here?'&mdash;'Many,
+a few.'</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Name here in the class-room an object of which there
+are several.'&mdash;'Bench, window, wall, copy-book, pencil,
+slate-pencil, pupil, and so forth.'&mdash;'Name an object of
+which there is only one in the class-room.'&mdash;'The blackboard,
+stove, door, ceiling, floor, picture, teacher, and so
+forth.'&mdash;'If I put this cube away in my pocket, how many
+cubes will there be left in my hand?'&mdash;'Not one.'&mdash;'And
+how many must I again put into my hand, to have as many
+as before?'&mdash;'One.'&mdash;'What is meant by saying that
+Pétya fell down once? How many times did Pétya
+fall? Did he fall another time? Why does it say once?'&mdash;'Because
+we are speaking only of one case and not of another
+case.'&mdash;'Take your slates (or copy-books). Make
+on them a line of this size.' (The teacher draws on the
+blackboard a line two or four inches in length, or shows on
+the ruler that length.) 'Rub it off. How many lines are
+left?'&mdash;'Not one.'&mdash;'Draw several such lines.' It would
+be unnatural to invent any other exercises in order to acquaint
+the children with number one. It suffices to rouse
+in them that conception of unity which they, no doubt,
+had previous to their school instruction."</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Bunákov speaks of exercises on the board,
+and so on, and Mr. Evtushévski of the number four with
+its decomposition. Before examining the theory itself of
+the transmission of ideas, the question involuntarily arises
+whether that theory is not mistaken in its very problem.
+Has the condition of the pedagogical material with which
+it has to do been correctly defined? The first thing that
+startles us is the strange relation to some imaginary children,
+to such as I, at least, have never seen in the Russian
+Empire. The conversations, and the information which
+they impart, refer to children of less than two years of age,
+because two-year-old children know all that is contained
+in them, but as to the questions which have to be asked,
+they have reference to parrots. Any pupil of six, seven,
+eight, or nine years will not understand a thing in these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+questions, because he knows all about that, and cannot
+make out what it all means. The demands for such conversations
+evince either complete ignorance, or a desire
+to ignore that degree of development on which the pupils
+stand.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe the children of Hottentots and negroes, or some
+German children, do not know what is imparted to them
+in such conversations, but Russian children, except demented
+ones, all those who come to a school, not only
+know what is up and what down, what is a bench and
+what a table, what is two and what one, and so forth, but,
+in my experience, the peasant children who are sent to
+school by their parents can every one of them express their
+thoughts well and correctly, can understand another person's
+thought (if it is expressed in Russian), and can count
+to twenty and more; playing with knuckle-bones they
+count in pairs and sixes, and they know how many points
+and pairs there are in a six. Frequently the pupils who
+came to my school brought with them the problem with
+the geese, and explained it to me. But even if we admit
+that children possess no such conceptions as those the
+pedagogues want to impart to them by means of conversations,
+I do not find the method chosen by them to be
+correct.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, for example, Mr. Bunákov has written a reader.
+This book is to be used in conjunction with the conversations
+to teach the children language. I have run through
+the book and have found it to be a series of bad language
+blunders, wherever extracts from other books are not
+quoted. The same complete ignorance of language I have
+found in Mr. Evtushévski's problems. Mr. Evtushévski
+wants to give ideas by means of problems. First of all
+he ought to have seen to it that the tool for the transmission
+of ideas, that is, the language, was correct.</p>
+
+<p>What has been mentioned here refers to the form in
+which the development is imparted. Let us look at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+contents themselves. Mr. Bunákov proposes the following
+questions to be put to the children: "Where can you
+see cats? where a magpie? where sand? where a wasp
+and a suslik? what are a suslik and a magpie and a cat
+covered with, and what are the parts of their bodies?"
+(The suslik is a favourite animal of pedagogy, no doubt
+because not one peasant child in the centre of Russia
+knows that word.)</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally the teacher does not always put these
+questions straight to the children, as forming the predetermined
+programme of the lesson; more frequently the
+small and undeveloped children have to be led up to
+the solution of the question of the programme by a series
+of suggestive questions, by directing their attention to the
+side of the subject which is more correct at the given
+moment, or by inciting them to recall something from
+their previous observations. Thus the teacher need not
+put the question directly: 'Where can a wasp be seen?'
+but, turning to this or that pupil, he may ask him whether
+he has seen a wasp, where he has seen it, and then only,
+combining the replies of several pupils, compose an answer
+to the first question of his programme. In answering the
+teacher's questions, the children will often connect several
+remarks that have no direct relation to the matter; for
+example, when the question is about what the parts of a
+magpie are, one may say irrelevantly that a magpie jumps,
+another that it chatters funnily, a third that it steals
+things,&mdash;let them add and give utterance to everything
+that arises in their memory or imagination,&mdash;it is the
+teacher's business to concentrate their attention in accordance
+with the programme, and these remarks and additions
+of the children he should take notice of for the purpose
+of elaborating the other parts of the programme. In
+viewing a new subject, the children at every convenient
+opportunity return to the subjects which have already
+been under consideration. Since they have observed that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+a magpie is covered with feathers, the teacher asks: 'Is
+the suslik also covered with feathers? What is it covered
+with? And what is a chicken covered with? and a
+horse? and a lizard?' When they have observed that a
+magpie has two legs, the teacher asks: 'How many legs
+has a dog? and a fox? and a chicken? and a wasp?
+What other animals do you know with two legs? with
+four? with six?'"</p>
+
+<p>Involuntarily the question arises: Do the children
+know, or do they not know, what is so well explained
+to them in these conversations? If the pupils know it
+all, then, upon occasion, in the street or at home, where
+they do not need to raise their left hands, they will certainly
+be able to tell it in more beautiful and more correct
+Russian than they are ordered to do. They will certainly
+not say that a horse is "covered" with wool; if so, why
+are they compelled to repeat these questions just as the
+teacher has put them? But if they do not know them
+(which is not to be admitted except as regards the
+suslik), the question arises: by what will the teacher be
+guided in what is with so much unction called the programme
+of questions,&mdash;by the science of zoology, or by
+logic? or by the science of eloquence? But if by none
+of the sciences, and merely by the desire to talk about
+what is visible in the objects, there are so many visible
+things in objects, and they are so diversified, that a guiding
+thread is needed to show what to talk upon, whereas
+in objective instruction there is no such thread, and there
+can be none.</p>
+
+<p>All human knowledge is subdivided for the purpose
+that it may more conveniently be gathered, united, and
+transmitted, and these subdivisions are called sciences.
+But outside their scientific classifications you may talk
+about objects anything you please, and you may say all
+the nonsense imaginable, as we actually see. In any
+case, the result of the conversation will be that the children<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+are either made to learn by heart the teacher's words
+about the suslik, or to change their own words, place
+them in a certain order (not always a correct order), and
+to memorize and repeat them. For this reason all the
+manuals of this kind, in general all the exercises of development,
+suffer on the one hand from absolute arbitrariness,
+and on the other from superfluity. For example,
+in Mr. Bunákov's book the only story which, it seems, is
+not copied from another author, is the following:</p>
+
+<p>"A peasant complained to a hunter about his trouble:
+a fox had carried off several of his chickens and one duck;
+the fox was not in the least afraid of watch-dog Dandy,
+who was chained up and kept barking all night long; in
+the morning he had placed a trap with a piece of roast
+meat in the fresh tracks on the snow,&mdash;evidently the
+red-haired sneak was disporting near the house, but he
+did not go into the trap. The hunter listened to what
+the peasant had to say to him, and said: 'Very well;
+now we will see who will be shrewder!' The hunter
+walked all day with his gun and with his dog, over the
+tracks of the fox, to discover how he found his way into
+the yard. In the daytime the sneak sleeps in his lair,
+and knows nothing of what is going on, so that had to be
+considered: on its path the hunter dug a hole and covered
+it with boards, dirt, and snow; a few steps from it he
+put down a piece of horseflesh. In the evening he seated
+himself with a loaded gun in his ambush, fixed things in
+such a way that he could see everything and shoot comfortably,
+and there he waited. It grew dark. The moon
+swam out. Cautiously, looking around and listening, the
+fox crept out of his lair, raised his nose, and sniffed. He
+at once smelled the odour of horseflesh, and ran at a slow
+trot to the place, and suddenly stopped and pricked his
+ears: the shrewd one saw that there was a mound there
+which had not been in that spot the previous evening.
+This mound apparently vexed him, and made him think;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+he took a large circle around it, and sniffed and listened,
+and sat down, and for a long time looked at the meat from
+a distance, so that the hunter could not shoot him,&mdash;it
+was too far. The fox thought and thought, and suddenly
+ran at full speed between the meat and the mound. Our
+hunter was careful, and did not shoot. He knew that the
+sneak was merely trying to find out whether anybody was
+sitting behind that mound; if he had shot at the running
+fox, he would certainly have missed him, and then he
+would not have seen the sneak, any more than he could
+see his own ears. Now the fox quieted down,&mdash;the mound
+no longer disturbed him: he walked briskly up to the
+meat, and ate it with great delight. Then the hunter
+aimed carefully, without haste, so that he might not miss
+him. Bang! The fox jumped up from pain and fell
+down dead."</p>
+
+<p>Everything is arbitrary here: it is an arbitrary invention
+to say that a fox could carry off a peasant's duck in
+winter, that peasants trap foxes, that a fox sleeps in the
+daytime in his lair (for he sleeps only at night); arbitrary
+is that hole which is uselessly dug in winter and covered
+with boards without being made use of; arbitrary is the
+statement that the fox eats horseflesh, which he never
+does; arbitrary is the supposed cunning of the fox, who
+runs past the hunter; arbitrary are the mound and the
+hunter, who does not shoot for fear of missing, that is,
+everything, from beginning to end, is bosh, for which any
+peasant boy might arraign the author of the story, if he
+could talk without raising his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Then a whole series of so-called exercises in Mr. Bunákov's
+lessons is composed of such questions as: "Who
+bakes? Who chops? Who shoots?" to which the pupil
+is supposed to answer: "The baker, the wood-chopper,
+and the marksmen," whereas he might just as correctly
+answer that the woman bakes, the axe chops, and the
+teacher shoots, if he has a gun. Another arbitrary statement<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+in that book is that the throat is a part of the
+mouth, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>All the other exercises, such as "The ducks fly, and
+the dogs?" or "The linden and birch are trees, and the
+horse?" are quite superfluous. Besides, it must be observed
+that if such conversations are really carried on with
+the pupils (which never happens) that is, if the pupils are
+permitted to speak and ask questions, the teacher, choosing
+simple subjects (they are most difficult), is at each
+step perplexed, partly through ignorance, and partly because
+<i>ein Narr kann mehr fragen, als zehn Weise antworten</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Exactly the same takes place in the instruction of
+arithmetic, which is based on the same pedagogical principle.
+Either the pupils are informed in the same way
+of what they already know, or they are quite arbitrarily
+informed of combinations of a certain character that are
+not based on anything. The lesson mentioned above and
+all the other lessons up to ten are merely information
+about what the children already know. If they frequently
+do not answer questions of that kind, this is due to the
+fact that the question is either wrongly expressed in
+itself, or wrongly expressed as regards the children.
+The difficulty which the children encounter in answering
+a question of that character is due to the same
+cause which makes it impossible for the average boy
+to answer the question: Three sons were to Noah,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">&nbsp;[1]&nbsp;</a>&mdash;Shem,
+Ham, and Japheth,&mdash;who was their father?
+The difficulty is not mathematical, but syntactical, which
+is due to the fact that in the statement of the problem
+and in the question there is not one and the same
+subject; but when to the syntactical difficulty there is
+added the awkwardness of the proposer of the problems
+in expressing himself in Russian, the matter becomes of
+greater difficulty still to the pupil; but the trouble is no
+longer mathematical.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">&nbsp;[1]&nbsp;</span></a> The Russian way of saying "Noah had three sons."</p></div>
+
+<p>Let anybody understand at once Mr. Evtushévski's
+problem: "A certain boy had four nuts, another had five.
+The second boy gave all his nuts to the first, and this one
+gave three nuts to a third, and the rest he distributed
+equally to three other friends. How many nuts did each
+of the last get?" Express the problem as follows: "A
+boy had four nuts. He was given five more. He gave
+away three nuts, and the rest he wants to give to three
+friends. How many can he give to each?" and a child of
+five years of age will solve it. There is no problem here
+at all, but the difficulty may arise only from a wrong
+statement of the problem, or from a weak memory. And
+it is this syntactical difficulty, which the children overcome
+by long and difficult exercises, that gives the teacher
+cause to think that, teaching the children what they know
+already, he is teaching them anything at all. Just as
+arbitrarily are the children taught combinations in arithmetic
+and the decomposition of numbers according to a
+certain method and order, which have their foundation
+only in the fancy of the teacher. Mr. Evtushévski says:</p>
+
+<p>"Four. (1) The formation of the number. On the
+upper border of the board the teacher places three cubes
+together&mdash;I I I. How many cubes are there here? Then
+a fourth cube is added. And how many are there now?
+I I I I. How are four cubes formed from three and one?
+We have to add one cube to the three.</p>
+
+<p>"(2) Decomposition into component parts. How can
+four cubes be formed? or, How can four cubes be broken
+up? Four cubes may be broken up into two and two:
+II + II. Four cubes may be formed from one, and one,
+and one, and one more, or by taking four times one cube:
+I + I + I + I. Four cubes may be broken up into three
+and one: III + I. It may be formed from one, and one,
+and two: I + I + II. Can four cubes be put together in
+any other way? The pupils convince themselves that
+there can be no other decomposition, distinct from those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+already given. If the pupils begin to break the four
+cubes in this way: one, two, and one, or, two, one and
+one; or, one and three, the teacher will easily point out
+to them that these decompositions are only repetitions of
+what has been got before, only in a different order.</p>
+
+<p>"Every time, whenever the pupils indicate a new method
+of decomposition, the teacher places the cubes on a ledge of
+the blackboard in the manner here indicated. Thus there
+will be four cubes on the upper ledge; two and two in
+a second place; in a third place the four cubes will be
+separated at some distance from each other; in a fourth
+place, three and one, and in a fifth one, one, and two.</p>
+
+<p>"(3) Decomposition in order. It may easily happen
+that the children will at once point out the decomposition
+of the number into component parts in order; even then
+the third exercise cannot be regarded as superfluous:
+Here we have formed four cubes of twos, of separate
+cubes, and of threes,&mdash;in what order had we best place
+the cubes on the board? With what shall the decomposition
+of the four cubes begin? With the decomposition
+into separate cubes. How are four cubes to be formed
+from separate cubes? We must take four times one cube.
+How are four cubes to be formed from twos, from a pair?
+We must take two twos,&mdash;twice two cubes, two pairs of
+cubes. How shall we afterward break up the four cubes?
+They can be formed of threes: for this purpose we take
+three and one, or one and three. The teacher explains to
+the pupils that the last decomposition, that is, 1 1 2,
+does not come under the accepted order, and is a modification
+of one of the first three."</p>
+
+<p>Why does Mr. Evtushévski not admit this last decomposition?
+Why must there be the order indicated by
+him? All that is a matter of mere arbitrariness and
+fancy. In reality, it is apparent to every thinking man
+that there is only one foundation for any composition and
+decomposition, and for the whole of mathematics. Here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+is the foundation: 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 1 = 4, and
+so forth,&mdash;precisely what the children learn at home,
+and what in common parlance is called counting to ten,
+to twenty, and so forth. This process is known to every
+pupil, and no matter what decomposition Mr. Evtushévski
+may make, it is to be explained from this one. A boy
+that can count to four, considers four as a whole, and so
+also three, and two, and one. Consequently, he knows
+that four was produced from the consecutive addition of
+one. Similarly he knows that four is produced by adding
+twice one to two, just as he knows twice one is two.
+What, then, are the children taught here? That which
+they know, or that process of counting which they must
+learn according to the teacher's fancy.</p>
+
+<p>The other day I happened to witness a lesson in mathematics
+according to Grube's method. The pupil was
+asked: "How much is 8 and 7?" He hastened to answer
+and said 16. His neighbour, too, was in a hurry and,
+without raising his left hand, said: "8 and 8 is 16,
+and one less is 15." The teacher sternly stopped him,
+and compelled the first boy to add one after one to 8, until
+he came to 15, though the boy knew long ago that he had
+made a blunder. In that school they had reached the
+number 15, but 16 was supposed to be unknown yet.</p>
+
+<p>I am afraid that many people, reading all these long
+refutals of the methods of object instruction and counting
+according to Grube, which I am making, will say: "What
+is there here to talk about? Is it not evident that it is
+all mere nonsense which it is not worth while to criticize?
+Why pick out the errors and blunders of a Bunákov
+and Evtushévski, and criticize what is beneath all
+criticism?"</p>
+
+<p>That was the way I myself thought before I was led to
+see what was going on in the pedagogical world, when I
+convinced myself that Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski
+were not mere individuals, but authorities in our pedagogics,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+and that what they prescribe is actually carried out in
+our schools. In the backwoods we may find teachers,
+especially women, who spread Evtushévski's and Bunákov's
+manuals out before them and ask according to their
+prescription how much one feather and one feather is, and
+what a hen is covered with. All that would be funny if
+it were only an invention of the theorist, and not a guide
+in practical work, a guide that some follow already, and if
+it did not concern one of the most important affairs of
+life,&mdash;the education of the children. I was amused at
+it when I read it as theoretical fancies; but when I learned
+and saw that that was being practised on children, I felt
+pity for them and ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>From a theoretical standpoint, not to mention the fact
+that they faultily define the aim of education, the pedagogues
+of this school make this essential error, that they
+depart from the conditions of all instruction, whether this
+instruction be on the highest or lowest stage of the science,
+in a university or in a popular school. The essential conditions
+of all instruction consist in selecting the homogeneous
+phenomena from an endless number of heterogeneous
+phenomena, and in imparting the laws of these phenomena
+to the students. Thus, in the study of language, the pupils
+are taught the laws of the word, and in mathematics,
+the laws of the numbers. The study of language consists
+in imparting the laws of the decomposition and of the reverse
+composition of sentences, words, syllables, sounds,&mdash;and
+these laws form the subject of instruction. The instruction
+of mathematics consists in imparting the laws
+of the composition and decomposition of the numbers (but
+I beg to observe,&mdash;not in the process of the composition
+and the decomposition of the numbers, but in imparting
+the laws of that composition and decomposition). Thus,
+the first law consists in the ability of regarding a collection
+of units as a unit of a higher order, precisely what a
+child does when he says: "2 and 1 = 3." He regards 2<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+as a kind of unit. On this law are based the consequent
+laws of numeration, then of addition, and of the whole
+of mathematics. But arbitrary conversations about the
+wasp, and so forth, or problems within the limit of 10,&mdash;its
+decomposition in every manner possible,&mdash;cannot
+form a subject of instruction, because, in the first
+place, they transcend the subject and, in the second place,
+because they do not treat of its laws.</p>
+
+<p>That is the way the matter presents itself to me from
+its theoretical side; but theoretical criticism may frequently
+err, and so I will try to verify my deductions by
+means of practical data. G&mdash;&mdash; P&mdash;&mdash; has given us a
+sample of the practical results of both object instruction
+and of mathematics according to Grube's method. One
+of the older boys was told: "Put your hand under your
+book!" in order to prove that he had been taught the
+conceptions of "over" and "under," and the intelligent
+boy, who, I am sure, knew what "over" and "under" was,
+when he was three years old, put his hand on the book
+when he was told to put it under it. I have all the time
+observed such examples, and they prove more clearly than
+anything else how useless, strange, and disgraceful, I feel
+like saying, this object instruction is for Russian children.
+A Russian child cannot and will not believe (he has too
+much respect for the teacher and for himself) that the
+teacher is in earnest when he asks him whether the ceiling
+is above or below, or how many legs he has. In
+arithmetic, too, we have seen that pupils who did not even
+know how to write the numbers and during the whole
+time of the instruction were exercised only in mental calculations
+up to 10, for half an hour did not stop blundering
+in every imaginable way in response to questions
+which the teacher put to them within the limit of 10.
+Evidently the instruction of mental calculation brought
+no results, and the syntactical difficulty, which consists in
+unravelling a question that is improperly put, has remained<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+the same as ever. And thus, the practical results of the
+examination which took place did not confirm the usefulness
+of the development.</p>
+
+<p>But I will be more exact and conscientious. Maybe
+the process of development, which at first is confined not
+so much to the study, as to the analysis of what the pupils
+know already, will produce results later on. Maybe the
+teacher, who at first takes possession of the pupils' minds
+by means of the analysis, later guides them firmly and
+with ease, and from the narrow sphere of the descriptions
+of a table and the count of 2 and 1 leads them into the real
+sphere of knowledge, in which the pupils are no longer
+confined to learning what they know already, but also
+learn something new, and learn that new information in
+a new, more convenient, more intelligent manner. This
+supposition is confirmed by the fact that all the German
+pedagogues and their followers, among them Mr. Bunákov,
+say distinctly that object instruction is to serve as an introduction
+to "home science" and "natural science." But
+we should be looking in vain in Mr. Bunákov's manual to
+find out how this "home science" is to be taught, if by
+this word any real information is to be understood, and
+not the descriptions of a hut and a vestibule,&mdash;which the
+children know already. Mr. Bunákov, on page 200, after
+having explained that it is necessary to teach where the
+ceiling is and where the stove, says briefly:</p>
+
+<p>"Now it is necessary to pass over to the third stage of
+object instruction, the contents of which have been defined
+by me as follows: The study of the country, county,
+Government, the whole realm with its natural products and
+its inhabitants, in general outline, as a sketch of home
+science and the beginning of natural science, with the predominance
+of reading, which, resting on the immediate
+observations of the first two grades, broadens the mental
+horizon of the pupils,&mdash;the sphere of their concepts and
+ideas. We can see from the mere definition that here the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+objectivity appears as a complement to the explanatory
+reading and narrative of the teacher,&mdash;consequently,
+what is said in regard to the occupations of the third year
+has more reference to the discussion of the second occupation,
+which enters into the composition of the subject
+under instruction, which is called the native language,&mdash;the
+explanatory reading."</p>
+
+<p>We turn to the third year,&mdash;the explanatory reading,
+but there we find absolutely nothing to indicate how the
+new information is to be imparted, except that it is good
+to read such and such books, and in reading to put such
+and such questions. The questions are extremely queer
+(to me, at least), as, for example, the comparison of the
+article on water by Ushínski and of the article on water
+by Aksákov, and the request made of the pupils that they
+should explain that Aksákov considers water as a phenomenon
+of Nature, while Ushínski considers it as a substance,
+and so forth. Consequently, we find here again
+the same foisting of views on the pupils, and of subdivisions
+(generally incorrect) of the teacher, and not one word,
+not one hint, as to how any new knowledge is to be
+imparted.</p>
+
+<p>It is not known what shall be taught: natural history,
+or geography. There is nothing there but reading with
+questions of the character I have just mentioned. On the
+other side of the instruction about the word,&mdash;grammar
+and orthography,&mdash;we should just as much be looking in
+vain for any new method of instruction which is based on
+the preceding development. Again the old Perevlévski's
+grammar, which begins with philosophical definitions and
+then with syntactical analysis, serves as the basis of all
+new grammatical exercises and of Mr. Bunákov's manual.</p>
+
+<p>In mathematics, too, we should be looking in vain, at
+that stage where the real instruction in mathematics begins,
+for anything new and more easy, based on the
+whole previous instruction of the exercises of the second<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+year up to 20. Where in arithmetic the real difficulties
+are met with, where it becomes necessary to explain the
+subject from all its sides to the pupil, as in numeration, in
+addition, subtraction, division, in the division and multiplication
+of fractions, you will not find even a shadow of
+anything easier, any new explanation, but only quotations
+from old arithmetics.</p>
+
+<p>The character of this instruction is everywhere one and
+the same. The whole attention is directed toward teaching
+the pupil what he already knows. And since the
+pupil knows what he is being taught, and easily recites in
+any order desired what he is asked to recite by the
+teacher, the teacher thinks that he is really teaching
+something, and the pupil's progress is great, and the
+teacher, paying no attention to what forms the real difficulty
+of teaching, that is, to teaching something new,
+most comfortably stumps about in one spot.</p>
+
+<p>This explains why our pedagogical literature is overwhelmed
+with manuals for object-lessons, with manuals
+about how to conduct kindergartens (one of the most
+monstrous excrescences of the new pedagogy), with pictures
+and books for reading, in which are eternally repeated
+the same articles about the fox and the blackcock, the
+same poems which for some reason are written out in prose
+in all kinds of permutations and with all kinds of explanations;
+but we have not a single new article for children's
+reading, not one Russian, nor Church-Slavic grammar, nor
+a Church-Slavic dictionary, nor an arithmetic, nor a geography,
+nor a history for the popular schools. All the
+forces are absorbed in writing text-books for the instruction
+of children in subjects they need not and ought not
+to be taught in school, because they are taught them in
+life. Of course, there is no end to the writing of such
+books; for there can be only one grammar and arithmetic,
+but of exercises and reflections, like those I have quoted
+from Bunákov, and of the orders of the decomposition of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+numbers from Evtushévski, there may be an endless
+number.</p>
+
+<p>Pedagogy is in the same condition in which a science
+would be that would teach how a man ought to walk;
+and people would try to discover rules about how to teach
+the children, how to enjoin them to contract this muscle,
+stretch that muscle, and so forth. This condition of the
+new pedagogy results directly from its two fundamental
+principles: (1) that the aim of the school is development
+and not science, and (2) that development and the means
+for attaining it may be theoretically defined. From this
+has consistently resulted that miserable and frequently
+ridiculous condition in which the whole matter of the
+schools now is. Forces are wasted in vain, and the
+masses, who at the present moment are thirsting for education,
+as the dried-up grass thirsts for rain, and are ready
+to receive it, and beg for it,&mdash;instead of a loaf receive a
+stone, and are perplexed to understand whether they were
+mistaken in regarding education as something good, or
+whether something is wrong in what is being offered to
+them. That matters are really so there cannot be the
+least doubt for any man who becomes acquainted with
+the present theory of teaching and knows the actual condition
+of the school among the masses. Involuntarily
+there arises the question: how could honest, cultured
+people, who sincerely love their work and wish to do
+good,&mdash;for such I regard the majority of my opponents
+to be,&mdash;have arrived at such a strange condition and be
+in such deep error?</p>
+
+<p>This question has interested me, and I will try to communicate
+those answers which have occurred to me.
+Many causes have led to it. The most natural cause
+which has led pedagogy to the false path on which it now
+stands, is the criticism of the old order, the criticism for
+the sake of criticism, without positing new principles in
+the place of those criticized. Everybody knows that criticizing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+is an easy business, and that it is quite fruitless
+and frequently harmful, if by the side of what is condemned
+one does not point out the principles on the basis
+of which this condemnation is uttered. If I say that
+such and such a thing is bad because I do not like it, or
+because everybody says that it is bad, or even because it is
+really bad, but do not know how it ought to be right, the
+criticism will always be useless and injurious. The views
+of the pedagogues of the new school are, above all, based
+on the criticism of previous methods. Even now, when it
+seems there would be no sense in striking a prostrate
+person, we read and hear in every manual, in every
+discussion, "that it is injurious to read without comprehension;
+that it is impossible to learn by heart the definitions
+of numbers and operations with numbers; that senseless
+memorizing is injurious; that it is injurious to operate
+with thousands without being able to count 2-3," and so
+forth. The chief point of departure is the criticism of
+the old methods and the concoction of new ones to be as
+diametrically opposed to the old as possible, but by no
+means the positing of new foundations of pedagogy, from
+which new methods might result.</p>
+
+<p>It is very easy to criticize the old-fashioned method of
+studying reading by means of learning by heart whole
+pages of the psalter, and of studying arithmetic by memorizing
+what a number is, and so forth. I will remark, in
+the first place, that nowadays there is no need of attacking
+these methods, because there will hardly be found
+any teachers who would defend them, and, in the second
+place, that if, criticizing such phenomena, they want to
+let it be known that I am a defender of the antiquated
+method of instruction, it is no doubt due to the fact that
+my opponents, in their youth, do not know that nearly
+twenty years ago I with all my might and main fought
+against those antiquated methods of pedagogy and coöperated
+in their abolition.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And thus it was found that the old methods of instruction
+were not good for anything, and, without building any
+new foundation, they began to look for new methods. I
+say "without building any new foundation," because
+there are only two permanent foundations of pedagogy:</p>
+
+<p>(1) The determination of the criterion of what ought
+to be taught, and (2) the criterion of how it has to be
+taught, that is, the determination that the chosen subjects
+are most necessary, and that the chosen method is the
+best.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody has even paid any attention to these foundations,
+and each school has in its own justification invented
+quasi-philosophical justificatory reflections. But
+this "theoretical substratum," as Mr. Bunákov has
+accidentally expressed himself quite well, cannot be regarded
+as a foundation. For the old method of instruction
+possessed just such a theoretical substratum.</p>
+
+<p>The real, peremptory question of pedagogy, which
+fifteen years ago I vainly tried to put in all its significance,
+"Why ought we to know this or that, and how
+shall we teach it?" has not even been touched. The
+result of this has been that as soon as it became apparent
+that the old method was not good, they did not try to
+find out what the best method would be, but immediately
+set out to discover a new method which would be the
+very opposite of the old one. They did as a man may do
+who finds his house to be cold in winter and does not
+trouble himself about learning why it is cold, or how to
+help matters, but at once tries to find another house which
+will as little as possible resemble the one he is living in.
+I was then abroad, and I remember how I everywhere
+came across messengers roving all over Europe in search
+of a new faith, that is, officials of the ministry, studying
+German pedagogy.</p>
+
+<p>We have adopted the methods of instruction current
+with our nearest neighbours, the Germans, in the first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+place, because we are always prone to imitate the Germans;
+in the second, because it was the most complicated
+and cunning of methods, and if it comes to taking something
+from abroad, of course, it has to be the latest fashion
+and what is most cunning; in the third, because, in particular,
+these methods were more than any others opposed
+to the old way. And thus, the new methods were taken
+from the Germans, and not by themselves, but with a
+theoretical substratum, that is, with a quasi-philosophical
+justification of these methods.</p>
+
+<p>This theoretical substratum has done great service.
+The moment parents or simply sensible people, who busy
+themselves with the question of education, express their
+doubt about the efficacy of these methods, they are told:
+"And what about Pestalozzi, and Diesterweg, and Denzel,
+and Wurst, and methodics, heuristics, didactics, concentrism?"
+and the bold people wave their hands, and say:
+"God be with them,&mdash;they know better." In these German
+methods there also lay this other advantage (the
+cause why they stick so eagerly to this method), that
+with it the teacher does not need to try too much, does
+not need to go on studying, does not need to work over
+himself and the methods of instruction. For the greater
+part of the time the teacher teaches by this method what
+the children know, and, besides, teaches it from a text-book,
+and that is convenient. And unconsciously, in
+accordance with an innate human weakness, the teacher
+is fond of this convenience. It is very pleasant for me,
+with my firm conviction that I am teaching and doing an
+important and very modern work, to tell the children
+from the book about the suslik, or about a horse's having
+four legs, or to transpose the cubes by twos and by threes,
+and ask the children how much two and two is; but if,
+instead of telling about the suslik, the teacher had to tell
+or read something interesting, to give the foundations of
+grammar, geography, sacred history, and of the four operations,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+he would at once be led to working over himself,
+to reading much, and to refreshing his knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, the old method was criticized, and a new one
+was taken from the Germans. This method is so foreign
+to our Russian un-pedantic mental attitude, its monstrosity
+is so glaring, that one would think that it could never
+have been grafted on Russia, and yet it is being applied,
+even though only in a small measure, and in some way
+gives at times better results than the old church method.
+This is due to the fact that, since it was taken in our
+country (just as it originated in Germany) from the criticism
+of the old method, the faults of the former method
+have really been rejected, though, in its extreme opposition
+to the old method, which, with the pedantry characteristic
+of the Germans, has been carried to the farthest
+extreme, there have appeared new faults, which are almost
+greater than the former ones.</p>
+
+<p>Formerly reading was taught in Russia by attaching to
+the consonants useless endings (<i>buki</i>&mdash;<i>uki</i>, <i>vyedi</i>&mdash;<i>yedi</i>),
+and in Germany <i>es em de ce</i>, and so forth, by attaching a
+vowel to each consonant, now in front, and now behind,
+and that caused some difficulty. Now they have fallen
+into the other extreme, by trying to pronounce the consonants
+without the vowels, which is an apparent impossibility.
+In Ushínski's grammar (Ushínski is with us
+the father of the sound method), and in all the manuals
+on sound, a consonant is defined thus: "That sound
+which cannot be pronounced by itself." And it is this
+sound which the pupil is taught before any other. When
+I remarked that it is impossible to pronounce <i>b</i> alone, but
+that it always gives you <i>bu&#774;</i>, I was told that was due to
+the inability of some persons, and that it took great skill
+to pronounce a consonant. And I have myself seen a
+teacher correct a pupil more than ten times, though he
+seemed quite satisfactorily to pronounce short <i>b</i>, until at
+last the pupil began to talk nonsense. And it is with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+these <i>b's</i>, that is, sounds that cannot be pronounced, as
+Ushínski defines them, or the pronunciation of which
+demands special skill, that the instruction of reading
+begins according to the pedantic German manuals.</p>
+
+<p>Formerly syllables were senselessly learned by heart
+(that was bad); diametrically opposed to this, the new
+fashion enjoins us not to divide up into syllables at all,
+which is absolutely impossible in a long word, and which
+in reality is never done. Every teacher, according to the
+sound method, feels the necessity of letting a pupil rest
+after a part of a word, having him pronounce it separately.
+Formerly they used to read the psalter, which, on account
+of its high and deep style, is incomprehensible to the
+children (which was bad); in contrast to this the children
+are made to read sentences without any contents whatever,
+to explain intelligible words, or to learn by heart
+what they cannot understand. In the old school the
+teacher did not speak to the pupil at all; now the teacher
+is ordered to talk to them on anything and everything,
+on what they know already, or what they do not need to
+know. In mathematics they formerly learned by heart
+the definition of operations, but now they no longer have
+anything to do with operations, for, according to Evtushévski,
+they reach numeration only in the third year, and
+it is assumed that for a whole year they are to be taught
+nothing but numbers up to ten. Formerly the pupils
+were made to work with large abstract numbers, without
+paying any attention to the other side of mathematics, to
+the disentanglement of the problem (the formation of an
+equation). Now they are taught solving puzzles, forming
+equations with small numbers before they know numeration
+and how to operate with numbers, though experience
+teaches any teacher that the difficulty of forming equations
+or the solution of puzzles are overcome by a general
+development in life, and not in school.</p>
+
+<p>It has been observed&mdash;quite correctly&mdash;that there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+is no greater aid for a pupil, when he is puzzled by a
+problem with large numbers, than to give him the same
+problem with smaller numbers. The pupil, who in life
+learns to grope through problems with small numbers, is
+conscious of the process of solving, and transfers this
+process to the problem with large numbers. Having observed
+this, the new pedagogues try to teach only the
+solving of puzzles with small numbers, that is, what cannot
+form the subject of instruction and is only the work
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>In the instruction of grammar the new school has again
+remained consistent with its point of departure,&mdash;with
+the criticism of the old and the adoption of the diametrically
+opposite method. Formerly they used to learn by
+heart the definition of the parts of speech, and from etymology
+passed over to syntax; now they not only begin
+with syntax, but even with logic, which the children are
+supposed to acquire. According to the grammar of Mr.
+Bunákov, which is an abbreviation of Perevlévski's grammar,
+even with the same choice of examples, the study of
+grammar begins with syntactical analysis, which is so
+difficult and, I will say, so uncertain for the Russian language,
+which does not fully comply with the classic forms
+of syntax. To sum up, the new school has removed certain
+disadvantages, of which the chief are the superfluous
+addition to the consonants and the memorizing of definitions,
+and in this it is superior to the old method, and in
+reading and writing sometimes gives better results; but,
+on the other hand, it has introduced new defects, which
+are that the contents of the reading are most senseless and
+that arithmetic is no longer taught as a study.</p>
+
+<p>In practice (I can refer in this to all the inspectors of
+schools, to all the members of school councils, who have
+visited the schools, and to all the teachers), in practice, in
+the majority of schools, where the German method is prescribed,
+this is what takes place, with rare exceptions.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+The children learn not by the sound system, but by the
+method of letter composition; instead of saying <i>b</i>, <i>v</i>, they
+say <i>bu&#774;</i>, <i>vu&#774;</i>, and break up the words into syllables. The
+object instruction is entirely lost sight of, arithmetic does
+not proceed at all, and the children have absolutely nothing
+to read. The teachers quite unconsciously depart
+from the theoretical demands and fall in with the needs
+of the masses. These practical results, which are repeated
+everywhere, should, it seems, prove the incorrectness of
+the method itself; but among the pedagogues, those that
+write manuals and prescribe rules, there exists such a complete
+ignorance of and aversion to the knowledge of the
+masses and their demands that the relation of reality to
+these methods does not in the least impair the progress of
+their business. It is hard to imagine the conception
+about the masses which exists in this world of the pedagogues,
+and from which result their method and all the
+consequent manner of instruction.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bunákov, in proof of how necessary the object instruction
+and development is for the children of a Russian
+school, with extraordinary naïveté adduces Pestalozzi's
+words: "Let any one who has lived among the common
+people," he says, "contradict my words that there is nothing
+more difficult than to impart any idea to these creatures.
+Nobody, indeed, gainsays that. The Swiss pastors
+affirm that when the people come to them to receive instruction
+they do not understand what they are told, and
+the pastors do not understand what the people say to them.
+City dwellers who settle in the country are amazed at the
+inability of the country population to express themselves;
+years pass before the country servants learn to express
+themselves to their masters." This relation of the common
+people in Switzerland to the cultured class is assumed
+as the foundation for just such a relation in Russia.</p>
+
+<p>I regard it as superfluous to expatiate on what is known
+to everybody, that in Germany the people speak a special<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+language, called Plattdeutsch, and that in the German
+part of Switzerland this Plattdeutsch is especially far removed
+from the German language, whereas in Russia we
+frequently speak a bad language, while the masses always
+speak a good Russian, and that in Russia it will be more
+correct to put these words of Pestalozzi in the mouth of
+peasants speaking of the teachers. A peasant and his boy
+will say quite correctly that it is very hard to understand
+what those creatures, meaning the teachers, say. The ignorance
+about the masses is so complete in this world of
+the pedagogues that they boldly say that to the peasant
+school come little savages, and therefore boldly teach them
+what is down and what up, that a blackboard is placed on
+a stand, and that underneath it there is a groove. They
+do not know that if the pupils asked the teacher, there
+would turn up very many things which the teacher would
+not know; that, for example, if you rub off the paint from
+the board, nearly any boy will tell you of what kind of
+wood the board is made, whether of pine, linden, or aspen,
+which the teacher cannot tell; that a boy will always tell
+better than the teacher about a cat or a chicken, because
+he has observed them better than the teacher; that instead
+of the problem about the wagons the boy knows the
+problems about the crows, about the cattle, and about the
+geese. (About the crows: There flies a flock of crows,
+and there stand some oak-trees: if two crows alight on
+each, a crow will be lacking; if one on each, an oak-tree
+will be lacking. How many crows and how many oak-trees
+are there? About the cattle: For one hundred
+roubles buy one hundred animals,&mdash;calves at half a rouble,
+cows at three roubles, and oxen at ten roubles. How
+many oxen, cows, and calves are there?) The pedagogues
+of the German school do not even suspect that quickness
+of perception, that real vital development, that contempt
+for everything false, that ready ridicule of everything
+false, which are inherent in every Russian peasant boy,&mdash;and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+only on that account so boldly (as I myself have
+seen), under the fire of forty pairs of intelligent youthful
+eyes, perform their tricks at the risk of ridicule. For this
+reason, a real teacher, who knows the masses, no matter
+how sternly he is enjoined to teach the peasant children
+what is up and what down, and that two and three is five,
+not one real teacher, who knows the pupils with whom
+he has to deal, will be able to do that.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, the chief causes which have led us into such
+error are: (1) the ignorance about the masses; (2) the
+involuntarily seductive ease of teaching the children what
+they already know; (3) our proneness to imitate the
+Germans, and (4) the criticism of the old, without putting
+down a new, foundation. This last cause has led the
+pedagogues of the new school to this, that, in spite of
+the extreme external difference of the new method from
+the old, it is identical with it in its foundation, and, consequently,
+in the methods of instruction and in the results.
+In either method the essential principle consists in the
+teacher's firm and absolute knowledge of what to teach
+and how to teach, and this knowledge of his he does not
+draw from the demands of the masses and from experience,
+but simply decides theoretically once for all
+that he must teach this or that and in such a way, and
+so he teaches. The pedagogue of the ancient school, which
+for briefness' sake I shall call the church school, knows
+firmly and absolutely that he must teach from the prayer-book
+and the psalter by making the children learn by
+rote, and he admits no alterations in his methods; in the
+same manner the teacher of the new, the German, school
+knows firmly and absolutely that he must teach according
+to Bunákov and Evtushévski, begin with the words
+"whisker" and "wasp," ask what is up and what down,
+and tell about the favourite suslik, and he admits
+no alterations in his method. Both of them base their
+opinion on the firm conviction that they know the best<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+methods. From the identity of the foundations arises
+also a further similarity. If you tell a teacher of the
+church reading that it takes the children a long time and
+causes them difficulty to acquire reading and writing, he
+will reply that the main interest is not in the reading and
+writing, but in the "divine instruction," by which he
+means the study of the church books. The same you will
+be told by a teacher of Russian reading according to the
+German method. He will tell you (all say and write it)
+that the main question is not the rapidity of the acquisition
+of the art of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but in
+the "development." Both place the aim of instruction
+in something independent of reading, writing, and arithmetic,
+that is, of science, in something else, which is
+absolutely necessary.</p>
+
+<p>This similarity continues down to the minutest details.
+In either method all instruction previous to the school, all
+knowledge acquired outside the school, is not taken into
+account,&mdash;all entering pupils are regarded as equally
+ignorant, and all are made to learn from the beginning.
+If a boy who knows the letters and the syllables <i>a</i>, <i>be</i>,
+enters a church school, he is made to change them to
+<i>buki-az</i>&mdash;<i>ba</i>. The same is true of the German school.</p>
+
+<p>Just so, in either school it happens that some children
+cannot learn the rudiments.</p>
+
+<p>Just so, with either method, the mechanical side of
+instruction predominates over the mental. In either
+school the pupils excel in a good handwriting and good
+enunciation with absolutely exact reading, that is, not as
+it is spoken, but as it is written. Just so, with either
+method, there always reigns an external order in the
+school, and the children are in constant fear and can
+be guided only with the greatest severity. Mr. Korolév
+has incidentally remarked that in instruction according
+to the sound method blows are not neglected. I have
+seen the same in the schools of the German method, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+I assume that without blows it is impossible to get along
+even in the new German school, because, like the church
+school, it teaches without asking what the pupil finds
+interesting to know, but what, in the teacher's opinion,
+seems necessary, and so the school can be based only on
+compulsion. Compulsion is attained with children generally
+by means of blows. The church and the new
+German school, starting from the same principles and
+arriving at the same results, are absolutely identical.
+But, if it came to choosing one of the two, I should still
+prefer the church school. The defects are the same, but
+on the side of the church school is the custom of a thousand
+years and the authority of the church, which is so
+powerful with the masses.</p>
+
+<p>Having finished the analysis and criticism of the German
+school, I consider it necessary,&mdash;in view of what I
+have said, namely, that criticism is fruitful only when,
+condemning, it points out how that which is bad ought
+to be,&mdash;I consider it necessary to speak of those foundations
+of instruction which I regard as legitimate, and on
+which I rear my method of instruction.</p>
+
+<p>In order to elucidate in what I find these unquestionable
+foundations of every pedagogical activity, I shall be
+compelled to repeat myself, that is, to repeat what I said
+fifteen years ago in the pedagogical periodical, <i>Yásnaya
+Polyána</i>, which I then published. This repetition will
+not be tedious for the pedagogues of the new school, because
+what I then wrote is not exactly forgotten, but has
+never been considered by the pedagogues,&mdash;and yet I
+still think that just what was expressed by me at that
+time might have placed pedagogy, as a theory, on a firm
+foundation. Fifteen years ago, when I took up the matter
+of popular education without any preconceived theories or
+views on the subject, with the one desire to advance the
+matter in a direct and straightforward manner, I, as a
+teacher in my school, was at once confronted with two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+questions: (1) What must I teach? and (2) How must I
+teach it?</p>
+
+<p>At that time, even as at the present, there existed
+the greatest diversity of opinion in the answers to these
+questions.</p>
+
+<p>I know that some pedagogues, who are locked up in
+their narrow theoretical world, think that there is no
+other light than what peeps through the windows, and
+that there is no longer any diversity of opinions.</p>
+
+<p>I ask those who think so to observe that it only seems
+so to them, just as it seems so to the circles that are
+opposed to them. In the whole mass of people who
+are interested in education, there exists, as it has existed
+before, the greatest diversity of opinions. Formerly, just
+as now, some, in reply to the question of what ought to
+be taught, said that outside of the rudiments the most
+useful information for a primary school is obtained from
+the natural sciences; others, even as now, that that was
+not necessary, and was even injurious; even as now, some
+proposed history, or geography, while others denied their
+necessity; some proposed the Church-Slavic language and
+grammar, and religion, while others found that, too, superfluous,
+and ascribed a prime importance to "development."
+On the question of how to teach there has always been a
+still greater diversity of answers. The most diversified
+methods of instructing in reading and arithmetic have
+been proposed.</p>
+
+<p>In the bookstalls there were sold, side by side, the self-teachers
+according to the <i>buki-az&mdash;ba</i>, Bunákov's lessons,
+Zolotóv's charts, Madame Daragán's alphabets, and all
+had their advocates. When I encountered these questions
+and found no answer for them in Russian literature,
+I turned to the literature of Europe. After having read
+what had been written on the subject and having made
+the personal acquaintance of the so-called best representatives
+of the pedagogical science in Europe, I not only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+failed to find anywhere an answer to the question I was
+interested in, but I convinced myself that this question
+does not even exist for pedagogy, as a science; that every
+pedagogue of any given school firmly believed that the
+methods which he used were the best, because they were
+based on absolute truth, and that it would be useless for
+him to look at them with a critical eye.</p>
+
+<p>However, because, as I said, I took up the matter of
+popular education without any preconceived notions, or
+because I took up the matter without prescribing laws
+from a distance about how I ought to teach, but became
+a schoolmaster in a village popular school in the backwoods,&mdash;I
+could not reject the idea that there must of
+necessity exist a criterion by means of which the question
+could be solved: What to teach and how to teach it.
+Should I teach the psalter by heart, or the classification
+of the organisms? Should I teach according to the
+sound alphabet, translated from the German, or from the
+prayer-book? In the solution of this question I was
+aided by a certain pedagogical tact, with which I am
+gifted, and especially by that close and impassioned relation
+in which I stood to the matter.</p>
+
+<p>When I entered at once into the closest direct relations
+with those forty tiny peasants that formed my
+school (I call them tiny peasants because I found in them
+the same characteristics of perspicacity, the same immense
+store of information from practical life, of jocularity,
+simplicity, and loathing for everything false, which
+distinguish the Russian peasant), when I saw that susceptibility,
+that readiness to acquire the information
+which they needed, I felt at once that the antiquated
+church method of instruction had outlived its usefulness
+and was not good for them. I began to experiment on
+other proposed methods of instruction; but, because compulsion
+in education, both by my conviction and by my
+character, are repulsive to me, I did not exercise any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+pressure, and, the moment I noticed that something was
+not readily received, I did not compel them, and looked
+for something else. From these experiments it appeared
+to me and to those teachers who instructed with me at
+Yásnaya Polyána and in other schools on the same principle
+of freedom, that nearly everything which in the
+pedagogical world was written about schools was separated
+by an immeasurable abyss from reality, and that
+many of the proposed methods, such as object-lessons, the
+natural sciences, the sound method, and others, called
+forth contempt and ridicule, and were not accepted by the
+pupils. We began to look for those contents and those
+methods which were readily taken up by the pupils, and
+struck that which forms my method of instruction.</p>
+
+<p>But this method stood in a line with all other methods,
+and the question of why it was better than the rest remained
+as unsolved as before. Consequently, the question
+of what the criterion was as to what to teach and
+how to teach received an even greater meaning for me;
+only by solving it could I be convinced that what I
+taught was neither injurious nor useless. This question
+both then and now has appeared to me as a corner-stone
+of the whole pedagogy, and to the solution of this question
+I devoted the publication of the pedagogical periodical
+<i>Yásnaya Polyána</i>. In several articles (I do not
+renounce anything I then said) I tried to put the question
+in all its significance and to solve it as much as I could.
+At that time I found no sympathy in all the pedagogical
+literature, not even any contradiction, but the most complete
+indifference to the question which I put. There
+were some attacks on certain details and trifles, but the
+question itself evidently did not interest any one. I was
+young then, and that indifference grieved me. I did not
+understand that with my question, "How do you know
+what to teach and how to teach?" I was like a man
+who, let us say, in a gathering of Turkish pashas discussing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+the question in what manner they may collect the
+greatest revenue from the people, should propose to them
+the following: "Gentlemen, in order to know how much
+revenue to collect from each, we must first analyze the
+question on what your right to exact that revenue is
+based." Obviously all the pashas would continue their
+discussion of the measures of extortion, and would reply
+only with silence to his irrelevant question. But the question
+cannot be circumvented. Fifteen years ago no attention
+was paid to it, and the pedagogues of every school,
+convinced that everybody else was talking to the wind
+and that they were right, most calmly prescribed their
+laws, basing their principles on philosophies of a very
+doubtful character, which they used as a substratum for
+their wee little theories.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, this question is not quite so difficult if we
+only renounce completely all preconceived notions. I
+have tried to elucidate and solve this question, and, without
+repeating those proofs, which he who wishes may
+read in the article, I will enunciate the results to which
+I was led. "The only criterion of pedagogy is freedom,
+the only method&mdash;experience." After fifteen years I have
+not changed my opinion one hair's breadth; but I consider
+it necessary to define with greater precision what I
+understand by these words, not only in respect to education
+in general, but also in respect to the particular
+question of popular education in a primary school. One
+hundred years ago the question what to teach and how to
+teach could have had no place either in Europe or with
+us. Education was inseparably connected with religion.
+To learn reading meant to learn Holy Writ. In the
+Mohammedan countries this relation of the rudiments
+and religion still persists in its full force. To learn
+means to learn the Koran, and, therefore, Arabic. But
+the moment religion ceased to be the criterion of what
+ought to be taught, and the school became independent of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
+it, this question had to arise. But it did not arise because
+the school was not suddenly freed from its dependence
+on religion, but by imperceptible steps. Now it is
+accepted by everybody that religion cannot serve as the
+contents, nor as an indication of the method of education,
+and that education has different demands for its basis.
+In what do these demands consist? On what are they
+based? In order that these principles should be incontrovertible,
+it is necessary either that they be proved
+philosophically, incontrovertibly, or that, at least, all educated
+people should be agreed on them. But is it so?
+There can be no doubt whatsoever about this, that in
+philosophy have not been found those principles on which
+could be built up the decision of what ought to be taught,
+the more so since the matter itself is not an abstract, but
+a practical affair, which depends on an endless number of
+vital conditions. Still less can these principles be discovered
+in the common consent of all men who busy
+themselves with this matter, in the consent which we
+may take as a practical foundation, as an expression of
+the universal common sense. Not only in matters of popular,
+but even of higher education do we see a complete
+diversity of opinions among the best representatives of education,
+as, for example, in the question of classicism and
+realism. And yet, in spite of the absence of any foundations,
+we see education proceeding on its own path and on
+the whole being guided by only one principle, namely by
+freedom. There exist side by side the classical and the
+real school, each of which is prepared to regard itself as
+the only natural school, and both satisfy some want, for
+parents send their children to either.</p>
+
+<p>In the popular school the right to determine what the
+children shall learn, no matter from what standpoint we
+may consider this question, belongs just as much to the
+masses, that is, either to the pupils themselves, or to
+the parents who send the children to school, and so the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+answer to the question what the children are to be taught
+in a popular school can be got only from the masses.
+But, perhaps, we shall say that we, as highly cultured
+people, must not submit to the demands of the rude
+masses and that we must teach the masses what to wish.
+Thus many think, but to that I can give this one answer:
+give us a firm, incontrovertible foundation why
+this or that is chosen by you, show me a society in which
+the two diametrically opposed views on education do not
+exist among the highly cultured people; where it is not
+eternally repeated that if education falls into the hands of
+the clergy, the masses are educated in one sense, and if education
+falls into the hands of the progressists, the people
+are educated in another sense,&mdash;show me a state of society
+where that does not exist, and I will agree with you.
+So long as that does not exist, there is no criterion except
+the freedom of the learner, where, in matters of the popular
+school, the place of the learning children is taken by
+their parents, that is, by the needs of the masses.</p>
+
+<p>These needs are not only definite, quite clear, and
+everywhere the same throughout Russia, but also so intelligent
+and broad that they include all the most diversified
+demands of the people who are debating what the
+masses ought to be taught. These needs are: the knowledge
+of Russian and Church-Slavic reading, and calculation.
+The masses everywhere and always regard the
+natural sciences as useless trifles. Their programme is
+remarkable not only by its unanimity and firm definiteness,
+but, in my opinion, also by the breadth of its
+demands and the correctness of its view. The masses
+admit two spheres of knowledge, the most exact and the
+least subject to vacillation from a diversity of views,&mdash;the
+languages and mathematics; everything else they
+regard as trifles. I think that the masses are quite correct,&mdash;in
+the first place, because in this knowledge there
+can be no half information, no falseness, which they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+cannot bear, and, in the second, because the sphere of
+those two kinds of knowledge is immense. Russian and
+Church-Slavic grammar and calculation, that is, the knowledge
+of one dead and one living language, with their
+etymological and syntactical forms and their literatures,
+and arithmetic, that is, the foundation of all mathematics,
+form their programme of knowledge, which, unfortunately,
+but the rarest of the cultured class possess. In
+the third place, the masses are right, because by this
+programme they will be taught in the primary school
+only what will open to them the more advanced paths
+of knowledge, for it is evident that the thorough knowledge
+of two languages and their forms, and, in addition
+to them, of arithmetic, completely opens the paths to an
+independent acquisition of all other knowledge. The
+masses, as though feeling the false relation to them, when
+they are offered incoherent scraps of all kinds of information,
+repel that lie from themselves, and say: "I need
+know but this much,&mdash;the church language and my
+own and the laws of the numbers, but that other knowledge
+I will take myself if I want it."</p>
+
+<p>Thus, if we admit freedom as the criterion of what
+is to be taught, the programme of the popular schools is
+clearly and firmly defined, until the time when the
+masses shall express some new demands. Church-Slavic
+and Russian and arithmetic to their highest possible
+stages, and nothing else but that. That is the determination
+of the limits of the programme of the popular
+school, which, however, does not presume that all three
+subjects be introduced systematically. With such a programme
+the attainment of symmetrical results in all three
+subjects would naturally be desirable; but it cannot be
+said that the predominance of one subject over another
+would be injurious. The problem consists only in keeping
+within the limits of the programme. It may happen
+that from the demands of the parents, and especially<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+from the knowledge of the teacher, this or that subject
+will be more prominent,&mdash;with a clerical person the
+Church-Slavic language, with a teacher from a county
+school&mdash;either Russian or arithmetic; in all these cases
+the demands of the masses will be satisfied, and the instruction
+will not depart from its fundamental criterion.</p>
+
+<p>The second part of the question, how to teach, that is,
+how to discover which method is the best, has remained
+just as unsolved.</p>
+
+<p>Just as in the first part of the question of what to
+teach, the assumption that on the basis of reflections it is
+possible to build a programme of instruction leads to
+contradictory schools, so it is also with the question as to
+how to teach. Let us take the very first stage of the
+teaching of reading. One asserts that it is easier to
+teach so from cards; another&mdash;according to the <i>b</i>, <i>v</i>
+system; a third&mdash;according to Korf; a fourth&mdash;according
+to the <i>be</i>, <i>ve</i>, <i>ge</i> system, and so forth. It is said that
+the nuns teach reading in six weeks by the <i>buki-az</i>&mdash;<i>ba</i>
+system. And every teacher, convinced of the superiority
+of his method, proves this superiority either by the
+fact that he teaches with it faster than others, or by
+reflections of the character which Mr. Bunákov and the
+German pedagogues adduce. At the present time, when
+there are thousands of examples, we ought to know precisely
+by what to be guided in our choice. Neither
+theory, nor reflections, nor even the results of instruction
+can show this completely.</p>
+
+<p>Education and instruction are generally considered in
+the abstract, that is, the question is discussed how in the
+best and easiest manner to produce a certain act of instruction
+on a certain subject (whether it be one child or
+a mass of children). This view is quite faulty. All
+education and instruction can be viewed only as a certain
+relation of two persons or of two groups of persons having
+for their aim education or instruction. This definition,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
+more general than all the other definitions, has
+special reference to popular education, where the question
+is the education of an immense number of persons, and
+where there can be no question about an ideal education.
+In general, with the popular education we cannot put the
+question, "How is the best education to be given?" just
+as with the question of the nutrition of the masses we
+cannot ask how the most nutritious and best loaf is to be
+baked. The question has to be put like this: "How is
+the best relation to be established between given people
+who want to learn and others who want to teach?" or,
+"How is the best bread to be made from given bolted
+flour?" Consequently the question of how to teach and
+what is the best method is a question of what will be
+the best relation between teacher and pupil.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody, I suppose, will deny that the best relation
+between teacher and pupil is that of naturalness, and that
+the contrary relation is that of compulsion. If so, the
+measure of all methods is to be found in the greater or
+lesser naturalness of relations and, therefore, in the lesser
+or greater compulsion in instruction. The less the children
+are compelled to learn, the better is the method; the
+more&mdash;the worse. I am glad that I do not have to
+prove this evident truth. Everybody is agreed that just
+as in hygiene the use of any food, medicine, exercise, that
+provokes loathing or pain, cannot be useful, so also in
+instruction can there be no necessity of compelling children
+to learn anything that is tiresome and repulsive to
+them, and that, if necessity demands that children be
+compelled, it only proves the imperfection of the method.
+Any one who has taught children has no doubt observed
+that the less the teacher himself knows the subject which
+he teaches and the less he likes it, the more will he have
+to have recourse to severity and compulsion; on the contrary,
+the more the teacher knows and loves his subject,
+the more natural and easy will his instruction be. With<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>
+the idea that for successful instruction not compulsion is
+wanted, but the rousing of the pupil's interest, all the
+pedagogues of the school which is opposed to me agree.
+The only difference between us is that the conception
+that the teaching must rouse the child's interest is with
+them lost in a mass of other conflicting notions about
+"development," of the value of which they are convinced
+and in which they exercise compulsion; whereas I consider
+the rousing of the pupil's interest, the greatest
+possible ease, and, therefore, the non-compulsion and naturalness
+of instruction as the fundamental and only measure
+of good and bad instruction.</p>
+
+<p>Every progress of pedagogy, if we attentively consider
+the history of this matter, consists in an ever increasing
+approximation toward naturalness of relations between
+teacher and pupil, in a lessened compulsion, and in a
+greater ease of instruction.</p>
+
+<p>The objection was formerly made and, I know, is made
+even now that it is hard to find the limit of freedom
+which shall be permitted in school. To this I will reply
+that this limit is naturally determined by the teacher, his
+knowledge, his ability to manage the school; that this
+freedom cannot be prescribed; the measure of this freedom
+is only the result of the greater or lesser knowledge and
+talent of the teacher. This freedom is not a rule, but
+serves as a check in comparing schools between themselves,
+and as a check in comparing new methods which
+are introduced into the school curriculum. The school
+in which there is less compulsion is better than the one in
+which there is more. The method which at its introduction
+into the school does not demand an increase of discipline
+is good; but the one which demands greater severity
+is certainly bad. Take, for example, a more or less free
+school, such as mine was, and try to start a conversation
+in it about the table and the ceiling, or to transpose cubes,&mdash;you
+will see what it hubbub will arise in the school<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+and how you will feel the necessity of restoring order by
+means of severity; try to tell them an interesting story,
+or to give them problems, or make one write on the board
+and let the others correct his mistakes, and allow them to
+leave the benches, and you will find them all occupied
+and there will be no naughtiness, and you will not have
+to increase your severity,&mdash;and you may safely say that
+the method is good.</p>
+
+<p>In my pedagogical articles I have given theoretical
+reasons why I find that only the freedom of choice on the
+side of the learners as to what they are to be taught and
+how can form a foundation of any instruction; in practice
+I have always applied these rules in the schools
+under my guidance, at first on a large scale, and later in
+narrower limits, and the results have always been very
+good, both for the teachers and the pupils, as also for
+the evolution of new methods,&mdash;and this I assert boldly,
+for hundreds of visitors have come to the Yásnaya Polyána
+school and know all about it.</p>
+
+<p>The consequences of such a relation to the pupils has
+been for the teachers that they did not consider that
+method best which they knew, but tried to discover other
+methods, became acquainted with other teachers for the
+purpose of learning their methods, tested new methods,
+and, above all, were learning something all the time. A
+teacher never permitted himself to think that in cases of
+failure it was the pupils' fault,&mdash;their laziness, playfulness,
+dulness, deafness, stammering,&mdash;but was firmly
+convinced that he alone was to blame for it, and for every
+failure of a pupil or of all the pupils he tried to find a
+remedy. For the pupils the result was that they learned
+readily, always begged the teachers to give them evening
+classes in the winter, and were absolutely free in the
+school,&mdash;which, in my conviction and experience, is
+the chief condition for successful progress in instruction.
+Between teachers and pupils there were always established<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+friendly, natural relations, with which alone it is possible
+for the teacher to know his pupils well. If, from a first,
+external impression of the school, we were to determine
+the difference between the church, the German, and my
+own school, it would be this: in a church school you
+hear a peculiar, unnatural, monotonous shouting of all the
+pupils and now and then the stern cries of the teacher;
+in the German school you hear only the teacher's voice
+and now and then the timid voices of the pupils; in mine
+you hear the loud voices of the teachers and the pupils,
+almost simultaneously.</p>
+
+<p>As for the methods of instruction the consequences
+were that not one method of instruction was adopted or
+rejected because it was liked or not, but only because it
+was accepted or not by the pupils without compulsion.
+But in addition to the good results which were always
+obtained without fail from the application of my method
+by myself and by everybody else (more than twenty
+teachers), who taught according to my method ("without
+fail" I say for the reason that not once did we have a
+pupil who did not learn the rudiments), besides these
+results, the application of the principles of which I have
+spoken had the effect that during these fifteen years all
+the various modifications, to which my method was subjected,
+not only did not remove it from the needs of the
+masses, but, on the contrary, brought it nearer and nearer
+to them. The masses, at least in our parts, know the
+method itself and discuss it, and prefer it to the church
+method, which I cannot say of the sound method. In
+the schools which are conducted according to my method
+the teacher cannot remain motionless in his knowledge,
+such as he is and must be with the method of sounds.
+If a teacher according to the new German fashion wants
+to go ahead and perfect himself, he has to follow the
+pedagogical literature, that is, to read all those new inventions
+about the conversations about the suslik and about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+the transposition of the squares. I do not think that
+that can promote his personal education. On the contrary,
+in my school, where the subjects of instruction,
+language and mathematics, demand positive knowledge,
+every teacher, in advancing his pupils, feels the need of
+learning himself, which was constantly the case with all
+the teachers I had.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, the methods of instruction themselves, which
+are not settled once for all, but always strive to be as easy
+and as simple as possible, are modified and improved from
+the indications which the teacher discovers in the relations
+of the learners to his instruction.</p>
+
+<p>The very opposite to this I see in what, unfortunately,
+takes place in the schools of the German pattern, which
+of late have been introduced in our country in an artificial
+manner. The failure to recognize that before deciding
+what to teach and how to teach we must solve the question
+how we can find that out has led the pedagogues to
+a complete disagreement with reality, and the abyss which
+fifteen years ago was felt to exist between theory and
+practice has now reached the farthest limits. Now that
+the masses are on all sides begging for education, while
+pedagogy has more than ever passed to personal fancies,
+this discord has reached incredible proportions.</p>
+
+<p>This discord between the demands of pedagogy and
+reality has of late found its peculiarly striking expression
+not only in the matter of instruction itself, but also in
+another very important side of the school, namely in its
+administration. In order to show in what condition this
+matter has been and might be, I shall speak of Krapívensk
+County of the Government of Túla, in which I live, which
+I know, and which, from its position, forms the type of
+the majority of counties of central Russia.</p>
+
+<p>In 1862 fourteen schools were opened in a district
+of ten thousand souls, when I was rural judge; besides,
+there existed about ten schools in the district among the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+clericals and in the manors among the servants. In
+the three remaining districts of the county there were
+fifteen large and thirty small schools among the clericals
+and manorial servants. Without saying anything about the
+number of the learners, of which, I assume, there were in
+general not less than now, nor about the instruction itself,
+which was partly bad and partly good, but on the whole
+not worse than at present, I will tell how and on what
+that business was based.</p>
+
+<p>All schools were then, with few exceptions, based on a
+free agreement of the teacher with the parents of the
+pupils, or with the whole partnership of the peasants paying
+a lump sum for everybody. Such a relation between
+the parents or Communes and the teachers is even now
+met with in some exceedingly rare places of our county
+and of the Government in general. Everybody will agree
+that, leaving aside the question of the quality of instruction,
+such a relation of the teacher to the parents and
+peasants is most just, natural, and desirable. But, with
+the introduction of the law of 1864, this relation was
+abolished and is being abolished more and more. Everybody
+who knows the matter as it is will observe that with
+the abolition of this relation the people take less and less
+part in the matter of their education, which is only natural.
+In some County Councils the school tax of the peasants
+is even turned into the County Council, and the
+salary, appointment of teachers, location of schools,&mdash;all
+that is done quite independently of those for whom it is
+intended (in theory the peasants, no doubt, are members
+of the County Council, but in practice they have through
+this mediation no influence on their own schools). Nobody
+will, I suppose, assert that that is just, but some
+will say: "The illiterate peasants cannot judge what is
+good and what bad, and we must build for them as well
+as we can." But how do we know? Do we know firmly,
+are we all of one opinion, how to build schools? And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+does it not frequently turn out bad, for we have built
+much worse than they have?</p>
+
+<p>Thus, in relation to the administrative side of the
+schools I have again to put a third question, on the same
+basis of freedom: Why do we know how best to arrange
+a school? To this question German pedagogy gives an
+answer which is quite consistent with its whole system.
+It knows what the best school is, it has formed a clear,
+definite ideal, down to the minutest details, the benches,
+the hours of instruction, and so forth, and gives an answer:
+the school has to be such and such, according to this pattern,&mdash;this
+alone is good and every other school is injurious.
+I know that, although the desire of Henry IV. to
+give each Frenchman soup and a chicken was unrealizable,
+it was impossible to say that the desire was false.
+But the matter assumes an entirely different aspect when
+the soup is of a very questionable quality and is not a
+chicken soup, but a worthless broth. And yet the so-called
+science of pedagogy is in this matter indissolubly
+connected with power; both in Germany and with us
+there are prescribed certain ideal one-class, two-class
+schools, and so forth; and the pedagogical and the administrative
+powers do not wish to know the fact that the
+masses would like to attend to their own education. Let
+us see how such a view of popular education has been reflected
+in practice on the question of education.</p>
+
+<p>Beginning with the year 1862 the idea that education
+was necessary has more and more spread among the
+masses: on all sides schools were established by church
+servants, hired teachers, and the Communes. Whether
+good or bad, these schools were spontaneous and grew out
+directly from the needs of the masses; with the introduction
+of the law of 1864 this tendency was increased, and
+in 1870 there were, according to the reports, about sixty
+schools in Krapívensk County. Since then officials of
+the ministry and members of the County Council have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+begun to meddle more and more with school matters, and
+in Krapívensk County forty schools have been closed
+and schools of a lower order have been prohibited from
+being opened. I know that those who closed those
+schools affirm that these schools existed only nominally
+and were very bad; but I cannot believe it, because I
+know well-instructed pupils from three villages, Trósna,
+Lamíntsovo, and Yásnaya Polyána, where schools were
+closed. I also know&#8212;-and this will seem incredible to
+many&#8212;-what is meant by prohibiting the opening of
+schools. It means that, on the basis of a circular of the
+ministry of public instruction, which spoke of the prohibition
+of unreliable teachers (this, no doubt, had reference
+to the Nihilists), the school council transferred this prohibition
+to the minor schools, taught by sextons, soldiers,
+and so forth, which the peasants themselves had opened,
+and which, no doubt, are not at all comprised in the circular.
+But, instead, there exist twenty schools with
+teachers, who are supposed to be good because they
+receive a salary of two hundred roubles in silver, and the
+County Council has distributed Ushínski's text-books, and
+these schools are called one-class schools, because they
+teach in them according to a programme, and the whole
+year around, that is, also in summer, with the exception of
+July and August.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving aside the question of the quality of the former
+schools, we shall now take a glance at their administrative
+side, and we will compare, from this side, what was
+before, with what is now. In the administrative, external
+side of the school there are five main subjects,
+which are so closely connected with the school business
+itself that on their good or bad structure depend to a
+great extent the success and dissemination of popular
+education. These five subjects are: (1) the school building,
+(2) the schedule of instruction, (3) the distribution of
+the schools according to localities, (4) the choice of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+teacher, and&mdash;what is most important&mdash;(5) the material
+means, the remuneration of the teachers.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the school building the masses rarely have
+any difficulty, when they start a school for themselves,
+and if the Commune is rich and there are any communal
+buildings, such as a storehouse or a deserted inn, the Commune
+fixes it up; if there is none, it buys a building, at
+times even from a landed proprietor, or it builds one of
+its own. If the Commune is not well-to-do and is small,
+it hires quarters from a peasant, or establishes a rotation,
+and the teacher passes from hut to hut. If the Commune,
+as it most generally does, selects a teacher from its
+own midst, a manorial servant, a soldier, or a church
+servant, the school is located at the house of that person,
+and the Commune looks only after the heating. In any
+case, I have never heard that the question of the location
+of the school ever troubled a Commune, or that half the
+sum set aside for instruction should be lost, as is done by
+school councils, on the buildings, nay, not even one-sixth
+or one-tenth of the whole sum. The peasant Communes
+have arranged it one way or another, but the question of
+the school building has never been regarded as troublesome.
+Only under the influence of the higher authorities
+do there occur cases where the Communes build brick
+buildings with iron roofs. The peasants assume that the
+school is not in the structure, but in the teacher, and that
+the school is not a permanent institution, but that as soon
+as the parents have acquired knowledge, the next generation
+will get the rudiments without a teacher. But the
+County Council department of the ministry always assumes&mdash;since
+for it the whole problem consists in
+inspecting and classifying&mdash;that the chief foundation of
+the school is the structure and that the school is a permanent
+establishment, and so, as far as I know, now
+spends about one-half of its money on buildings, and
+inscribes empty school buildings in the list of the schools<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+of the third order. In the Krapívensk County Council
+seven hundred roubles out of two thousand roubles are
+spent on buildings. The ministerial department cannot
+admit that the teacher (that educated pedagogue who is
+assumed for the masses) would lower himself to such an
+extent as to be willing to go, like a tailor, from hut to hut,
+or to teach in a smoky house. But the masses assume
+nothing and only know that for their money they can
+hire whom they please, and that, if they, the hiring peasants,
+live in smoky huts, the hired teacher has no reason
+to turn up his nose at them.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the second question, about the division of
+the school time, the masses have always and everywhere
+invariably expressed one demand, and that is that the
+instruction shall be carried on in the winter only.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere the parents quit sending their children in
+the spring, and those children who are left in the school,
+from one-fourth to one-fifth of the whole number, are the
+little tots or the children of rich parents, and they attend
+school unwillingly. When the masses hire a teacher
+themselves, they always hire him by the month and only
+for the winter. The ministerial department assumes that,
+just as in the institutions of learning there are two
+months of vacation, so it ought also to be in a one-class
+country school. From the standpoint of the ministerial
+department that is quite reasonable: the children will not
+forget their instruction, the teacher is provided for during
+the whole year, and the inspectors find it more comfortable
+to travel in the summer; but the masses know nothing
+about all that, and their common sense tells them
+that in winter the children sleep for ten hours, consequently
+their minds are fresh; that in winter there are no
+plays and no work for the children, and that if they study
+in winter as long as possible, taking in even the evenings,
+for which a lamp costing one rouble fifty kopeks is needed
+and kerosene costing as much, there will be enough instruction.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+Besides, in the summer every boy is of use to
+the peasant, and in summer proceeds the life instruction,
+which is more important than school learning. The
+masses say that there is no reason why they should pay
+the teacher during the summer. "Rather will we increase
+his pay for the winter months, and that will please him
+better. We prefer to hire a teacher at twenty-five roubles
+a month for seven months, than at twelve roubles a
+month for the whole year. For the summer the teacher
+will hire himself out elsewhere."</p>
+
+<p>As to the third question, the distribution of the schools
+according to localities, the arrangements of the masses
+most markedly differ from those of the school council.
+In the first place, the distribution of the schools, that is,
+whether there shall be more or less of them for a certain
+locality, always depends on the character of the whole
+population (when the masses themselves attend to it).
+Wherever the masses are more industrial and work out,
+where they are nearer to the cities, where they need the
+rudiments,&mdash;there there are more schools; where the locality
+is more removed and agricultural, there there are fewer
+of them. In the second place, when the masses themselves
+attend to the matter, they distribute the schools in such a
+way as to give all the parents a chance to make use of the
+schools in return for their money, that is, to send their children
+to school. The peasants of small, remote villages of
+from thirty to forty souls, where half the population will be
+found, prefer to have a cheap teacher in their own village,
+than an expensive one in the centre of the township,
+whither their children cannot walk or be driven. By
+this distribution of the schools, the schools themselves,
+as arranged by the peasants, depart, it is true, from the
+required pattern of the school, but, instead, acquire the
+most diversified forms, everywhere adapting themselves to
+local conditions. Here a clerical person from a neighbouring
+village teaches eight boys at his house, receiving fifty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+kopeks a month from each. Here a small village hires a
+soldier for eight roubles for the winter, and he goes from
+house to house. Here a rich innkeeper hires a teacher
+for his children for five roubles and board, and the neighbouring
+peasants join him, by adding two roubles for each
+of their boys. There a large village or a compact township
+levies fifteen kopeks from each of the twelve hundred
+souls and hires a teacher for 180 roubles for the
+winter. There the priest teaches, receiving as a remuneration
+either money, or labour, or both. The chief difference
+in this respect between the view of the peasants and
+that of the County Council is this: the peasants, according
+to the more or less favourable local conditions, introduce
+schools of a better or worse quality, but always in
+such a way that there is not a single locality where some
+kind of instruction is not offered; while with the arrangement
+of the County Council a large half of the population
+is left outside every possibility of partaking of that education
+even in the distant future.</p>
+
+<p>In matters of the petty villages, forming one-half of
+the population, the ministerial department acts most decisively.
+It says: "We provide schools where there is a
+building and where the peasants of the township have
+collected enough money to support a teacher at two hundred
+roubles. We will contribute from the County Council
+what is wanting, and the school is entered on the
+lists." The villages that are removed from the school may
+send their children there, if they so wish. Of course, the
+peasants do not take their children there, because it is too
+far, and yet they pay. Thus, in the Yásenets township
+all pay for three schools, but only 450 souls in three
+villages make use of the school, though there are in all
+three thousand souls; thus, only one-seventh of the population
+makes use of the school, though all pay for it. In
+the Chermóshen township there are nine hundred souls
+and there is a school there, but only thirty pupils attend<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+it, because all the villages of that township are scattered.
+To nine hundred souls there ought to be four hundred
+pupils. And yet, both in the Yásenets and the Chermóshen
+townships the question of the distribution of
+schools is regarded as satisfactorily solved.</p>
+
+<p>In matters of the choice of a teacher, the masses are
+again guided by quite different views from the County
+Council. In choosing a teacher, the masses look upon
+him in their own way, and judge him accordingly. If
+the teacher has been in the neighbourhood, and the masses
+know what the results of his teaching are, they value him
+according to these results as a good or as a bad teacher;
+but, in addition to the scholastic qualities, the masses
+demand that the teacher shall be a man who stands in
+close relations to the peasant, able to understand his life
+and to speak Russian, and so they will always prefer a
+country to a city teacher. In doing so, the masses have
+no bias and no antipathy toward any class in particular:
+he may be a gentleman, official, burgher, soldier, sexton,
+priest,&mdash;that makes no difference so long as he is a
+simple man and a Russian. For this reason the peasants
+have no cause for excluding clerical persons, as the
+County Councils do. The County Councils select their
+teachers from among strangers, getting them from the
+cities, while the masses look for them among themselves.
+But the chief difference in this respect between the view
+of the Communes and that of the County Council consists
+in this: the County Council has only one type,&mdash;the
+teacher who has attended pedagogical courses, who has
+finished a course in a seminary or school, at two hundred
+roubles; but with the masses, who do not exclude this
+teacher and appreciate him, if he is good, there are gradations
+of all kinds of teachers. Besides, with the majority
+of school councils there are definite favourite types of
+teachers, for the most part such as are foreign to the
+masses and antagonistic to them, and other types which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+the school councils dislike. Thus, evidently, the favourite
+type of many counties of the Government of Túla are
+lady teachers; the disliked type are the clerical persons,
+and in the whole of the Túla and Krapívensk counties
+there is not one school with a teacher from the clergy,
+which is quite remarkable from an administrative point
+of view. In Krapívensk County there are fifty parishes.
+The clerical persons are the cheapest of teachers, because
+they are permanently settled and for the most part can
+teach in their own houses with the aid of their wives and
+daughters,&mdash;and these are, it seems, purposely avoided,
+as though they were very harmful people.</p>
+
+<p>In matters of the remuneration of the teachers, the
+difference between the view of the masses and that of
+the County Council has almost all been expressed in the
+preceding pages. It consists in this: (1) the masses
+choose a teacher according to their means, and they admit
+and know from experience that there are teachers at all
+prices, from two puds of flour a month to thirty roubles a
+month; (2) teachers are to be remunerated for the winter
+months, for those during which there can be some instruction;
+(3) the masses, in the housing of the school as also
+in matters of the remuneration of the teachers, always
+know how to find a cheap way: they give flour, hay, the
+use of carts, eggs, and all kinds of trifles, which are imperceptible
+to the world at large, but which improve the
+teacher's condition; (4) above all, a teacher is paid, or is
+remunerated in addition to the payment, by the parents
+of the pupils, who pay by the month, or by the whole
+Commune which enjoys the advantages of the school, and
+not by the administration that has no direct interest in
+the matter.</p>
+
+<p>The ministerial department cannot act differently in this
+respect. The norm of the salary for a model teacher is
+given, consequently these means have to be got together
+in some way. For example: a Commune intends to open<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
+a school,&mdash;the township gives it a certain number of
+kopeks per soul. The County Council calculates how
+much to add. If there are no demands made by other
+schools, it gives more, sometimes twice as much as the
+Commune has given; at times, when all the money has
+been distributed, it gives less, or entirely refuses to give
+any. Thus, there is in Krapívensk County a Commune
+which gives ninety roubles, and the County Council adds
+to that three hundred roubles for a school with an assistant;
+and there is another Commune which gives 250
+roubles, and the County Council adds another fifty roubles;
+and a third Commune which offers fifty-six roubles, and
+the County Council refuses to add anything or to open the
+school, because that money is insufficient for a normal
+school, and all the money has been distributed.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, the chief distinctions between the administrative
+view of the masses and that of the County Council are
+the following: (1) the County Council pays great attention
+to the housing and spends large sums upon it, while
+the masses obviate this difficulty by domestic, economic
+means, and look upon the primary schools as temporary,
+passing institutions; (2) the ministerial department demands
+that instruction be carried on during the whole
+year, with the exception of July and August, and nowhere
+introduces evening classes, while the masses demand that
+instruction be carried on only in the winter and are fond
+of evening classes; (3) the ministerial department has a
+definite type of teachers, without which it does not recognize
+the school, and has a loathing for clerical persons
+and, in general, for local instructors; the masses recognize
+no norm and choose their teachers preferably from local
+inhabitants; (4) the ministerial department distributes
+the schools by accident, that is, it is guided only by the
+desire of forming a normal school, and has no care for
+that greater half of the population which under such
+a distribution is left outside the school education; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+masses not only recognize no definite external form of
+the school, but in the greatest variety of ways get teachers
+with all kinds of means, arranging worse and cheaper
+schools with small means and good and expensive schools
+with greater means, and turn their attention to furnishing
+all localities with instruction in return for their money;
+(5) the ministerial department determines one measure of
+remuneration, which is sufficiently high, and arbitrarily
+increases the amount from the County Council; the
+masses demand the greatest possible economy and distribute
+the remuneration in such a way that those whose
+children are taught pay directly.</p>
+
+<p>It seems as though it would be superfluous to expatiate
+on how clearly the common sense of the masses is expressed
+in these demands, in contradistinction to that
+artificial structure, in which, at its very birth, they are
+trying to imprison the business of popular education.
+Even besides this, the feeling of justice is involuntarily
+provoked against such an order of things. See what is
+taking place. The masses have felt the necessity of education,
+and have begun to work in the direction of attaining
+their end. In addition to all the taxes which they
+pay, they have voluntarily imposed upon themselves the
+tax for education, that is, they have begun to hire teachers.
+What have we done? "Oh, you are able to pay," we
+said, "wait, then, for you are stupid and rude. Let us
+have the money, and we will arrange it for you in the
+best manner possible."</p>
+
+<p>The masses have given up their money (as I have said,
+in many County Councils the levy for the schools has
+been turned directly into a tax). The money was taken,
+and the education was arranged for them.</p>
+
+<p>I am not going to repeat about the artificiality of the
+education, but how the whole matter has been arranged.
+In Krapívensk County there are forty thousand souls,
+including girls, according to the last census. According<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
+to Bunyakóvski's table of the distribution of ten thousand
+of the Orthodox population for the year 1862, there
+ought to be, of the male sex between six and fourteen
+years, 1,834, and of the female sex, 1,989,&mdash;in all 3,823
+to each ten thousand. According to my own observations,
+there ought to be more, no doubt on account of the increase
+of the population, so that the average school population
+may boldly be put at four thousand. In a school
+there are, on an average, in the large centres, about sixty
+pupils, and in the smaller, from ten to twenty-five. In
+order that all may receive instruction, the smaller centres,
+forming the greater half of the population, need schools
+for ten, fifteen, and twenty pupils, so that the average of
+a school, in my opinion, would be not more than thirty
+pupils. How many schools are, then, needed for sixteen
+thousand pupils? Divide sixteen thousand by thirty, and
+we get 530 schools. Let us assume that, although at the
+opening of the schools all pupils from seven to fifteen
+years of age will enter, not all will attend regularly for
+the period of eight years; let us reject one-fourth, that is
+130 schools and, consequently, 4,200 pupils. Let us say
+that there are four hundred schools. Only twenty have
+been opened. The County Council gives two thousand
+roubles and has added one thousand roubles, making in
+all three thousand roubles. From some of the peasants,
+not from all, fifteen kopeks are levied from each soul, in
+all about four thousand roubles. On the building of
+schools seven hundred roubles are spent, and on the pedagogical
+courses twelve hundred roubles have been used in
+one year. But let us suppose that the County Council
+will act quite simply and sensibly, and will not waste
+money on pedagogical courses and other trifles; let us
+suppose that all peasants will pay the new school tax
+of fifteen kopeks, what will the future of this matter be?
+From the peasants six thousand, from the County Council
+three thousand, in all nine thousand. Let us assume that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+ten more schools will be added. Nine thousand roubles
+will barely suffice for the support of these schools, and
+that only in case the school council will act most
+prudently and economically. Consequently, with the
+County Council administration, thirty schools to forty
+thousand of the population are the highest limit of what
+the dissemination of the schools in the county may reach.
+And this limit of the school business can be attained only
+if the peasants will levy fifteen kopeks on each soul, which
+is extremely doubtful, and if the disbursement of this
+money will be in the hands of the peasants, and not of
+the County Council. I do not speak of the possible increase
+of three thousand roubles, because this increase
+of three thousand roubles partly falls back on those same
+peasants, and on the other hand is not secured by anything,
+forming only an accidental means. Thus, in order
+to bring the business of popular education to the state in
+which it ought to be, that is, in order that there shall be
+four hundred schools to the forty thousand of the population,
+and in order that the schools shall not be a toy, but
+may answer a real want of the masses, there is no other
+issue than that the peasants be taxed, not fifteen kopeks,
+but three roubles a soul, in order that the necessary three
+hundred roubles to each school be obtained. Even then
+I do not see any reason for thinking that as many schools
+as are needed would be built.</p>
+
+<p>Do we not see that now, when the simplest arithmetical
+calculation shows that the only means for the success
+of the schools is the simplification of methods, the simplicity
+and cheapness of the arrangement of the school,&mdash;the
+pedagogues are busy, as though having made a wager
+to concoct a most difficult, most complicated, and expensive
+(and, I must add, most bad) instruction? In the
+manuals of Messrs. Bunákov and Evtushévski I have
+figured up three hundred roubles' worth of aids to instruction
+which, in their opinion, are absolutely necessary for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+the establishment of a primary school. All they talk
+about in pedagogical circles is how to prepare improved
+teachers in the seminaries, so that a village might not be
+able to get them even for four hundred roubles. On that
+road of perfection, on which pedagogy stands, it is quite
+apparent to me that if 120,000 roubles were collected in
+a county, the pedagogues would find use for them all in
+twenty schools, with adjustable tables, seminaries for
+teachers, and so forth. Have we not seen that forty
+schools were closed in Krapívensk County, and that those
+who closed them were fully convinced that they thus
+advanced the cause of education, for now they have
+twenty "good" schools? But what is most remarkable
+is that those who express these demands are not in the
+least interested in knowing whether the masses for whom
+they are preparing all these things want them, and still
+less, who is going to pay for it all. But the County
+Councils are so befogged by these demands that they do
+not see the simple calculation and the simple justice.
+It is as though a man asked me to buy him two puds of
+flour for a month, and I bought him for that rouble a box
+of perfumed confectionery and reproached him for his
+ignorance, because he was dissatisfied.</p>
+
+<p>As I wish to remain true to my rule that criticism
+should point out how that which is not good ought to be,
+I shall try to show how the whole school business ought
+to be arranged, if it is not to be a plaything, and is to
+have a future. The answer is the same as to the first two
+questions,&mdash;freedom. The masses must be given the
+freedom to arrange their schools as they wish, and as
+little as possible should any one interfere in their arrangement.
+Only with such a view of the matter will all the
+obstacles to the dissemination of the schools be obviated,
+though they have seemed insuperable. The chief obstacles
+are the insufficiency of the means and the impossibility
+of increasing them. To the first the masses reply<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+that they are using all the measures at their command to
+make the schools cost little; to the second they reply
+that the means will always be found so long as they
+themselves are the masters, and that they are not willing
+to increase the means for the support of that which they
+do not need.</p>
+
+<p>The essential difference between the view of the people
+and of the ministerial department consists in the following:
+(1) In the opinion of the masses there is no one
+definite norm and form of the school, outside and below
+which the school is not recognized, as is assumed by the
+ministerial department; a school may be of any kind,
+either a very good and expensive one, or a very poor and
+cheap one, but even in a very poor one reading and writing
+may be learned, and, as in a richer parish a better
+pope is appointed and a better church built, so also may
+a better school be built in a wealthy village, and a poorer
+school in a less well-to-do village; but just as one can
+pray equally well in a poor or in a rich parish, even so it
+is with learning. (2) The masses regard as the first condition
+of their education an even, equal distribution of
+this education, though it be in its lowest stage, and then
+only they propose a further, again an even, raising of the
+level of education, while the ministerial department considers
+it necessary to give to a certain chosen few, to one-twentieth
+of the whole number, a specimen of education,
+to show them how nice it is. (3) The ministerial department,
+either unable or purposely unwilling to calculate,
+has raised the educational business to such a high, expensive
+level, and one which is so foreign to the masses, that
+considering the high price at which the education is
+acquired, no issue from that situation can be foreseen, and
+the number of learners can never be increased; but the
+masses, who know how to calculate, and who are interested
+in that calculation, have no doubt long ago figured
+out what I have pointed out above, and see as clear as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>
+daylight that those expensive schools, which cost as much
+as four hundred roubles each, may be good indeed, but
+are not what they need, and try in every way possible to
+diminish the expenses for their schools.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, is to be done? How are the County
+Councils to act in order that this business may not be a
+plaything and a pastime, but shall have a future? Let
+them conform with the needs of the masses, and, so far
+as possible, cheapen and free the forms of the school, and
+afford the Communes the greatest possible power in the
+establishment of the schools.</p>
+
+<p>For this it is necessary that the County Councils shall
+entirely abandon the distribution of the taxes to the
+schools and the distribution of the schools according to
+localities, but shall leave this distribution to the peasants
+themselves. The determination of the pay to the teacher,
+the hiring, purchase, or building of the house, the choice
+of place and of the teacher himself,&mdash;all that ought to
+be left to the peasants. The County Council, that is, the
+school council, should only demand that the Communes
+inform it where and on what foundations schools have
+been established, not in order that, upon learning the
+facts, it shall prohibit them, as is done now, but in order
+that, learning about the conditions under which the
+school exists, it may add (if the conditions are in conformity
+with the demands of the council) from its County
+Council's sums, for the support of the school newly
+founded, a certain, definite part of what the school costs
+the Commune: a half, a third, a fourth, according to the
+quality of the school and the means and wishes of the
+County Council. Thus, for example, a village of twenty
+souls hires a transient man at two roubles a month to
+teach the children. The school council, that is, a person
+authorized by it, of whom I shall speak later, upon receiving
+that information, invites the transient to come to him,
+asks him what he knows and how he teaches, and, if the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+transient is the least bit educated and does not represent
+anything harmful, apportions to him the amount determined
+upon by the County Council, one-half, one-third, or
+one-fourth, in precisely the same way the school council
+proceeds in reference to a clerical person hired by the
+Commune at five roubles per month, or in reference to
+a teacher hired at fifteen roubles per month. Of course,
+that is the way the school council acts in reference to the
+teachers hired by the Communes themselves; but if the
+Communes turn to the school council, the latter recommends
+to them teachers under the same conditions. But
+in doing so the County Council must not forget that there
+should not be merely teachers at two hundred roubles;
+the school council should be an employment agency for
+teachers of every description and of every price, from one
+rouble to thirty roubles a month. On buildings the school
+council ought not to spend or add anything, because they
+are one of the most unproductive items of expense. But
+the County Council ought not to disdain, as it now does,
+teachers at two, three, four, five roubles per month and
+locations in smoky huts or by rotation from farm to farm.</p>
+
+<p>The County Council ought to remember that the prototype
+of the school, that ideal toward which it ought to
+tend, is not a stone building with an iron roof, with blackboards
+and desks, such as we see in model schools, but
+the very hut in which the peasant lives, with those
+benches and tables on which he eats, and not a teacher
+in a Prince Albert or a lady teacher in a chignon, but a
+male teacher in a caftan and shirt, or a female teacher in
+a peasant skirt and with a kerchief on her head, and not
+with one hundred pupils, but with five, six, or ten.</p>
+
+<p>The County Council must have no bias or antipathy
+for certain types of teachers, as is the case at present.
+Thus, for example, the Túla County Council just now has
+a special bias for the type of school-teachers from the
+gymnasia and clerical schools, and the greater part of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>
+the schools in Túla County are in their charge. In
+Krapívensk County there exists a strange antipathy for
+teachers from the clerical profession, so that in this
+county, where there are as many as fifty parishes, there
+is not one clerical person employed as a teacher. The
+County Council, in proposing a teacher, ought to be guided
+by two chief considerations: in the first place, that the
+teacher should be as cheap as possible; in the second,
+that by his education he should stand as near to the
+masses as possible. Only thanks to the opposite view
+on the matter can be explained such an inexplicable phenomenon
+as that in Krapívensk County (almost the same
+is true of the whole Government and of the majority of
+Governments) there are fifty parishes and twenty schools,
+and that for these twenty schools there is not a single
+clerical teacher, although there is not a parish where a
+priest, or a deacon, or a sexton, or their daughters and
+wives could not be found, who would not be glad to do
+the teaching for one-fourth the pay that the teachers
+coming from the city would be willing to take.</p>
+
+<p>But I shall be told: What kind of schools will those
+be with bigots, drunken soldiers, expelled scribes, and
+sextons? And what control can there be over those formless
+schools? To this I will reply that, in the first place,
+these teachers, bigots, soldiers, and sextons are not so bad
+as they are imagined to be. In my school practice I often
+had to do with pupils from these schools, and some of
+them could read fluently and write beautifully, and soon
+abandoned the bad habits which they brought with them
+from those schools. All of us know peasants who have
+learned the rudiments in such schools, and it cannot be
+said that this learning was useless or injurious. In the
+second place, I will say that teachers of that calibre are
+especially bad because they are quite abandoned in the
+backwoods and teach without any aid or instruction, and
+that now there is not to be found a single one of the old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+teachers who would not tell you with regret that he does
+not know the new methods and has himself learned for
+copper pence, and that many of them, especially the
+younger church servants, are quite willing to learn the
+new methods. These teachers ought not to be rejected
+without further ado as absolutely worthless. There are
+among them better and worse teachers (and I have seen
+some very capable ones). They ought to be compared;
+the better of them ought to be selected, encouraged,
+brought together with other better teachers, and instructed,&mdash;which
+is quite feasible and precisely the thing
+in which the duty of the school council is to consist.</p>
+
+<p>But how are they to be controlled, watched, and
+taught, if they breed by the hundred in each county?
+In my opinion the work of the County Council and
+school council ought to consist in nothing but watching
+the pedagogical side of the business, and that is feasible,
+if these means will be taken: in every County Council,
+which has taken upon itself the duty of the dissemination
+of popular education, or the coöperation with it,
+there ought to be one person&mdash;whether it be an unpaid
+member of the school council, or a man at a salary of
+not less than one thousand roubles, hired by the County
+Council&mdash;who is to attend to the pedagogical side of the
+business in the county. That person ought to have a
+general, fresh education within the limits of a gymnasium
+course, that is, he must know Russian thoroughly and
+Church-Slavic partly, arithmetic and algebra thoroughly,
+and be a teacher, that is, know the practice of pedagogy.
+This person must be freshly educated, because I have
+observed that frequently the information of a man who
+has long ago finished his course even in a university, and
+who has not refreshed his education, is insufficient, not
+only for the guidance of teachers, but even for the examination
+of a village school. This person must by all
+means be a teacher himself in the same locality, in order<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+that in his demands and instructions he may always have
+in view that pedagogical material with which the other
+teachers have to deal, and that he may sustain in himself
+that live relation to reality which is the chief preservative
+against error and delusion. If a County Council
+does not possess such a man and does not wish to employ
+one, it has, in my opinion, absolutely nothing to do with
+the popular education, except to give money, because
+every interference with the administrative side of the
+matter, in the way it is done now, can only be injurious.</p>
+
+<p>This member of the County Council, or the educated
+person hired by it, must have the best model school, with
+an assistant, in the county. In addition to conducting
+this school and applying to it all the newest methods of
+instruction, this head teacher ought to keep an eye on all
+the other schools. This school is not to be a model in
+the sense of introducing into it all kinds of cubes and
+pictures and all kinds of nonsense invented by the Germans,
+but the teacher in this school should experiment
+on just such peasant children as the other schools consist
+of, in order to determine the simplest methods which may
+be adopted by the majority of the teachers, sextons, and
+soldiers, who form the bulk of all the schools. Since
+with the arrangement which I propose there will certainly
+be formed large complete schools in the larger centres (as
+I think, in the proportion of one to twenty of all the
+other schools), and in these large schools the teachers
+will be of a grade of education equal to that of the seminarists
+who have finished a course in a theological school,
+the head teacher will visit all these larger schools, bring
+together these teachers on Sundays, point out to them
+the defects, propose new methods, give counsel and books
+for their own education, and invite them to his school on
+Sundays. The library of the head teacher ought to consist
+of several copies of the Bible, of Church-Slavic and
+Russian grammars, arithmetic, and algebra. The head<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>
+teacher, whenever he has time, will visit also the small
+schools and invite their teachers to come to see him; but
+the duty of watching the minor teachers is imposed on
+the older teachers, who just in the same way visit their
+district and invite those teachers to come to see them on
+Sundays and on week-days. The County Council either
+pays the teachers for travelling, or, in adding its portion
+to what the Communes levy, makes it a condition that
+the Communes furnish transportation. The meetings of
+the teachers and the visits in similar or better schools are
+one of the chief conditions for the successful conduct of
+the business of education, and so the County Council
+ought to direct its main attention to the organization of
+these meetings, and not spare any money for them.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, in the large schools, where there will be more
+than fifty pupils, there ought to be chosen, instead of the
+assistants which they now have, such of the pupils, of
+either sex, as show marked ability for a teacher's calling,
+and they should be made assistants, two or three in each
+school. These assistants should receive a salary of fifty
+kopeks to one rouble per month, and the teacher should
+work with them separately in the evenings, so that they
+may not fall behind the others. These assistants, chosen
+from among the best, are to form the future teachers, to
+take the place of the lowest in the minor schools.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally the organization of these teachers' meetings,
+both for the smaller and the larger schools, and the head
+teacher's visits of inspection, and the formation of teachers
+from pupils acting as assistants may take place in a large
+variety of ways; the main point is that the surveillance
+of any number of schools (even though it may reach the
+norm of one school to every one hundred souls) is possible
+in this manner. With such an arrangement the teachers
+of both the large and the small schools will feel that
+their labours are appreciated, that they have not buried
+themselves in the backwoods without hope of salvation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>
+that they have companions and guides, and that in the
+matter of instruction, both for their own further education
+and for the improvement of their situation, they
+have means for advancement. With such an arrangement,
+the devotee and the sexton who are able to learn
+will learn; while those who are unable or unwilling to
+do so will be replaced by some one else.</p>
+
+<p>The time of instruction ought to be, as is the wish of
+all peasants, during the seven winter months, and so the
+salary is to be determined by the month. With such an
+arrangement, leaving out the rapidity and the equal distribution
+of education, the advantage will be this, that
+the schools will be established in those centres where the
+necessity for them is felt by the masses, where they are
+established spontaneously and, therefore, firmly. Where
+the character of the population demands education it will
+be permanent. Just look: in the towns, the children of
+the innkeepers and well-to-do peasants learn to read in
+one way or another and never forget what they have
+learned; but in the backwoods, where a landed proprietor
+founds a school, the children learn well, but in ten years
+all is forgotten, and the population is as illiterate as ever.
+For this reason the centres, large or small, where the
+schools are established spontaneously, are particularly
+precious. Where such a school has germinated, no matter
+how poor it be, it will throw out roots, and sooner or
+later the population will be able to read and write. Consequently,
+these sprouts ought to be deemed precious, and
+not be treated, as they are everywhere,&mdash;they ought not
+to be forbidden, because the schools are not according to
+our taste, that is, the sprouts ought not to be killed, and
+branches stuck in the ground where they will not take
+root.</p>
+
+<p>With merely such an arrangement, without the establishment
+of costly and artificial seminaries, the chosen
+ones&mdash;those selected from the best of the pupils themselves,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+and those who are educated in the schools&mdash;will
+form that contingent of cheap popular teachers who will
+take the place of the soldiers and sextons and will fully satisfy
+all the demands of the masses and of the educated
+classes. The chief advantage of such an arrangement is
+that it alone gives the development of popular education
+a future, that is, takes us out from that blind alley into
+which the County Councils have gone, thanks to the
+expensive schools and to the absence of new sources for
+the increase of their numbers. Only when the masses
+themselves choose the centres for the schools, themselves
+choose teachers, determine the amount of the remuneration,
+and directly enjoy the advantages of the schools,
+will they be ready to add means for the schools if such
+should become necessary. I know Communes that paid
+fifty kopeks a soul for a school in each of their villages;
+but it is difficult to compel the peasants to pay fifteen
+kopeks for a school in the township, if not all of them
+can make use of it. For the whole county, for the County
+Council, the peasants will not add a single kopek, because
+they feel that they will not enjoy the advantages of their
+money. Only with such an arrangement will be found
+soon the means for the proper maintenance of all schools,
+of one to each one hundred souls, which seems so impossible
+in the present state of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to this, with the arrangement which I propose,
+the interests of the peasant Communes and of the
+County Council, as the representative of the intelligence
+of the locality, will indissolubly be connected. Let us
+say that the County Council gives one-third of what the
+peasants give. In furnishing this amount, it will evidently,
+in one way or another, see to it that the money
+is not wasted, and, consequently, will also keep an eye on
+the two-thirds given by the peasant Communes. The
+peasant Commune sees that the County Council gives its
+part, and so admits the right of the Council to follow the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>
+progress of the instruction. At the same time, it has an
+object-lesson in the difference which exists between a
+school maintained at a smaller and that maintained at
+a greater expense, and chooses the one which it needs or
+which is more accessible to it in accordance with its means.</p>
+
+<p>I will again take Krapívensk County, with which I am
+familiar, to show what difference the proposed arrangement
+would make. I cannot have the slightest doubt
+that the moment permission is granted to open schools,
+wherever wanted and of any description desired, there
+will at once appear very many schools. I am convinced
+that in Krapívensk County, in which there are fifty
+parishes, there will always be a school in each parish,
+because the parishes are always centres of population,
+and because among the church servants there will always
+be found one who is capable of teaching, likes to teach,
+and will find his advantage in it. In addition to the
+schools maintained by the church servants there will be
+opened those forty schools that have been closed (more
+correctly thirty, because ten of them were church schools),
+and there will be opened very many new schools, so that
+in a very short time there will be not far from four hundred
+instead of the twenty at present.</p>
+
+<p>I may be believed or not, but I will assume that in
+Krapívensk County 380 additional schools will be opened,
+the moment they are given over to the masses, so that
+there will be four hundred in all, and I will try to determine
+whether the existence of these four hundred schools,
+that is, of twenty times as many as at present, is possible
+under the conditions which I have assumed in discussing
+the existing order.</p>
+
+<p>Assuming that all peasants pay fifteen kopeks per soul,
+and the County Council gives three thousand roubles,
+there will be nine thousand roubles, which will suffice
+only for thirty schools with the former arrangement.
+But with the new arrangement:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I assume that ten of the old schools are left intact;
+in these schools the teachers get twenty roubles per
+month, which, for the seven winter months, amounts
+to fourteen hundred roubles.</p>
+
+<p>I assume that in every parish there will be established
+a school with the teacher's salary at five roubles per
+month, which, for fifty schools, amounts to 1,750 roubles.</p>
+
+<p>I assume the remaining 340 schools are of the cheap
+character, at two roubles per month; fifteen roubles for
+each of the 340 schools makes 5,100 roubles.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the four hundred schools will demand an expenditure
+in salaries amounting to 8,250 roubles. There are
+still left 750 roubles for school appliances and transportation.</p>
+
+<p>The figures for the teachers' wages are not chosen
+arbitrarily by me: on the other hand, the expensive
+teachers are given a larger salary than they now get by
+the month for the whole year. Even so, the amount
+apportioned to the church servants is what they now
+receive in the majority of cases. But the cheap schools
+at two roubles per month are assumed by me at a higher
+rate than what the peasants in reality pay, so that the
+calculation may boldly be accepted. In this calculation
+is included the kernel of ten chief teachers and ten or
+more church servant teachers. It is evident that only
+with such a calculation will the school business be placed
+on a serious and possible basis and have a clear and
+definite future.</p>
+
+<p>If what I have pointed out does not convince anybody
+that will mean that I did not express clearly what I
+wanted to say, and do not wish to enter into any disputes
+with anybody. I know that no deaf people are so hopeless
+as those who do not want to hear. I know how it is
+with farmers. A new threshing-machine has been bought
+at a great expense, and it is put up and started threshing.
+It threshes miserably, no matter how you set the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>
+screw; it threshes badly, and the grain falls into the straw.
+There is a loss, and it is as clear as can be that the
+machine ought to be abandoned and another means be
+employed for threshing, but the money has been spent
+and the threshing-machine is put up. "Let her thresh,"
+says the master. Precisely the same thing will happen
+with this matter. I know that for a long time to come
+there will flourish the object instruction, and cubes, and
+buttons instead of arithmetic, and hissing and sputtering,
+in teaching the letters, and twenty expensive schools of
+the German pattern, instead of the needed four hundred
+popular, cheap schools. But I know just as surely that
+the common sense of the Russian nation will not permit
+this false, artificial system of instruction to be foisted
+upon it.</p>
+
+<p>The masses are the chief interested person and the
+judge, and now do not pay a particle of attention to our
+more or less ingenious discussions about the manner in
+which the spiritual food of education is best to be prepared
+for them. They do not care, because they are
+firmly convinced that in the great business of their
+mental development they will not make a false step and
+will not accept what is bad,&mdash;and it would be like
+making pease stick to the wall to attempt to educate,
+direct, and teach them in the German fashion.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="WHAT_MEN_LIVE_BY" id="WHAT_MEN_LIVE_BY"></a>WHAT MEN LIVE BY<br />
+1881</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center big">WHAT MEN LIVE BY</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>We know that we have passed from death unto life,
+because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his
+brother abideth in death. (First Ep. of John, iii. 14.)</p>
+
+<p>But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother
+have need, and shutteth, up his heart from him, how dwelleth
+the love of God in him? (<i>Ib.</i> iii. 17.)</p>
+
+<p>My children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue;
+but in deed and in truth. (<i>Ib.</i> iii. 18.)</p>
+
+<p>Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of
+God, and knoweth God. (<i>Ib.</i> iv. 7.)</p>
+
+<p>He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
+(<i>Ib.</i> iv. 8.)</p>
+
+<p>No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one
+another, God dwelleth in us. (<i>Ib.</i> iv. 12.)</p>
+
+<p>God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in
+God, and God in him. (<i>Ib.</i> iv. 16.)</p>
+
+<p>If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a
+liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath
+seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen. (<i>Ib.</i>
+iv. 20.)</p></div>
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p>A shoemaker was lodging with his wife and children
+at the house of a peasant. He had no house, no land of
+his own, and supported his family by his shoemaker's
+trade. Bread was dear, but work was cheap, and he
+spent everything he made. The shoemaker and his wife
+had one fur coat between them, and even that was all
+worn to tatters; this was the second year that the shoemaker
+had been meaning to buy a sheepskin for a new
+fur coat.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Toward fall the shoemaker had saved some money: three
+roubles in paper lay in his wife's coffer, and five roubles
+and twenty kopeks were outstanding in the village.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning the shoemaker went to the village to get
+him that fur coat. He put on his wife's wadded nankeen
+jacket over his shirt, and over it his cloth caftan; he put
+the three-rouble bill into his pocket, broke off a stick, and
+started after breakfast. He thought:</p>
+
+<p>"I shall get the five roubles from the peasant, will add
+my own three, and with that will buy me a sheepskin for
+the fur coat."</p>
+
+<p>The shoemaker came to the village, and called on the
+peasant: he was not at home, and his wife promised to
+send her husband with the money, but gave him none
+herself. He went to another peasant, but the peasant
+swore that he had no money, and gave him only twenty
+kopeks for mending a pair of boots. The shoemaker
+made up his mind to take the sheepskin on credit, but
+the furrier would not give it to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring me the money," he said, "and then you can
+choose any you please; we know what it means to collect
+debts."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the shoemaker accomplished nothing. All he got
+was the twenty kopeks for the boots he had mended, and
+a peasant gave him a pair of felt boots to patch with
+leather.</p>
+
+<p>The shoemaker was grieved, spent all the twenty
+kopeks on vódka, and started home without the fur coat.
+In the morning it had seemed frosty to him, but now
+that he had drunk a little he felt warm even without the
+fur coat. The shoemaker walked along, with one hand
+striking the stick against the frozen mud clumps, and
+swinging the felt boots in the other, and talking to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I am warm even without a fur coat," he said. "I
+have drunk a cup, and the vódka is coursing through all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>
+my veins. I do not need a sheepskin. I have forgotten
+my woe. That's the kind of a man I am! What do I
+care! I can get along without a fur coat: I do not need
+it all the time. The only trouble is the old woman will
+be sorry. It is a shame indeed: I work for him, and he
+leads me by the nose. Just wait! If you do not bring
+the money, I'll take away your cap, upon my word, I
+will! How is this? He pays me back two dimes at a
+time! What can you do with two dimes? Take a
+drink, that is all. He says he suffers want. You suffer
+want, and am I not suffering? You have a house, and
+cattle, and everything, and here is all I possess; you
+have your own grain, and I have to buy it. I may do as
+I please, but I have to spend three roubles a week on
+bread. I come home, and the bread is gone: again lay
+out a rouble and a half! So give me what is mine!"</p>
+
+<p>Thus the shoemaker came up to a chapel at the turn of
+the road, and there he saw something that looked white,
+right near the chapel. It was growing dusk, and the
+shoemaker strained his eyes, but could not make out
+what it was.</p>
+
+<p>"There was no stone here," he thought. "A cow? It
+does not look like a cow. It looks like the head of a
+man, and there is something white besides. And what
+should a man be doing there?"</p>
+
+<p>He came nearer, and he could see plainly. What marvel
+was that? It was really a man, either alive or dead,
+sitting there all naked, leaning against the chapel, and
+not stirring in the least. The shoemaker was frightened,
+and thought to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody must have killed a man, and stripped him
+of his clothes, and thrown him away there. If I go up to
+him, I shall never clear myself."</p>
+
+<p>And the shoemaker went past. He walked around the
+chapel, and the man was no longer to be seen. He went
+past the chapel, and looked back, and saw the man leaning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>
+away from the building and moving, as though watching
+him. The shoemaker was frightened even more than
+before, and he thought to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I go up to him, or not? If I go up, something
+bad may happen. Who knows what kind of a man he is?
+He did not get there for anything good. If I go up, he
+will spring at me and choke me, and I shall not get away
+from him; and if he does not choke me, I may have
+trouble with him all the same. What can I do with
+him, since he is naked? Certainly I cannot take off the
+last from me and give it to him! May God save me!"</p>
+
+<p>And the shoemaker increased his steps. He was
+already a distance away from the chapel, when his conscience
+began to smite him.</p>
+
+<p>And the shoemaker stopped on the road.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing, Semén?" he said to himself.
+"A man is dying in misery, and you go past him and
+lose your courage. Have you suddenly grown so rich?
+Are you afraid that they will rob you of your wealth?
+Oh, Semén, it is not right!"</p>
+
+<p>Semén turned back, and went up to the man.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>Semén walked over to the man, and looked at him;
+and saw that it was a young man, in the prime of his
+strength, with no bruises on his body, but evidently frozen
+and frightened: he was leaning back and did not look at
+Semén, as though he were weakened and could not raise
+his eyes. Semén went up close to him, and the man
+suddenly seemed to wake up. He turned his head,
+opened his eyes, and looked at Semén. And this one
+glance made Semén think well of the man. He threw
+down the felt boots, ungirt himself, put his belt on the
+boots, and took off his caftan.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the use of talking?" he said. "Put it on!
+Come now!"</p>
+
+<p>Semén took the man by his elbows and began to raise
+him. The man got up. And Semén saw that his body
+was soft and clean, his hands and feet not calloused, and
+his face gentle. Semén threw his caftan over the man's
+shoulders. He could not find his way into the sleeves.
+So Semén put them in, pulled the caftan on him, wrapped
+him in it, and girded it with the belt.</p>
+
+<p>Semén took off his torn cap, intending to put it on the
+naked man, but his head grew cold, and so he thought:
+"My whole head is bald, while he has long, curly hair."
+He put it on again. "I had better put the boots on him."</p>
+
+<p>He seated himself and put the felt boots on him.</p>
+
+<p>The shoemaker addressed him and said:</p>
+
+<p>"That's the way, my friend! Now move about and get
+warmed up. This business will be looked into without
+us. Can you walk?"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The man stood, looking meekly at Semén, but could
+not say a word.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you speak? You can't stay here through
+the winter. We must make for a living place. Here,
+take my stick, lean on it, if you are weak. Tramp along!"</p>
+
+<p>And the man went. And he walked lightly, and did
+not fall behind.</p>
+
+<p>As they were walking along, Semén said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you, please?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am a stranger."</p>
+
+<p>"I know all the people here about. How did you get
+near that chapel?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot tell."</p>
+
+<p>"Have people insulted you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one has. God has punished me."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, God does everything, but still you must be
+making for some place. Whither are you bound?"</p>
+
+<p>"It makes no difference to me."</p>
+
+<p>Semén was surprised. He did not resemble an evil-doer,
+and was gentle of speech, and yet did not say anything
+about himself. And Semén thought that all kinds
+of things happen, and so he said to the man:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, come to my house and warm yourself a little."</p>
+
+<p>Semén walked up to the farm, and the stranger did not
+fall behind, but walked beside him. A wind rose and
+blew into Semén's shirt, and his intoxication went away,
+and he began to feel cold. He walked along, sniffling,
+and wrapping himself in his wife's jacket, and he thought:</p>
+
+<p>"There is your fur coat: I went to get myself a fur
+coat, and I am coming back without a caftan, and am
+even bringing a naked man with me. Matréna will not
+praise me for it!"</p>
+
+<p>And as Semén thought of Matréna, he felt sorry; and
+as he looked at the stranger and recalled how he had
+looked at him at the chapel, his blood began to play in
+his heart.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 429px;">
+<a href="images/i_360.jpg">
+<img src="images/i_360_s.jpg" width="429" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+<span class="caption">&quot;&#39;Whither are you bound?&#39;&quot;<br />
+<i>Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>Semén's wife got things done early. She chopped the
+wood, brought the water, fed the children, herself took a
+bite of something, and fell to musing. She was thinking
+about when to set the bread, whether to-day or to-morrow.
+There was a big slice of it left.</p>
+
+<p>"If Semén has his dinner there," she thought, "and
+does not eat much for supper, the bread will last until
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Matréna turned the slice around and a second time, and
+thought:</p>
+
+<p>"I will not set any bread to-day. I have enough meal
+for just one setting. We shall somehow hold out until
+Friday."</p>
+
+<p>Matréna put the bread away, and seated herself at the
+table to put a patch in her husband's shirt. She was
+sewing and thinking of how he would buy a sheepskin for
+a fur coat.</p>
+
+<p>"If only the furrier does not cheat him, for my man
+is too simple for anything. He himself will not cheat a
+soul, but a little child can deceive him. Eight roubles is
+no small sum. One can pickup a good fur coat for it.
+It will not be tanned, still it will be a fur coat. How
+we suffered last winter without a fur coat! We could
+not get down to the river, or anywhere. And there he
+has gone out, putting everything on him, and I have nothing
+to dress in. He went away early; it is time for him
+to be back. If only my dear one has not gone on a
+spree!"</p>
+
+<p>Just as Matréna was thinking this, the steps creaked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>
+on the porch, and somebody entered. Matréna stuck the
+needle in the cloth, and went out into the vestibule. She
+saw two coming in: Semén, and with him a man without
+a cap and in felt boots.</p>
+
+<p>Matréna at once smelt the liquor in her husband's
+breath. "Well," she thought, "so it is: he has been on
+a spree." And when she saw that he was without his
+caftan, in nothing but the jacket, and that he was not
+bringing anything, but only keeping silent and crouching,
+something broke in Matréna's heart. "He has spent all
+the money in drinks," she thought, "and has been on a
+spree with some tramp, and has even brought him along."</p>
+
+<p>Matréna let them pass into the hut, and then stepped
+in herself. She saw the lean young man, and he had on
+him their caftan. No shirt was to be seen under the
+caftan, and he had no hat on his head. When he entered,
+he stood still, and did not stir, and did not raise his
+eyes. And Matréna thought: "He is not a good man,&mdash;he
+is afraid."</p>
+
+<p>Matréna scowled and went to the oven, waiting to see
+what would happen.</p>
+
+<p>Semén took off his cap and sat down on the bench like
+a good man.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Matréna, will you let us have something for
+supper, will you?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Matréna growled something under her breath. She
+stood at the oven, and did not stir: she looked now at
+the one, and now at the other, and shook her head. Semén
+saw that his wife was not in a good humour, but
+there was nothing to be done, and he acted as though he
+did not see it. He took the stranger by the arm:</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, my friend," he said, "we shall have our
+supper."</p>
+
+<p>The stranger sat down on the bench.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, have you not cooked anything?"</p>
+
+<p>That simply roiled Matréna.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I have cooked, but not for you. You seem to have
+drunk away your senses, I see. You went to get a fur
+coat, and come back without your caftan, and have even
+brought some kind of a naked tramp with you. I have
+no supper for you drunkards."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, Matréna! What is the use of wagging your
+tongue without any sense? First ask what kind of a
+man it is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what you did with the money."</p>
+
+<p>Semén stuck his hand into the caftan, took out the
+bill, and opened it before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is the money. Trifónov has not paid me,&mdash;he
+promised to give it to me to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>That enraged Matréna even more: he had bought no
+fur coat, and the only caftan they had he had put on a
+naked fellow, and had even brought him along.</p>
+
+<p>She grabbed the bill from the table, and ran to put it
+away, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I have no supper. One cannot feed all the drunkards."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Matréna, hold your tongue. First hear what I
+have to say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Much sense shall I hear from a drunken fool. With
+good reason did I object to marrying you, a drunkard.
+My mother gave me some linen, and you spent it on
+drinks; you went to buy a fur coat, and spent that, too."</p>
+
+<p>Semén wanted to explain to his wife that he had spent
+twenty kopeks only, and wanted to tell her that he had
+found the man; but Matréna began to break in with anything
+she could think of, and to speak two words at once.
+Even what had happened ten years before, she brought
+up to him now.</p>
+
+<p>Matréna talked and talked, and jumped at Semén, and
+grabbed him by the sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me my jacket. That is all I have left, and you
+have taken it from me and put it on yourself. Give it to
+me, you freckled dog,&mdash;may the apoplexy strike you!"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Semén began to take off the bodice; as he turned back
+his arm, his wife gave the bodice a jerk, and it ripped at
+the seam. Matréna grabbed the jacket, threw it over her
+head, and made for the door. She wanted to go out, but
+stopped: her heart was doubled, for she wanted to have
+her revenge, and also to find out what kind of a man he
+was.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<p>Matréna stopped and said:</p>
+
+<p>"If he were a good man, he would not be naked; but,
+as it is, he has not even a shirt on him. If he meant
+anything good, you would tell me where you found that
+dandy."</p>
+
+<p>"I am telling you: as I was walking along, I saw him
+sitting at the chapel, without any clothes, and almost
+frozen. It is not summer, and he was all naked. God
+sent me to him, or he would have perished. Well, what
+had I to do? All kinds of things happen! I picked
+him up and dressed him, and brought him here. Calm
+yourself! It is a sin, Matréna. We shall all die."</p>
+
+<p>Matréna wanted to go on scolding, but she looked at
+the stranger and kept silence. The stranger sat without
+moving, just as he had seated himself on the edge of the
+bench. His hands were folded on his knees, his head
+drooped on his breast, his eyes were not opened, and he
+frowned as though something were choking him. Matréna
+grew silent. And Semén said:</p>
+
+<p>"Matréna, have you no God?"</p>
+
+<p>When Matréna heard these words, she glanced at the
+stranger, and suddenly her heart became softened. She
+went away from the door, walked over to the oven corner,
+and got the supper ready. She placed a bowl on the
+table, filled it with kvas, and put down the last slice of
+bread. She handed them a knife and spoons.</p>
+
+<p>"Eat, if you please," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Semén touched the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>"Creep through here, good fellow!" he said.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Semén cut up the bread and crumbled it into the kvas,
+and they began to eat. And Matréna sat down at the
+corner of the table, and leaned on her arm, and kept
+looking at the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>And Matréna pitied the stranger, and took a liking for
+him. And suddenly the stranger grew merry, stopped
+frowning, raised his eyes on Matréna, and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>They got through with their supper. The woman
+cleared the table, and began to ask the stranger:</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am a stranger."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you get on the road?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot tell."</p>
+
+<p>"Has somebody robbed you?"</p>
+
+<p>"God has punished me."</p>
+
+<p>"And you were lying there naked?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I was lying naked, and freezing. Semén saw
+me, took pity on me, pulled off his caftan, put it on me,
+and told me to come here. And you have given me to
+eat and to drink, and have pitied me. The Lord will
+save you!"</p>
+
+<p>Matréna got up, took from the window Semén's old
+shirt, the same that she had been patching, and gave it to
+the stranger; and she found a pair of trousers, and gave
+them to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, take it! I see that you have no shirt. Put it
+on, and lie down wherever it pleases you,&mdash;on the hanging
+bed or on the oven."</p>
+
+<p>The stranger took off the caftan, put on the shirt, and
+lay down on the hanging bed. Matréna put out the
+light, took the caftan, and climbed to where her husband
+was.</p>
+
+<p>Matréna covered herself with the corner of the caftan,
+and she lay and could not sleep: the stranger would not
+leave her mind.</p>
+
+<p>As she thought how he had eaten the last slice of bread<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>
+and how there would be no bread for the morrow; as she
+thought how she had given him a shirt and a pair of
+trousers, she felt pretty bad; but when she thought
+of how he smiled, her heart was gladdened.</p>
+
+<p>Matréna could not sleep for a long time, and she heard
+that Semén, too, was not sleeping; he kept pulling the
+caftan on himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Semén!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"We have eaten up the last bread, and I have not set
+any. I do not know what to do for to-morrow. Maybe
+I had better ask Gossip Malánya for some."</p>
+
+<p>"If we are alive we shall find something to eat."</p>
+
+<p>The woman lay awhile and kept silence.</p>
+
+<p>"He must be a good man. But why does he not tell
+about himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose he cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"Semén!"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"We give, but why does nobody give to us?"</p>
+
+<p>Semén did not know what to say. He only said, "Stop
+talking!" and turned over, and fell asleep.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+<p>In the morning Semén awoke. The children were
+asleep; his wife had gone to the neighbours to borrow
+some bread. The stranger of last night, in the old trousers
+and shirt, was alone, sitting on the bench and looking
+upward. And his face was brighter than on the day
+before.</p>
+
+<p>And Semén said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, dear man, the belly begs for bread, and the
+naked body for clothes. We must earn our living. Can
+you work?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know anything."</p>
+
+<p>Semén wondered at him, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"If only you are willing: people can learn anything."</p>
+
+<p>"People work, and I, too, will work."</p>
+
+<p>"What is your name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Michael."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mikháyla, you do not want to talk about yourself,&mdash;that
+is your business; but a man has to live. If
+you work as I order you, I will feed you."</p>
+
+<p>"God save you, and I will learn. Show me what to do!"</p>
+
+<p>Semén took the flax, put it on his fingers and began to
+make an end.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not a hard thing to do, you see."</p>
+
+<p>Mikháyla watched him, himself put the flax on his
+fingers, and made a thread end, as Semén had taught him.</p>
+
+<p>Semén showed him how to wax it. Mikháyla again
+learned the way at once. The master showed him how
+to weld the bristle, and how to whet, and Mikháyla
+learned it all at once.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>No matter what work Semén showed to him, he grasped
+it at once, and on the third day he began to sew as though
+he had done nothing else in all his life. He worked without
+unbending himself, ate little, between the periods of
+work kept silence, and all the time looked toward the sky.
+He did not go into the street, spoke no superfluous word,
+and did not jest or laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Only once was he seen to smile, and that was the first
+evening, when the woman gave him a supper.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+<p>Day was added to day, week to week, and the circle of
+a year went by. Mikháyla was living as before with
+Semén, and working. And the report spread about Semén's
+workman that nobody sewed a boot so neatly and so
+strongly as he. And people from all the surrounding
+country began to come to Semén for boots, and Semén's
+income began to grow.</p>
+
+<p>One time, in the winter, Semén was sitting with Mikháyla
+and working, when a tróyka with bells stopped at
+the door. They looked through the window: the carriage
+had stopped opposite the hut, and a fine lad jumped
+down from the box and opened the carriage door. Out
+of the carriage stepped a gentleman in a fur coat. He
+came out of the carriage, walked toward Semén's house,
+and went on the porch. Up jumped Matréna and opened
+the door wide. The gentleman bent his head and entered
+the hut; he straightened himself up, almost struck the
+ceiling with his head, and took up a whole corner.</p>
+
+<p>Semén got up, bowed to the gentleman, and wondered
+what he wanted. He had not seen such men. Semén
+himself was spare-ribbed, and Mikháyla was lean, and
+Matréna was as dry as a chip, while this one was like a
+man from another world: his face was red and blood-filled,
+his neck like a bull's, and altogether he looked as
+though cast in iron.</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman puffed, took off his fur coat, seated himself
+on a bench, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Who is the master shoemaker?"</p>
+
+<p>Semén stepped forward, and said:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I, your Excellency."</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman shouted to his lad:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Fédka, let me have the material!"</p>
+
+<p>The lad came running in and brought a bundle. The
+gentleman took it and put it on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Open it!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>The lad opened it. The gentleman pointed to the
+material, and said to Semén:</p>
+
+<p>"Listen now, shoemaker! Do you see the material?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do," he said, "your Honour."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you understand what kind of material this is?"</p>
+
+<p>Semén felt of it, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"It is good material."</p>
+
+<p>"I should say it is! You, fool, have never seen such
+before. It is German material: it costs twenty
+roubles."</p>
+
+<p>Semén was frightened, and he said:</p>
+
+<p>"How could we have seen such?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's it. Can you make me boots to fit my feet from
+this material?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can, your Honour."</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman shouted at him:</p>
+
+<p>"That's it: you can. You must understand for whom
+you are working, and what material you have to work on.
+Make me a pair of boots that will wear a year without
+running down or ripping. If you can, undertake it and
+cut the material; if you cannot, do not undertake it
+and do not cut the material. I tell you in advance: if
+the boots wear off or rip before the year is over, I will put
+you into jail; if they do not wear off or rip for a year, I
+will give you ten roubles for the work."</p>
+
+<p>Semén was frightened and did not know what to say.
+He looked at Mikháyla. He nudged him with his
+elbow, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Friend, what do you say?"</p>
+
+<p>Mikháyla nodded to him: "Take the work!"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Semén took Mikháyla's advice and undertook to make
+a pair of boots that would not wear down or rip.</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman shouted at his lad, told him to pull off
+the boot from his left foot, and stretched out his leg.</p>
+
+<p>"Take the measure!"</p>
+
+<p>Semén sewed together a piece of paper, ten inches in
+length, smoothed it out, knelt down, carefully wiped his
+hand on his apron so as not to soil the gentleman's stocking,
+and began to measure. He measured the sole, then
+the instep, and then the calf, but there the paper was not
+long enough. His leg at the calf was as thick as a log.</p>
+
+<p>"Be sure and do not make them too tight in the boot-leg!"</p>
+
+<p>Semén sewed up another piece to the strip. The
+gentleman sat and moved his toes in his stocking, and
+watched the people in the room. He caught sight of
+Mikháyla.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that man there?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That is my master workman,&mdash;he will make those
+boots."</p>
+
+<p>"Remember," said the gentleman to Mikháyla, "remember!
+Make them so that they will wear a year."</p>
+
+<p>Semén, too, looked at Mikháyla, and he saw that
+Mikháyla was not looking at the gentleman, but gazed
+at the corner, as though he saw some one there. Mikháyla
+looked and looked, suddenly smiled and shone bright.</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you show your teeth, fool? You had
+better be sure and get the boots in time."</p>
+
+<p>And Mikháyla said:</p>
+
+<p>"They will be done in time."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly."</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman put on his boot and his fur coat, and
+wrapped himself up, and went to the door. He forgot to
+bow down, and hit his head against the lintel.</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman cursed awhile, and rubbed his head,
+and seated himself in the carriage, and drove away.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When the gentleman was gone, Semén said:</p>
+
+<p>"He is mighty flinty! You can't kill him with a club.
+He has knocked out the lintel, but he himself took little
+harm."</p>
+
+<p>And Matréna said:</p>
+
+<p>"How can he help being smooth, with the life he leads?
+Even death will not touch such a sledge-hammer!"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+<p>And Semén said to Mikháyla:</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, we have undertaken to do the work, if
+only we do not get into trouble! The material is costly,
+and the gentleman is cross. I hope we shall not make a
+blunder. Your eyes are sharper, and your hands are
+nimbler than mine, so take this measure! Cut the material,
+and I will put on the last stitches."</p>
+
+<p>Mikháyla did not disobey him, but took the gentleman's
+material, spread it out on the table, doubled it, took
+the scissors, and began to cut.</p>
+
+<p>Matréna came up and saw Mikháyla cutting, and was
+wondering at what he was doing. Matréna had become
+used to the shoemaker's trade, and she looked, and saw
+that Mikháyla was not cutting the material in shoemaker
+fashion, but in a round shape.</p>
+
+<p>Matréna wanted to say something, but thought: "Perhaps
+I do not understand how boots have to be made for
+a gentleman; no doubt Mikháyla knows better, and I will
+not interfere."</p>
+
+<p>Mikháyla cut the pair, and picked up the end, and began
+to sew, not in shoemaker fashion, with the two ends
+meeting, but with one end, like soft shoes.</p>
+
+<p>Again Matréna marvelled, but did not interfere. And
+Mikháyla kept sewing and sewing. They began to eat
+their dinner, and Semén saw that Mikháyla had made a
+pair of soft shoes from the gentleman's material.</p>
+
+<p>Semén heaved a sigh. "How is this?" he thought.
+"Mikháyla has lived with me a whole year, and has never
+made a mistake, and now he has made such trouble for
+me. The gentleman ordered boots with long boot-legs,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>
+and he has made soft shoes, without soles, and has spoiled
+the material. How shall I now straighten it out with the
+master? No such material can be found."</p>
+
+<p>And he said to Mikháyla:</p>
+
+<p>"What is this, dear man, that you have done? You
+have ruined me. The master has ordered boots, and see
+what you have made!"</p>
+
+<p>He had just begun to scold Mikháyla, when there was
+a rattle at the door ring,&mdash;some one was knocking. They
+looked through the window: there was there a man on
+horseback, and he was tying up his horse. They opened
+the door: in came the same lad of that gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"Good day!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good day, what do you wish?"</p>
+
+<p>"The lady has sent me about the boots."</p>
+
+<p>"What about the boots?"</p>
+
+<p>"What about the boots? Our master does not need
+them. Our master has bid us live long."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say!"</p>
+
+<p>"He had not yet reached home, when he died in his
+carriage. The carriage drove up to the house, and the
+servants came to help him out, but he lay as heavy as a
+bag, and was stiff and dead, and they had a hard time
+taking him out from the carriage. So the lady has sent
+me, saying: 'Tell the shoemaker that a gentleman came
+to see him, and ordered a pair of boots, and left the material
+for them; well, tell him that the boots are not
+wanted, but that he should use the leather at once for a
+pair of soft shoes. Wait until they make them, and bring
+them with you.' And so that is why I have come."</p>
+
+<p>Mikháyla took the remnants of the material from the
+table, rolled them up, and took the soft shoes which he
+had made, and clapped them against each other, and wiped
+them off with his apron, and gave them to the lad. The
+lad took the soft shoes.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, masters, good luck to you!"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>VIII.</h3>
+
+<p>There passed another year, and a third, and Mikháyla
+was now living the sixth year with Semén. He
+was living as before. He went nowhere, did not speak
+an unnecessary word, and all that time had smiled but
+twice: once, when they gave him the supper, and the
+second time when the gentleman came. Semén did not
+get tired admiring his workman. He no longer asked
+him where he came from; he was only afraid that Mikháyla
+might leave him.</p>
+
+<p>One day they were sitting at home. The housewife
+was putting the iron pots into the oven, and the children
+were running on the benches, and looking out of the window.
+Semén was sharpening his knives at one window,
+and Mikháyla was heeling a shoe at the other.</p>
+
+<p>One of the little boys ran up to Mikháyla on the bench,
+leaned against his shoulder, and looked out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Mikháyla, look there: a merchant woman is
+coming to us with some little girls. One of the girls
+is lame."</p>
+
+<p>When the boy said that, Mikháyla threw down his
+work, turned to the window, and looked out into the
+street.</p>
+
+<p>And Semén marvelled. Mikháyla had never before
+looked into the street, and now he had rushed to the window,
+and was gazing at something. Semén, too, looked
+out of the window: he saw, indeed, a woman who was
+walking over to his yard. She was well dressed, and led
+two little girls in fur coats and shawls. The girls looked
+one like the other, so that it was hard to tell them apart,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>
+only one had a maimed left leg,&mdash;she walked with a
+limp.</p>
+
+<p>The woman walked up the porch to the vestibule, felt
+for the entrance, pulled at the latch, and opened the door.
+First she let the two girls in, and then entered herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Good day, people!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are welcome! What do you wish?"</p>
+
+<p>The woman seated herself at the table. The girls
+pressed close to her knees: they were timid before the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to make some leather boots for the girls
+for the spring."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that can be done. We have not made such
+small shoes, but we can do it. We can make sharp-edged
+shoes, or turnover shoes on linen. Mikháyla is
+my master."</p>
+
+<p>Semén looked around at Mikháyla, and he saw that
+Mikháyla had put away his work and was sitting and
+gazing at the girls.</p>
+
+<p>And Semén marvelled at Mikháyla. Indeed, the girls
+were pretty: black-eyed, chubby, ruddy-faced, and the fur
+coats and shawls which they had on were fine; but still
+Semén could not make out why he was gazing at them as
+though they were friends of his.</p>
+
+<p>Semén marvelled, and began to talk with the woman
+and to bargain. They came to an agreement, and he took
+the measures. The woman took the lame girl on her
+knees, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"For this girl take two measures: make one shoe for
+the lame foot, and three for the sound foot. They have the
+same size of feet, exactly alike. They are twins."</p>
+
+<p>Semén took the measure, and he said about the lame
+girl:</p>
+
+<p>"What has made her lame? She is such a pretty girl.
+Was she born this way?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, her mother crushed her."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Matréna broke in,&mdash;she wanted to know who the
+woman was, and whose the children were, and so she
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you not their mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not their mother, nor their kin, housewife! I
+am a stranger to them: I have adopted them."</p>
+
+<p>"Not your children! How you care for them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I not care for them? I nursed them
+with my own breast. I had a child of my own, but God
+took him away. I did not care for him so much as I
+have cared for them."</p>
+
+<p>"Whose are they, then?"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>IX.</h3>
+
+<p>The woman began to talk, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"It was six years ago that these orphans lost their
+parents in one week: their father was buried on a Tuesday,
+and their mother died on Friday. These orphans
+were born three days after their father's death, and their
+mother did not live a day. At that time I was living
+with my husband in the village. We were their neighbours,
+our yard joining theirs. Their father was a lonely
+man; he worked in the forest. They dropped a tree on
+him, and it fell across his body and squeezed out his
+entrails. They had barely brought him home, when he
+gave up his soul to God, and that same week his wife bore
+twins,&mdash;these girls. The woman was poor and alone;
+she had neither old woman nor girl with her.</p>
+
+<p>"Alone she bore them, and alone she died.</p>
+
+<p>"I went in the morning to see my neighbour, but she,
+the dear woman, was already cold. As she died she fell
+on the girl, and wrenched her leg. The people came,
+and they washed and dressed her, and made a coffin, and
+buried her. All of them were good people. The girls
+were left alone. What was to be done with them? Of
+all the women I alone had a baby. I had been nursing
+my first-born boy for eight weeks. I took them for the
+time being to my house. The peasants gathered and
+thought and thought what to do with them, and they said
+to me: 'Márya, keep the girls awhile, and we will try
+and think what to do with them.' And I nursed the
+straight girl once, but the lame girl I would not nurse.
+I did not want her to live. But, I thought, why should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>
+the angelic soul go out, and so I pitied her, too. I began
+to nurse her, and so I raised my own and the two girls,
+all three of them with my own breasts. I was young and
+strong, and I had good food. And God gave me so much
+milk in my breasts that at times they overflowed. I
+would feed two of them, while the third would be waiting.
+When one rolled away, I took the third. And God
+granted that I should raise the three, but my own child I
+lost in the second year. And God has given me no other
+children. We began to earn more and more, and now we
+are living here with the merchant at the mill. The
+wages are big, and our living is good. I have no children,
+and how should I live if it were not for these girls?
+How can I help loving them? They are all the wax of
+my tapers that I have."</p>
+
+<p>With one hand the woman pressed the lame girl to her
+side, and with the other she began to wipe off her tears.</p>
+
+<p>And Matréna sighed, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Not in vain is the proverb: 'You can live without
+parents, but not without God.'"</p>
+
+<p>And so they were talking among themselves, when
+suddenly the room was lighted as though by sheet lightning
+from the corner where sat Mikháyla. All looked at
+him, and they saw Mikháyla sitting with folded hands on
+his knees, and looking up, and smiling.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>X.</h3>
+
+<p>The woman went away with the girls, and Mikháyla
+got up from his bench. He lay down his work, took off his
+apron, bowed to the master and to the housewife, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, people! God has forgiven me. You,
+too, should forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>And the master and his wife saw a light coming from
+Mikháyla. And Semén got up, and bowed to Mikháyla,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I see, Mikháyla, you are not a simple man, and I cannot
+keep you, and must not beg you to remain. But tell
+me this: Why, when I found you and brought you home,
+were you gloomy, and when my wife gave you a supper,
+why did you smile at her and after that grow brighter?
+Later, when the gentleman ordered the boots, you smiled
+for the second time, and after that grew brighter, and
+now, when the woman brought her girls, you smiled for
+the third time, and grew entirely bright. Tell me, Mikháyla,
+why does such light come from you, and why did
+you smile three times?"</p>
+
+<p>And Mikháyla said:</p>
+
+<p>"The light comes from me, because I had been punished,
+and now God has forgiven me. And I smiled three times
+because I had to learn three words of God. And I have
+learned the three words: one word I learned when your
+wife took pity on me, and so I smiled for the first time.
+The second word I learned when the rich man ordered
+the boots, and then I smiled for the second time. And
+now, when I saw the girls, I learned the last, the third
+word, and I smiled for the third time."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And Semén said:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Mikháyla, for what did God punish you, and
+what are those words of God, that I may know them."</p>
+
+<p>And Mikháyla said:</p>
+
+<p>"God punished me for having disobeyed him. I was
+an angel in heaven, and I disobeyed God. I was an
+angel in heaven, and God sent me down to take the soul
+out of a woman. I flew down to the earth, and I saw the
+woman lying sick, and she had borne twins,&mdash;two girls.
+The girls were squirming near their mother, and she
+could not take them to her breasts. The woman saw me,
+and she knew that God had sent me for her soul. She
+wept, and said: 'Angel of God! My husband has just
+been buried,&mdash;he was killed by a tree in the forest. I
+have neither sister, nor aunt, nor granny,&mdash;there is no
+one to bring up my orphans, so do not take my soul! Let
+me raise my own children, and put them on their feet.
+Children cannot live without a father, without a mother.'
+And I listened to the mother, and placed one girl to her
+breast, and gave the other one into her hands, and rose up
+to the Lord in heaven. And I came before the Lord, and
+said: 'I cannot take the soul out of the mother in childbirth.
+The father was killed by a tree, the mother bore
+twins, and she begged me not to take the soul out of her,
+saying, Let me rear and bring up my children, and put
+them on their feet. Children cannot live without a father
+or mother. I did not take the soul out of the woman in
+childbirth.' And the Lord said: 'Go and take the soul
+out of the woman in childbirth! And you will learn
+three words: you will learn what there is in men, and
+what is not given to men, and what men live by. When
+you learn them, you will return to heaven.' I flew back
+to earth and took the soul out of the woman.</p>
+
+<p>"The little ones fell away from the breasts. The dead
+body rolled over on the bed and crushed one of the girls,
+and wrenched her leg. I rose above the village and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span>
+wanted to take the soul to God; but the wind caught me,
+and my wings fell flat; and dropped off, and the soul went
+by itself before God, and I fell near the road on the
+earth."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>XI.</h3>
+
+<p>And Semén and Matréna understood whom they had
+clothed and fed, and who had lived with them, and they
+wept for terror and for joy, and said the angel:</p>
+
+<p>"I was left all alone in the field, and naked. I had
+not known before of human wants, neither of cold, nor of
+hunger, and I became a man. I was starved and chilled
+and did not know what to do. I saw in the field a chapel
+made for the Lord, and I went to God's chapel and wanted
+to hide myself in it. The chapel was locked, and I could
+not get in. And I seated myself behind the chapel, to
+protect myself against the wind. The evening came, I
+was hungry and chilled, and I ached all over. Suddenly
+I heard a man walking on the road; he was carrying a
+pair of boots and talking to himself. And I saw a mortal
+face, for the first time since I had become a man, and
+that face was terrible to me, and I turned away from it.
+And I heard the man talking to himself about how he
+might cover his body in the winter from the cold, and
+how he might feed his wife and children. And I thought:
+'I am dying from hunger and cold, and here comes a man,
+who is thinking only of how to cover himself and his
+wife with a fur coat, and of how to feed his family. He
+cannot help me.' The man saw me; he frowned, and
+looked gloomier still, and passed by me. And I was in
+despair. Suddenly I heard the man coming back. I
+looked at him and did not recognize him: before that death
+had been in his face, and now he was revived, and in his
+face I saw God. He came up to me, and clothed me, and
+took me with him, and led me to his house. I came to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>
+his house, and a woman came out of the house and began
+to talk. The woman was more terrible yet than the man;
+the dead spirit was coming out of her mouth, and I could
+not breathe from the stench of death. She wanted to
+send me out into the cold, and I knew that she would
+die if she drove me out. And suddenly her husband
+reminded her of God. And the woman suddenly changed.
+And when she gave us to eat, and looked at us, I glanced
+at her: there was no longer death in her,&mdash;she was alive,
+and I recognized God in her.</p>
+
+<p>"And I recalled God's first word: 'You will know
+what there is in men.' And I learned that there was love
+in men. And I rejoiced at it, because God had begun
+to reveal to me what He had promised, and I smiled for
+the first time. But I could not yet learn everything. I
+could not understand what was not given to men, and
+what men lived by.</p>
+
+<p>"I began to live with you, and lived a year, and
+there came a man, to order a pair of boots, such as would
+wear a year, without ripping or turning. I looked at
+him, and suddenly I saw behind his shoulder my companion,
+the angel of death. None but me saw that
+angel; but I knew him, and I knew that the sun would
+not go down before the rich man's soul would be taken
+away. And I thought: 'The man is providing for a
+year, and does not know that he will not live until evening.'
+And I thought of God's second word: 'You will
+learn what is not given to men.'</p>
+
+<p>"I knew already what there was in men. Now I
+learned what was not given to men. It is not given
+men to know what they need for their bodies. And I
+smiled for the second time. I was glad because I had
+seen my comrade the angel, and because God had revealed
+the second word to me.</p>
+
+<p>"But I could not understand everything. I could not
+understand what men lived by. And I lived and waited<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>
+for God to reveal to me the last word. And in the sixth
+year came the twin girls with the woman, and I recognized
+the girls and knew how they were kept alive. I recognized
+them, and I thought: 'The mother begged me for
+the sake of the children, and I believed the mother and
+thought that the children could not live without father and
+mother, and yet a strange woman has fed them and reared
+them.' And when the woman was touched as she looked
+at the children and wept, I saw in her the living God, and
+I understood what men lived by. And I learned that
+God had revealed the third word to me and forgave me.
+And I smiled for the third time."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>XII.</h3>
+
+<p>And the angel's body was bared and clothed in light,
+so that the eye could not behold him, and he spoke
+louder, as though the voice were coming not from him
+but from heaven. And the angel said:</p>
+
+<p>"I have learned that every man lives not by the care
+for himself, but by love.</p>
+
+<p>"It was not given to the mother to know what her
+children needed for life. It was not given to the rich
+man to know what he needed for himself. And it is not
+given to any man to know whether before evening he
+will need boots for his life, or soft shoes for his death.</p>
+
+<p>"I was kept alive when I was a man not by what I
+did for myself, but because there was love in a passer-by
+and in his wife, and because they pitied and loved me.
+The orphans were left alive not by what was done for
+them, but because there was love in the heart of a
+strange woman, and she pitied and loved them. And all
+men live not by what they do for themselves, but because
+there is love in men.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew before that God gave life to men and that He
+wanted them to live; now I understand even something
+else.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand that God does not want men to live
+apart, and so He has not revealed to them what each
+needs for himself, but wants them to live together, and
+so He has revealed to them what they all need for themselves
+and for all.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand now that it only seems to men that
+they live by the care for themselves, and that they live<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>
+only by love. He who has love, is in God, and God is in
+him, because God is love."</p>
+
+<p>And the angel began to sing the praise of God, and
+from his voice the whole hut shook. And the ceiling
+expanded, and a fiery column rose from earth to heaven.
+And Semén and his wife and children fell to the ground.
+And the wings were unfolded on the angel's shoulders,
+and he rose to heaven.</p>
+
+<p>And when Semén awoke, the hut was as before, and in
+the room were only his family.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_THREE_HERMITS" id="THE_THREE_HERMITS"></a>THE THREE HERMITS<br />
+1884</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p class ="big center">THE THREE HERMITS</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen
+do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much
+speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your
+Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask
+him. (Matt. vi. 7-8.)</p></div>
+
+
+<p>A bishop was sailing in a ship from Arkhángelsk to Solóvki.
+On this ship there were pilgrims on their way to
+visit the saints. The wind was favourable, the weather
+clear, and the vessel did not roll. Of the pilgrims some
+were lying down, some eating, some sitting in groups, and
+some talking with each other. The bishop, too, came out
+on deck, and began to walk up and down on the bridge.
+He walked up to the prow and saw there several men
+sitting together. A peasant was pointing to something in
+the sea and talking, while the people listened to him. The
+bishop stopped to see what the peasant was pointing at:
+he could see nothing except that the sun was glistening
+on the water. The bishop came nearer and began to listen.
+When the peasant saw the bishop, he took off his cap
+and grew silent. And the people, too, when they saw
+the bishop, took off their caps and saluted him.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not trouble yourselves, friends," said the bishop.
+"I have just come to hear what you, good man, are telling
+about."</p>
+
+<p>"The fisherman is telling us about the hermits," said
+a merchant, who was a little bolder than the rest.</p>
+
+<p>"What about those hermits?" asked the bishop. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>
+walked over to the gunwale and sat down on a box.
+"Tell me, too, and I will listen. What were you pointing
+at?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is an island glinting there," said the peasant,
+pointing forward and to the right. "On that island the
+hermits are living and saving their souls."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is that island?" asked the bishop.</p>
+
+<p>"Please to follow my hand! There is a small cloud;
+below it and a little to the left of it the island appears
+like a streak."</p>
+
+<p>The bishop looked and looked, but only the water was
+rippling in the sun, and he could not make out anything
+with his unaccustomed eye.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not see it," he said. "What kind of hermits are
+living on that island?"</p>
+
+<p>"God's people," replied the peasant. "I had heard
+about them for a long time, and never had any
+chance to see them; but two summers ago I saw them
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>The fisherman went on to tell how he went out to
+catch fish and was driven to that island, and did not
+know where he was. In the morning he walked out and
+came to an earth hut, and there he saw one hermit, and
+then two more came out. They fed him and dried him
+and helped him to mend his boat.</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of people are they?" asked the bishop.</p>
+
+<p>"One is small and stooping, a very old man, in an old
+cassock; he must be more than a hundred years old, the
+gray of his beard is turning green, and he smiles all the
+time, and is as bright as an angel of heaven. The second
+is taller; he, too, is old, and wears a ragged caftan; his
+broad gray beard is streaked yellow, and he is a powerful
+man: he turned my boat around as though it were
+a vat, before I had a chance to help him; he also is a
+cheerful man. The third man is tall; his beard falls
+down to his knees and is as white as snow; he is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span>
+gloomy man, and his brows hang over his eyes; he is all
+naked, and girded only with a piece of matting."</p>
+
+<p>"What did they tell you?" asked the bishop.</p>
+
+<p>"They did everything mostly in silence, and spoke
+little to one another. When one looked up, the others
+understood him. I asked the tall man how long they
+had been living there. He frowned and muttered something,
+as though he were angry, but the little hermit
+took his arm and smiled, and the tall one grew silent.
+All the little hermit said was: 'Have mercy on us,'
+and smiled."</p>
+
+<p>While the peasant spoke, the ship came nearer to the
+island.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you can see it plainly," said the merchant.
+"Please to look there, your Reverence!" he said, pointing
+to the island.</p>
+
+<p>The bishop looked up and really saw a black strip,
+which was the island. The bishop looked at it for quite
+awhile, then he went away from the prow to the stern,
+and walked over to the helmsman.</p>
+
+<p>"What island is this that we see there?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is a nameless island. There are so many of
+them here."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true what they say, that some hermits are saving
+their souls there?"</p>
+
+<p>"They say so, your Reverence, but I do not know
+whether it is so. Fishermen say that they have seen
+them. But they frequently speak to no purpose."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to land on that island and see the hermits,"
+said the bishop. "How can I do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"The ship cannot land there," said the helmsman.
+"You can get there by a boat, but you must ask the captain."</p>
+
+<p>The captain was called out.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to see those hermits," said the bishop.
+"Can I not be taken there?"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The captain began to dissuade him.</p>
+
+<p>"It can be done, but it will take much time, and, I
+take the liberty of informing your Reverence, it is not
+worth while to look at them. I have heard people say
+that they were foolish old men: they understand nothing
+and cannot speak, just like the fishes of the sea."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish it," said the bishop. "I will pay you for the
+trouble, so take me there."</p>
+
+<p>It could not be helped. The sailors shifted the sails
+and the helmsman turned the ship, and they sailed toward
+the island. A chair was brought out for the bishop
+and put at the prow. He sat down and looked. All the
+people gathered at the prow, and all kept looking at the
+island. Those who had sharper eyes saw the rocks on
+the island, and they pointed to the earth hut. And one
+man could make out the three hermits. The captain
+brought out his spy-glass and looked through it and gave
+it to the bishop.</p>
+
+<p>"That's so," he said, "there, on the shore, a little to
+the right from that big rock, stand three men."</p>
+
+<p>The bishop looked through the glass and turned it to
+the right spot. There were three men there: one tall, a
+second smaller, and a third a very small man. They
+were standing on the shore and holding each other's
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>The captain walked over to the bishop, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Here, your Reverence, the ship has to stop. If you
+wish to go there by all means, you will please go from
+here in a boat, and we will wait here at anchor."</p>
+
+<p>The hawsers were let out, the anchor dropped, the sails
+furled, and the vessel jerked and shook. A boat was
+lowered, the oarsmen jumped into it, and the bishop went
+down a ladder. He sat down on a bench in the boat,
+and the oarsmen pulled at the oars and rowed toward the
+island. They came near to the shore and could see
+clearly three men standing there: a tall man, all naked,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>
+with a mat about his loins; the next in size, in a tattered
+caftan; and the stooping old man, in an old cassock.
+There they stood holding each other's hands.</p>
+
+<p>The oarsmen rowed up to the shore and caught their
+hook in it. The bishop stepped ashore.</p>
+
+<p>The old men bowed to him. He blessed them, and
+they bowed lower still. Then the bishop began to talk
+to them:</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard," he said, "that you are here, hermits of
+God, saving your souls and praying to Christ our God for
+men. I, an unworthy servant of Christ, have been called
+here by the mercy of God to tend His flock, and so I
+wanted to see you, the servants of God, and to give you
+some instruction, if I can do so."</p>
+
+<p>The hermits kept silence, and smiled, and looked at
+one another.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, how do you save yourselves and serve God?"
+asked the bishop.</p>
+
+<p>The middle-sized hermit heaved a sigh and looked at
+the older, the stooping hermit. And the stooping hermit
+smiled, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"We do not know, O servant of God, how to serve
+God. We only support ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"How, then, do you pray to God?"</p>
+
+<p>And the stooping hermit said:</p>
+
+<p>"We pray as follows: There are three of you and three
+of us,&mdash;have mercy on us!"</p>
+
+<p>And the moment the stooping hermit had said that,
+all three of them raised their eyes to heaven, and all
+three said:</p>
+
+<p>"There are three of you and three of us,&mdash;have mercy
+on us!"</p>
+
+<p>The bishop smiled, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You have heard that about the Holy Trinity, but you
+do not pray the proper way. I like you, hermits of God,
+and I see that you want to please God, but do not know<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>
+how to serve Him. I will teach you, not according to my
+way, but from the Gospel will I teach you as God has
+commanded all men to pray to Him."</p>
+
+<p>And the bishop began to explain to the hermits how
+God had revealed Himself to men: he explained to them
+about God the Father, and God the Son, and God the
+Holy Ghost, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"God the Son came down upon earth to save men and
+taught them to pray as follows. Listen, and repeat after
+me."</p>
+
+<p>And the bishop began to say, "Our Father." And one
+of the hermits repeated, "Our Father," and the second repeated,
+"Our Father," and the third repeated, "Our Father."</p>
+
+<p>"Which art in heaven." The hermit repeated, "Which
+art in heaven." But the middle hermit got mixed in his
+words, and did not say it right; and the tall, naked hermit
+did not say it right: his moustache was all over his
+mouth, and he could not speak clearly; and the stooping,
+toothless hermit, too, lisped it indistinctly.</p>
+
+<p>The bishop repeated it a second time, and the hermits
+repeated it after him. And the bishop sat down on a
+stone, and the hermits stood around him and looked into
+his mouth and repeated after him so long as he spoke.
+And the bishop worked with them all day; he repeated
+one word ten, and twenty, and a hundred times, and the
+hermits repeated after him. They blundered, and he
+corrected them, and made them repeat from the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>The bishop did not leave the hermits until he taught
+them the whole Lord's prayer. They said it with him
+and by themselves. The middle-sized hermit was the
+first to learn it, and he repeated it all by himself. The
+bishop made him say it over and over again, and both
+the others said the prayer, too.</p>
+
+<p>It was beginning to grow dark, and the moon rose from
+the sea, when the bishop got up to go back to the ship.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span>
+The bishop bade the hermits good-bye, and they bowed
+to the ground before him. He raised each of them, and
+kissed them, and told them to pray as he had taught them,
+and entered the boat, and was rowed back to the ship.</p>
+
+<p>And as the boat was rowed toward the ship, the bishop
+heard the hermits loudly repeating the Lord's prayer in
+three voices. The boat came nearer to the ship, and the
+voices of the hermits could no longer be heard, but in
+the moonlight they could be seen standing on the shore,
+in the spot where they had been left: the smallest of
+them was in the middle, the tallest on the right, and the
+middle-sized man on the left. The bishop reached the
+ship and climbed up to the deck. The anchors were
+weighed, the sails unfurled, and the wind blew and drove
+the ship, and on they sailed. The bishop went to the
+prow and sat down there and looked at the island. At
+first the hermits could be seen, then they disappeared
+from view, and only the island could be seen; then the
+island, too, disappeared, and only the sea glittered in the
+moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>The pilgrims lay down to sleep, and everything grew
+quiet on the deck. But the bishop did not feel like
+sleeping. He sat by himself at the prow and looked out
+to sea to where the island had disappeared, and thought
+of the good hermits. He thought of how glad they had
+been to learn the prayer, and thanked God for having
+taken him there to help the God's people,&mdash;to teach them
+the word of God.</p>
+
+<p>The bishop was sitting and thinking and looking out to
+sea to where the island had disappeared. There was something
+unsteady in his eyes: now a light quivered in one
+place on the waves, and now in another. Suddenly he
+saw something white and shining in the moonlight,&mdash;either
+a bird, a gull, or a white sail on a boat. The
+bishop watched it closely.</p>
+
+<p>"A sailboat is following after us," he thought. "It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>
+will soon overtake us. It was far, far away, but now it is
+very near. It is evidently not a boat, for there seems to
+be no sail. Still it is flying behind us and coming up
+close to us."</p>
+
+<p>The bishop could not make out what it was: a boat, no,
+it was not a boat; a bird, no, not a bird; a fish, no, not
+a fish! It was like a man, but too large for that, and
+then, how was a man to be in the middle of the ocean?
+The bishop got up and walked over to the helmsman.</p>
+
+<p>"See there, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, my friend? What is it?" asked the
+bishop, but he saw himself that those were the hermits
+running over the sea. Their beards shone white, and, as
+though the ship were standing still, they came up to it.</p>
+
+<p>The helmsman looked around and was frightened. He
+dropped the helm, and called out in a loud voice:</p>
+
+<p>"O Lord! The hermits are running after us on the
+sea as though it were dry land!"</p>
+
+<p>The people heard him, and rushed to the helm. All
+saw the hermits running and holding each other's hands.
+Those at the ends waved their hands, asking the ship to
+be stopped. All three were running over the water as
+though it were dry land, without moving their feet.</p>
+
+<p>Before the ship could be stopped, the hermits came
+abreast with the ship. They came up to the gunwale,
+raised their heads, and spoke in one voice:</p>
+
+<p>"O servant of God, we have forgotten your lesson. So
+long as we repeated it, we remembered it; but when we
+stopped for an hour, one word leaped out, and then the
+rest scattered. We do not remember a thing, so teach
+us again."</p>
+
+<p>The bishop made the sign of the cross, bent down to
+the hermits, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Even your prayer, hermits of God, reaches the Lord.
+It is not for me to teach you. Pray for us sinful
+men!"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And the bishop made a low obeisance to the hermits.
+And the hermits stopped, turned around, and walked back
+over the sea. And up to morning a light could be seen
+on the side where the hermits had departed.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="NEGLECT_THE_FIRE" id="NEGLECT_THE_FIRE"></a>NEGLECT THE FIRE<br />
+And You Cannot Put It Out<br />
+1885</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="big center">NEGLECT THE FIRE<br />
+And You Cannot Put It Out</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall
+my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven
+times?</p>
+
+<p>Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven
+times: but, Until seventy times seven.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain
+king, which would take account of his servants.</p>
+
+<p>And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought
+unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents.</p>
+
+<p>But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded
+him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all
+that he had, and payment to be made.</p>
+
+<p>The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him,
+saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee
+all.</p>
+
+<p>Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion,
+and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.</p>
+
+<p>But the same servant went out, and found one of his
+fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and
+he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying,
+Pay me that thou owest.</p>
+
+<p>And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought
+him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.</p>
+
+<p>And he would not: but went and cast him into prison,
+till he should pay the debt.</p>
+
+<p>So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they
+were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that
+was done.</p>
+
+<p>Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto
+him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt,
+because thou desiredst me:</p>
+
+<p>Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy
+fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors,
+till he should pay all that was due unto him.</p>
+
+<p>So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you,
+if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother
+their trespasses. (Matt. xviii. 21-35.)</p></div>
+
+
+<p>There lived in a village a peasant, by the name of Iván
+Shcherbakóv. He lived well; he was himself in full
+strength, the first worker in the village, and he had three
+sons,&mdash;all of them on their legs: one was married, the
+second about to marry, and the third a grown-up lad who
+drove horses and was beginning to plough. Iván's wife
+was a clever woman and a good housekeeper, and his
+daughter-in-law turned out to be a quiet person and a
+good worker. There was no reason why Iván should not
+have led a good life with his family. The only idle mouth
+on the farm was his old, ailing father (he had been lying
+on the oven for seven years, sick with the asthma).</p>
+
+<p>Iván had plenty of everything, three horses and a colt,
+a cow and a yearling calf, and fifteen sheep. The women
+made the shoes and the clothes for the men and worked
+in the field; the men worked on their farms.</p>
+
+<p>They had enough grain until the next crop. From the
+oats they paid their taxes and met all their obligations.
+An easy life, indeed, might Iván have led with his children.
+But next door to him he had a neighbour, Gavrílo
+the Lame, Gordyéy Ivánov's son. And there was an
+enmity between him and Iván.</p>
+
+<p>So long as old man Gordyéy was alive, and Iván's
+father ran the farm, the peasants lived in neighbourly
+fashion. If the women needed a sieve or a vat, or the
+men had to get another axle or wheel for a time, they
+sent from one farm to another, and helped each other out
+in a neighbourly way. If a calf ran into the yard of the
+threshing-floor, they drove it out and only said: "Don't
+let it out, for the heap has not yet been put away." And
+it was not their custom to put it away and lock it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span>
+up in the threshing-floor or in a shed, or to revile each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>Thus they lived so long as the old men were alive.
+But when the young people began to farm, things went
+quite differently.</p>
+
+<p>The whole thing began from a mere nothing. A hen
+of Iván's daughter-in-law started laying early. The
+young woman gathered the eggs for Passion week. Every
+day she went to the shed to pick up an egg from the
+wagon-box. But, it seems, the boys scared away the hen,
+and she flew across the wicker fence to the neighbour's
+yard, and laid an egg there. The young woman heard
+the hen cackle, so she thought:</p>
+
+<p>"I have no time now, I must get the hut in order for
+the holiday; I will go there later to get it."</p>
+
+<p>In the evening she went to the wagon-box under the
+shed, to fetch the egg, but it was not there. The young
+woman asked her mother-in-law and her brother-in-law if
+they had taken it; but Taráska, her youngest brother-in-law,
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Your hen laid an egg in the neighbour's yard, for she
+cackled there and flew out from that yard."</p>
+
+<p>The young woman went to look at her hen, and found
+her sitting with the cock on the perch; she had closed her
+eyes and was getting ready to sleep. The woman would
+have liked to ask her where she laid the egg, but she
+would not have given her any answer. Then the young
+woman went to her neighbour. The old woman met her.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want, young woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Granny, my hen has been in your yard to-day,&mdash;did
+she not lay an egg there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not set eyes on her. We have hens of our
+own, thank God, and they have been laying for quite
+awhile. We have gathered our own eggs, and we do not
+need other people's eggs. Young woman, we do not go to
+other people's yards to gather eggs."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The young woman was offended. She said a word too
+much, the neighbour answered with two, and the women
+began to scold. Iván's wife was carrying water, and she,
+too, took a hand in it. Gavrílo's wife jumped out, and
+began to rebuke her neighbour. She reminded her of
+things that had happened, and mentioned things that had
+not happened at all. And the tongue-lashing began. All
+yelled together, trying to say two words at the same time.
+And they used bad words.</p>
+
+<p>"You are such and such a one; you are a thief, a sneak;
+you are simply starving your father-in-law; you are a
+tramp."</p>
+
+<p>"And you are a beggar: you have torn my sieve; and
+you have our shoulder-yoke. Give me back the yoke!"</p>
+
+<p>They grabbed the yoke, spilled the water, tore off their
+kerchiefs, and began to fight. Gavrílo drove up from the
+field, and he took his wife's part. Iván jumped out with
+his son, and they all fell in a heap. Iván was a sturdy
+peasant, and he scattered them all. He yanked out a
+piece of Gavrílo's beard. People ran up to them, and
+they were with difficulty pulled apart.</p>
+
+<p>That's the way it began.</p>
+
+<p>Gavrílo wrapped the piece of his beard in a petition
+and went to the township court to enter a complaint.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not raise a beard for freckled Iván to pull it
+out."</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime his wife bragged to the neighbours
+that they would now get Iván sentenced and would have
+him sent to Siberia, and the feud began.</p>
+
+<p>The old man on the oven tried to persuade them to
+stop the first day they started to quarrel, but the young
+people paid no attention to him. He said to them:</p>
+
+<p>"Children, you are doing a foolish thing, and for a
+foolish thing have you started a feud. Think of it,&mdash;the
+whole affair began from an egg. The children picked
+up the egg,&mdash;well, God be with them! There is no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span>
+profit in one egg. With God's aid there will be enough
+for everybody. Well, you have said a bad word, so correct
+it, show her how to use better words! Well, you
+have had a fight,&mdash;you are sinful people. That, too,
+happens. Well, go and make peace, and let there be an
+end to it! If you keep it up, it will only be worse."</p>
+
+<p>The young people did not obey the old man; they
+thought that he was not using sense, but just babbling in
+old man's fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Iván did not give in to his neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not pull his beard," he said. "He jerked it out
+himself; but his son has yanked off my shirt-button and
+has torn my whole shirt. Here it is."</p>
+
+<p>And Iván, too, took the matter to court. The case was
+heard before a justice of the peace, and in the township
+court. While they were suing each other, Gavrílo lost a
+coupling-pin out of his cart. The women in Gavrílo's
+house accused Iván's son of having taken it.</p>
+
+<p>"We saw him in the night," they said, "making his
+way under the window to the cart, and the gossip says
+that he went to the dram-shop and asked the dram-shopkeeper
+to take the pin from him."</p>
+
+<p>Again they started a suit. But at home not a day
+passed but that they quarrelled, nay, even fought. The
+children cursed one another,&mdash;they learned this from
+their elders,&mdash;and when the women met at the brook,
+they did not so much strike the beetles as let loose their
+tongues, and to no good.</p>
+
+<p>At first the men just accused each other, but later they
+began to snatch up things that lay about loose. And
+they taught the women and children to do the same.
+Their life grew worse and worse. Iván Shcherbakóv and
+Gavrílo the Lame kept suing one another at the meetings
+of the Commune, and in the township court, and before
+the justices of the peace, and all the judges were tired of
+them. Now Gavrílo got Iván to pay a fine, or he sent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>
+him to the lockup, and now Iván did the same to Gavrílo.
+And the more they did each other harm, the more
+furious they grew. When dogs make for each other, they
+get more enraged the more they fight. You strike a dog
+from behind, and he thinks that the other dog is biting
+him, and gets only madder than ever. Just so it was
+with these peasants: when they went to court, one or the
+other was punished, either by being made to pay a
+fine, or by being thrown into prison, and that only
+made their rage flame up more and more toward one
+another.</p>
+
+<p>"Just wait, I will pay you back for it!"</p>
+
+<p>And thus it went on for six years. The old man on
+the oven kept repeating the same advice. He would say
+to them:</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing, my children? Drop all your
+accounts, stick to your work, don't show such malice
+toward others, and it will be better. The more you rage,
+the worse will it be."</p>
+
+<p>They paid no attention to the old man.</p>
+
+<p>In the seventh year the matter went so far that Iván's
+daughter-in-law at a wedding accused Gavrílo before people
+of having been caught with horses. Gavrílo was
+drunk, and he did not hold back his anger, but struck
+the woman and hurt her so that she lay sick for a week,
+for she was heavy with child. Iván rejoiced, and went
+with a petition to the prosecuting magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he thought, "I will get even with my neighbour:
+he shall not escape the penitentiary or Siberia."</p>
+
+<p>Again Iván was not successful. The magistrate did
+not accept the petition: they examined the woman, but
+she was up and there were no marks upon her. Iván
+went to the justice of the peace; but the justice sent the
+case to the township court. Iván bestirred himself in
+the township office, filled the elder and the scribe with
+half a bucket of sweet liquor, and got them to sentence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>
+Gavrílo to having his back flogged. The sentence was
+read to Gavrílo in the court.</p>
+
+<p>The scribe read:</p>
+
+<p>"The court has decreed that the peasant Gavrílo Gordyéy
+receive twenty blows with rods in the township
+office."</p>
+
+<p>Iván listened to the decree and looked at Gavrílo, wondering
+what he would do. Gavrílo, too, heard the decree,
+and he became as pale as a sheet, and turned away and
+walked out into the vestibule. Iván followed him out
+and wanted to go to his horse, when he heard Gavrílo
+say:</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, he will beat my back, and it will burn,
+but something of his may burn worse than that."</p>
+
+<p>When Iván heard these words, he returned to the
+judges.</p>
+
+<p>"Righteous judges! He threatens to set fire to my
+house. Listen, he said it in the presence of witnesses."</p>
+
+<p>Gavrílo was called in.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true that you said so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I said nothing. Flog me, if you please. Evidently
+I must suffer for my truth, while he may do anything
+he wishes."</p>
+
+<p>Gavrílo wanted to say something more, but his lips
+and cheeks trembled. He turned away toward the wall.
+Even the judges were frightened as they looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"It would not be surprising," they thought, "if he
+actually did some harm to his neighbour or to himself."</p>
+
+<p>And an old judge said to them:</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, friends! You had better make peace with
+each other. Did you do right, brother Gavrílo, to strike
+a pregnant woman? Luckily God was merciful to you,
+but think what crime you might have committed! Is
+that good? Confess your guilt and beg his pardon!
+And he will pardon you. Then we shall change the
+decree."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The scribe heard that, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"That is impossible, because on the basis of Article
+117 there has taken place no reconciliation, but the
+decree of the court has been handed down, and the decree
+has to be executed."</p>
+
+<p>But the judge paid no attention to the scribe.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop currycombing your tongue. The first article,
+my friend, is to remember God, and God has commanded
+me to make peace."</p>
+
+<p>And the judge began once more to talk to the peasants,
+but he could not persuade them. Gavrílo would not
+listen to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am fifty years old less one," he said, "and I have a
+married son. I have not been beaten in all my life, and
+now freckled Iván has brought me to being beaten with
+rods, and am I to beg his forgiveness? Well, he will&mdash;Iván
+will remember me!"</p>
+
+<p>Gavrílo's voice trembled again. He could not talk.
+He turned around and went out.</p>
+
+<p>From the township office to the village was a distance
+of ten versts, and Iván returned home late. The women
+had already gone out to meet the cattle. He unhitched
+his horse, put it away, and entered the hut. The room
+was empty. The children had not yet returned from the
+field, and the women were out to meet the cattle. Iván
+went in, sat down on a bench, and began to think. He
+recalled how the decision was announced to Gavrílo, and
+how he grew pale, and turned to the wall. And his
+heart was pinched. He thought of how he should feel if
+he were condemned to be flogged. He felt sorry for Gavrílo.
+He heard the old man coughing on the oven. The
+old man turned around, let down his legs, and sat up.
+He pulled himself with difficulty up to the bench, and
+coughed and coughed, until he cleared his throat, and
+leaned against the table, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, have they condemned him?"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Iván said:</p>
+
+<p>"He has been sentenced to twenty strokes with the
+rods."</p>
+
+<p>The old man shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Iván, you are not doing right. It's wrong, not wrong
+to him, but to yourself. Well, will it make you feel
+easier, if they flog him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He will never do it again," said Iván.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? In what way is he doing worse than
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"What, he has not harmed me?" exclaimed Iván. "He
+might have killed the woman; and he even now threatens
+to set fire to my house. Well, shall I bow to him for it?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man heaved a sigh, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You, Iván, walk and drive wherever you please in the
+free world, and I have passed many years on the oven,
+and so you think that you see everything, while I see
+nothing. No, my son, you see nothing,&mdash;malice has
+dimmed your eyes. Another man's sins are in front of
+you, but your own are behind your back. You say that
+he has done wrong. If he alone had done wrong, there
+would be no harm. Does evil between people arise from
+one man only? Evil arises between two. You see his badness,
+but you do not see your own. If he himself were
+bad, and you good, there would be no evil. Who pulled
+out his beard? Who blasted the rick which was at
+halves? Who is dragging him to the courts? And yet
+you put it always on him. You yourself live badly, that's
+why it is bad. Not thus did I live, and no such thing,
+my dear, did I teach you. Did I and the old man, his
+father, live this way? How did we live? In neighbourly
+fashion. If his flour gave out, and the woman came: 'Uncle
+Frol, I need some flour.'&mdash;'Go, young woman, into the
+granary, and take as much as you need.' If he had nobody
+to send out with the horses,&mdash;'Go, Iván, and look
+after his horses!' And if I was short of anything, I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>
+used to go to him. 'Uncle Gordyéy, I need this and
+that.' And how is it now? The other day a soldier was
+talking about Plévna. Why, your war is worse than
+what they did at Plévna. Do you call this living? It is
+a sin! You are a peasant, a head of a house. You will
+be responsible. What are you teaching your women and
+your children? To curse. The other day Taráska, that
+dirty nose, cursed Aunt Arína, and his mother only laughed
+at him. Is that good? You will be responsible for it.
+Think of your soul. Is that right? You say a word to
+me, and I answer with two; you box my ears, and I box
+you twice. No, my son, Christ walked over the earth
+and taught us fools something quite different. If a word
+is said to you,&mdash;keep quiet, and let conscience smite
+him. That's what he, my son, has taught us. If they
+box your ears, you turn the other cheek to them: 'Here,
+strike it if I deserve it.' His own conscience will prick
+him. He will be pacified and will do as you wish.
+That's what he has commanded us to do, and not to crow.
+Why are you silent? Do I tell you right?"</p>
+
+<p>Iván was silent, and he listened.</p>
+
+<p>The old man coughed again, and with difficulty coughed
+up the phlegm, and began to speak again:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think Christ has taught us anything bad?
+He has taught us for our own good. Think of your
+earthly life: are you better off, or worse, since that Plévna
+of yours was started? Figure out how much you have
+spent on these courts, how much you have spent in travelling
+and in feeding yourself on the way? See what
+eagles of sons you have! You ought to live, and live
+well, and go up, but your property is growing less.
+Why? For the same reason. From your pride. You
+ought to be ploughing with the boys in the field and attend
+to your sowing, but the fiend carries you to court or
+to some pettifogger. You do not plough in time and do
+not sow in time, and mother earth does not bring forth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>
+anything. Why did the oats not do well this year?
+When did you sow them? When you came back from
+the city. And what did you gain from the court? Only
+trouble for yourself. Oh, son, stick to your business,
+and attend to your field and your house, and if any one has
+offended you, forgive him in godly fashion, and things
+will go better with you, and you will feel easier at
+heart."</p>
+
+<p>Iván kept silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, Iván! Pay attention to me, an old man. Go
+and hitch the gray horse, and drive straight back to the
+office: squash there the whole business, and in the morning
+go to Gavrílo, make peace with him in godly fashion,
+and invite him to the holiday" (it was before Lady-day),
+"have the samovár prepared, get a half bottle, and make
+an end to all sins, so that may never happen again, and
+command the women and children to live in peace."</p>
+
+<p>Iván heaved a sigh, and thought: "The old man is
+speaking the truth," and his heart melted. The only
+thing he did not know was how to manage things so as
+to make peace with his neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>And the old man, as though guessing what he had in
+mind, began once more:</p>
+
+<p>"Go, Iván, do not put it off! Put out the fire at the
+start, for when it burns up, you can't control it."</p>
+
+<p>The old man wanted to say something else, but did not
+finish, for the women entered the room and began to
+prattle like magpies. The news had already reached
+them about how Gavrílo had been sentenced to be flogged,
+and how he had threatened to set fire to the house. They
+had found out everything, and had had time in the pasture
+to exchange words with the women of Gavrílo's house.
+They said that Gavrílo's daughter-in-law had threatened
+them with the examining magistrate. The magistrate, they
+said, was receiving gifts from Gavrílo. He would now upset
+the whole case, and the teacher had already written another<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span>
+petition to the Tsar about Iván, and that petition mentioned
+all the affairs, about the coupling-pin, and about the
+garden,&mdash;and half of the estate would go back to him.
+Iván listened to their talk, and his heart was chilled
+again, and he changed his mind about making peace with
+Gavrílo.</p>
+
+<p>In a farmer's yard there is always much to do. Iván
+did not stop to talk with the women, but got up and went
+out of the house, and walked over to the threshing-floor
+and the shed. Before he fixed everything and started
+back again, the sun went down, and the boys returned
+from the field. They had been ploughing up the field
+for the winter crop. Iván met them, and asked them about
+their work and helped them to put up the horses. He
+laid aside the torn collar and was about to put some poles
+under the shed, when it grew quite dark. Iván left the
+poles until the morrow; instead he threw some fodder
+down to the cattle, opened the gate, let Taráska out with
+the horses into the street, to go to the night pasture, and
+again closed the gate and put down the gate board.</p>
+
+<p>"Now to supper and to bed," thought Iván. He took
+the torn collar and went into the house. He had entirely
+forgotten about Gavrílo, and about what his father had
+told him. As he took hold of the ring and was about to
+enter the vestibule, he heard his neighbour on the other
+side of the wicker fence scolding some one in a hoarse
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"The devil take him!" Gavrílo was crying to some
+one. "He ought to be killed."</p>
+
+<p>These words made all the old anger toward his neighbour
+burst forth in Iván. He stood awhile and listened
+to Gavrílo's scolding. Then Gavrílo grew quiet, and
+Iván went into the house.</p>
+
+<p>He entered the room. Fire was burning within. The
+young woman was sitting in the corner behind the spinning-wheel;
+the old woman was getting supper ready;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span>
+the eldest son was making laces for the bast shoes, the
+second was at the table with a book, and Taráska was
+getting ready to go to the night pasture.</p>
+
+<p>In the house everything was good and merry, if it
+were not for that curse,&mdash;a bad neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>Iván was angry when he entered the room. He
+knocked the cat down from the bench and scolded the
+women because the vat was not in the right place. Iván
+felt out of humour. He sat down, frowning, and began
+to mend the collar. He could not forget Gavrílo's words,
+with which he had threatened him in court, and how he
+had said about somebody, speaking in a hoarse voice:
+"He ought to be killed."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman got Taráska something to eat. When
+he was through with his supper, he put on a fur coat and
+a caftan, girded himself, took a piece of bread, and went
+out to the horses. The eldest brother wanted to see him
+off, but Iván himself got up and went out on the porch.
+It was pitch-dark outside, the sky was clouded, and a
+wind had risen. Iván stepped down from the porch,
+helped his little son to get on a horse, frightened a colt
+behind him, and stood looking and listening while Taráska
+rode down the village, where he met other children,
+and until they all rode out of hearing. Iván stood and
+stood at the gate, and could not get Gavrílo's words out
+of his head, "Something of yours may burn worse."</p>
+
+<p>"He will not consider himself," thought Iván. "It is
+dry, and a wind is blowing. He will enter somewhere
+from behind, the scoundrel, and will set the house on fire,
+and he will go free. If I could catch him, he would not
+get away from me."</p>
+
+<p>This thought troubled Iván so much that he did not go
+back to the porch, but walked straight into the street and
+through the gate, around the corner of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"I will examine the yard,&mdash;who knows?"</p>
+
+<p>And Iván walked softly down along the gate. He had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>
+just turned around the corner and looked up the fence,
+when it seemed to him that something stirred at the
+other end, as though it got up and sat down again. Iván
+stopped and stood still,&mdash;he listened and looked: everything
+was quiet, only the wind rustled the leaves in the
+willow-tree and crackled through the straw. It was
+pitch-dark, but his eyes got used to the darkness: Iván
+could see the whole corner and the plough and the penthouse.
+He stood and looked, but there was no one there.</p>
+
+<p>"It must have only seemed so to me," thought Iván,
+"but I will, nevertheless, go and see," and he stole up
+along the shed. Iván stepped softly in his bast shoes, so
+that he did not hear his own steps. He came to the
+corner, when, behold, something flashed by near the
+plough, and disappeared again. Iván felt as though
+something hit him in the heart, and he stopped. As he
+stopped he could see something flashing up, and he could
+see clearly some one in a cap squatting down with his
+back toward him, and setting fire to a bunch of straw in
+his hands. He stood stock-still.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he thought, "he will not get away from me.
+I will catch him on the spot."</p>
+
+<p>Before Iván had walked two lengths of the fence it
+grew quite bright, and no longer in the former place, nor
+was it a small fire, but the flame licked up in the straw
+of the penthouse and was going toward the roof, and
+there stood Gavrílo so that the whole of him could be
+seen.</p>
+
+<p>As a hawk swoops down on a lark, so Iván rushed up
+against Gavrílo the Lame.</p>
+
+<p>"I will twist him up," he thought, "and he will not
+get away from me."</p>
+
+<p>But Gavrílo the Lame evidently heard his steps and
+ran along the shed with as much speed as a hare.</p>
+
+<p>"You will not get away," shouted Iván, swooping down
+on him.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He wanted to grab him by the collar, but Gavrílo got
+away from him, and Iván caught him by the skirt of his
+coat. The skirt tore off, and Iván fell down.</p>
+
+<p>Iván jumped up.</p>
+
+<p>"Help! Hold him!" and again he ran.</p>
+
+<p>As he was getting up, Gavrílo was already near his
+yard, but Iván caught up with him. He was just going
+to take hold of him, when something stunned him, as
+though a stone had come down on his head. Gavrílo
+had picked up an oak post near his house and hit Iván
+with all his might on the head, when he ran up to him.</p>
+
+<p>Iván staggered, sparks flew from his eyes, then all
+grew dark, and he fell down. When he came to his
+senses, Gavrílo was gone. It was as light as day, and
+from his yard came a sound as though an engine were
+working, and it roared and crackled there. Iván turned
+around and saw that his back shed was all on fire and
+the side shed was beginning to burn; the fire, and the
+smoke, and the burning straw were being carried toward
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>"What is this? Friend!" cried Iván. He raised his
+hands and brought them down on his calves. "If I
+could only pull it out from the penthouse, and put it out!
+What is this? Friends!" he repeated. He wanted to
+shout, but he nearly strangled,&mdash;he had no voice. He
+wanted to run, but his feet would not move,&mdash;they
+tripped each other up. He tried to walk slowly, but he
+staggered, and he nearly strangled. He stood still again
+and drew breath, and started to walk. Before he came to
+the shed and reached the fire, the side shed was all on
+fire, and he could not get into the yard. People came
+running up, but nothing could be done. The neighbours
+dragged their own things out of their houses, and drove
+the cattle out. After Iván's house, Gavrílo's caught
+fire; a wind rose and carried the fire across the street.
+Half the village burned down.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All they saved from Iván's house was the old man, who
+was pulled out, and everybody jumped out in just what
+they had on. Everything else was burned, except the
+horses in the pasture: the cattle were burned, the chickens
+on their roosts, the carts, the ploughs, the harrows,
+the women's chests, the grain in the granary,&mdash;everything
+was burned.</p>
+
+<p>Gavrílo's cattle were saved, and they dragged a few
+things out of his house.</p>
+
+<p>It burned for a long time, all night long. Iván stood
+near his yard, and kept looking at it, and saying:</p>
+
+<p>"What is this? Friends! If I could just pull it out
+and put it out!"</p>
+
+<p>But when the ceiling in the hut fell down, he jumped
+into the hottest place, took hold of a brand, and wanted
+to pull it out. The women saw him and began to call
+him back, but he pulled out one log and started for
+another: he staggered and fell on the fire. Then his son
+rushed after him and dragged him out. Iván had his
+hair and beard singed and his garments burnt and his
+hands blistered, but he did not feel anything.</p>
+
+<p>"His sorrow has bereft him of his senses," people said.</p>
+
+<p>The fire died down, but Iván was still standing there,
+and saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Friends, what is this? If I could only pull it out."</p>
+
+<p>In the morning the elder sent his son to Iván.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Iván, your father is dying: he has sent for
+you, to bid you good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>Iván had forgotten about his father, and did not understand
+what they were saying to him.</p>
+
+<p>"What father?" he said. "Send for whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has sent for you, to bid you good-bye. He
+is dying in our house. Come, Uncle Iván!" said the
+elder's son, pulling him by his arm.</p>
+
+<p>Iván followed the elder's son.</p>
+
+<p>When the old man, was carried out, burning straw fell on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>
+him and scorched him. He was taken to the elder's house
+in a distant part of the village. This part did not burn.</p>
+
+<p>When Iván came to his father, only the elder's wife
+was there, and the children on the oven. The rest were
+all at the fire. The old man was lying on a bench, with
+a taper in his hand, and looking toward the door. When
+his son entered, he stirred a little. The old woman went
+up to him and said that his son had come. He told her
+to have him come closer to him. Iván went up, and then
+the old man said:</p>
+
+<p>"What have I told you, Iván? Who has burned the
+village?"</p>
+
+<p>"He, father," said Iván, "he,&mdash;I caught him at it.
+He put the fire to the roof while I was standing near. If
+I could only have caught the burning bunch of straw and
+put it out, there would not have been anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Iván," said the old man, "my death has come, and
+you, too, will die. Whose sin is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Iván stared at his father and kept silence; he could
+not say a word.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak before God: whose sin is it? What have I
+told you?"</p>
+
+<p>It was only then that Iván came to his senses, and
+understood everything. And he snuffled, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Mine, father." And he knelt before his father, and
+wept, and said: "Forgive me, father! I am guilty
+toward you and toward God."</p>
+
+<p>The old man moved his hands, took the taper in his
+left hand, and was moving his right hand toward his
+brow, to make the sign of the cross, but he did not get
+it so far, and he stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Glory be to thee, O Lord! Glory be to thee, O Lord!"
+he said, and his eyes were again turned toward his son.</p>
+
+<p>"Iván! Oh, Iván!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, father?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is to be done now?"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Iván was weeping.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know, father," he said. "How am I to live
+now, father?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man closed his eyes and lisped something, as
+though gathering all his strength, and he once more opened
+his eyes and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You will get along. With God's aid will you get
+along." The old man was silent awhile, and he smiled
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Remember, Iván, you must not tell who started the fire.
+Cover up another man's sin! God will forgive two sins."</p>
+
+<p>And the old man took the taper into both hands, folded
+them over his heart, heaved a sigh, stretched himself, and
+died.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Iván did not tell on Gavrílo, and nobody found out
+how the fire had been started.</p>
+
+<p>And Iván's heart was softened toward Gavrílo, and
+Gavrílo marvelled at Iván, because he did not tell anybody.
+At first Gavrílo was afraid of him, but later he
+got used to him. The peasants stopped quarrelling, and
+so did their families. While they rebuilt their homes,
+the two families lived in one house, and when the village
+was built again, and the farmhouses were built farther
+apart, Iván and Gavrílo again were neighbours, living in
+the same block.</p>
+
+<p>And Iván and Gavrílo lived neighbourly together, just as
+their fathers had lived. Iván Shcherbakóv remembered
+his father's injunction and God's command to put out the
+fire in the beginning. And if a person did him some
+harm, he did not try to have his revenge on the man, but
+to mend matters; and if a person called him a bad name,
+he did not try to answer with worse words still, but to
+teach him not to speak badly. And thus he taught, also
+the women folk and the children. And Iván Shcherbakóv
+improved and began to live better than ever.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_CANDLE" id="THE_CANDLE"></a>THE CANDLE<br />
+1885</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center big">THE CANDLE</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an
+eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That
+ye resist not evil. (Matt. v. 38, 39.)</p></div>
+
+
+<p>This happened in the days of slavery. There were
+then all kinds of masters. There were such as remembered
+their hour of death and God, and took pity on their people,
+and there were dogs,&mdash;not by that may their memory
+live! But there were no meaner masters than those who
+from serfdom rose, as though out of the mud, to be lords!
+With them life was hardest of all.</p>
+
+<p>There happened to be such a clerk in a manorial estate.
+The peasants were doing manorial labour. There was
+much land, and the land was good, and there was water,
+and meadows, and forests. There would have been enough
+for everybody, both for the master and for the peasants,
+but the master had placed over them a clerk, a manorial
+servant of his from another estate.</p>
+
+<p>The clerk took the power into his own hand, and sat
+down on the peasants' necks. He was a married man,&mdash;he
+had a wife and two married daughters,&mdash;and had
+saved some money: he might have lived gloriously without
+sin, but he was envious, and stuck fast in sin. He
+began by driving the peasants to manorial labour more
+than the usual number of days. He started a brick-kiln,
+and he drove all the men and women to work in it above<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span>
+their strength, and sold the brick. The peasants went
+to the proprietor in Moscow to complain against him, but
+they were not successful. When the clerk learned that
+the peasants had entered a complaint against him, he took
+his revenge out of them. The peasants led a harder life
+still. There were found faithless people among the
+peasants: they began to denounce their own brothers to
+the clerk, and to slander one another. And all the people
+became involved, and the clerk was furious.</p>
+
+<p>The further it went, the worse it got, and the clerk
+carried on so terribly that the people became afraid of
+him as of a wolf. When he drove through the village,
+everybody ran away from him as from a wolf, so as not to
+be seen by him. The clerk saw that and raved more than
+ever because people were afraid of him. He tortured the
+peasants with beating and with work, and they suffered
+very much from him.</p>
+
+<p>It used to happen that such evil-doers were put out of
+the way, and the peasants began to talk that way about
+him. They would meet somewhere secretly, and such as
+were bolder would say:</p>
+
+<p>"How long are we going to endure this evil-doer? We
+are perishing anyway,&mdash;and it is no sin to kill a man
+like him."</p>
+
+<p>One day the peasants met in the forest, before Easter
+week: the clerk had sent them to clean up the manorial
+woods. They came together at dinner-time, and began
+to talk:</p>
+
+<p>"How can we live now?" they said. "He will root
+us up. He has worn us out with work: neither in the
+daytime nor at night does he give any rest to us or to
+the women. And the moment a thing does not go the
+way he wants it to, he nags at us and has us flogged.
+Semén died from that flogging; Anísim he wore out in
+the stocks. What are we waiting for? He will come
+here in the evening and will again start to torment us.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span>
+We ought just to pull him down from his horse, whack
+him with an axe, and that will be the end of it. We
+will bury him somewhere like a dog, and mum is the
+word. Let us agree to stand by each other and not give
+ourselves away."</p>
+
+<p>Thus spoke Vasíli Mináev. He was more furious at
+the clerk than anybody else. The clerk had him flogged
+every week, and had taken his wife from him and made
+her a cook at his house.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the peasants talked, and in the evening the clerk
+came. He came on horseback, and immediately began to
+nag them because they were not cutting right. He found
+a linden-tree in the heap.</p>
+
+<p>"I have commanded you not to cut any lindens down,"
+he said. "Who cut it down? Tell me, or I will have
+every one of you flogged!"</p>
+
+<p>He tried to find out in whose row the linden was.
+They pointed to Sídor. The clerk beat Sídor's face until
+the blood came, and struck Vasíli with a whip because
+his pile was small. He rode home.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening the peasants met again, and Vasíli began
+to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, people, you are not men, but sparrows! 'We
+will stand up, we will stand up!' but when the time for
+action came, they all flew under the roof. Even thus the
+sparrows made a stand against the hawk: 'We will not
+give away, we will not give away! We will make a stand,
+we will make a stand!' But when he swooped down on
+them, they made for the nettles. And the hawk seized
+one of the sparrows, the one he wanted, and flew away
+with him. Out leaped the sparrows: 'Chivik, chivik!'
+one of them was lacking. 'Who is gone? Vánka. Well,
+served him right!' Just so you did. 'We will not give
+each other away, we will not give each other away!'
+When he took hold of Sídor, you ought to have come
+together and made an end of him. But there you say,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span>
+We will not give away, we will not give away! We
+will make a stand, we will make a stand!' and when he
+swooped down on you, you made for the bushes."</p>
+
+<p>The peasants began to talk that way oftener and
+oftener, and they decided fully to make away with the
+clerk. During Passion week the clerk told the peasants
+to get ready to plough the manorial land for oats during
+Easter week. That seemed offensive to the peasants, and
+they gathered during Passion week in Vasíli's back yard,
+and began to talk.</p>
+
+<p>"If he has forgotten God," they said, "and wants to do
+such things, we must certainly kill him. We shall
+be ruined anyway."</p>
+
+<p>Peter Mikhyéev came to them. He was a peaceable
+man, and did not take counsel with the peasants. He
+came, and listened to their speeches, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Brothers, you are planning a great crime. It is a
+serious matter to ruin a soul. It is easy to ruin somebody
+else's soul, but how about our own souls? He is
+doing wrong, and the wrong is at his door. We must
+suffer, brothers."</p>
+
+<p>Vasíli grew angry at these words.</p>
+
+<p>"He has got it into his head that it is a sin to kill a
+man. Of course it is, but what kind of a man is he? It
+is a sin to kill a good man, but such a dog even God has
+commanded us to kill. A mad dog has to be killed, if
+we are to pity men. If we do not kill him, there will be
+a greater sin. What a lot of people he will ruin! Though
+we shall suffer, it will at least be for other people. Men
+will thank us for it. If we stand gaping he will ruin us
+all. You are speaking nonsense, Mikhyéev. Will it be
+a lesser sin if we go to work on Christ's holiday? You
+yourself will not go."</p>
+
+<p>And Mikhyéev said:</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I not go? If they send me, I will go to
+plough. It is not for me. God will find out whose sin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>
+it is, so long as we do not forget him. Brothers, I am
+not speaking for myself. If we were enjoined to repay
+evil with evil, there would be a commandment of that
+kind, but we are taught just the opposite. You start to
+do away with evil, and it will only pass into you. It is
+not a hard thing to kill a man. But the blood sticks
+to your soul. To kill a man means to soil your soul with
+blood. You imagine that when you kill a bad man you
+have got rid of the evil, but, behold, you have reared a
+worse evil within you. Submit to misfortune, and misfortune
+will be vanquished."</p>
+
+<p>The peasants could not come to any agreement: their
+thoughts were scattered. Some of them believed with
+Vasíli, and others agreed with Peter's speech that they
+ought not commit a crime, but endure.</p>
+
+<p>The peasants celebrated the first day, the Sunday. In
+the evening the elder came with the deputies from the
+manor, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Mikhaíl Seménovich, the clerk, has commanded me to
+get all the peasants ready for the morrow, to plough the
+field for the oats." The elder made the round of the village
+with the deputies and ordered all to go out on the
+morrow to plough, some beyond the river, and some from
+the highway. The peasants wept, but did not dare to
+disobey, and on the morrow went out with their ploughs
+and began to plough.</p>
+
+<p>Mikhaíl Seménovich, the clerk, awoke late, and went
+out to look after the farm. His home folk&mdash;his wife
+and his widowed daughter (she had come for the holidays)&mdash;were
+all dressed up. A labourer hitched a cart for
+them, and they went to mass, and returned home again.
+A servant made the samovár, and when Mikhaíl Seménovich
+came, they sat down to drink tea. Mikhaíl Seménovich
+drank his tea, lighted a pipe, and sent for the elder.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "have you sent out the peasants to
+plough?"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mikhaíl Seménovich."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, did all of them go?"</p>
+
+<p>"All. I placed them myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, you have placed them,&mdash;but are they
+ploughing? Go and see, and tell them that I will be
+there in the afternoon, and by that time they are to plough
+a desyatína to each two ploughs, and plough it well. If
+I find any unploughed strips, I will pay no attention to
+the holiday."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The elder started to go out, but Mikhaíl Seménovich
+called him back. He called him back, but he hesitated,
+for he wanted to say something and did not know how to
+say it. He hesitated awhile, and then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to what those robbers are saying about me.
+Tell me everything,&mdash;who is scolding me, or whatever
+they may be saying. I know those robbers: they do not
+like to work; all they want to do is to lie on their sides
+and loaf. To eat and be idle, that is what they like;
+they do not consider that if the time of ploughing is
+missed it will be too late. So listen to what they have
+to say, and let me know everything you may hear! Go,
+but be sure you tell me everything and keep nothing
+from me!"</p>
+
+<p>The elder turned around and left the room. He
+mounted his horse and rode into the field to the peasants.</p>
+
+<p>The clerk's wife had heard her husband's talk with the
+elder, and she came in and began to implore him. The
+wife of the clerk was a peaceable woman, and she had a
+good heart. Whenever she could, she calmed her husband
+and took the peasants' part.</p>
+
+<p>She came to her husband, and began to beg him: "My
+dear Míshenka, do not sin, for the Lord's holiday! For
+Christ's sake, send the peasants home!"</p>
+
+<p>Mikhaíl Seménovich did not accept his wife's words,
+but only laughed at her:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Is it too long a time since the whip danced over you
+that you have become so bold, and meddle in what is not
+your concern?"</p>
+
+<p>"Míshenka, my dear, I have had a bad dream about
+you. Listen to my words and send the peasants home!"</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely, that's what I say. Evidently you have
+gathered so much fat that you think the whip will not
+hurt you. Look out!"</p>
+
+<p>Seménovich grew angry, knocked the burning pipe into
+her teeth, sent her away, and told her to get the dinner
+ready.</p>
+
+<p>Mikhaíl Seménovich ate cold gelatine, dumplings, beet
+soup with pork, roast pig, and milk noodles, and drank
+cherry cordial, and ate pastry for dessert; he called in
+the cook and made her sit down and sing songs to him,
+while he himself took the guitar and accompanied her.</p>
+
+<p>Mikhaíl Seménovich was sitting in a happy mood and
+belching, and strumming the guitar, and laughing with the
+cook. The elder came in, made a bow, and began to
+report what he had seen in the field.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, are they ploughing? Will they finish the task?"</p>
+
+<p>"They have already ploughed more than half."</p>
+
+<p>"No strips left?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not seen any. They are afraid, and are working
+well."</p>
+
+<p>"And are they breaking up the dirt well?"</p>
+
+<p>"The earth is soft and falls to pieces like a poppy."</p>
+
+<p>The clerk was silent for awhile.</p>
+
+<p>"What do they say about me? Are they cursing me?"</p>
+
+<p>The elder hesitated, but Mikhaíl Seménovich commanded
+him to tell the whole truth.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell everything! You are not going to tell me your
+words, but theirs. If you tell me the truth, I will reward
+you; and if you shield them, look out, I will have you
+flogged. O Kátyusha, give him a glass of vódka to brace
+him up!"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The cook went and brought the elder the vódka. The
+elder saluted, drank the vódka, wiped his mouth, and
+began to speak. "I cannot help it," he thought, "it is
+not my fault if they do not praise him; I will tell him
+the truth, if he wants it." And the elder took courage
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"They murmur, Mikhaíl Seménovich, they murmur."</p>
+
+<p>"What do they say? Speak!"</p>
+
+<p>"They keep saying that you do not believe in God."</p>
+
+<p>The clerk laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Who said that?"</p>
+
+<p>"All say so. They say that you are submitting to the
+devil."</p>
+
+<p>The clerk laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"That is all very well," he said, "but tell me in particular
+what each says. What does Vasíli say?"</p>
+
+<p>The elder did not wish to tell on his people, but with
+Vasíli he had long been in a feud.</p>
+
+<p>"Vasíli," he said, "curses more than the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"What does he say? Tell me!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is too terrible to tell. He says that you will die an
+unrepenting death."</p>
+
+<p>"What a brave fellow!" he said. "Why, then, is he
+gaping? Why does he not kill me? Evidently his arms
+are too short. All right," he said, "Vasíli, we will square
+up accounts. And Tíshka, that dog, I suppose he says so,
+too?"</p>
+
+<p>"All speak ill of you."</p>
+
+<p>"But what do they say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I loathe to tell."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind! Take courage and speak!"</p>
+
+<p>"They say: 'May his belly burst, and his guts run
+out!'"</p>
+
+<p>Mikhaíl Seménovich was delighted, and he even laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"We will see whose will run out first. Who said that?
+Tíshka?"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 418px;">
+<a href="images/i_434.jpg">
+<img src="images/i_434_s.jpg" width="418" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+<span class="caption">&quot;But the candle was still burning&quot;<br />
+<i>Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshénko</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span></p>
+<p>"Nobody said a good word. All of them curse you
+and threaten you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and Peter Mikhyéev? What does he say? He,
+too, I suppose, is cursing me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mikhaíl Seménovich, Peter is not cursing."</p>
+
+<p>"What does he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is the only one of all the peasants who is not
+saying anything. He is a wise peasant. I wondered at
+him, Mikhaíl Seménovich."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?"</p>
+
+<p>"All the peasants were wondering at what he was
+doing."</p>
+
+<p>"What was he doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is wonderful. I rode up to him. He is ploughing
+the slanting desyatína at Túrkin Height. As I rode up
+to him, I heard some one singing such nice, high tones,
+and on the plough-staff something was shining."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was shining like a light. I rode up to him, and
+there I saw a five-kopek wax candle was stuck on the
+cross-bar and burning, and the wind did not blow it out.
+He had on a clean shirt, and was ploughing and singing
+Sunday hymns. And he would turn over and shake off
+the dirt, but the candle did not go out. He shook the
+plough in my presence, changed the peg, and started
+the plough, but the candle was still burning and did not
+go out."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said nothing. When he saw me, he greeted me
+and at once began to sing again."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not say anything to him, but the peasants came
+up and laughed at him: 'Mikhyéev will not get rid of his
+sin of ploughing during Easter week even if he should
+pray all his life.'"</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say to that?"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"All he said was: 'Peace on earth and good-will to
+men.' He took his plough, started his horses, and sang
+out in a thin voice, but the candle kept burning and did
+not go out."</p>
+
+<p>The clerk stopped laughing. He put down the guitar,
+lowered his head, and fell to musing.</p>
+
+<p>He sat awhile; then he sent away the cook and the
+elder, went behind the curtain, lay down on the bed, and
+began to sigh and to sob, just as though a cart were driving
+past with sheaves. His wife came and began to speak
+to him; he gave her no answer. All he said was:</p>
+
+<p>"He has vanquished me. My turn has come."</p>
+
+<p>His wife tried to calm him.</p>
+
+<p>"Go and send them home! Maybe it will be all right.
+See what deeds you have done, and now you lose your
+courage."</p>
+
+<p>"I am lost," he said. "He has vanquished me."</p>
+
+<p>His wife cried to him:</p>
+
+<p>"You just have it on your brain, 'He has vanquished
+me, he has vanquished me.' Go and send the peasants
+home, and all will be well. Go, and I will have your horse
+saddled."</p>
+
+<p>The horse was brought up, and the clerk's wife persuaded
+him to ride into the field to send the peasants
+home.</p>
+
+<p>Mikhaíl Seménovich mounted his horse and rode into
+the field. He drove through the yard, and a woman
+opened the gate for him, and he passed into the village.
+The moment the people saw the clerk, they hid themselves
+from him, one in the yard, another around a corner,
+a third in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>The clerk rode through the whole village and reached
+the outer gate. The gate was shut, and he could not open
+it while sitting on his horse. He called and called for
+somebody to open the gate, but no one would come. He
+got down from his horse, opened the gate, and in the gateway<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span>
+started to mount again. He put his foot into the
+stirrup, rose in it, and was on the point of vaulting over
+the saddle, when his horse shied at a pig and backed up
+toward the picket fence; he was a heavy man and did
+not get into his saddle, but fell over, with his belly on
+picket. There was but one sharp post in the picket
+fence, and it was higher than the rest. It was this post
+that he struck with his belly. He was ripped open and
+fell to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>When the peasants drove home from their work, the
+horses snorted and would not go through the gate. The
+peasants went to look, and saw Mikhaíl lying on his back.
+His arms were stretched out, his eyes stood open, and all
+his inside had run out and the blood stood in a pool,&mdash;the
+earth had not sucked it in.</p>
+
+<p>The peasants were frightened. They took their horses
+in by back roads, but Mikhyéev alone got down and
+walked over to the clerk. He saw that he was dead, so
+he closed his eyes, hitched his cart, with the aid of his
+son put the dead man in the bed of the cart, and took
+him to the manor.</p>
+
+<p>The master heard about all these things, and to save
+himself from sin substituted tenant pay for the manorial
+labour.</p>
+
+<p>And the peasants saw that the power of God was not
+in sin, but in goodness.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_TWO_OLD_MEN" id="THE_TWO_OLD_MEN"></a>THE TWO OLD MEN<br />
+1885</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p class="center big">THE TWO OLD MEN</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the
+well: and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a
+woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her,
+Give me to drink. (For his disciples were gone away unto
+the city to buy meat.) Then saith the woman of Samaria
+unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of
+me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no
+dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said
+unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is
+that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have
+asked of him, for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
+(John iv. 19-23.)</p></div>
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p>Two old men got ready to go to old Jerusalem to pray
+to God. One of them was a rich peasant; his name was
+Efím Tarásych Shevelév. The other was not a well-to-do
+man, and his name was Eliséy Bodróv.</p>
+
+<p>Efím was a steady man: he did not drink liquor, nor
+smoke tobacco, nor take snuff, had never cursed in his
+life, and was a stern, firm old man. He had served two
+terms as an elder, and had gone out of his office without
+a deficit. He had a large family,&mdash;two sons and a
+married grandson,&mdash;and all lived together. As to looks
+he was a sound, bearded, erect man, and only in his
+seventh decade did a gray streak appear in his beard.</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy was neither wealthy nor poor; in former days
+he used to work out as a carpenter, but in his old age he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span>
+stayed at home and kept bees. One son was away earning
+money, and another was living at home. Eliséy was
+a good-natured and merry man. He liked to drink liquor
+and take snuff, and sing songs; but he was a peaceable
+man, and lived in friendship with his home folk and with
+the neighbours. In appearance he was an undersized,
+swarthy man, with a curly beard and, like his saint,
+Prophet Elisha, his whole head was bald.</p>
+
+<p>The old men had long ago made the vow and agreed to
+go together, but Tarásych had had no time before: he had
+so much business on hand. The moment one thing came
+to an end, another began; now he had to get his grandson
+married, now he was expecting his younger son back from
+the army, and now he had to build him a new hut.</p>
+
+<p>On a holiday the two old men once met, and they sat
+down on logs.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Eliséy, "when are we going to carry out
+our vow?"</p>
+
+<p>Efím frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have to wait," he said, "for this is a hard
+year for me. I have started to build a house,&mdash;I thought
+I could do it with one hundred, but it is going on now in
+the third. And still it is not done. We shall have to
+let it go till summer. In the summer, God willing, we
+shall go by all means."</p>
+
+<p>"According to my understanding," said Eliséy, "there
+is no sense in delaying. We ought to go at once. Spring
+is the best time."</p>
+
+<p>"The time is all right, but the work is begun, so how
+can I drop it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you nobody to attend to it? Your son will do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Do it? My eldest is not reliable,&mdash;he drinks."</p>
+
+<p>"When we die, friend, they will get along without us.
+Let your son learn it!"</p>
+
+<p>"That is so, but still I want to see things done under
+my eyes."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear man! You can never attend to everything.
+The other day the women in my house were washing and
+cleaning up for the holidays. This and that had to be
+done, and everything could not be looked after. My
+eldest daughter-in-law, a clever woman, said: 'It is a
+lucky thing the holidays come without waiting for us, for
+else, no matter how much we might work, we should never
+get done.'"</p>
+
+<p>Tarásych fell to musing.</p>
+
+<p>"I have spent a great deal of money on this building,"
+he said, "and I can't start out on the pilgrimage with empty
+hands. One hundred roubles are not a trifling matter."</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't sin, friend!" he said. "You have ten times as
+much as I, and yet you talk about money. Only say
+when we shall start. I have no money, but that will be
+all right."</p>
+
+<p>Tarásych smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"What a rich man you are!" he said. "Where shall
+you get the money from?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will scratch around in the house and will get together
+some there; and if that is not enough, I will let
+my neighbour have ten hives. He has been asking me
+for them."</p>
+
+<p>"You will have a fine swarm! You will be worrying
+about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Worrying? No, my friend! I have never worried
+about anything in life but sins. There is nothing more
+precious than the soul."</p>
+
+<p>"That is so; but still, it is not good if things do not run
+right at home."</p>
+
+<p>"If things do not run right in our soul, it is worse. We
+have made a vow, so let us go! Truly, let us go!"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>Eliséy persuaded his friend to go. Efím thought and
+thought about it, and on the following morning he came
+to Eliséy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let us go," he said, "you have spoken rightly.
+God controls life and death. We must go while we are
+alive and have strength."</p>
+
+<p>A week later the old men started.</p>
+
+<p>Tarásych had money at home. He took one hundred
+roubles with him and left two hundred with his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy, too, got ready. He sold his neighbour ten hives
+and the increase of ten other hives. For the whole he
+received seventy roubles. The remaining thirty roubles
+he swept up from everybody in the house. His wife gave
+him the last she had,&mdash;she had put it away for her
+funeral; his daughter-in-law gave him what she had.</p>
+
+<p>Efím Tarásych left all his affairs in the hands of his
+eldest son: he told him where to mow, and how many
+fields to mow, and where to haul the manure, and how to
+finish the hut and thatch it. He considered everything, and
+gave his orders. But all the order that Eliséy gave was
+that his wife should set out the young brood separately
+from the hives sold and give the neighbour what belonged
+to him without cheating him, but about domestic affairs
+he did not even speak: "The needs themselves," he
+thought, "will show you what to do and how to do it.
+You have been farming yourselves, so you will do as
+seems best to you."</p>
+
+<p>The old men got ready. The home folk baked a lot of
+flat cakes for them, and they made wallets for themselves,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span>
+cut out new leg-rags, put on new short boots, took reserve
+bast shoes, and started. The home folk saw them off
+beyond the enclosure and bade them good-bye, and the
+old men were off for their pilgrimage.</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy left in a happy mood, and as soon as he left his
+village he forgot all his affairs. All the care he had was
+how to please his companion, how to keep from saying an
+unseemly word to anybody, how to reach the goal in peace
+and love, and how to get home again. As Eliséy walked
+along the road he either muttered some prayer or repeated
+such of the lives of the saints as he knew. Whenever he
+met a person on the road, or when he came to a hostelry,
+he tried to be as kind to everybody as he could, and to
+say to them God-fearing words. He walked along and
+was happy. There was only one thing Eliséy could not
+do: he wanted to stop taking snuff and had left his snuff-box
+at home, but he hankered for it. On the road a man
+offered him some. He wrangled with himself and stepped
+away from his companion so as not to lead him into sin,
+and took a pinch.</p>
+
+<p>Efím Tarásych walked firmly and well; he did no
+wrong and spoke no vain words, but there was no lightness
+in his heart. The cares about his home did not
+leave his mind. He was thinking all the time about
+what was going on at home,&mdash;whether he had not forgotten
+to give his son some order, and whether his son
+was doing things in the right way. When he saw along
+the road that they were setting out potatoes or hauling
+manure, he wondered whether his son was doing as he
+had been ordered. He just felt like returning, and showing
+him what to do, and doing it himself.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>The old men walked for live weeks. They wore out
+their home-made bast shoes and began to buy new ones.
+They reached the country of the Little-Russians. Heretofore
+they had been paying for their night's lodging and
+for their dinner, but when they came to the Little-Russians,
+people vied with each other in inviting them to
+their houses. They let them come in, and fed them, and
+took no money from them, but even filled their wallets
+with bread, and now and then with flat cakes. Thus the
+old men walked without expense some seven hundred
+versts. They crossed another Government and came to
+a place where there had been a failure of crops. There
+they let them into the houses and did not take any money
+for their night's lodging, but would not feed them. And
+they did not give them bread everywhere,&mdash;not even for
+money could the old men get any in some places. The
+previous year, so the people said, nothing had grown.
+Those who had been rich were ruined,&mdash;they sold everything;
+those who had lived in comfort came down to
+nothing; and the poor people either entirely left the
+country, or turned beggars, or just managed to exist at
+home. In the winter they lived on chaff and orach.</p>
+
+<p>One night the two old men stayed in a borough. There
+they bought about fifteen pounds of bread. In the morning
+they left before daybreak, so that they might walk a
+good distance before the heat. They marched some ten
+versts and reached a brook. They sat down, filled their
+cups with water, softened the bread with it and ate it,
+and changed their leg-rags. They sat awhile and rested<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span>
+themselves. Eliséy took out his snuff-horn. Efím Tarásych
+shook his head at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you throw away that nasty thing?" he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy waved his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Sin has overpowered me," he said. "What shall
+I do?"</p>
+
+<p>They got up and marched on. They walked another
+ten versts. They came to a large village, and passed
+through it. It was quite warm then. Eliséy was tired,
+and wanted to stop and get a drink, but Tarásych would
+not stop. Tarásych was a better walker, and Eliséy had
+a hard time keeping up with him.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to get a drink," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, drink! I do not want any."</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not wait for me," he said. "I will just run into
+a hut and get a drink of water. I will catch up with
+you at once."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said. And Efím Tarásych proceeded
+by himself along the road, while Eliséy turned to go into
+a hut.</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy came up to the hut. It was a small clay cabin;
+the lower part was black, the upper white, and the clay
+had long ago crumbled off,&mdash;evidently it had not been
+plastered for a long time,&mdash;and the roof was open at one
+end. The entrance was from the yard. Eliséy stepped
+into the yard, and there saw that a lean, beardless man
+with his shirt stuck in his trousers in Little-Russian
+fashion was lying near the earth mound. The man had
+evidently lain down in a cool spot, but now the sun was
+burning down upon him. He was lying there awake.
+Eliséy called out to him, asking him to give him a drink,
+but the man made no reply. "He is either sick, or an
+unkind man," thought Eliséy, going up to the door. Inside
+he heard a child crying. He knocked with the door-ring.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span>
+"Good people!" No answer. He struck with his
+staff against the door. "Christian people!" No stir.
+"Servants of the Lord!" No reply. Eliséy was on the
+point of going away, when he heard somebody groaning
+within. "I wonder whether some misfortune has happened
+there to the people. I must see." And Eliséy
+went into the hut.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<p>Eliséy turned the ring,&mdash;the door was not locked.
+He pushed the door open and walked through the vestibule.
+The door into the living-room was open. On the
+left there was an oven; straight ahead was the front
+corner; in the corner stood a shrine and a table; beyond
+the table was a bench, and on it sat a bareheaded old
+woman, in nothing but a shirt; her head was leaning on
+the table, and near her stood a lean little boy, his face as
+yellow as wax and his belly swollen, and he was pulling
+the old woman's sleeve, and crying at the top of his voice
+and begging for something.</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy entered the room. There was a stifling air in
+the house. He saw a woman lying behind the oven,
+on the floor. She was lying on her face without looking
+at anything, and snoring, and now stretching out a leg
+and again drawing it up. And she tossed from side to
+side,&mdash;and from her came that oppressive smell: evidently
+she was very sick, and there was nobody to take
+her away. The old woman raised her head, when she
+saw the man.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?" she said, in Little-Russian.
+"What do you want? We have nothing, my dear man."</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy understood what she was saying: he walked
+over to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Servant of the Lord," he said, "I have come in to get
+a drink of water."</p>
+
+<p>"There is none, I say, there is none. There is nothing
+here for you to take. Go!"</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy asked her:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Is there no well man here to take this woman away?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is nobody here: the man is dying in the yard,
+and we here."</p>
+
+<p>The boy grew quiet when he saw the stranger, but
+when the old woman began to speak, he again took hold
+of her sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"Bread, granny, bread!" and he burst out weeping.</p>
+
+<p>Just as Eliséy was going to ask the old woman another
+question, the man tumbled into the hut; he walked along
+the wall and wanted to sit down on the bench, but before
+reaching it he fell down in the corner, near the threshold.
+He did not try to get up, but began to speak. He would
+say one word at a time, then draw his breath, then say
+something again.</p>
+
+<p>"We are sick," he said, "and&mdash;hungry. The boy is
+starving." He indicated the boy with his head and began
+to weep.</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy shifted his wallet on his back, freed his arms,
+let the wallet down on the ground, lifted it on the bench,
+and untied it. When it was open, he took out the bread
+and the knife, out off a slice, and gave it to the man.
+The man did not take it, but pointed to the boy and the
+girl, to have it given to them. Eliséy gave it to the boy.
+When the boy saw the bread, he made for it, grabbed the
+slice with both his hands, and stuck his nose into the bread.
+A girl crawled out from behind the oven and gazed at the
+bread. Eliséy gave her, too, a piece. He cut off another
+slice and gave it to the old woman. She took it and
+began to chew at it.</p>
+
+<p>"If you would just bring us some water," she said.
+"Their lips are parched. I wanted to bring some yesterday
+or to-day,&mdash;I do not remember when,&mdash;but I fell
+down and left the pail there, if nobody took it away."</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy asked where their well was. The old woman
+told him where. Eliséy went out. He found the pail,
+brought some water, and gave the people to drink. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span>
+children ate some more bread with water, and the old
+woman ate some, but the man would not eat.</p>
+
+<p>"My stomach will not hold it," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The woman did not get up or come to: she was
+just tossing on the bed place. Eliséy went to the shop,
+and bought millet, salt, flour, and butter. He found an
+axe, chopped some wood, and made a fire in the oven.
+The girl helped him. Eliséy cooked a soup and porridge,
+and fed the people.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+<p>The man ate a little, and so did the old woman, and
+the girl and the little boy licked the bowl clean and
+embraced each other and fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>The man and the old woman told Eliséy how it had
+all happened.</p>
+
+<p>"We lived heretofore poorly," they said, "but when
+the crop failed us, we ate up in the fall everything we
+had. When we had nothing left, we began to beg from
+our neighbours and from good people. At first they gave
+us some, but later they refused. Some of them would
+have been willing to give us to eat, but they had nothing
+themselves. Besides we felt ashamed to beg: we owed
+everybody money and flour and bread. I looked for
+work," said the man, "but could find none. People were
+everywhere looking for work to get something to eat.
+One day I would work, and two I would go around looking
+for more work. The old woman and the girl went a
+distance away to beg, but the alms were poor,&mdash;nobody
+had any bread. Still, we managed to get something to
+eat: we thought we might squeeze through until the new
+crop; but in the spring they quit giving us alms altogether,
+and sickness fell upon us. It grew pretty bad:
+one day we would have something to eat, and two we
+went without it. We began to eat grass. And from the
+grass, or from some other reason, the woman grew sick.
+She lay down, and I had no strength, and we had nothing
+with which to improve matters."</p>
+
+<p>"I was the only one," the old woman said, "who
+worked: but I gave out and grew weak, as I had nothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span>
+to eat. The girl, too, grew weak and lost her courage.
+I sent her to the neighbours, but she did not go. She hid
+herself in a corner and would not go. A neighbour came
+in two days ago, but when she saw that we were hungry
+and sick, she turned around and went out. Her husband
+has left, and she has nothing with which to feed her
+young children. So we were lying here and waiting for
+death."</p>
+
+<p>When Eliséy heard what they said, he changed his
+mind about catching up with his companion, and remained
+there overnight. In the morning Eliséy got up
+and began to work about the house as though he were the
+master. He set bread with the old woman and made a
+fire in the oven. He went with the girl to the neighbours
+to fetch what was necessary. Everything he
+wanted to pick up was gone: there was nothing left for
+farming, and the clothes were used up. Eliséy got everything
+which was needed: some things he made himself,
+and some he bought. Eliséy stayed with them one day,
+and a second, and a third. The little boy regained his
+strength, and he began to walk on the bench and to make
+friends with Eliséy. The girl, too, became quite cheerful
+and helped him in everything. She kept running after
+Eliséy: "Grandfather, grandfather!"</p>
+
+<p>The old woman got up and went to her neighbour.
+The man began to walk by holding on to the wall. Only
+the woman was lying down. On the third day she came
+to and asked for something to eat.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," thought Eliséy, "I had not expected to lose so
+much time. Now I must go."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+<p>The fourth day was the last of a fast, and Eliséy said
+to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"I will break fast with them. I will buy something
+for them for the holidays, and in the evening I must
+leave."</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy went once more to the village and bought milk,
+white flour, and lard. He and the old woman cooked and
+baked a lot of things, and in the morning Eliséy went to
+mass and came back and broke fast with the people. On
+that day the woman got up and began to move about.
+The man shaved himself, put on a clean shirt,&mdash;the old
+woman had washed it for him,&mdash;and went to a rich
+peasant to ask a favour of him. His mowing and field
+were mortgaged to the rich man, so he went to ask him
+to let him have the mowing and the field until the new
+crop. He came back gloomy in the evening, and burst
+out weeping. The rich man would not show him the
+favour; he had asked him to bring the money.</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy fell to musing.</p>
+
+<p>"How are they going to live now? People will be
+going out to mow, but they cannot go, for it is all mortgaged.
+The rye will ripen and people will begin to
+harvest it (and there is such a fine stand of it!), but they
+have nothing to look forward to,&mdash;their desyatína is sold
+to the rich peasant. If I go away, they will fall back
+into poverty."</p>
+
+<p>And Eliséy was in doubt, and did not go away in the
+evening, but put it off until morning. He went into the
+yard to sleep. He said his prayers and lay down, but
+could not fall asleep.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I ought to go,&mdash;as it is I have spent much time and
+money; but I am sorry for the people. You can't help
+everybody. I meant to bring them some water and give
+each a slice of bread, but see how far I have gone. Now
+I shall have to buy out his mowing and field. And if I
+buy out the field, I might as well buy a cow for the
+children, and a horse for the man to haul his sheaves
+with. Brother Eliséy Kuzmích, you are in for it! You
+have let yourself loose, and now you will not straighten
+out things."</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy got up, took the caftan from under his head, and
+unrolled it; he drew out his snuff-horn and took a pinch,
+thinking that he would clear his thoughts, but no,&mdash;he
+thought and thought and could not come to any conclusion.
+He ought to get up and go, but he was sorry for the
+people. He did not know what to do. He rolled the caftan
+up under his head and lay down to sleep. He lay there
+for a long time, and the cocks crowed, and then only
+did he fall asleep. Suddenly he felt as though some one
+had wakened him. He saw himself all dressed, with his
+wallet and staff, and he had to pass through a gate, but it
+was just open enough to let a man squeeze through. He
+went to the gate and his wallet caught on one side, and
+as he was about to free it, one of his leg-rags got caught
+on the other side and came open. He tried to free the leg-rag,
+but it was not caught in the wicker fence: it was the
+girl who was holding on to it, and crying, "Grandfather,
+grandfather, bread!" He looked at his foot, and there
+was the little boy holding on to it, and the old woman
+and the man were looking out of the window. Eliséy
+awoke, and he began to speak to himself in an audible voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I will buy out the field and the mowing to-morrow,
+and will buy a horse, and flour to last until harvest-time,
+and a cow for the children. For how would it be to go
+beyond the sea to seek Christ and lose him within me?
+I must get the people started."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And Eliséy fell asleep until morning. He awoke early.
+He went to the rich merchant, bought out the rye and
+gave him money for the mowing. He bought a scythe,&mdash;for
+that had been sold, too,&mdash;and brought it home. He
+sent the man out to mow, and himself went to see the
+peasants: he found a horse and a cart for sale at the innkeeper's.
+He bargained with him for it, and bought it;
+then he bought a bag of flour, which he put in the cart,
+and went out to buy a cow. As he was walking, he came
+across two Little-Russian women, and they were talking
+to one another. Though they were talking in their dialect,
+he could make out what they were saying about
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"You see, at first they did not recognize him; they
+thought that he was just a simple kind of a man. They
+say, he went in to get a drink, and he has just stopped
+there. What a lot of things he has bought them! I myself
+saw him buy a horse and cart to-day of the innkeeper.
+Evidently there are such people in the world. I must go
+and take a look at him."</p>
+
+<p>When Eliséy heard that, he understood that they were
+praising him, and so he did not go to buy the cow. He
+returned to the innkeeper and gave him the money for the
+horse. He hitched it up and drove with the flour to the
+house. When he drove up to the gate, he stopped and
+climbed down from the cart. When the people of the
+house saw the horse, they were surprised. They thought
+that he had bought the horse for them, but did not dare
+say so. The master came out to open the gates.</p>
+
+<p>"Grandfather, where did you get that horse?"</p>
+
+<p>"I bought it," he said. "I got it cheap. Mow some
+grass and put it in the cart, so that the horse may have
+some for the night. And take off the bag!"</p>
+
+<p>The master unhitched the horse, carried the bag to the
+granary, mowed a lot of grass, and put it into the cart.
+They lay down to sleep. Eliséy slept in the street, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>
+thither he had carried his wallet in the evening. All
+the people fell asleep. Eliséy got up, tied his wallet, put
+on his shoes and his caftan, and started down the road to
+catch up with Efím.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+<p>Eliséy had walked about five versts, when day began
+to break. He sat down under a tree, untied his wallet,
+and began to count his money. He found that he had
+seventeen roubles twenty kopeks left.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he thought, "with this sum I cannot travel
+beyond the sea, but if I beg in Christ's name, I shall only
+increase my sin. Friend Efím will reach the place by
+himself, and will put up a candle for me. But I shall
+evidently never fulfil my vow. The master is merciful,
+and he will forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy got up, slung his wallet over his shoulders, and
+turned back. He made a circle around the village so that
+people might not see him. And soon he reached home.
+On his way out he had found it hard: it was hard keeping
+up with Efím; but on his way home God made it
+easy for him, for he did not know what weariness was.
+Walking was just play to him, and he swayed his staff,
+and made as much as seventy versts a day.</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy came back home. The harvest was all in. The
+home folk were glad to see the old man. They asked all
+about him, why he had left his companion and why he
+had not gone to Jerusalem, but had returned home.
+Eliséy did not tell them anything.</p>
+
+<p>"God did not grant me that I should," he said. "I
+spent my money on the way, and got separated from my
+companion. And so I did not go. Forgive me for Christ's
+sake."</p>
+
+<p>He gave the old woman what money he had left. He
+asked all about the home matters: everything was right;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>
+everything had been attended to and nothing missed, and
+all were living in peace and agreement.</p>
+
+<p>Efím's people heard that very day that Eliséy had come
+back, and so they came to inquire about their old man.
+And Eliséy told them the same story.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he said, "the old man started to walk
+briskly, and three days before St. Peter's day we lost each
+other. I wanted to catch up with him, but it happened
+that I spent all my money and could not go on, so I
+returned home."</p>
+
+<p>The people marvelled how it was that such a clever
+man had acted so foolishly as to start and not reach the
+place and merely spend his money. They wondered
+awhile, and forgot about it. Eliséy, too, forgot about it.
+He began to work about the house: he got the wood
+ready for the winter with his son, threshed the grain
+with the women, thatched the sheds, gathered in the
+bees, and gave ten hives with the young brood to his
+neighbour. When he got all the work done, he sent
+his son out to earn money, and himself sat down in
+the winter to plait bast shoes and hollow out blocks for
+the hives.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>VIII.</h3>
+
+<p>All that day that Eliséy passed with the sick people,
+Efím waited for his companion. He walked but a short
+distance and sat down. He waited and waited, and fell
+asleep; when he awoke, he sat awhile,&mdash;but his companion
+did not turn up. He kept a sharp lookout for him,
+but the sun was going down behind a tree, and still Eliséy
+was not there.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether he has not passed by me," he
+thought. "Maybe somebody drove him past, and he did
+not see me while I was asleep. But how could he help
+seeing me? In the steppe you can see a long distance
+off. If I go back, he may be marching on, and we shall
+only get farther separated from each other. I will walk
+on,&mdash;we shall meet at the resting-place for the night."</p>
+
+<p>When he came to a village, he asked the village officer
+to look out for an old man and bring him to the house
+where he stayed. Eliséy did not come there for the
+night. Efím marched on, and asked everybody whether
+they had seen a bald-headed old man. No one had seen
+him. Efím was surprised and walked on.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall meet somewhere in Odessa," he thought,
+"or on the boat," and then he stopped thinking about it.</p>
+
+<p>On the road he fell in with a pilgrim. The pilgrim,
+in calotte, cassock, and long hair, had been to Mount
+Athos, and was now going for the second time to Jerusalem.
+They met at a hostelry, and they had a chat and started
+off together.</p>
+
+<p>They reached Odessa without any accident. They
+waited for three days for a ship. There were many pilgrims<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span>
+there, and they had come together from all directions.
+Again Efím asked about Eliséy, but nobody had
+seen him.</p>
+
+<p>Efím provided himself with a passport,&mdash;that cost five
+roubles. He had forty roubles left for his round trip,
+and he bought bread and herring for the voyage. The
+ship was loaded, then the pilgrims were admitted, and
+Tarásych sat down beside the pilgrim he had met. The
+anchors were weighed, they pushed off from the shore,
+and the ship sailed across the sea.</p>
+
+<p>During the day they had good sailing; in the evening
+a wind arose, rain fell, and the ship began to rock and to
+be washed by the waves. The people grew excited; the
+women began to shriek, and such men as were weak ran
+up and down the ship, trying to find a safe place. Efím,
+too, was frightened, but he did not show it: where he
+had sat down on the floor on boarding the ship by the side
+of Tambóv peasants, he sat through the night and the
+following day; all of them held on to their wallets and
+did not speak. On the third day it grew calmer. On the
+fifth day they landed at Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the pilgrims went ashore there, to visit the
+Cathedral of St. Sophia, which now the Turks hold;
+Tarásych did not go, but remained on board the ship.
+All he did was to buy some white bread. They remained
+there a day, and then again sailed through the sea. They
+stopped at Smyrna town, and at another city by the name
+of Alexandria, and safely reached the city of Jaffa. In
+Jaffa all pilgrims go ashore: from there it is seventy versts
+on foot to Jerusalem. At the landing the people had
+quite a scare: the ship was high, and the people were let
+down into boats below; but the boats were rocking all
+the time, and two people were let down past the boat and
+got a ducking, but otherwise all went safely.</p>
+
+<p>When all were ashore, they went on afoot; on the
+third day they reached Jerusalem at dinner-time. They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span>
+stopped in a suburb, in a Russian hostelry; there they
+had their passports stamped and ate their dinner, and then
+they followed a pilgrim to the holy places. It was too
+early yet to be admitted to the Sepulchre of the Lord, so
+they went to the Monastery of the Patriarch. There
+all the worshippers were gathered, and the female sex was
+put apart from the male. They were all ordered to take
+off their shoes and sit in a circle. A monk came out with
+a towel, and began to wash everybody's feet. He would
+wash, and rub them clean, and kiss them, and thus he
+went around the whole circle. He washed Efím's feet
+and kissed them. They celebrated vigils and matins, and
+placed a candle, and served a mass for the parents. There
+they were fed, and received wine to drink.</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning they went to the cell of Mary
+of Egypt, where she took refuge. There they placed
+candles, and a mass was celebrated. From there they
+went to Abraham's Monastery. They saw the Sebak
+garden, the place where Abraham wanted to sacrifice his
+son to God. Then they went to the place where Christ
+appeared to Mary Magdalene, and to the Church of Jacob,
+the brother of the Lord. The pilgrim showed them all the
+places, and in every place he told how much money
+they ought to give. At dinner they returned to the
+hostelry. They ate, and were just getting ready to lie
+down to sleep, when the pilgrim, who was rummaging
+through his clothes, began to sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"They have pulled out my pocketbook with money in
+it," he said. "I had twenty-three roubles,&mdash;two ten-rouble
+bills, and three in change."</p>
+
+<p>The pilgrim felt badly about it, but nothing could be
+done, and all went to sleep.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>IX.</h3>
+
+<p>As Efím went to sleep, a temptation came over him.</p>
+
+<p>"They have not taken the pilgrim's money," he
+thought, "he did not have any. Nowhere did he offer
+anything. He told me to give, but he himself did not
+offer any. He took a rouble from me."</p>
+
+<p>As Efím was thinking so, he began to rebuke himself:</p>
+
+<p>"How dare I judge the man, and commit a sin. I will
+not sin." The moment he forgot himself, he again thought
+that the pilgrim had a sharp eye on money, and that it
+was unlikely that they had taken the money from him.
+"He never had any money," he thought. "It's only an
+excuse."</p>
+
+<p>They got up before evening and went to an early mass
+at the Church of the Resurrection,&mdash;to the Sepulchre of
+the Lord. The pilgrim did not leave Efím's side, but
+walked with him all the time.</p>
+
+<p>They came to the church. There was there collected
+a large crowd of worshippers, Greeks, and Armenians, and
+Turks, and Syrians. Efím came with the people to the
+Holy Gate. A monk led them. He took them past
+the Turkish guard to the place where the Saviour was
+taken from the cross and anointed, and where candles
+were burning in nine large candlesticks. He showed and
+explained everything to them. Efím placed a candle
+there. Then the monks led Efím to the right over steps
+to Golgotha, where the cross stood; there Efím prayed;
+then Efím was shown the cleft where the earth was rent
+to the lowermost regions; then he was shown the place
+where Christ's hands and feet had been nailed to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span>
+cross, and then he was shown Adam's grave, where Christ's
+blood dropped on his bones. Then they came to the rock
+on which Christ sat when they put the wreath of thorns
+on his head; then to the post to which Christ was tied
+when he was beaten. Then Efím saw the stone with the
+two holes, for Christ's feet. They wanted to show him
+other things, but the people hastened away: all hurried
+to the grotto of the Lord's Sepulchre. Some foreign mass
+was just ended, and the Russian began. Efím followed
+the people to the grotto.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to get away from the pilgrim, for in thought
+he still sinned against him, but the pilgrim stuck to him,
+and went with him to mass at the Sepulchre of the Lord.
+They wanted to stand close to it, but were too late. There
+was such a crowd there that it was not possible to move
+forward or back. Efím stood there and looked straight
+ahead and prayed, but every once in awhile he felt his
+purse, to see whether it was in his pocket. His thoughts
+were divided; now he thought that the pilgrim had deceived
+him; and then he thought, if he had not deceived
+him, and the pocketbook had really been stolen, the same
+might happen to him.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>X.</h3>
+
+<p>Efím stood there and prayed and looked ahead into the
+chapel where the Sepulchre itself was, and where over
+the Sepulchre thirty-six lamps were burning. Efím looked
+over the heads to see the marvellous thing: under the
+very lamps, where the blessed fire was burning, in front
+of all, he saw an old man in a coarse caftan, with a bald
+spot shining on his whole head, and he looked very much
+like Eliséy Bodróv.</p>
+
+<p>"He resembles Eliséy," he thought. "But how can it
+be he? He could not have got here before me. The
+previous ship started a week ahead of us. He could not
+have been on that ship. On our ship he was not, for I
+saw all the pilgrims."</p>
+
+<p>Just as Efím was thinking this, the old man began to
+pray, and made three bows: once in front of him, to God,
+and twice to either side, to all the Orthodox people. And
+as the old man turned his head to the right, Efím recognized
+him. Sure enough, it was Bodróv: it was his blackish,
+curly beard, and the gray streak on his cheeks, and his
+brows, his eyes, his nose, and full face,&mdash;all his. Certainly
+it was he, Eliséy Bodróv.</p>
+
+<p>Efím was glad that he had found his companion, and
+he marvelled how Eliséy could have got there ahead of him.</p>
+
+<p>"How in the world did Bodróv get to that place in
+front?" he thought. "No doubt he met a man who knew
+how to get him there. When all go out, I will hunt him
+up, and I will drop the pilgrim in the colette, and will
+walk with him. Maybe he will take me to the front
+place."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Efím kept an eye on Eliséy, so as not to lose him.
+When the masses were over, the people began to stir. As
+they went up to kiss the Sepulchre, they crowded and
+pushed Efím to one side. He was frightened lest his
+purse should be stolen. He put his hand to his purse
+and tried to make his way out into the open. When he
+got out, he walked and walked, trying to find Eliséy, both
+on the outside and in the church. In the church he saw
+many people in the cells: some ate, and drank wine, and
+slept there, and read their prayers. But Eliséy was not
+to be found. Efím returned to the hostelry, but he did
+not find his companion there either. On that evening
+the pilgrim, too, did not come back. He was gone, and
+had not returned the rouble to Efím. So Efím was left
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day Efím went again to the Sepulchre
+of the Lord with a Tambóv peasant, with whom he had
+journeyed on the ship. He wanted to make his way to
+the front, but he was again pushed back, and so he stood
+at a column and prayed. He looked ahead of him, and
+there in front, under the lamps, at the very Sepulchre of
+the Lord, stood Eliséy. He had extended his hands, like a
+priest at the altar, and his bald spot shone over his whole
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," thought Efím, "I will not miss him."</p>
+
+<p>He made his way to the front, but Eliséy was not
+there. Evidently he had left. On the third day he again
+went to the Sepulchre of the Lord, and there he saw
+Eliséy standing in the holiest place, in sight of everybody,
+and his hands were stretched out, and he looked up, as
+though he saw something above him. And his bald spot
+shone over his whole head.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," thought Efím, "I will certainly not miss him;
+I will go and stand at the entrance, and then he cannot
+escape me."</p>
+
+<p>Efím went out and stood there for a long time. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span>
+stood until after noon: all the people had passed out, but
+Eliséy was not among them.</p>
+
+<p>Efím passed six weeks in Jerusalem, and visited all the
+places, Bethlehem, and Bethany, and the Jordan, and had
+a stamp put on a new shirt at the Lord's Sepulchre, to be
+buried in it, and filled a bottle of Jordan water, and got
+some earth, and candles with blessed fire, and in eight
+places inscribed names for the mass of the dead. He
+spent all his money and had just enough left to get home
+on, and so he started for home. He reached Jaffa, boarded
+a ship, landed at Odessa, and walked toward his home.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>XI.</h3>
+
+<p>Efím walked by himself the same way he had come
+out. As he was getting close to his village, he began to
+worry again about how things were going at his house
+without him. In a year, he thought, much water runs
+by. It takes a lifetime to get together a home, but it
+does not take long to ruin it. He wondered how his son
+had done without him, how the spring had opened, how
+the cattle had wintered, and whether the hut was well
+built. Efím reached the spot where the year before he
+had parted from Eliséy. It was not possible to recognize
+the people. Where the year before they had suffered
+want, now there was plenty. Everything grew well in the
+field. The people picked up again and forgot their former
+misery. In the evening Efím reached the very village
+where the year before Eliséy had fallen behind. He had
+just entered the village, when a little girl in a white shirt
+came running out of a hut.</p>
+
+<p>"Grandfather, grandfather! Come to our house!"</p>
+
+<p>Efím wanted to go on, but the girl would not let him.
+She took hold of his coat and laughed and pulled him to
+the hut. A woman with a boy came out on the porch,
+and she, too, beckoned to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, grandfather, and eat supper with us and stay
+overnight!"</p>
+
+<p>Efím stepped in.</p>
+
+<p>"I can, at least, ask about Eliséy," he thought. "This
+is the very hut into which he went to get a drink."</p>
+
+<p>Efím went inside. The woman took off his wallet, gave
+him water to wash himself, and seated him at the table.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span>
+She fetched milk, cheese, cakes, and porridge, and placed
+it all on the table. Tarásych thanked her and praised
+the people for being hospitable to pilgrims. The woman
+shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"We cannot help receiving pilgrims," she said. "We
+received life from a pilgrim. We lived forgetting God,
+and God punished us in such a way that all of us were
+waiting for death. Last summer we came to such a point
+that we were all lying down sick and starved. We should
+certainly have died, but God sent us an old man like you.
+He stepped in during the daytime to get a drink; when
+he saw us, he took pity on us and remained at our house.
+He gave us to eat and to drink, and put us on our feet
+again. He cleared our land from debt, and bought a
+horse and cart and left it with us."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman entered the room, and interrupted her
+speech:</p>
+
+<p>"We do not know," she said, "whether he was a man
+or an angel of the Lord. He was good to us all, and
+pitied us, and then went away without giving his name,
+so that we do not know for whom to pray to God. I see
+it as though it happened just now: I was lying down and
+waiting for death to come; I looked up and saw a man
+come in,&mdash;just a simple, bald-headed man,&mdash;and ask for
+a drink. I, sinful woman, thought that he was a tramp,
+but see what he did! When he saw us he put down his
+wallet, right in this spot, and opened it."</p>
+
+<p>The girl broke in.</p>
+
+<p>"No, granny," she said, "first he put his wallet in the
+middle of the room, and only later did he put it on the
+bench."</p>
+
+<p>And they began to dispute and to recall his words and
+deeds: where he had sat down, and where he had
+slept, and what he had done, and what he had said to
+each.</p>
+
+<p>Toward evening the master of the house came home on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span>
+a horse, and he, too, began to tell about Eliséy, and how
+he had stayed at their house.</p>
+
+<p>"If he had not come to us," he said, "we should all of
+us have died in sin. We were dying in despair, and we
+murmured against God and men. But he put us on our
+feet, and through him we found out God, and began to
+believe in good people. May Christ save him! Before
+that we lived like beasts, and he has made men of us."</p>
+
+<p>They gave Efím to eat and to drink, and gave him a
+place to sleep, and themselves went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>As Efím lay down, he could not sleep, and Eliséy did
+not leave his mind, but he thought of how he had seen
+him three times in Jerusalem in the foremost place.</p>
+
+<p>"So this is the way he got ahead of me," he thought.
+"My work may be accepted or not, but his the Lord has
+accepted."</p>
+
+<p>In the morning Efím bade the people good-bye: they
+filled his wallet with cakes and went to work, while Efím
+started out on the road.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>XII.</h3>
+
+<p>Efím was away precisely a year. In the spring he returned
+home.</p>
+
+<p>He reached his house in the evening. His son was not
+at home,&mdash;he was in the dram-shop. He returned intoxicated,
+and Efím began to ask him about the house.
+He saw by everything that the lad had got into bad ways
+without him. He had spent all the money, and the business
+he had neglected. His father scolded him, and he
+answered his father with rude words.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to have come back yourself," he said.
+"Instead, you went away and took all the money with
+you, and now you make me responsible."</p>
+
+<p>The old man became angry and beat his son.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Efím Tarásych went to the elder to
+talk to him about his son. As he passed Eliséy's farm,
+Eliséy's wife was standing on the porch and greeting him:</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome, friend!" she said. "Did you, dear man,
+have a successful journey?"</p>
+
+<p>Efím Tarásych stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God," he said, "I have been at Jerusalem, but
+I lost your husband on the way. I hear that he is back."</p>
+
+<p>And the old woman started to talk to him, for she was
+fond of babbling.</p>
+
+<p>"He is back, my dear; he has been back for quite
+awhile. He returned soon after Assumption day. We
+were so glad to see him back. It was lonely without him.
+Not that we mean his work,&mdash;for he is getting old. But
+he is the head, and it is jollier for us. How happy our
+lad was! Without him, he said, it was as without light<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span>
+for the eyes. It was lonely without him, my dear. We
+love him so much!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, is he at home now?"</p>
+
+<p>"At home he is, neighbour, in the apiary, brushing
+in the swarms. He says it was a fine swarming season.
+The old man does not remember when there has been such
+a lot of bees. God gives us not according to our sins, he
+says. Come in, dear one! He will be so glad to see
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Efím walked through the vestibule and through the
+yard to the apiary, to see Eliséy. When he came inside
+the apiary, he saw Eliséy standing without a net, without
+gloves, in a gray caftan, under a birch-tree, extending his
+arms and looking up, and his bald spot shone over his
+whole head, just as he had stood in Jerusalem at the
+Lord's Sepulchre, and above him, through the birch-tree,
+the sun glowed, and above his head the golden bees
+circled in the form of a wreath, and did not sting him.
+Efím stopped.</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy's wife called out to her husband:</p>
+
+<p>"Your friend is here."</p>
+
+<p>Eliséy looked around. He was happy, and walked over
+toward his friend, softly brushing the bees out of his
+beard.</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome, friend, welcome, dear man! Did you have
+a successful journey?"</p>
+
+<p>"My feet took me there, and I have brought you some
+water from the river Jordan. Come and get it! But
+whether the Lord has received my work&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God! Christ save you!"</p>
+
+<p>Efím was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"I was there with my feet, but in spirit you were
+there, or somebody else&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It is God's work, my friend, God's work."</p>
+
+<p>"On my way home I stopped at the hut where I lost
+you."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Eliséy was frightened, and he hastened to say:</p>
+
+<p>"It is God's work, my friend, God's work. Well, won't
+you step in? I will bring some honey."</p>
+
+<p>And Eliséy changed the subject, and began to speak of
+home matters.</p>
+
+<p>Efím heaved a sigh. He did not mention the people of
+the hut to Eliséy, nor what he had seen in Jerusalem.
+And he understood that God has enjoined that each man
+shall before his death carry out his vow&mdash;with love
+and good deeds.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="WHERE_LOVE_IS_THERE" id="WHERE_LOVE_IS_THERE"></a>WHERE LOVE IS, THERE
+GOD IS ALSO<br />
+1885</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center big">WHERE LOVE IS, THERE
+GOD IS ALSO</p>
+
+
+<p>Shoemaker Martýn Avdyéich lived in the city. He
+lived in a basement, in a room with one window. The
+window looked out on the street. Through it the people
+could be seen as they passed by: though only the feet
+were visible, Martýn Avdyéich could tell the men by
+their boots. He had lived for a long time in one place
+and had many acquaintances. It was a rare pair of boots
+in the neighbourhood that had not gone once or twice
+through his hands. Some he had resoled; on others he
+had put patches, or fixed the seams, or even put on new
+uppers. Frequently he saw his own work through the
+window. He had much to do, for he did honest work,
+put in strong material, took no more than was fair, and
+kept his word. If he could get a piece of work done by a
+certain time he undertook to do it, and if not, he would
+not cheat, but said so in advance. Everybody knew
+Avdyéich, and his work never stopped.</p>
+
+<p>Avdyéich had always been a good man, but in his old
+age he thought more of his soul and came near unto God.
+Even while Martýn had been living with a master, his
+wife had died, and he had been left with a boy three
+years of age. Their children did not live long. All the
+elder children had died before. At first Martýn had
+intended sending his son to his sister in a village, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span>
+then he felt sorry for the little lad, and thought: "It will
+be hard for my Kapitóshka to grow up in somebody else's
+family, and so I will keep him."</p>
+
+<p>Avdyéich left his master, and took up quarters with
+his son. But God did not grant Avdyéich any luck
+with his children. No sooner had the boy grown up so
+as to be a help to his father and a joy to him, than a
+disease fell upon him and he lay down and had a fever
+for a week and died. Martýn buried his son, and was in
+despair. He despaired so much that he began to murmur
+against God. He was so downhearted that more than
+once he asked God to let him die, and rebuked God for
+having taken his beloved only son, and not him. He even
+stopped going to church.</p>
+
+<p>One day an old man, a countryman of Avdyéich's,
+returning from Tróitsa,&mdash;he had been a pilgrim for eight
+years,&mdash;came to see him. Avdyéich talked with him
+and began to complain of his sorrow:</p>
+
+<p>"I have even no desire to live any longer, godly man.
+If I could only die. That is all I am praying God for.
+I am a man without any hope."</p>
+
+<p>And the old man said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"You do not say well, Martýn. We cannot judge
+God's works. Not by our reason, but by God's judgment
+do we live. God has determined that your son should
+die, and you live. Evidently it is better so. The reason
+you are in despair is that you want to live for your own
+enjoyment."</p>
+
+<p>"What else shall we live for?" asked Martýn.</p>
+
+<p>And the old man said:</p>
+
+<p>"We must live for God, Martýn. He gives us life,
+and for Him must we live. When you shall live for Him
+and shall not worry about anything, life will be lighter
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>Martýn was silent, and he said:</p>
+
+<p>"How shall we live for God?"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And the old man said:</p>
+
+<p>"Christ has shown us how to live for God. Do you
+know how to read? If so, buy yourself a Gospel and
+read it, and you will learn from it how to live for God.
+It tells all about it."</p>
+
+<p>These words fell deep into Avdyéich's heart. And he
+went that very day and bought himself a New Testament
+in large letters, and began to read.</p>
+
+<p>Avdyéich had meant to read it on holidays only, but
+when he began to read it, his heart was so rejoiced that
+he read it every day. Many a time he buried himself so
+much in reading that all the kerosene would be spent in
+the lamp, but he could not tear himself away from the
+book. And Avdyéich read in it every evening, and the
+more he read, the clearer it became to him what God
+wanted of him, and how he should live for God; and his
+heart grew lighter and lighter. Formerly, when he lay
+down to sleep, he used to groan and sob and think of his
+Kapitóshka, but now he only muttered:</p>
+
+<p>"Glory be to Thee, glory to Thee, O Lord! Thy will
+be done!"</p>
+
+<p>Since then Avdyéich's life had been changed. Formerly,
+he used on a holiday to frequent the tavern, to
+drink tea, and would not decline a drink of vódka. He
+would drink a glass with an acquaintance and, though he
+would not be drunk, he would come out of the tavern in
+a happier mood, and then he would speak foolish things,
+and would scold, or slander a man. Now all that passed
+away from him. His life came to be calm and happy.
+In the morning he sat down to work, and when he got
+through, he took the lamp from the hook, put it down on
+the table, fetched the book from the shelf, opened it, and
+began to read it. And the more he read, the better he
+understood it, and his mind was clearer and his heart
+lighter.</p>
+
+<p>One evening Martýn read late into the night. He had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span>
+before him the Gospel of St. Luke. He read the sixth
+chapter and the verses: "And unto him that smiteth
+thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that
+taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat
+also. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him
+that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as
+ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them
+likewise."</p>
+
+<p>And he read also the other verses, where the Lord
+says: "And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the
+things which I say? Whosoever cometh to me, and
+heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to
+whom he is like: he is like a man which built an house,
+and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and
+when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon
+that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded
+upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like
+a man that without a foundation built an house upon the
+earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently,
+and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was
+great."</p>
+
+<p>When Avdyéich read these words, there was joy in his
+heart. He took off his glasses, put them on the book,
+leaned his arms on the table, and fell to musing. And
+he began to apply these words to his life, and he
+thought:</p>
+
+<p>"Is my house on a rock, or on the sand? It is well
+if it is founded on a rock: it is so easy to sit alone,&mdash;it
+seems to me that I am doing everything which God has
+commanded; but if I dissipate, I shall sin again. I will
+just proceed as at present. It is so nice! Help me,
+God!"</p>
+
+<p>This he thought, and he wanted to go to sleep, but he
+was loath to tear himself away from the book. And
+he began to read the seventh chapter. He read about the
+centurion, about the widow's son, about the answer to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span>
+John's disciples, and he reached the passage where the
+rich Pharisee invited the Lord to be his guest, and where
+the sinning woman anointed His feet and washed them
+with her tears, and he justified her. And he reached
+the 44th verse, and read: "And he turned to the
+woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman?
+I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for
+my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and
+wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me
+no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath
+not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst
+not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with
+ointment."</p>
+
+<p>When he had read these verses, he thought:</p>
+
+<p>"He gave no water for His feet; he gave no kiss; he
+did not anoint His head with oil."</p>
+
+<p>And again Avdyéich took off his glasses and placed
+them on the book, and fell to musing.</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently he was just such a Pharisee as I am. He,
+no doubt, thought only of himself: how to drink tea, and
+be warm, and in comfort, but he did not think of the
+guest. About himself he thought, but no care did he
+have for the guest. And who was the guest?&mdash;The Lord
+Himself. Would I have done so, if He had come to
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>And Avdyéich leaned his head on both his arms and
+did not notice how he fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Martýn!" suddenly something seemed to breathe
+over his very ear.</p>
+
+<p>Martýn shuddered in his sleep: "Who is that?"</p>
+
+<p>He turned around and looked at the door, but there
+was nobody there. He bent down again, to go to sleep.
+Suddenly he heard distinctly:</p>
+
+<p>"Martýn, oh, Martýn, remember, to-morrow I will come
+to the street."</p>
+
+<p>Martýn awoke, rose from his chair, and began to rub<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span>
+his eyes. He did not know himself whether he had heard
+these words in his dream or in waking. He put out the
+light and went to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Avdyéich got up in the morning before daybreak, said
+his prayers, made a fire, put the beet soup and porridge on
+the stove, started the samovár, tied on his apron, and sat
+down at the window to work. And, as he sat there at
+work, he kept thinking of what had happened the night
+before. His thoughts were divided: now he thought that
+it had only seemed so to him, and now again he thought
+he had actually heard the voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he thought, "such things happen."</p>
+
+<p>Martýn was sitting at the window and not so much
+working as looking out into the street, and if somebody
+passed in unfamiliar boots, he bent over to look out of the
+window, in order to see not merely the boots, but also
+the face. A janitor passed by in new felt boots; then a
+water-carrier went past; then an old soldier of the
+days of Nicholas, in patched old felt boots, holding a
+shovel in his hands, came in a line with the window.
+Avdyéich recognized him by his felt boots. The old
+man's name was Stepánych, and he was living with a
+neighbouring merchant for charity's sake. It was his duty
+to help the janitor. Stepánych began to clear away the
+snow opposite Avdyéich's window. Avdyéich cast a
+glance at him and went back to his work.</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently I am losing my senses in my old age,"
+Avdyéich laughed to himself. "Stepánych is clearing
+away the snow, and I thought that Christ was coming to
+see me. I, old fool, am losing my senses." But before
+he had made a dozen stitches, something drew him again
+toward the window. He looked out, and there he saw
+Stepánych leaning his shovel against the wall and either
+warming or resting himself.</p>
+
+<p>He was an old, broken-down man, and evidently shovelling
+snow was above his strength. Avdyéich thought:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span>
+"I ought to give him some tea; fortunately the samovár
+is just boiling." He stuck the awl into the wood, got up,
+placed the samovár on the table, put some tea in the teapot,
+and tapped with his finger at the window. Stepánych
+turned around and walked over to the window. Avdyéich
+beckoned to him and went to open the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in and get warmed up!" he said. "I suppose
+you are feeling cold."</p>
+
+<p>"Christ save you! I have a breaking in my bones,"
+said Stepánych.</p>
+
+<p>He came in, shook off the snow and wiped his boots so
+as not to track the floor, but he was tottering all the time.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't take the trouble to rub your boots. I will clean
+up,&mdash;that is my business. Come and sit down!" said
+Avdyéich. "Here, drink a glass of tea!"</p>
+
+<p>Avdyéich filled two glasses and moved one of them up
+to his guest, and himself poured his glass into the saucer
+and began to blow at it.</p>
+
+<p>Stepánych drank his glass; then he turned it upside
+down, put the lump of sugar on top of it, and began to
+express his thanks; but it was evident that he wanted
+another glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Have some more," said Avdyéich; and he poured out
+a glass for his guest and one for himself. Avdyéich drank
+his tea, but something kept drawing his attention to the
+window.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you waiting for anybody?" asked the guest.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I waiting for anybody? It is really a shame to
+say for whom I am waiting: no, I am not exactly waiting,
+but a certain word has fallen deep into my heart: I do
+not know myself whether it is a vision, or what. You see,
+my friend, I read the Gospel yesterday about Father Christ
+and how He suffered and walked the earth. I suppose
+you have heard of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have," replied Stepánych, "but we are ignorant
+people,&mdash;we do not know how to read."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, so I read about how He walked the earth. I
+read, you know, about how He came to the Pharisee, and
+the Pharisee did not give Him a good reception. Well,
+my friend, as I was reading last night about that very
+thing, I wondered how he could have failed to honour
+Father Christ. If He should have happened to come to me,
+for example, I should have done everything to receive
+Him. But he did not receive Him well. As I was thinking
+of it, I fell asleep. And as I dozed off I heard some
+one calling me by name: I got up and it was as though
+somebody were whispering to me: 'Wait,' he said: 'I will
+come to-morrow.' This he repeated twice. Would you
+believe it,&mdash;it has been running through my head,&mdash;I
+blame myself for it,&mdash;and I am, as it were, waiting for
+Father Christ."</p>
+
+<p>Stepánych shook his head and said nothing. He finished
+his glass and put it sidewise, but Avdyéich took it
+again and filled it with tea.</p>
+
+<p>"Drink, and may it do you good! I suppose when He,
+the Father, walked the earth, He did not neglect anybody,
+and kept the company mostly of simple folk. He visited
+mostly simple folk, and chose His disciples mostly from
+people of our class, labouring men, like ourselves the sinners.
+He who raises himself up, He said, shall be humbled,
+and he who humbles himself shall be raised. You
+call me Lord, He said, but I will wash your feet. He who
+wants to be the first, He said, let him be everybody's servant;
+because, He said, blessed are the poor, the meek
+the humble, and the merciful."</p>
+
+<p>Stepánych forgot his tea. He was an old man and
+easily moved to tears. He sat there and listened,
+and tears flowed down his cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Take another glass!" said Avdyéich.</p>
+
+<p>But Stepánych made the sign of the cross, thanked him
+for the tea, pushed the glass away from him, and
+got up.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Martýn Avdyéich," he said. "You were
+hospitable to me, and have given food to my body and my
+soul."</p>
+
+<p>"You are welcome. Come in again,&mdash;I shall be glad
+to see you," said Avdyéich.</p>
+
+<p>Stepánych went away. Martýn poured out the last tea,
+finished another glass, put away the dishes, and again sat
+down at the window to work,&mdash;to tap a boot. And as
+he worked, he kept looking out of the window,&mdash;waiting
+for Christ and thinking of Him and His works. And all
+kinds of Christ's speeches ran through his head.</p>
+
+<p>There passed by two soldiers, one in Crown boots, the
+other in boots of his own; then the proprietor of a neighbouring
+house came by in clean galoshes, and then a
+baker with a basket. All of these went past the window,
+and then a woman in woollen stockings and peasant shoes
+came in line with the window. She went by the window
+and stopped near a wall. Avdyéich looked at her through
+the window, and saw that she was a strange, poorly
+dressed woman, with a child: she had stopped with her
+back to the wind and was trying to wrap the child,
+though she did not have anything to wrap it in. The
+woman's clothes were for the summer, and scanty at that.
+Avdyéich could hear the child cry in the street, and her
+vain attempt to quiet it. Avdyéich got up and went out
+of his room and up to the staircase, and called out:</p>
+
+<p>"Clever Woman! Clever woman!"</p>
+
+<p>The woman heard him and turned around.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you standing there in the cold with the
+child? Come in here! It will be easier for you to wrap
+the child in a warm room. Here, this way!"</p>
+
+<p>The woman was surprised. She saw an old man in an
+apron, with glasses over his nose, calling to her. She
+followed him in.</p>
+
+<p>They went down the stairs and entered the room, and
+Martýn took the woman up to the bed.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sit down here, clever woman, nearer to the stove, and
+get warm and feed the child."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no milk in my breasts,&mdash;I have not had anything
+to eat since morning," said the woman, but still she
+took the child to her breast.</p>
+
+<p>Avdyéich shook his head, went to the table, fetched
+some bread and a bowl, opened a door in the stove, filled
+the bowl with beet soup, and took out the pot of porridge,
+but it was not done yet. He put the soup on the table,
+put down the bread, and took off a rag from a hook and
+put it down on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, clever woman, and eat, and I will sit with
+the babe,&mdash;I used to have children of my own, and so I
+know how to take care of them."</p>
+
+<p>The woman made the sign of the cross, sat down at the
+table, and began to eat, while Avdyéich seated himself on
+the bed with the child. He smacked his lips at it, but
+could not smack well, for he had no teeth. The babe
+kept crying all the time. Avdyéich tried to frighten it
+with his finger: he quickly carried his finger down toward
+the babe's mouth and pulled it away again. He did not
+put his finger into the child's mouth, because it was black,&mdash;all
+smeared with pitch. But the child took a fancy
+for his finger and grew quiet, and then began even to
+smile. Avdyéich, too, was happy. The woman was eating
+in the meantime and telling him who she was and
+whither she was going.</p>
+
+<p>"I am a soldier's wife," she said. "My husband was
+driven somewhere far away eight months ago, and I do
+not know where he is. I had been working as a cook
+when the baby was born; they would not keep me with
+the child. This is the third month that I have been
+without a place. I have spent all I had saved. I wanted
+to hire out as a wet-nurse, but they will not take me: they
+say that I am too thin. I went to a merchant woman,
+where our granny lives, and she promised she would take<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span>
+me. I thought she wanted me to come at once, but she
+told me she wanted me next week. She lives a distance
+away. I am all worn out and have worn out the dear
+child, too. Luckily our landlady pities us for the sake of
+Christ, or else I do not know how we should have lived
+until now."</p>
+
+<p>Avdyéich heaved a sigh, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"And have you no warm clothes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, it is time now to have warm clothing, dear
+man! But yesterday I pawned my last kerchief for
+twenty kopeks."</p>
+
+<p>The woman went up to the bed and took her child,
+but Avdyéich got up, went to the wall, rummaged there
+awhile, and brought her an old sleeveless cloak.</p>
+
+<p>"Take this!" he said. "It is an old piece, but you
+may use it to wrap yourself in."</p>
+
+<p>The woman looked at the cloak and at the old man,
+and took the cloak, and burst out weeping. Avdyéich
+turned his face away; he crawled under the bed, pulled
+out a box, rummaged through it, and again sat down
+opposite the woman.</p>
+
+<p>And the woman said:</p>
+
+<p>"May Christ save you, grandfather! Evidently He
+sent me to your window. My child would have frozen
+to death. When I went out it was warm, but now it has
+turned dreadfully cold. It was He, our Father, who taught
+you to look through the window and have pity on me,
+sorrowful woman."</p>
+
+<p>Avdyéich smiled, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"It is He who has instructed me: clever woman,
+there was good reason why I looked through the
+window."</p>
+
+<p>Martýn told the soldier woman about his dream, and
+how he had heard a voice promising him that the Lord
+would come to see him on that day.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything is possible," said the woman. She got<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span>
+up, threw the cloak over her, wrapped the child in it, and
+began to bow to Avdyéich and to thank him.</p>
+
+<p>"Accept this, for the sake of Christ," said Avdyéich,
+giving her twenty kopeks, with which to redeem her
+kerchief.</p>
+
+<p>The woman made the sign of the cross, and so did
+Avdyéich, and he saw the woman out.</p>
+
+<p>She went away. Avdyéich ate some soup, put the
+things away, and sat down once more to work. He was
+working, but at the same time thinking of the window:
+whenever it grew dark there, he looked up to see who was
+passing. There went by acquaintances and strangers, and
+there was nothing peculiar.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Avdyéich saw an old woman, a huckstress,
+stop opposite the very window. She was carrying a basket
+with apples. There were but few of them left,&mdash;evidently
+she had sold all, and over her shoulder she carried
+a bag with chips. No doubt, she had picked them up at
+some new building, and was on her way home. The bag
+was evidently pulling hard on her shoulder; she wanted
+to shift it to her other shoulder, so she let the bag down
+on the flagstones, set the apple-basket on a post, and began
+to shake down the chips. While she was doing that, a
+boy in a torn cap leaped out from somewhere, grasped any
+apple from the basket, and wanted to skip out, but the old
+woman saw him in time and turned around and grabbed
+the boy by the sleeve. The boy yanked and tried to get
+away, but the old woman held on to him with both her
+hands, knocked down his cap, and took hold of his hair.
+The boy cried, and the old woman scolded. Avdyéich did
+not have time to put away the awl. He threw it on the
+floor, jumped out of the room, stumbled on the staircase,
+and dropped his glasses. He ran out into the street. The
+old woman was pulling the boy's hair and scolding him.
+She wanted to take him to a policeman; the little fellow
+struggled and tried to deny what he had done:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I did not take any, so why do you beat me? Let me
+go!"</p>
+
+<p>Avdyéich tried to separate them. He took the boy's
+arm, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let him go, granny, forgive him for Christ's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will forgive him in such a way that he will not
+forget until the new bath brooms are ripe. I will take
+the rascal to the police station!"</p>
+
+<p>Avdyéich began to beg the old woman:</p>
+
+<p>"Let him go, granny, he will not do it again. Let him
+go, for Christ's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>The woman let go of him. The boy wanted to run,
+but Avdyéich held on to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Beg the grandmother's forgiveness," he said. "Don't
+do that again,&mdash;I saw you take the apple."</p>
+
+<p>The boy began to cry, and he asked her forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right. And now, take this apple!" Avdyéich
+took an apple from the basket and gave it to the boy. "I
+will pay for it, granny," he said to the old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"You are spoiling these ragamuffins," said the old
+woman. "He ought to be rewarded in such a way that
+he should remember it for a week."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, granny, granny!" said Avdyéich. "That is according
+to our ways, but how is that according to God's
+ways? If he is to be whipped for an apple, what ought to
+be done with us for our sins?"</p>
+
+<p>The old woman grew silent.</p>
+
+<p>And Avdyéich told the old woman the parable of the
+lord who forgave his servant his whole large debt, after
+which the servant went and took his fellow servant who
+was his debtor by the throat. The old woman listened to
+him, and the boy stood and listened, too.</p>
+
+<p>"God has commanded that we should forgive," said
+Avdyéich, "or else we, too, shall not be forgiven. All are
+to be forgiven, but most of all an unthinking person."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman shook her head and sighed.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That is so," said the old woman, "but they are very
+much spoiled nowadays."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we old people ought to teach them," said
+Avdyéich.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what I say," said the old woman. "I myself
+had seven of them,&mdash;but only one daughter is left now."
+And the old woman began to tell where and how she was
+living with her daughter, and how many grandchildren
+she had. "My strength is waning," she said, "but still I
+work. I am sorry for my grandchildren, and they are such
+nice children,&mdash;nobody else meets me the way they do.
+Aksyútka will not go to anybody from me. 'Granny,
+granny dear, darling!'" And the old woman melted with
+tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, he is but a child,&mdash;God be with him!"
+the old woman said about the boy.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to lift the bag on her shoulders, when the
+boy jumped up to her, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me carry it, granny! I am going that way."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman shook her head and threw the bag on
+the boy's shoulders. They walked together down the
+street. The old woman had forgotten to ask Avdyéich to
+pay her for the apple. Avdyéich stood awhile, looking
+at them and hearing them talk as they walked along.</p>
+
+<p>When they disappeared from sight, he returned to his
+room. He found his glasses on the staircase,&mdash;they were
+not broken,&mdash;and he picked up his awl and again sat
+down to work. He worked for awhile; he could not find
+the holes with the bristle, when he looked up and saw the
+lampman lighting the lamps.</p>
+
+<p>"It is evidently time to strike a light," he thought, and
+he got up and fixed the lamp and hung it on the hook,
+and sat down again to work. He finished a boot: he
+turned it around and looked at it, and he saw that it was
+well done. He put down his tool, swept up the clippings,
+put away the bristles and the remnants and the awls, took<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span>
+the lamp and put it on the table, and fetched the Gospel
+from the shelf. He wanted to open the book where he
+had marked it the day before with a morocco clipping, but
+he opened it in another place. And just as he went to
+open the Gospel, he thought of his dream of the night
+before. And just as he thought of it, it appeared to him
+as though something were moving and stepping behind
+him. He looked around, and, indeed, it looked as though
+people were standing in the dark corner, but he could not
+make out who they were. And a voice whispered to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Martýn, oh, Martýn, have you not recognized me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whom?" asked Avdyéich.</p>
+
+<p>"Me," said the voice. "It is I."</p>
+
+<p>And out of the dark corner came Stepánych, and he
+smiled and vanished like a cloud and was no more.</p>
+
+<p>"And it is I," said a voice.</p>
+
+<p>And out of the dark corner came the woman with the
+babe, and the woman smiled and the child laughed, and
+they, too, disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"And it is I," said a voice.</p>
+
+<p>And out came the old woman and the boy with the
+apple, and both smiled and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>And joy fell on Avdyéich's heart, and he made the sign
+of the cross, put on his glasses, and began to read the
+Gospel, there where he had opened it. And at the top of
+the page he read:</p>
+
+<p>"I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was
+thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye
+took me in."</p>
+
+<p>And at the bottom of the page he read:</p>
+
+<p>"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of
+these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Matt. xxv.)</p>
+
+<p>And Avdyéich understood that his dream had not deceived
+him, that the Saviour had really come to him on
+that day, and that he had received Him.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="TEXTS_FOR_CHAPBOOK" id="TEXTS_FOR_CHAPBOOK"></a>TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK<br />
+ILLUSTRATIONS<br />
+1885</h2>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center big">TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK<br />
+ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_FIEND_PERSISTS_BUT_GOD_RESISTS" id="THE_FIEND_PERSISTS_BUT_GOD_RESISTS"></a>THE FIEND PERSISTS, BUT GOD RESISTS</h2>
+
+
+<p>In ancient times there lived a good master. He had
+plenty of everything, and many slaves served him. And
+the slaves prided themselves on their master. They said:</p>
+
+<p>"There is not a better master under heaven. He feeds
+us and dresses us well, and gives us work to do according
+to our strength, and never offends us with a word, and
+bears no grudge against any one; he is not like other
+masters who torture their slaves worse than cattle, and
+punish them with cause and without cause, and never
+say a good word to them. Our master wishes us good,
+and does us good, and speaks good words to us. We do
+not want any better life."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the slaves boasted of their master. And the devil
+was annoyed to see the slaves living well and in love with
+their master. And the devil took possession of one of the
+master's slaves, Aleb. He took possession of him and
+commanded him to seduce other slaves. And when all
+the slaves were resting and praising their master, Aleb
+raised his voice and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Brothers, in vain do you pride yourselves on the goodness
+of your master. Try to do the devil's bidding, and
+he, too, will be kind to you. We serve our master well,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span>
+and please him in everything. He needs only to have a
+thing in mind, and we do it.&mdash;we guess his thoughts.
+Why, then, should he not be good to us? Stop doing his
+bidding and do him some wrong, and he will be like
+everybody else, and will repay evil with evil, much worse
+than the worst of masters."</p>
+
+<p>And the other slaves began to dispute with Aleb. They
+disputed and made a wager. Aleb undertook to anger the
+good master. He undertook to do so on condition that
+if he did not succeed in making him angry, he should
+lose his holiday garment, but if he did, each should give
+him his own holiday garment, and, besides, they promised
+to defend him against the master and to free him if the
+master should put him in irons or throw him into prison.
+They made this wager, and Aleb promised to anger the
+master on the following morning.</p>
+
+<p>Aleb was serving in the master's sheepfold and tended
+on costly thoroughbred rams. And so, when the good
+master came the next morning with his guests to the
+sheepfold to show them his favourite expensive rams, the
+devil's labourer winked to his companions: "Watch me
+now! I am going to anger the master." All the slaves
+gathered and looked through the door and over the enclosure,
+and the devil climbed a tree and looked from
+there into the yard, to see how his labourer was going to
+serve him. The master walked through the yard, showing
+his guests the sheep and lambs, and he wanted to
+show them his best ram.</p>
+
+<p>"The other rams are nice, too, but the one with the
+twisted horns is priceless, and I think more of him than
+of the pupil of my eye."</p>
+
+<p>The sheep and the lambs were shying from the people
+in the yard, and the guests could not get a good look at
+the expensive ram. The moment the ram stopped, the
+labourer of the devil, as though by accident, frightened
+the sheep, and they got all mixed. The guests could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span>
+make out which was the expensive ram. The master got
+tired of it, so he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Aleb, my dear friend, take the trouble carefully to
+catch the best ram with the twisted horns and to hold
+him awhile."</p>
+
+<p>The moment the master had said that, Aleb rushed
+forward, like a lion, into the midst of the rams and
+caught the priceless ram by his fleece. He got hold of
+the wool, and with one hand he seized the left hind leg
+and raised it and in the eyes of the master jerked it in
+such a way that it snapped like a linden post. Aleb had
+broken the ram's leg beneath the knee. The ram began
+to bleat and fell down on his fore legs. Aleb grasped the
+right leg while the left hung loose like a whip-cord. The
+guests and all the slaves groaned, and the devil rejoiced,
+when he saw how cleverly Aleb had done his work. The
+master looked blacker than night. He frowned, lowered
+his head, and did not say a word. The guests and the slaves
+were silent. They waited to see what would happen.</p>
+
+<p>The master was silent, then shook himself, as though
+he wanted to throw something off, and raised his head
+and lifted it to the sky. He looked at it for a short
+time, and the wrinkles on his face disappeared, and he
+smiled and lowered his eyes on Aleb. He looked at Aleb,
+and smiled, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"O Aleb, Aleb! Your master has commanded you to
+anger me. But my master is stronger than yours: you
+have not angered me, but I will anger your master. You
+were afraid that I would punish you, and you wanted to
+be free, Aleb. Know, then, that you will receive no punishment
+from me, and, since you wanted to be free, I free
+you in the presence of these my guests. Go in all four
+directions and take your holiday garment with you!"</p>
+
+<p>And the good master went with his guests to the house.
+But the devil ground his teeth and fell down from the
+tree and sank through the earth.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="LITTLE_GIRLS_WISER_THAN_OLD_PEOPLE" id="LITTLE_GIRLS_WISER_THAN_OLD_PEOPLE"></a>LITTLE GIRLS WISER THAN OLD PEOPLE</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was an early Easter. They had just quit using
+sleighs. In the yards lay snow, and rills ran down the
+village. A large puddle had run down from a manure
+pile into a lane between two farms. And at this puddle
+two girls, one older than the other, had met. Both of
+them had been dressed by their mothers in new bodices.
+The little girl had a blue bodice, and the elder a yellow
+one with a design. Both had their heads wrapped in red
+kerchiefs. After mass the two girls went to the puddle,
+where they showed their new garments to each other, and
+began to play. They wanted to plash in the water. The
+little girl started to go into the puddle with her shoes on,
+but the older girl said to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go, Malásha, your mother will scold you. I
+will take off my shoes, and you do the same."</p>
+
+<p>The girls took off their shoes, raised their skirts, and
+walked through the puddle toward each other. Malásha
+stepped in up to her ankles, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"It is deep, Akúlka, I am afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," she replied, "it will not be any deeper.
+Come straight toward me!" They came closer to each
+other. Akúlka said:</p>
+
+<p>"Malásha, look out, and do not splash it up, but walk
+softly."</p>
+
+<p>She had barely said that when Malásha plumped her
+foot into the water and bespattered Akúlka's bodice, and
+not only her bodice, but also her nose and eyes. When
+Akúlka saw the spots on her bodice, she grew angry at
+Malásha, and scolded her, and ran after her, and wanted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span>
+to strike her. Malásha was frightened and, seeing what
+trouble she had caused, jumped out of the puddle and ran
+home.</p>
+
+<p>Akúlka's mother passed by; she saw her daughter's
+bodice bespattered and her shirt soiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Where, accursed one, did you get yourself so dirty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Malásha has purposely splashed it on me."</p>
+
+<p>Akúlka's mother grasped Malásha and gave her a knock
+on the nape of her neck. Malásha began to howl, and
+her mother ran out of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you strike my daughter?" she began to
+scold her neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>One word brought back another, and the women began
+to quarrel. The men, too, ran out, and a big crowd gathered
+in the street. All were crying, and nobody could
+hear his neighbour. They scolded and cursed each other;
+one man gave another man a push, and a fight had begun,
+when Akúlka's grandmother came out. She stepped in
+the midst of the peasants, and began to talk to them:</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing, dear ones? Consider the holiday.
+This is a time for rejoicing. And see what sin
+you are doing!"</p>
+
+<p>They paid no attention to the old woman, and almost
+knocked her off her feet. She would never have stopped
+them, if it had not been for Akúlka and Malásha. While
+the women exchanged words, Akúlka wiped off her bodice,
+and went back to the puddle in the lane. She picked up
+a pebble and began to scratch the ground so as to let the
+water off into the street. While she was scratching,
+Malásha came up and began to help her: she picked up
+a chip and widened the rill. The peasants had begun
+to fight, just as the water went down the rill toward
+the place where the old woman was trying to separate the
+men. The girls ran, one from one side of the rill,
+the other from the other side.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out, Malásha, look out!" shouted Akúlka.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Malásha wanted to say something herself, but could
+not speak for laughter.</p>
+
+<p>The girls were running and laughing at a chip which
+was bobbing up and down the rill. They ran straight
+into the crowd of the peasants. The old woman saw them
+and said to the peasants:</p>
+
+<p>"Shame on you before God, men! You have started
+fighting on account of these two girls, and they have long
+ago forgotten it: the dear children have been playing
+nicely together. They are wiser than you."</p>
+
+<p>The men looked at the girls, and they felt ashamed.
+Then they laughed at themselves, and scattered to their
+farms.</p>
+
+<p>"Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter
+into the kingdom of heaven."</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_TWO_BROTHERS_AND_THE_GOLD" id="THE_TWO_BROTHERS_AND_THE_GOLD"></a>THE TWO BROTHERS AND THE GOLD</h2>
+
+
+<p>In ancient times there lived not far from Jerusalem two
+brothers, the elder named Athanasius, and the younger
+John. They lived in a mountain, not far from the city,
+and supported themselves on what people offered them.
+The brothers passed all their days at work. They worked
+not for themselves, but for the poor. Wherever were
+those who were oppressed by labour, or sick people, or
+orphans, or widows, thither the brothers went, and there
+they worked, and received no pay. Thus the two brothers
+passed the whole week away from each other, and met
+only on Saturday evening in their abode. On Sunday
+alone did they stay at home, and then they prayed and
+talked with each other. And an angel of the Lord came
+down to them and blessed them. On Monday they
+separated each in his own direction. Thus they lived
+for many years, and each week the angel of the Lord
+came down to them and blessed them.</p>
+
+<p>One Monday, when the brothers had already gone out
+to work and had gone each in his direction, the elder
+brother, Athanasius, was loath to part from his brother,
+and he stopped and looked back. John was walking with
+lowered head, in his direction, without looking back. But
+suddenly John, too, stopped and, as though he had suddenly
+noticed something, gazed at something, while shielding
+his eyes. Then he approached what he was gazing
+at, suddenly jumped to one side, and, without looking
+back, ran down-hill and up-hill again, away from the
+place, as though a wolf were after him. Athanasius was
+surprised. He went back to that spot, to see what it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span>
+that had so frightened his brother. He went up to it and
+saw something shining in the sun. He came nearer,
+and there lay a heap of gold on the ground, as though
+poured out from a measure. And Athanasius was still
+more surprised, both at the gold and at his brother's leap.</p>
+
+<p>"Why was he frightened, and why did he run away?"
+thought Athanasius. "There is no sin in gold. The sin
+is in man. With gold one may do wrong, but also some
+good. How many orphans and widows may be fed, how
+many naked people dressed, and the poor and sick aided
+with this gold! We now serve people, but our service is
+small, though it is to the best of our strength. With this
+gold, however, we can serve people better."</p>
+
+<p>Thus Athanasius thought, and he wanted to tell it all
+to his brother; but John was out of the range of hearing,
+and could be seen only as a speck the size of a beetle on
+another mountain.</p>
+
+<p>Athanasius took off his cloak, scooped up as much gold
+as he was able to carry away, threw it on his shoulder,
+and carried it into the city. He came to a hostelry and
+left the gold with the keeper, and went back for the rest.
+When he had brought all the gold, he went to the
+merchants, bought some land in the city, and stones and
+timber, and hired labourers, and began to build three
+houses.</p>
+
+<p>Athanasius lived for three months in the city, and
+built three houses there: one&mdash;an asylum for widows
+and orphans, another&mdash;a hospital for the sick and the
+lame, and a third&mdash;for pilgrims and for the needy. And
+Athanasius found three God-fearing old men, and one of
+them he placed in charge of the asylum, the second&mdash;of
+the hospital, and the third&mdash;of the hostelry. And Athanasius
+had still three thousand gold coins left. He gave
+each old man one thousand coins to distribute them to the
+poor.</p>
+
+<p>The three houses began to fill up with people, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span>
+people began to praise Athanasius for everything he had
+done. And Athanasius was glad of that and did not feel
+like leaving the city. But he loved his brother and so
+he bade the people farewell and, without keeping a single
+coin, went back to his abode, wearing the same old garment
+in which he had come.</p>
+
+<p>As Athanasius was approaching his mountain, he
+thought:</p>
+
+<p>"My brother did not judge rightly when he jumped
+from the gold and ran away from it. Have I not done
+better?"</p>
+
+<p>And no sooner had Athanasius thought so than he saw
+the angel who used to bless him standing in the road
+and looking threateningly at him. And Athanasius was
+frightened and only said:</p>
+
+<p>"For what, O Lord?"</p>
+
+<p>And the angel opened his lips, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Go hence! You are not worthy of living with your
+brother. One leap of your brother is worth all the deeds
+which you have done with your gold."</p>
+
+<p>And Athanasius began to speak of how many poor
+people and pilgrims he had fed, and how many orphans
+he had housed. And the angel said:</p>
+
+<p>"The devil who placed the gold there has also taught
+you these words."</p>
+
+<p>Then only did his conscience trouble him, and he saw
+that he had done his deeds not for God, and he wept and
+began to repent.</p>
+
+<p>The angel stepped out of the road and opened the path
+on which his brother, John, was already standing and
+waiting for him. After that Athanasius no longer submitted
+to the temptation of the devil who had scattered
+the gold, and he understood that not with gold, but only
+with words can we serve God and men.</p>
+
+<p>And the brothers began to live as before.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="ILYAS" id="ILYAS"></a>ILYÁS</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the Government of Ufá there lived a Bashkir, Ilyás.
+His father had left him no wealth. His father had died
+a year after he had got his son married. At that time
+Ilyás had seven mares, two cows, and a score of sheep;
+but Ilyás was a good master and began to increase his
+possessions; he worked with his wife from morning until
+night, got up earlier than anybody, and went to bed later,
+and grew richer from year to year. Thus Ilyás passed
+thirty-five years at work, and came to have a vast fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Ilyás finally had two hundred head of horses, 150
+head of cattle, and twelve hundred sheep. Men herded
+Ilyás's herds and flocks, and women milked the mares
+and cows, and made kumys, butter, and cheese. Ilyás
+had plenty of everything, and in the district everybody
+envied him his life. People said:</p>
+
+<p>"Ilyás is a lucky fellow. He has plenty of everything,&mdash;he
+does not need to die."</p>
+
+<p>Good people made Ilyás's friendship and became his
+friends. And guests came to him from a distance. He
+received them all, and fed them, and gave them to drink.
+No matter who came, he received kumys, and tea, and
+sherbet, and mutton. If guests came to see him, a
+sheep or two were killed, and if many guests arrived, he
+had them kill a mare.</p>
+
+<p>Ilyás had two sons and a daughter. He had got all of
+them married. When Ilyás had been poor, his sons had
+worked with him and had herded the horses and the
+cattle and the sheep; but when they grew rich, the sons<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span>
+became spoiled, and one of them even began to drink.
+One of them, the eldest, was killed in a fight, and the
+other, the younger, had a proud wife, and did not obey
+his father, and his father had to give him a separate
+maintenance.</p>
+
+<p>Ilyás gave him a house and cattle, and his own wealth
+was diminished. Soon after a plague fell on Ilyás's
+sheep, and many of them died. Then there was a famine
+year, the hay crop was a failure, and in the winter many
+head of cattle died. Then the Kirgizes drove off the best
+herd of horses. And thus Ilyás's estate grew less, and he
+fell lower and lower, and his strength began to wane.</p>
+
+<p>When he was seventy years old, he began to sell off
+his furs, rugs, saddles, and tents, and soon had to sell his
+last head of cattle, so that he was left without anything.
+Before he knew it, all was gone, and in his old age he
+had to go with his wife to live among strangers. All
+that Ilyás had left of his fortune was what garments he
+had on his body, a fur coat, a cap, and his morocco slippers
+and shoes, and his wife, Sham-shemagi, who was
+now an old woman. The son to whom he had given the
+property had left for a distant country, and his daughter
+had died. And so there was nobody to help the old
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Their neighbour, Muhamedshah, took pity on them.
+Muhamedshah was neither rich nor poor, and he lived an
+even life, and was a good man. He remembered Ilyás's
+hospitality, and so pitied him, and said to Ilyás:</p>
+
+<p>"Come to live with me, Ilyás, and bring your wife with
+you! In the summer work according to your strength in
+my truck-garden, and in the winter feed the cattle, and
+let Sham-shemagi milk the mares and make kumys. I
+will feed and clothe you and will let you have whatever
+you may need."</p>
+
+<p>Ilyás thanked his neighbour, and went to live with his
+wife as Muhamedshah's labourers. At first it was hard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span>
+for them, but soon they got used to the work, and the
+old people worked according to their strength.</p>
+
+<p>It was profitable for the master to keep these people,
+for they had been masters themselves and knew all the
+order and were not lazy, but worked according to their
+strength; but it pained Muhamedshah to see the well-to-do
+people brought down so low.</p>
+
+<p>One day distant guests, match-makers, happened to call
+on Muhamedshah; and the mulla, too, came. Muhamedshah
+ordered his men to catch a sheep and kill it.
+Ilyás flayed the sheep and cooked it and sent it in to the
+guests. They ate the mutton, drank tea, and then started
+to drink kumys. The guests and the master were sitting
+on down cushions on the rugs, drinking kumys out of
+bowls, and talking; but Ilyás got through with his work
+and walked past the door. When Muhamedshah saw
+him, he said to a guest:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see the old man who just went past the
+door?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did," said the guest; "but what is there remarkable
+about him?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is remarkable is that he used to be our richest
+man. Ilyás is his name; maybe you have heard of
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I have," said the guest. "I have never
+seen him, but his fame has gone far abroad."</p>
+
+<p>"Now he has nothing left, and he lives with me as a
+labourer, and his wife is with him,&mdash;she milks the cows."</p>
+
+<p>The guest was surprised. He clicked with his tongue,
+shook his head, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently fortune flies around like a wheel: one it
+lifts up, another it takes down. Well, does the old man
+pine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? He lives quietly and peaceably, and
+works well."</p>
+
+<p>Then the guest said:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"May I speak with him? I should like to ask him
+about his life."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you may," said the master, and he called
+out of the tent: "Babay!" (This means "grandfather"
+in the Bashkia language.) "Come in and drink some
+kumys, and bring your wife with you!"</p>
+
+<p>Ilyás came in with his wife. He exchanged greetings
+with the guests and with the master, said a prayer, and
+knelt down at the door; but his wife went back of a curtain
+and sat down with the mistress.</p>
+
+<p>A bowl of kumys was handed to Ilyás. Ilyás saluted
+the guests and the master, made a bow, drank a little, and
+put down the bowl.</p>
+
+<p>"Grandfather," the guest said to him, "I suppose it
+makes you feel bad to look at us and think of your former
+life, considering what fortune you had and how hard your
+life is now."</p>
+
+<p>But Ilyás smiled and said:</p>
+
+<p>"If I should tell you about my happiness and unhappiness,
+you would not believe me,&mdash;you had better ask
+my wife. She is a woman, and what is in her heart is
+on her tongue: she will tell you all the truth about this
+matter."</p>
+
+<p>And the guest spoke to her behind the curtain:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, granny, tell us how you judge about your
+former happiness and present sorrow."</p>
+
+<p>And Sham-shemagi spoke from behind the curtain:</p>
+
+<p>"I judge like this: My husband and I lived for fifty
+years trying to find happiness, and we did not find it; but
+now it is the second year that we have nothing left and
+that we live as labourers, and we have found that happiness
+and need no other."</p>
+
+<p>The guests were surprised and the master marvelled,
+and he even got up to throw aside the curtain and to look
+at the old woman. But the old woman was standing
+with folded hands, smiling and looking at her husband,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span>
+and the old man was smiling, too. The old woman said
+once more:</p>
+
+<p>"I am telling you the truth, without any jest: for half
+a century we tried to find happiness, and so long as we
+were rich, we did not find it; now nothing is left, and
+we are working out,&mdash;and we have come to have such
+happiness that we wish for no other.".</p>
+
+<p>"Wherein does your happiness lie?"</p>
+
+<p>"In this: when we were rich, my husband and I did
+not have an hour's rest: we had no time to talk together,
+to think of our souls, or to pray. We had so many cares!
+Now guests called on us,&mdash;and there were the cares about
+what to treat them to and what presents to make so that
+they should not misjudge us. When the guests left, we
+had to look after the labourers: they thought only of
+resting and having something good to eat, but we cared
+only about having our property attended to,&mdash;and so
+sinned. Now we were afraid that a wolf would kill a
+colt or a calf, and now that thieves might drive off a herd.
+When we lay down to sleep, we could not fall asleep,
+fearing lest the sheep might crush the lambs. We would
+get up in the night and walk around; no sooner would we
+be quieted than we would have a new care,&mdash;how to get
+fodder for the winter. And, worse than that, there was
+not much agreement between my husband and me. He
+would say that this had to be done so and so, and I would
+say differently, and so we began to quarrel, and sin. Thus
+we lived from one care to another, from one sin to another,
+and saw no happy life."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now my husband and I get up, speak together peaceably,
+in agreement, for we have nothing to quarrel about,
+nothing to worry about,&mdash;all the care we have is to serve
+our master. We work according to our strength, and we
+work willingly so that our master shall have no loss, but
+profit. When we come back, dinner is ready, and supper,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span>
+and kumys. If it is cold, there are dung chips to make
+a fire with and a fur coat to warm ourselves. For fifty
+years we looked for happiness, but only now have we
+found it."</p>
+
+<p>The guests laughed.</p>
+
+<p>And Ilyás said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do not laugh, brothers! This is not a joke, but a
+matter of human life. My wife and I were foolish and
+wept because we had lost our fortune, but now God has
+revealed the truth to us, and we reveal this to you, not for
+our amusement but for your good."</p>
+
+<p>And the mulla said:</p>
+
+<p>"That was a wise speech, and Ilyás has told the precise
+truth,&mdash;it says so, too, in Holy Writ."</p>
+
+<p>And the guests stopped laughing and fell to musing.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_FAIRY-TALE" id="A_FAIRY-TALE"></a>A FAIRY-TALE</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>About Iván the Fool and His Two Brothers, Semén
+the Warrior and Tarás the Paunch, and His
+Dumb Sister Malánya, and About the Old Devil
+and the Three Young Devils</p></div>
+
+<p>1885</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p class="center big">A FAIRY-TALE</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>About Iván the Fool and His Two Brothers, Semén
+the Warrior and Tarás the Paunch, and His
+Dumb Sister Malánya, and About the Old Devil
+and the Three Young Devils</p></div>
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p>In a certain kingdom, in a certain realm, there lived a
+rich peasant. He had three sons, Semén the Warrior,
+Tarás the Paunch, and Iván the Fool, and a daughter Malánya,
+the dumb old maid.</p>
+
+<p>Semén the Warrior went to war, to serve the king;
+Tarás the Paunch went to a merchant in the city, to sell
+wares; but Iván the Fool and the girl remained at home,
+to work and hump their backs.</p>
+
+<p>Semén the Warrior earned a high rank and an estate,
+and married a lord's daughter. His salary was big, and
+his estate was large, but still he could not make both ends
+meet: whatever he collected, his wife scattered as though
+from a sleeve, and they had no money.</p>
+
+<p>Semén the Warrior came to his estate, to collect the
+revenue. His clerk said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Where shall it come from? We have neither cattle,
+nor tools: neither horses, nor cows, nor plough, nor harrow.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span>
+Everything has to be provided, then there will be
+an income."</p>
+
+<p>And Semén the Warrior went to his father:</p>
+
+<p>"You are rich, father," he said, "and you have not
+given me anything. Cut off a third and I will transfer it
+to my estate."</p>
+
+<p>And the old man said:</p>
+
+<p>"You have brought nothing to my house, why should
+I give you a third? It will be unfair to Iván and to the
+girl."</p>
+
+<p>But Semén said:</p>
+
+<p>"But he is a fool, and she is a dumb old maid. What
+do they need?"</p>
+
+<p>And the old man said:</p>
+
+<p>"As Iván says so it shall be!"</p>
+
+<p>But Iván said:</p>
+
+<p>"All right, let him have it!"</p>
+
+<p>So Semén the Warrior took his third from the house,
+transferred it to his estate, and again went away to serve
+the king.</p>
+
+<p>Tarás the Paunch, too, earned much money,&mdash;and
+married a merchant woman. Still he did not have
+enough, and he came to his father, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Give me my part!"</p>
+
+<p>The old man did not want to give Tarás his part:</p>
+
+<p>"You," he said, "have brought nothing to the house,
+and everything in the house has been earned by Iván. I
+cannot be unfair to him and to the girl."</p>
+
+<p>But Tarás said:</p>
+
+<p>"What does he want it for? He is a fool. He cannot
+marry, for no one will have him; and the dumb girl does
+not need anything, either. Give me," he said, "half of the
+grain, Iván! I will not take your tools, and of your animals
+I want only the gray stallion,&mdash;you cannot plough
+with him."</p>
+
+<p>Iván laughed.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "I will earn it again."</p>
+
+<p>So Tarás, too, received his part. Tarás took the grain
+to town, and drove off the gray stallion, and Iván was left
+with one old mare, and he went on farming and supporting
+his father and his mother.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>The old devil was vexed because the brothers had not
+quarrelled in dividing up, but had parted in love. And so
+he called up three young devils.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he said, "there are three brothers, Semén
+the Warrior, Tarás the Paunch, and Iván the Fool. They
+ought to be quarrelling, but, instead, they live peacefully;
+they exchange with each other bread and salt. The fool
+has spoiled all my business. Go all three of you.&mdash;get
+hold of them, and mix them up in such a way that they
+shall tear out one another's eyes. Can you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can," they said.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you going to do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"We will do it like this," they said: "First we will
+ruin them, so that they will have nothing to eat; then we
+will throw them all in a heap, so that they will quarrel
+together."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," he said. "I see that you know your
+business. Go, and do not return to me before you have
+muddled all three, or else I will flay all three of you."</p>
+
+<p>The three devils all went to a swamp, and considered
+how to take hold of the matter: they quarrelled and
+quarrelled, for they wanted each of them to get the easiest
+job, and finally they decided to cast lots for each man. If
+one of them got through first, he was to come and help the
+others. The devils cast lots, and set a time when they
+were to meet again in the swamp, in order to find out
+who was through, and who needed help.</p>
+
+<p>When the time came, the devils gathered in the swamp.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span>
+They began to talk about their affairs. The first devil,
+Semén the Warrior's, began to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"My affair," he said, "is progressing. To-morrow my
+Semén will go to his father."</p>
+
+<p>His comrades asked him how he did it.</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place," he said, "I brought such bravery
+over Semén that he promised his king to conquer
+the whole world, and the king made him a commander
+and sent him out to fight the King of India. They
+came together for a fight. But that very night I wet
+all his powder, and I went over to the King of India
+and made an endless number of soldiers for him out of
+straw. When Semén's soldiers saw the straw soldiers
+walking upon them on all sides, they lost their courage.
+Semén commanded them to fire their cannon and their
+guns, but they could not fire them. Semén's soldiers were
+frightened and ran away like sheep. And the King of
+India vanquished them. Semén is disgraced,&mdash;they have
+taken his estate from him, and to-morrow he is to be
+beheaded. I have only one day's work left to do: to let
+him out of the prison, so that he can run home. To-morrow
+I shall be through with him, so tell me which of
+you I am to aid!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the other devil, Tarás's, began to speak:</p>
+
+<p>"I do not need any help," he said, "for my affair is also
+progressing nicely,&mdash;Tarás will not live another week.
+In the first place, I have raised a belly on him, and made
+him envious. He is so envious of other people's property
+that, no matter what he sees, he wants to buy it. He
+has bought up an endless lot of things and spent all his
+money on them and is still buying. He now buys on other
+people's money. He has quite a lot on his shoulders, and is
+so entangled that he will never free himself. In a week the
+time will come for him to pay, and I will change all his
+wares into manure,&mdash;and he will not be able to pay his
+debts, and will go to his father's."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They began to ask the third devil, Iván's.</p>
+
+<p>"How is your business?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must say, my business is not progressing at all.
+The first thing I did was to spit into his kvas jug, so as
+to give him a belly-ache, and I went to his field and made
+the soil so hard that he should not be able to overcome it.
+I thought that he would never plough it up, but he, the
+fool, came with his plough and began to tear up the soil.
+His belly-ache made him groan, but he stuck to his
+ploughing. I broke one plough of his, but he went
+home, fixed another plough, wrapped new leg-rags on
+him, and started once more to plough. I crept under the
+earth, and tried to hold the ploughshare, but I could not
+do it,&mdash;he pressed so hard on the plough; the ploughshares
+are sharp, and he has cut up my hands. He has
+ploughed up nearly the whole of it,&mdash;only a small strip
+is left. Come and help me, brothers, or else, if we do not
+overpower him, all our labours will be lost. If the fool is
+left and continues to farm, they will have no want, for
+he will feed them all."</p>
+
+<p>Semén's devil promised to come on the morrow to help
+him, and thereupon the devils departed.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[Pg 487]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>Iván ploughed up all the fallow field, and only one strip
+was left. His belly ached, and yet he had to plough. He
+straightened out the lines, turned over the plough, and
+went to the field. He had just made one furrow, and was
+coming back, when something pulled at the plough as
+though it had caught in a root. It was the devil that had
+twined his legs about the plough-head and was holding it
+fast.</p>
+
+<p>"What in the world is that?" thought Iván. "There
+were no roots here before, but now there are."</p>
+
+<p>Iván stuck his hand down in the furrow, and felt something
+soft. He grabbed it and pulled it out. It was as
+black as a root, but something was moving on it. He
+took a glance at it, and, behold, it was a live devil.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing!" And Iván
+swung him and was about to strike him against the plough-handle;
+but the devil began to scream.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not beat me," he said, "and I will do for you anything
+you wish."</p>
+
+<p>"What will you do for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Say what you want!"</p>
+
+<p>Iván scratched himself.</p>
+
+<p>"My belly aches,&mdash;can you cure me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, cure me!"</p>
+
+<p>The devil bent down to the furrow, scratched awhile
+in it, pulled out a few roots,&mdash;three of them in a bunch,&mdash;and
+gave them to Iván.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[Pg 488]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Here," he said, "is a root, which, if you swallow, will
+make your ache go away at once."</p>
+
+<p>Iván took the roots, tore them up, and swallowed one.
+His belly-ache stopped at once.</p>
+
+<p>Then the devil began to beg again:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go, now, and I will slip through the earth, and
+will not come up again."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "God be with you!"</p>
+
+<p>And the moment Iván mentioned God's name, the
+devil bolted through the earth, as a stone plumps into
+the water, and only a hole was left. Iván put the remaining
+two roots in his cap, and started to finish his work.
+He ploughed up the strip, turned over the plough, and
+went home. He unhitched the horse, came to the house,
+and there found his eldest brother, Semén the Warrior,
+with his wife, eating supper. His estate had been taken
+from him, and he had with difficulty escaped from prison
+and come to his father's to live.</p>
+
+<p>Semén saw Iván, and, "I have come to live with you,"
+he said. "Feed me and my wife until I find a new
+place!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "stay here!"</p>
+
+<p>Iván wanted to sit down on a bench, but the lady did
+not like the smell of Iván. So she said to her husband:</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot eat supper with a stinking peasant."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "I have to go anyway to pasture
+the mare for the night."</p>
+
+<p>Iván took some bread and his caftan, and went out to
+herd his mare.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<p>That night Semén's devil got through with his work
+and by agreement went to find Iván's devil, to help to
+make an end of the fool. He came to the field and looked
+for him everywhere, but found only the hole.</p>
+
+<p>"Something has evidently gone wrong with my comrade,"
+he thought,&mdash;"I must take his place. The ploughing
+is done,&mdash;I shall have to catch him in the mowing
+time."</p>
+
+<p>The devil went to the meadows and sent a flood on the
+mowing so that it was all covered with mud. Iván returned
+in the morning from the night watch, whetted his
+scythe, and went out to mow the meadows. He came,
+and began to mow: he swung the scythe once, and a
+second time, and it grew dull and would not cut,&mdash;it was
+necessary to grind it. Iván worked hard and in vain.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, "I will go home, and will bring the
+grindstone with me, and a round loaf. If I have to stay
+here for a week, I will not give up until I mow it all."</p>
+
+<p>When the devil heard it he thought:</p>
+
+<p>"This fool is stiff-necked,&mdash;I cannot get at him. I
+must try something else."</p>
+
+<p>Iván came back, ground his scythe, and began to mow.
+The devil crept into the grass and began to catch the scythe
+by the snath-end and to stick the point into the ground.
+It went hard with Iván, but he finished the mowing, and
+there was left only one scrubby place in the swamp.
+The devil crawled into the swamp and thought:</p>
+
+<p>"If I get both my paws cut, I will not let him
+mow it."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Iván went into the swamp; the grass was not dense,
+but he found it hard to move the scythe. Iván grew angry
+and began to swing the scythe with all his might. The
+devil gave in; he had hardly time to get away,&mdash;he saw
+that matters were in bad shape, so he hid in a bush. Iván
+swung the scythe with all his might and struck the bush,
+and cut off half of the devil's tail. Iván finished the
+mowing, told the girl to rake it up, and himself went to
+cut the rye.</p>
+
+<p>He went out with a round knife, but the bobtailed
+devil had been there before him and had so mixed up the
+rye that he could not cut it with the round knife. Iván
+went back, took the sickle, and began to cut it; he cut all
+the rye.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I must go to the oats," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The bobtailed devil heard it, and thought:</p>
+
+<p>"I could not cope with him on the rye, but I will get
+the better of him in the oats,&mdash;just let the morning come."</p>
+
+<p>The devil ran in the morning to the oats-field, but the
+oats were all cut down. Iván had cut them in the night,
+to keep them from dropping the seed.</p>
+
+<p>The devil grew angry:</p>
+
+<p>"The fool has cut me all up, and has worn me out. I
+have not seen such trouble even in war-time. The accursed
+one does not sleep,&mdash;I cannot keep up with him.
+I will go now to the ricks, and will rot them all."</p>
+
+<p>And the devil went to the rye-rick, climbed between
+the sheaves, and began to rot them: he warmed them up,
+and himself grew warm and fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Iván hitched his mare, and went with the girl to haul
+away the ricks. He drove up to one and began to throw
+the sheaves into the cart. He had just put two sheaves
+in when he stuck his fork straight into the devil's back;
+he raised it, and, behold, on the prongs was a live devil,
+and a bobtailed one at that, and he was writhing and
+twisting, and trying to get off.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing! Are you
+here again?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am a different devil," he said. "My brother was
+here before. I was with your brother Semén."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not care who you are," he replied, "you will catch
+it, too."</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to strike him against the ground, but the
+devil began to beg him:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go, and I will not do it again, and I will do
+for you anything you please."</p>
+
+<p>"What can you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can make soldiers for you from anything."</p>
+
+<p>"What good are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can turn them to any use you please: they will
+do anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Can they play music?"</p>
+
+<p>"They can."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, make them for me!"</p>
+
+<p>And the devil said:</p>
+
+<p>"Take a sheaf of rye, strike the lower end against the
+ground, and say: 'By my master's command not a sheaf
+shall you stand, but as many straws as there are so many
+soldiers there be.'"</p>
+
+<p>Iván took the sheaf, shook it against the ground, and
+spoke as the devil told him to. And the sheaf fell to
+pieces, and the straws were changed into soldiers, and in
+front a drummer was drumming, and a trumpeter blowing
+the trumpet. Iván laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare," he said, "it is clever. This is nice to
+amuse the girls with."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go now," said the devil.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, "I will do that with threshed straw,
+and I will not let full ears waste for nothing. I will
+thresh them first."</p>
+
+<p>So the devil said:</p>
+
+<p>"Say, 'As many soldiers, so many straws there be!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[Pg 492]</a></span>
+With my master's command again a sheaf it shall
+stand.'"</p>
+
+<p>Iván said this, and the sheaf was as before. And the
+devil begged him again:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go now!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right!" Iván caught him on the cart-hurdle, held
+him down with his hand, and pulled him off the fork.
+"God be with you!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>The moment he said, "God be with you," the devil
+bolted through the earth, as a stone plumps into the water,
+and only a hole was left.</p>
+
+<p>Iván went home, and there he found his second brother.
+Tarás and his wife were sitting and eating supper. Tarás
+the Paunch had not calculated right, and so he ran away
+from his debts and came to his father's. When he saw
+Iván, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Iván, feed me and my wife until I go back to trading!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "stay with us!"</p>
+
+<p>Iván took off his caftan, and seated himself at the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>But the merchant's wife said:</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot eat with a fool. He stinks of sweat."</p>
+
+<p>So Tarás the Paunch said:</p>
+
+<p>"Iván, you do not smell right, so go and eat in the
+vestibule!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, and, taking bread, he went out.
+"It is just right," he said, "for it is time for me to go and
+pasture the mare for the night."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[Pg 493]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+<p>That night Tarás's devil got through with his job, and
+he went by agreement to help out his comrades,&mdash;to get
+the best of Iván the Fool. He came to the field and
+tried to find his comrades, but all he saw was a hole in
+the ground; he went to the meadows, and found a tail
+in the swamp, and in the rye stubbles he found another
+hole.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he thought, "evidently some misfortune has
+befallen my comrades; I must take their place, and go
+for the fool."</p>
+
+<p>The devil went forth to find Iván. But Iván was
+through with the field, and was chopping wood in the
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>The brothers were not comfortable living together, and
+they had ordered the fool to cut timber with which to
+build them new huts.</p>
+
+<p>The devil ran to the woods, climbed into the branches,
+and did not let Iván fell the trees. Iván chopped the
+tree in the right way, so that it might fall in a clear
+place; he tried to make it fall, but it came down the
+wrong way, and fell where it had no business to fall, and
+got caught in the branches. Iván made himself a lever
+with his axe, began to turn the tree, and barely brought
+it down. Iván went to chop a second tree, and the same
+thing happened. He worked and worked at it, and
+brought it down. He started on a third tree, and again
+the same happened.</p>
+
+<p>Iván had expected to cut half a hundred trunks, and
+before he had chopped ten it was getting dark. Iván<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[Pg 494]</a></span>
+was worn out. Vapours rose from him as though a mist
+were going through the woods, but he would not give up.
+He chopped down another tree, and his back began to
+ache so much that he could not work: he stuck the axe
+in the wood, and sat down to rest himself.</p>
+
+<p>The devil saw that Iván had stopped, and was glad:</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he thought, "he has worn himself out, and he
+will stop soon. I will myself take a rest," and he sat
+astride a bough, and was happy.</p>
+
+<p>But Iván got up, pulled out his axe, swung with all
+his might, and hit the tree so hard from the other side
+that it cracked and came down with a crash. The devil
+had not expected it and had no time to straighten out
+his legs. The bough broke and caught the devil's hand.
+Iván began to trim, and behold, there was a live devil.
+Iván was surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare," he said, "you are a nasty thing! Are you
+here again?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not the same," he said. "I was with your
+brother Tarás."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not care who you are,&mdash;you will fare the same
+way." Iván swung his axe, and wanted to crush him
+with the back of the axe.</p>
+
+<p>The devil began to beg him:</p>
+
+<p>"Do not kill me,&mdash;I will do anything you please for
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"What can you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can make as much money for you as you wish."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, make it for me!"</p>
+
+<p>And the devil taught him how to do it.</p>
+
+<p>"Take some oak leaves from this tree," he said, "and rub
+them in your hands. The gold will fall to the ground."</p>
+
+<p>Iván took some leaves and rubbed them,&mdash;and the
+gold began to fall.</p>
+
+<p>"This is nice to have," he said, "when you are out
+celebrating with the boys."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[Pg 495]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Let me go now!" said the devil.</p>
+
+<p>"All right!" Iván took his lever, and freed the devil.
+"God be with you," he said, and the moment he mentioned
+God's name, the devil bolted through the earth, as a stone
+plumps into the water, and only a hole was left.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[Pg 496]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+<p>The brothers built themselves houses, and began to
+live each by himself. But Iván got through with his
+field work, and brewed some beer and invited his brothers
+to celebrate with him. They would not be Iván's
+guests:</p>
+
+<p>"We have never seen a peasant celebration," they said.</p>
+
+<p>Iván treated the peasants and their wives, and himself
+drank until he was drunk, and he went out into the street
+to the khorovód. He went up to the women, and told
+them to praise him.</p>
+
+<p>"I will give you what you have not seen in all your
+lives."</p>
+
+<p>The women laughed, and praised him. When they got
+through, they said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let us have it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will bring it to you at once," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He picked up the seed-basket and ran into the woods.
+The women laughed: "What a fool he is!" And they
+forgot about him, when, behold, he was running toward
+them, and carrying the basket full of something.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I let you have it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Iván picked up a handful of gold and threw it to the
+women. O Lord, how they darted for the money! The
+peasants rushed out and began to tear it out of the hands
+of the women. They almost crushed an old woman to
+death. Iván laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you fools," he said, "why did you crush that old
+woman? Be more gentle, and I will give you some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[Pg 497]</a></span>
+more." He began to scatter more gold. People ran up,
+and Iván scattered the whole basketful. They began to
+ask for more. But Iván said:</p>
+
+<p>"That is all. I will give you more some other time.
+Now let us have music! Sing songs!"</p>
+
+<p>The women started a song.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not like your kind of songs," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What kind is better?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will show you in a minute," he said. He went to
+the threshing-floor, pulled out a sheaf, straightened it up,
+placed it on end, and struck it against the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"At your master's command not a sheaf shall you stand,
+each straw a soldier shall be."</p>
+
+<p>The sheaf flew to pieces, and out came the soldiers, and
+the drums began to beat and the trumpets to sound. Iván
+told the soldiers to play songs, and went into the street
+with them. The people were surprised. The soldiers
+played songs, and then Iván took them back to the threshing-floor,
+and told nobody to follow him. He changed
+the soldiers back into a sheaf, and threw it on the loft.
+He went home and went to sleep behind the partition.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[Pg 498]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+<p>On the next morning his eldest brother, Semén the
+Warrior, heard of it, and he went to see Iván.</p>
+
+<p>"Reveal to me," he said, "where did you find those
+soldiers, and where did you take them to?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is that to you?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What a question! With soldiers anything may be
+done. You can get a kingdom for yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Iván was surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed? Why did you not tell me so long ago?" he
+said. "I will make as many for you as you please.
+Luckily the girl and I have threshed a lot of straw."</p>
+
+<p>Iván took his brother to the threshing-floor, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Look here! I will make them for you, but you take
+them away, or else, if we have to feed them, they will
+ruin the village in one day."</p>
+
+<p>Semén the Warrior promised that he would take the
+soldiers away, and Iván began to make them. He struck
+a sheaf against the floor, there was a company; he struck
+another, there was a second, and he made such a lot of
+them that they took up the whole field.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, will that do?"</p>
+
+<p>Semén was happy, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"It will do. Thank you, Iván."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said. "If you need more, come to me,
+and I will make you more. There is plenty of straw
+to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Semén the Warrior at once attended to the army, collected
+it as was proper, and went forth to fight.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had Semén the Warrior left, than Tarás the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[Pg 499]</a></span>
+Paunch came. He, too, had heard of the evening's affair,
+and he began to beg his brother:</p>
+
+<p>"Reveal to me, where do you get the gold money
+from? If I had such free money, I would with it gather
+in all the money of the whole world."</p>
+
+<p>Iván was surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed? You ought to have told me so long ago,"
+he said. "I will rub up for you as much as you want."</p>
+
+<p>His brother was glad:</p>
+
+<p>"Give me at least three seed-baskets full!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "let us go to the woods! But
+hitch up the horse, or you will not be able to carry it
+away."</p>
+
+<p>They went to the woods, and Iván began to rub the
+oak leaves. He rubbed up a large heap.</p>
+
+<p>"Will that do, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Tarás was happy.</p>
+
+<p>"It will do for awhile," he said. "Thank you, Iván."</p>
+
+<p>"You are welcome. If you need more, come to me,
+and I will rub up some more,&mdash;there are plenty of leaves
+left."</p>
+
+<p>Tarás the Paunch gathered a whole wagon-load of
+money, and went away to trade with it.</p>
+
+<p>Both brothers left the home. And Semén went out to
+fight, and Tarás to trade. And Semén the Warrior conquered
+a whole kingdom for himself, while Tarás the
+Paunch made a big heap of money by trading.</p>
+
+<p>The brothers met, and they revealed to one another
+where Semén got the soldiers, and Tarás the money.</p>
+
+<p>Semén the Warrior said to his brother:</p>
+
+<p>"I have conquered a kingdom for myself, and I lead a
+good life, only I have not enough money to feed my
+soldiers with."</p>
+
+<p>And Tarás the Paunch said:</p>
+
+<p>"And I have earned a whole mound of money, but here
+is the trouble: I have nobody to guard the money."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[Pg 500]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So Semén the Warrior said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go to our brother! I will tell him to make
+me more soldiers, and I will give them to you to guard
+your money; and you tell him to rub me more money
+with which to feed the soldiers."</p>
+
+<p>And they went to Iván. When they came to him,
+Semén said:</p>
+
+<p>"I have not enough soldiers, brother. Make me some
+more soldiers,&mdash;if you have to work over two stacks."</p>
+
+<p>Iván shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not make you any soldiers, for nothing in the
+world."</p>
+
+<p>"But you promised you would."</p>
+
+<p>"So I did, but I will not make them for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you fool, won't you make them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because your soldiers have killed a man. The other
+day I was ploughing in the field, when I saw a woman
+driving with a coffin in the road, and weeping all the time.
+I asked her who had died, and she said, 'Semén's soldiers
+have killed my husband in a war.' I thought that the
+soldiers would make music, and there they have killed a
+man. I will give you no more."</p>
+
+<p>And he stuck to it, and made no soldiers for him.</p>
+
+<p>Then Tarás the Paunch began to beg Iván to make
+him more gold money. But Iván shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not rub any, for nothing in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"But you promised you would."</p>
+
+<p>"So I did, but I will not do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you fool, will you not do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because your gold coins have taken away Mikháylovna's
+cow."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?"</p>
+
+<p>"They just did. Mikháylovna had a cow, whose milk
+the children sipped, but the other day the children came
+to me to ask for some milk. I said to them: 'Where
+is your cow?' And they answered: 'Tarás the Paunch's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[Pg 501]</a></span>
+clerk came, and he gave mother three gold pieces, and she
+gave him the cow, and now we have no milk to sip.' I
+thought you wanted to play with the gold pieces, and you
+take the cow away from the children. I will not give
+you any more."</p>
+
+<p>And the fool stuck to it, and did not give him any.
+So the brothers went away.</p>
+
+<p>They went away, and they wondered how they might
+mend matters. Then Semén said:</p>
+
+<p>"This is what we shall do. You give me money to
+feed the soldiers with, and I will give you half my
+kingdom with the soldiers to guard your money." Tarás
+agreed to it. The brothers divided up, and both became
+kings, and rich men.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[Pg 502]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>VIII.</h3>
+
+<p>But Iván remained at home, supporting father and
+mother, and working the field with the dumb girl.</p>
+
+<p>One day Iván's watch-dog grew sick: he had the mange
+and was dying. Iván was sorry for him, and he took some
+bread from the dumb girl, put it in his hat, and took it
+out and threw it to the dog. But the cap was torn, and
+with the bread one of the roots fell out. The old dog
+swallowed it with the bread. And no sooner had he swallowed
+it than he jumped up, began to play and to bark,
+and wagged his tail,&mdash;he was well again.</p>
+
+<p>When his father and his mother saw that, they were
+surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"With what did you cure the dog?"</p>
+
+<p>And Iván said to them:</p>
+
+<p>"I had two roots with which to cure all diseases, and
+he swallowed one."</p>
+
+<p>It happened that at that time the king's daughter grew
+ill, and the king proclaimed in all the towns and villages
+that he would reward him who should cure her, and that
+if it should be an unmarried man, he should have his
+daughter for a wife. The same was also proclaimed in
+Iván's village.</p>
+
+<p>Father and mother called Iván, and said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard what the king has proclaimed? You
+said that you had a root, so go and cure the king's daughter.
+You will get a fortune for the rest of your life."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said. And he got ready to go. He
+was dressed up, and went out on the porch, and saw a
+beggar woman with a twisted arm.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[Pg 503]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I have heard that you can cure," she said. "Cure
+my arm, for I cannot dress myself."</p>
+
+<p>And Iván said:</p>
+
+<p>"All right!" He took the root, gave it to the beggar
+woman, and told her to swallow it.</p>
+
+<p>She swallowed it, and was cured at once and could
+wave her arm. Iván's parents came out to see him off on
+his way to the king, and when they heard that he had
+given away the last root and had nothing left with which
+to cure the king's daughter, they began to upbraid him.</p>
+
+<p>"You have taken pity on the beggar woman, but you
+have no pity on the king's daughter."</p>
+
+<p>But he hitched his horse, threw a little straw into the
+hamper, and was getting ready to drive away.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going, fool?"</p>
+
+<p>"To cure the king's daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have nothing to cure her with!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, and drove away.</p>
+
+<p>He came to the king's palace, and the moment he
+stepped on the porch, the king's daughter was cured.</p>
+
+<p>The king rejoiced, and sent for Iván. He had him all
+dressed up:</p>
+
+<p>"Be my son-in-law!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said.</p>
+
+<p>And Iván married the king's daughter. The king died
+soon after, and Iván became king. Thus all three brothers
+were kings.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[Pg 504]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>IX.</h3>
+
+<p>The three brothers were reigning.</p>
+
+<p>The elder brother, Semén the Warrior, lived well.
+With his straw soldiers he got him real soldiers. He
+commanded his people to furnish a soldier to each ten
+homes, and every such soldier had to be tall of stature,
+and white of body, and clean of face. And he gathered
+a great many such soldiers and taught them all what to
+do. And if any one acted contrary to his will, he at once
+sent his soldiers against that person, and did as he pleased.
+And all began to be afraid of him.</p>
+
+<p>He had an easy life. Whatever he wished for, or his
+eyes fell upon, was his. He would send out his soldiers,
+and they would take away and bring to him whatever he
+needed.</p>
+
+<p>Tarás the Paunch, too, lived well. The money which
+he had received from Iván he had not spent, but he had
+increased it greatly. He, too, had good order in his kingdom.
+The money he kept in coffers, and exacted more
+money from the people. He exacted money from each
+soul for walking past, and driving past, and for bast shoes,
+and leg-rags, and shoe-laces. And no matter what he
+wished, he had; for money they brought him everything,
+and they went to work for him, because everybody needs
+money.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did Iván the Fool live badly. As soon as he had
+buried his father-in-law, he took off his royal garments
+and gave them to his wife to put away in the coffer. He
+put on his old hempen shirt and trousers, and his bast
+shoes, and began to work.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[Pg 505]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I do not feel well," he said. "My belly is growing
+larger, and I cannot eat, nor sleep."</p>
+
+<p>He brought his parents and the dumb girl, and began
+to work again.</p>
+
+<p>People said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"But you are a king!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "but a king, too, has to eat."</p>
+
+<p>The minister came to him, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"We have no money with which to pay salaries."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "if you have none, pay no salaries!"</p>
+
+<p>"But they will stop serving you."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "Let them stop serving! They will
+have more time for work. Let them haul manure.
+They have not hauled any for a long time."</p>
+
+<p>People came to Iván to have a case tried. One said:</p>
+
+<p>"He stole money from me."</p>
+
+<p>But Iván replied:</p>
+
+<p>"All right, evidently he needed it."</p>
+
+<p>All saw that Iván was a fool. His wife said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"They say about you that you are a fool."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Iván's wife, too, was a fool, and she thought and
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I go against my husband?" she said.
+"The thread belongs where the needle is."</p>
+
+<p>She took off her regal garments, put them in a coffer,
+and went to the dumb girl to learn to work. She learned,
+and began to help her husband.</p>
+
+<p>All the wise men left Iván's kingdom, and only the
+fools were left. Nobody had any money. They lived
+and worked and fed themselves and all good people.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[Pg 506]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>X.</h3>
+
+<p>The old devil waited and waited for some news from
+the young devils about how they had destroyed the three
+brothers, but none came. He went to find out for himself:
+he looked everywhere for the three, but found only
+three holes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he thought, "evidently they did not get the
+best of them. I shall have to try it myself."</p>
+
+<p>He went to find the brothers, but they were no longer
+in their old places. He found them in different kingdoms.
+All three were living and reigning there. That vexed the
+old devil.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to do the work myself," he said.</p>
+
+<p>First of all he went to King Semén. He did not go
+to him in his own form, but in the shape of a general.
+He went to him, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard that you, King Semén, are a great warrior.
+I have had good instruction in this business, and I
+want to serve you."</p>
+
+<p>King Semén began to ask him questions, and he saw
+that he was a clever man, and so received him into his
+service.</p>
+
+<p>The old general began to teach King Semén how to
+gather a great army.</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place," he said, "you must collect more
+soldiers, for too many people in your kingdom are walking
+about idly. You must shave the heads of all the
+young men without exception, and then you will have an
+army which will be five times as large as it is now. In
+the second place, you must introduce new guns and cannon.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[Pg 507]</a></span>
+I will get you the kind of guns that fire one
+hundred bullets at once, as though pouring out pease.
+And I will get you cannon that burn with their fire:
+whether a man, or a horse, or a wall,&mdash;they burn everything."</p>
+
+<p>King Semén listened to his new general, and ordered
+all the young men without exception to be drafted as
+soldiers, and started new factories. He had a lot of new
+guns and cannon made, and at once started a war against
+a neighbouring king. The moment the enemy's army
+came out against him, he ordered his soldiers to fire at
+them with bullets and to burn them with the cannon fire.
+He at once maimed and burnt one-half the army. The
+neighbouring king became frightened, and he surrendered
+and gave up his kingdom to him. King Semén was
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I will vanquish the King of India," he said.</p>
+
+<p>But the King of India heard of King Semén, and
+adopted all his inventions and added a few of his own.
+The King of India drafted not only all the young men,
+but he also made all the unmarried women serve as
+soldiers, and so he had even more soldiers than King
+Semén. He adopted all of King Semén's guns and cannon,
+and introduced flying in the air and throwing
+explosive bombs from above.</p>
+
+<p>King Semén went out to make war on the King of
+India. He thought that he would conquer him as he had
+conquered before; but the scythe was cutting too fine,&mdash;the
+King of India did not give Semén's army a chance to
+fire a single shot, for he sent his women into the air, to
+throw explosive bombs on Semén's army. The women
+began to pour the bombs on Semén's army, like borax on
+cockroaches, and the whole army ran away, and King
+Semén was left alone. The King of India took possession
+of the whole of Semén's kingdom, and Semén the Warrior
+ran whither his eyes took him.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[Pg 508]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The old devil had done up this brother, and he made for
+King Tarás. He took the shape of a merchant and settled
+in Tarás's kingdom. He started an establishment, and
+began to issue money. The merchant paid high prices for
+everything, and the whole nation rushed to the merchant
+to get his money. And the people had so much money
+that they paid all their back taxes and paid on time all
+the taxes as they fell due. King Tarás was happy.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks to the merchant," he thought, "I shall now
+have more money than ever, and my life will improve."</p>
+
+<p>And King Tarás fell on new plans. He began to build
+himself a new palace: he commanded the people to haul
+lumber and stone, and to come to work, and offered high
+prices for everything. King Tarás thought that as before
+the people would rush to work for him. But, behold, all
+the lumber and stone was being hauled to the merchant,
+and only the labourers were rushing to the king.</p>
+
+<p>King Tarás offered higher prices, but the merchant
+went higher still. King Tarás had much money, but the
+merchant had more still, and the merchant could offer
+better pay than the king. The royal palace came to a
+standstill,&mdash;it could not be built.</p>
+
+<p>King Tarás wanted to get a garden laid out. When
+the fall came, King Tarás proclaimed that he wanted
+people to come and set out trees for him; but nobody
+came, as they were all digging a pond for the merchant.</p>
+
+<p>Winter came. King Tarás wanted to buy sable furs for
+a new coat, and he sent out men to buy them. The messenger
+came back, and said that there were no sables,&mdash;that
+all the furs were in the merchant's possession, as he
+had offered a higher price, and that he had made himself
+a sable rug.</p>
+
+<p>King Tarás wanted to have some stallions. He sent
+messengers to buy them for him; but they came back,
+and said that the merchant had all the good stallions,
+and they were hauling water and filling up the pond.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[Pg 509]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All the business of the king came to a stop. Men
+would not do anything for him, but worked only for the
+merchant; all he received was the merchant's money, for
+taxes.</p>
+
+<p>And the king collected such a mass of money that he
+did not know what to do with it, and his life grew bad.
+The king stopped planning things, and only thought of
+how he might pass his life peacefully, but he could not
+do so. He was oppressed in everything. His cooks, and
+his coachmen, and his servants began to leave him for the
+merchant. And he began to suffer for lack of food. He
+would send the women to market to buy provisions, but
+there was nothing there, for the merchant bought up
+everything, and all he received was money for taxes.</p>
+
+<p>King Tarás grew angry and sent the merchant abroad;
+but the merchant settled at the border and continued to
+do his work: as before, people dragged for the merchant's
+money all the things from the king to him. The king
+was in a bad plight: he did not eat for days at a time,
+and the rumour was spread that the merchant was boasting
+that he was going to buy the king himself with his
+money. King Tarás lost his courage, and did not know
+what to do.</p>
+
+<p>Semén the Warrior came to him, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Support me, for the King of India has vanquished
+me."</p>
+
+<p>But Tarás himself was pinched.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not eaten myself for two days," he said.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[Pg 510]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>XI.</h3>
+
+<p>The old devil had done up the two brothers, and now
+went to Iván. The old devil took the shape of a general,
+and he came to Iván and tried to persuade him to provide
+himself with an army.</p>
+
+<p>"It will not do for a king to live without an army,"
+he said. "Just command me, and I will gather soldiers
+from among your people, and will get you up an army."</p>
+
+<p>Iván took his advice.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "get me up an army: teach them
+to play good music,&mdash;I like that."</p>
+
+<p>The old devil started to go over the kingdom, to gather
+volunteers. He said that they should go and get their
+crowns shaved, for which they would get a bottle of vódka
+each, and a red cap.</p>
+
+<p>The fools laughed at him.</p>
+
+<p>"We have all the liquor we want," they said, "for we
+distil it ourselves, and as for caps, our women will make
+us any we want, even motley ones, with tassels at that."</p>
+
+<p>Not one of them would go. The old devil went to
+Iván and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Your fools will not go of their own will; you will
+have to force them."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "drive them by force!"</p>
+
+<p>And so the old devil announced that all the fools were
+to inscribe themselves as soldiers, and that Iván would
+execute those who would not go.</p>
+
+<p>The fools came to the general and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You say that the king will have us killed if we do
+not become soldiers, but you do not tell us what we shall<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[Pg 511]</a></span>
+have to do as soldiers. They say that soldiers, too, are
+killed."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that cannot be helped."</p>
+
+<p>When the fools heard that, they became stubborn.</p>
+
+<p>"We will not go," they said. "If so, let us be killed
+at home! Death cannot be escaped anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"Fools that you are!" said the old devil. "A soldier
+may be killed or not, but if you do not go, King Iván will
+certainly have you killed."</p>
+
+<p>The fools considered the matter, and went to see Iván
+the Fool.</p>
+
+<p>"Your general has come," they said, "and tells us all
+to turn soldiers. 'If you become soldiers,' he says, 'you
+may be killed, or not, but if you do not become soldiers
+King Iván will certainly put you to death.' Is that true?"</p>
+
+<p>Iván began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"How can I, one man, have you all put to death? If
+I were not a fool, I should explain that to you, but as it is,
+I do not understand it myself."</p>
+
+<p>"If so," they said, "we shall not become soldiers."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "don't."</p>
+
+<p>The fools went to the general and refused to become
+soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>The old devil saw that his business did not work, so
+he went to the King of Cockroachland, and got into his
+favour.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go," he said, "and wage war on King Iván, and
+vanquish him. He has no money, but he has plenty of
+grain, and cattle, and all kinds of things."</p>
+
+<p>The King of Cockroachland went out to make war: he
+had gathered a large army, and collected guns and cannon,
+and left his borders, to enter Iván's kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>People came to Iván and said:</p>
+
+<p>"The King of Cockroachland is coming against us."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "let him come."</p>
+
+<p>The King of Cockroachland crossed the border, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">[Pg 512]</a></span>
+sent the advance-guard to find Iván's army. They looked
+and looked for it, and could not find it. They thought
+that they might wait for it to show up. But they heard
+nothing about it,&mdash;there was no army to fight.</p>
+
+<p>The King of Cockroachland sent out his men to take
+possession of the villages. The soldiers came to one village,&mdash;and
+there the fools jumped out to look at the
+soldiers and to marvel at them. The soldiers began to
+take away the grain and the cattle: the fools gave it all
+up, and did not resist. The soldiers went to the next
+village, and the same happened. The soldiers walked for
+a day or two, and everywhere the same happened. They
+gave up all they had, and nobody resisted, and they invited
+the soldiers to come and live with them:</p>
+
+<p>"If you, dear people," they said, "have not enough to
+live on in your country, come and settle among us."</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers walked and walked, but no army was to
+be found; everywhere people were living, and feeding
+themselves and other people, and they did not resist, but
+invited them to come and live with them.</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers felt bad, and they came back to the King
+of Cockroachland.</p>
+
+<p>"We cannot fight here," they said, "so take us to some
+other place: war would be a good thing, but this is as
+though we were to cut soup. We cannot fight here."</p>
+
+<p>The King of Cockroachland grew wroth, and commanded
+his soldiers to march through the whole kingdom,
+and destroy villages and houses, and burn the grain and
+kill the cattle.</p>
+
+<p>"If you do not obey my command," he said, "I shall
+have you all executed."</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers became frightened, and began to carry out
+the king's command. They started to burn the houses
+and the grain, and to kill the cattle. And still the fools
+did not resist, but only wept. The old men wept, and
+the old women wept, and the children wept.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">[Pg 513]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why do you offend us? Why do you destroy the
+property? If you need it, take it along!"</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers felt ashamed. They did not go any farther,
+and the whole army ran away.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">[Pg 514]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>XII.</h3>
+
+<p>The old devil went away,&mdash;he could not get at Iván
+by means of the soldiers. The old devil changed into a
+clean-looking gentleman, and went to live in Iván's kingdom:
+he wished to get at him by means of money, as he
+had done with Tarás the Paunch.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to do you good," he said, "and to teach you
+what is good and proper. I will build a house in your
+country, and will start an establishment."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "stay here!"</p>
+
+<p>The clean-looking gentleman stayed overnight, and the
+following morning he took a large bag of gold to the market-square,
+and a sheet of paper, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You are all of you living like pigs. I will teach you
+how to live. Build me a house according to this plan!
+You work, and I will show you how, and will pay gold
+money to you."</p>
+
+<p>And he showed them the gold. The fools were astounded:
+they had no such a thing as money, and only
+exchanged things among themselves, or paid with work.
+They marvelled at the gold and said:</p>
+
+<p>"They are nice things."</p>
+
+<p>And for these gold things they began to give him what
+they had and to work for him. The old devil rejoiced
+and thought:</p>
+
+<p>"My affair is proceeding favourably. I will now ruin
+Iván completely, as I have ruined Tarás, and will buy
+him up, guts and all."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the fools had any gold, they gave it all away
+to their women for necklaces, and their girls wove it into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">[Pg 515]</a></span>
+their braids, and the children began to play in the streets
+with those pretty things. When all had enough of it,
+they refused to get any more. The clean-looking gentleman's
+palace was not half done, and the grain and the
+cattle were not yet attended to for the year. And
+the gentleman demanded that they should go and work
+for him, and haul his grain, and drive his cattle; he
+promised them much gold for everything and for all
+work.</p>
+
+<p>But no one came to work, and they brought nothing to
+him. Only now and then a boy or girl would run in
+to exchange an egg for a gold coin; otherwise nobody
+came, and he had nothing to eat. The clean-looking
+gentleman was starved, and he went to the village to buy
+something to eat: he went into one yard, and offered a
+gold coin for a chicken, but the woman would not take it.</p>
+
+<p>"I have too many of them as it is," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He went to a homeless woman, to buy a herring of her,
+and offered her a gold coin.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not want it, dear man," she said. "I have no
+children, and so there is nobody to play with it; I myself
+have three of these for show."</p>
+
+<p>He went to a peasant to buy bread of him, but the peasant,
+too, would not take the money.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not want it," he said. "If you want bread, for
+Christ's sake, wait, and I will have my wife cut you off a
+piece."</p>
+
+<p>The devil just spit out and ran away from the peasant.
+Not only would he not take anything for Christ's sake,
+but it was worse than cutting him even to hear that
+word.</p>
+
+<p>And so he did not get any bread. Everywhere it was
+the same; no matter where the devil went, they gave him
+nothing for money, but said:</p>
+
+<p>"Bring us something else, or come and work for it, or
+take it for Christ's sake!"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">[Pg 516]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the devil had nothing but money. He did not
+like to work, and for Christ's sake he could not take anything.
+The old devil grew angry.</p>
+
+<p>"What else do you want, if I give you money? You
+can buy anything for money, or hire a labourer."</p>
+
+<p>The fools paid no attention to him.</p>
+
+<p>"No," they said, "we do not want it. We have no
+taxes and no wages to pay, so what do we want with the
+money?"</p>
+
+<p>The old devil went to bed without eating supper.</p>
+
+<p>This affair reached the ears of Iván the Fool. They
+went to ask him:</p>
+
+<p>"What shall we do? A clean-looking gentleman has
+appeared among us: he is fond of eating and drinking,
+and does not like to work, and does not beg for Christ's
+sake, but only offers us gold pieces. So long as we did
+not have enough of them, we gave him everything, but
+now we do not give him any more. What shall we do with
+him? We are afraid that he will starve."</p>
+
+<p>Iván listened to what they had to say.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, "we shall have to feed him. Let
+him go from farm to farm as a shepherd!"</p>
+
+<p>The old devil could not help himself, and he began to
+go from farm to farm. The turn came to Iván's farm.
+The old devil came to dinner, and the dumb girl was just
+fixing it. Those who were lazy used to deceive her.
+Without having worked they came to dinner earlier and
+ate up all the porridge. And so the dumb girl contrived
+to tell the good-for-nothing by their hands: if one had
+calluses, she seated him at the table, but if not, she gave
+him what was left of the dinner. The old devil climbed
+behind the table; but the dumb girl took hold of his
+hands, and there were no calluses; the hands were clean
+and smooth, and the nails long.</p>
+
+<p>The dumb girl bawled, and pulled the devil out from
+behind the table.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">[Pg 517]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Iván's wife said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't take it amiss, clean gentleman! My sister-in-law
+will not let a man without calluses sit down at the
+table. Wait awhile! Let the people eat first, and then
+you will get what is left."</p>
+
+<p>The old devil was insulted, because at the king's house
+they would feed him with the swine. He said to
+Iván:</p>
+
+<p>"What a fool's law you have in your country to let all
+men work with their hands! You have invented that in
+your stupidity. Do men work with their hands only?
+How do you suppose clever people work?"</p>
+
+<p>But Iván said:</p>
+
+<p>"How can we fools know? We labour mostly with
+our hands and with our backs."</p>
+
+<p>"That is so, because you are fools. I will teach you,"
+he said, "how to work with your heads. You will see that
+with your heads you can work faster than with your
+hands."</p>
+
+<p>Iván marvelled.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed," he said, "we are called fools for good
+reason."</p>
+
+<p>And the old devil said:</p>
+
+<p>"But it is not easy to work with the head. You do
+not give me anything to eat because I have no calluses on
+my hands, and you do not know that it is a hundred
+times harder to work with the head. At times it just
+makes the head burst."</p>
+
+<p>Iván fell to musing.</p>
+
+<p>"But why do you torture yourself so much, my dear?
+It is no small matter to have your head burst. You had
+better do some easy work,&mdash;with your hands and
+back."</p>
+
+<p>And the devil said:</p>
+
+<p>"The reason I torture myself is because I pity you
+fools. If I did not torture myself, you would remain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">[Pg 518]</a></span>
+fools to the end of your days. I have worked with my
+head, and now I will teach you, too."</p>
+
+<p>Iván marvelled.</p>
+
+<p>"Teach us," he said, "for now and then the hands get
+tired, and it would be nice to use the head instead."</p>
+
+<p>The devil promised to teach him.</p>
+
+<p>And Iván proclaimed throughout his kingdom that a
+clean-looking man had appeared who would teach people
+how to work with their heads, that they could work more
+with their heads than with their hands, and that they
+should come and learn.</p>
+
+<p>In Iván's kingdom there was a high tower, and a straight
+staircase led up to it, and at the top there was a spy-room.
+Iván took the gentleman there so that he might
+see better.</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman stood up on the tower and began to
+speak from it. The fools gathered around to look at him.
+The fools thought that he would show them in fact how
+to work with the head instead of the hands. But the old
+devil taught them only in words how to live without
+working.</p>
+
+<p>The fools did not understand a word. They looked
+and looked and went away, each to his work.</p>
+
+<p>The old devil stood on the tower a day, and a second
+day, and kept talking. He wanted to eat; but the fools
+did not have enough sense to send some bread up to the
+tower. They thought that if he could work better with
+his head than with his hands, he would somehow earn
+bread for himself with his head. The old devil stood
+another day in the tower-room, and kept talking all the
+time. And the people came up and looked, and looked
+and went away.</p>
+
+<p>Then Iván asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, has the gentleman begun to work with his
+head?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," people said, "he is still babbling."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">[Pg 519]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The old devil stood another day on the tower and began
+to weaken; he tottered and struck his head against a post.
+One of the fools saw that, and told Iván's wife about it,
+and she ran to her husband in the field.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, let us go and see," she said. "The gentleman
+is beginning to work with his head."</p>
+
+<p>Iván was surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed?" he said. He turned in the horse, and went
+to the tower. When he came up to it, the old devil was
+weakened from hunger and tottering from side to side and
+knocking his head against the posts. Just as Iván came
+up, the devil stumbled and fell and rattled down the
+stairs, head foremost: he counted all the steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Iván, "the clean-looking gentleman told
+the truth when he said that at times the head bursts.
+This is worse than calluses: such works will leave bumps
+on the head."</p>
+
+<p>The old devil came down the whole staircase and struck
+his head against the ground. Iván wanted to go and see
+how much work he had done, but suddenly the earth
+gave way, and the old devil went through the earth, and
+nothing but a hole was left.</p>
+
+<p>Iván scratched himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing! It is again
+he. He must be the father of those others. What a
+big fellow he is!"</p>
+
+<p>Iván is still living, and people are all the time rushing
+to his kingdom, and his brothers, too, came to him, and
+he is feeding them all. If any one comes and says:
+"Feed me!" he replies:</p>
+
+<p>"All right, stay here, we have plenty of everything."</p>
+
+<p>They have but one custom in his country, and that is,
+if one has calluses on his hands, he may sit down at the
+table, and if he has not, he gets the remnants.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="transnote">
+<span class="big">Transcriber's note:</span><br />
+On <a href="#Page_133">page 133</a>, the original read: "The Tartars after him. He into the
+river."<br />
+
+This has been changed to "The Tartars after him. He threw himself into
+the river."</p>
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #38025 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38025)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Fables for Children, Stories for Children,
+Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales, by
+Leo Tolstoy, Edited by Leo Wiener, Translated by Leo Wiener
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales
+
+
+Author: Leo Tolstoy
+
+Editor: Leo Wiener
+
+Release Date: November 15, 2011  [eBook #38025]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FABLES FOR CHILDREN, STORIES FOR
+CHILDREN, NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES, POPULAR EDUCATION, DECEMBRISTS, MORAL
+TALES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Anna Hall, Albert L�szl�, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
+available by Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 38025-h.htm or 38025-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38025/38025-h/38025-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38025/38025-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/completeworksofc12tols
+
+
+Tanscriber's note:
+
+      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+      A letter with a breve is indicated by [)<letter>].
+
+
+
+
+
+The Complete Works of Count Tolst�y
+Volume XII.
+
+
+[Illustration: "The clerk beat Sidor's face until the blood came"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivsh�nko_]
+
+
+FABLES FOR CHILDREN
+STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES
+POPULAR EDUCATION
+DECEMBRISTS
+MORAL TALES
+
+by
+
+COUNT LEV N. TOLST�Y
+
+Translated from the Original Russian and Edited by
+
+LEO WIENER
+
+Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Boston
+Dana Estes & Company
+Publishers
+
+Edition De Luxe
+Limited to One Thousand Copies,
+of which this is
+No. 411
+
+_Copyright, 1904_
+By Dana Estes & Company
+
+_Entered at Stationers' Hall_
+
+Colonial Press: Electrotyped and Printed by
+C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                PAGE
+  FABLES FOR CHILDREN
+  �sop's Fables                                    3
+  Adaptations and Imitations of Hindoo Fables     19
+
+  STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+  The Foundling                                   39
+  The Peasant and the Cucumbers                   40
+  The Fire                                        41
+  The Old Horse                                   43
+  How I Learned to Ride                           46
+  The Willow                                      49
+  B�lka                                           51
+  B�lka and the Wild Boar                         53
+  Pheasants                                       56
+  Milton and B�lka                                58
+  The Turtle                                      60
+  B�lka and the Wolf                              62
+  What Happened to B�lka in Pyatig�rsk            65
+  B�lka's and Milton's End                        68
+  The Gray Hare                                   70
+  God Sees the Truth, but Does Not Tell at Once   72
+  Hunting Worse than Slavery                      82
+  A Prisoner of the Caucasus                      92
+  Erm�k                                          124
+
+  NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES
+  Stories From Physics:
+    The Magnet                                   137
+    Moisture                                     140
+    The Different Connection of Particles        142
+    Crystals                                     143
+    Injurious Air                                146
+    How Balloons Are Made                        150
+    Galvanism                                    152
+    The Sun's Heat                               156
+  Stories From Zoology:
+    The Owl and the Hare                         159
+    How the Wolves Teach Their Whelps            160
+    Hares and Wolves                             161
+    The Scent                                    162
+    Touch and Sight                              164
+    The Silkworm                                 165
+  Stories From Botany:
+    The Apple-Tree                               170
+    The Old Poplar                               172
+    The Bird-Cherry                              174
+    How Trees Walk                               176
+
+  The Decembrists                                181
+  On Popular Education                           251
+  What Men Live By                               327
+  The Three Hermits                              363
+  Neglect the Fire                               375
+  The Candle                                     395
+  The Two Old Men                                409
+  Where Love Is, There God Is Also               445
+
+  TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK ILLUSTRATIONS
+  The Fiend Persists, but God Resists            463
+  Little Girls Wiser than Old People             466
+  The Two Brothers and the Gold                  469
+  Ily�s                                          472
+
+  A Fairy-Tale about Iv�n the Fool               481
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                PAGE
+  "The clerk beat S�dor's face until the blood
+  came" (_The Candle, see page 397_)           _Frontispiece_
+  "'Whose knife is this?'"                        73
+  "'God will forgive you'"                        81
+  "They rode off to the mountains"                96
+  "'Whither are you bound?'"                     332
+  "But the candle was still burning"             403
+
+
+
+
+FABLES FOR CHILDREN
+
+1869-1872
+
+
+
+
+FABLES FOR CHILDREN
+
+
+
+
+I. �SOP'S FABLES
+
+
+THE ANT AND THE DOVE
+
+An Ant came down to the brook: he wanted to drink. A wave washed him
+down and almost drowned him. A Dove was carrying a branch; she saw the
+Ant was drowning, so she cast the branch down to him in the brook. The
+Ant got up on the branch and was saved. Then a hunter placed a snare for
+the Dove, and was on the point of drawing it in. The Ant crawled up to
+the hunter and bit him on the leg; the hunter groaned and dropped the
+snare. The Dove fluttered upwards and flew away.
+
+
+THE TURTLE AND THE EAGLE
+
+A Turtle asked an Eagle to teach her how to fly. The Eagle advised her
+not to try, as she was not fit for it; but she insisted. The Eagle took
+her in his claws, raised her up, and dropped her: she fell on stones and
+broke to pieces.
+
+
+THE POLECAT
+
+A Polecat entered a smithy and began to lick the filings. Blood began to
+flow from the Polecat's mouth, but he was glad and continued to lick; he
+thought that the blood was coming from the iron, and lost his whole
+tongue.
+
+
+THE LION AND THE MOUSE
+
+A Lion was sleeping. A Mouse ran over his body. He awoke and caught her.
+The Mouse besought him; she said:
+
+"Let me go, and I will do you a favour!"
+
+The Lion laughed at the Mouse for promising him a favour, and let her
+go.
+
+Then the hunters caught the Lion and tied him with a rope to a tree. The
+Mouse heard the Lion's roar, ran up, gnawed the rope through, and said:
+
+"Do you remember? You laughed, not thinking that I could repay, but now
+you see that a favour may come also from a Mouse."
+
+
+THE LIAR
+
+A Boy was watching the sheep and, pretending that he saw a wolf, he
+began to cry:
+
+"Help! A wolf! A wolf!"
+
+The peasants came running up and saw that it was not so. After doing
+this for a second and a third time, it happened that a wolf came indeed.
+The Boy began to cry:
+
+"Come, come, quickly, a wolf!"
+
+The peasants thought that he was deceiving them as usual, and paid no
+attention to him. The wolf saw there was no reason to be afraid: he
+leisurely killed the whole flock.
+
+
+THE ASS AND THE HORSE
+
+A man had an Ass and a Horse. They were walking on the road; the Ass
+said to the Horse:
+
+"It is heavy for me.--I shall not be able to carry it all; take at least
+a part of my load."
+
+The Horse paid no attention to him. The Ass fell down from overstraining
+himself, and died. When the master transferred the Ass's load on the
+Horse, and added the Ass's hide, the Horse began to complain:
+
+"Oh, woe to me, poor one, woe to me, unfortunate Horse! I did not want
+to help him even a little, and now I have to carry everything, and his
+hide, too."
+
+
+THE JACKDAW AND THE DOVES
+
+A Jackdaw saw that the Doves were well fed,--so she painted herself
+white and flew into the dove-cot. The Doves thought at first that she
+was a dove like them, and let her in. But the Jackdaw forgot herself and
+croaked in jackdaw fashion. Then the Doves began to pick at her and
+drove her away. The Jackdaw flew back to her friends, but the jackdaws
+were frightened at her, seeing her white, and themselves drove her away.
+
+
+THE WOMAN AND THE HEN
+
+A Hen laid an egg each day. The Mistress thought that if she gave her
+more to eat, she would lay twice as much. So she did. The Hen grew fat
+and stopped laying.
+
+
+THE LION, THE BEAR, AND THE FOX
+
+A Lion and a Bear procured some meat and began to fight for it. The Bear
+did not want to give in, nor did the Lion yield. They fought for so long
+a time that they both grew feeble and lay down. A Fox saw the meat
+between them; she grabbed it and ran away with it.
+
+
+THE DOG, THE COCK, AND THE FOX
+
+A Dog and a Cock went to travel together. At night the Cock fell asleep
+in a tree, and the Dog fixed a place for himself between the roots of
+that tree. When the time came, the Cock began to crow. A Fox heard the
+Cock, ran up to the tree, and began to beg the Cock to come down, as she
+wanted to give him her respects for such a fine voice.
+
+The Cock said:
+
+"You must first wake up the janitor,--he is sleeping between the roots.
+Let him open up, and I will come down."
+
+The Fox began to look for the janitor, and started yelping. The Dog
+sprang out at once and killed the Fox.
+
+
+THE HORSE AND THE GROOM
+
+A Groom stole the Horse's oats, and sold them, but he cleaned the Horse
+each day. Said the Horse:
+
+"If you really wish me to be in good condition, do not sell my oats."
+
+
+THE FROG AND THE LION
+
+A Lion heard a Frog croaking, and thought it was a large beast that was
+calling so loud. He walked up, and saw a Frog coming out of the swamp.
+The Lion crushed her with his paw and said:
+
+"There is nothing to look at, and yet I was frightened."
+
+
+THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE ANTS
+
+In the fall the wheat of the Ants got wet; they were drying it. A hungry
+Grasshopper asked them for something to eat. The Ants said:
+
+"Why did you not gather food during the summer?"
+
+She said:
+
+"I had no time: I sang songs."
+
+They laughed, and said:
+
+"If you sang in the summer, dance in the winter!"
+
+
+THE HEN AND THE GOLDEN EGGS
+
+A master had a Hen which laid golden eggs. He wanted more gold at once,
+and so killed the Hen (he thought that inside of her there was a large
+lump of gold), but she was just like any other hen.
+
+
+THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN
+
+An Ass put on a lion's skin, and all thought it was a lion. Men and
+animals ran away from him. A wind sprang up, and the skin was blown
+aside, and the Ass could be seen. People ran up and beat the Ass.
+
+
+THE HEN AND THE SWALLOW
+
+A Hen found some snake's eggs and began to sit on them. A Swallow saw it
+and said:
+
+"Stupid one! You will hatch them out, and, when they grow up, you will
+be the first one to suffer from them."
+
+
+THE STAG AND THE FAWN
+
+A Fawn once said to a Stag:
+
+"Father, you are larger and fleeter than the dogs, and, besides, you
+have huge antlers for defence; why, then, are you so afraid of the
+dogs?"
+
+The Stag laughed, and said:
+
+"You speak the truth, my child. The trouble is,--the moment I hear the
+dogs bark, I run before I have time to think."
+
+
+THE FOX AND THE GRAPES
+
+A Fox saw some ripe bunches of grapes hanging high, and tried to get at
+them, in order to eat them.
+
+She tried hard, but could not get them. To drown her annoyance she said:
+
+"They are still sour."
+
+
+THE MAIDS AND THE COCK
+
+A mistress used to wake the Maids at night and, as soon as the cocks
+crowed, put them to work. The Maids found that hard, and decided to kill
+the Cock, so that the mistress should not be wakened. They killed him,
+but now they suffered more than ever: the mistress was afraid that she
+would sleep past the time and so began to wake the Maids earlier.
+
+
+THE FISHERMAN AND THE FISH
+
+A Fisherman caught a Fish. Said the Fish:
+
+"Fisherman, let me go into the water; you see I am small: you will have
+little profit of me. If you let me go, I shall grow up, and then you
+will catch me when it will be worth while."
+
+But the Fisherman said:
+
+"A fool would be he who should wait for greater profit, and let the
+lesser slip out of his hands."
+
+
+THE FOX AND THE GOAT
+
+A Goat wanted to drink. He went down the incline to the well, drank his
+fill, and gained in weight. He started to get out, but could not do so.
+He began to bleat. A Fox saw him and said:
+
+"That's it, stupid one! If you had as much sense in your head as there
+are hairs in your beard, you would have thought of how to get out before
+you climbed down."
+
+
+THE DOG AND HER SHADOW
+
+A Dog was crossing the river over a plank, carrying a piece of meat in
+her teeth. She saw herself in the water and thought that another dog
+was carrying a piece of meat. She dropped her piece and dashed forward
+to take away what the other dog had: the other meat was gone, and her
+own was carried away by the stream.
+
+And thus the Dog was left without anything.
+
+
+THE CRANE AND THE STORK
+
+A peasant put out his nets to catch the Cranes for tramping down his
+field. In the nets were caught the Cranes, and with them one Stork.
+
+The Stork said to the peasant:
+
+"Let me go! I am not a Crane, but a Stork; we are most honoured birds; I
+live on your father's house. You can see by my feathers that I am not a
+Crane."
+
+The peasant said:
+
+"With the Cranes I have caught you, and with them will I kill you."
+
+
+THE GARDENER AND HIS SONS
+
+A Gardener wanted his Sons to get used to gardening. As he was dying, he
+called them up and said to them:
+
+"Children, when I am dead, look for what is hidden in the vineyard."
+
+The Sons thought that it was a treasure, and when their father died,
+they began to dig there, and dug up the whole ground. They did not find
+the treasure, but they ploughed the vineyard up so well that it brought
+forth more fruit than ever.
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE CRANE
+
+A Wolf had a bone stuck in his throat, and could not cough it up. He
+called the Crane, and said to him:
+
+"Crane, you have a long neck. Thrust your head into my throat and draw
+out the bone! I will reward you."
+
+The Crane stuck his head in, pulled out the bone, and said:
+
+"Give me my reward!"
+
+The Wolf gnashed his teeth and said:
+
+"Is it not enough reward for you that I did not bite off your head when
+it was between my teeth?"
+
+
+THE HARES AND THE FROGS
+
+The Hares once got together, and began to complain about their life:
+
+"We perish from men, and from dogs, and from eagles, and from all the
+other beasts. It would be better to die at once than to live in fright
+and suffer. Come, let us drown ourselves!"
+
+And the Hares raced away to drown themselves in a lake. The Frogs heard
+the Hares and plumped into the water. So one of the Hares said:
+
+"Wait, boys! Let us put off the drowning! Evidently the Frogs are having
+a harder life than we: they are afraid even of us."
+
+
+THE FATHER AND HIS SONS
+
+A Father told his Sons to live in peace: they paid no attention to him.
+So he told them to bring the bath broom, and said:
+
+"Break it!"
+
+No matter how much they tried, they could not break it. Then the Father
+unclosed the broom, and told them to break the rods singly. They broke
+it.
+
+The Father said:
+
+"So it is with you: if you live in peace, no one will overcome you; but
+if you quarrel, and are divided, any one will easily ruin you."
+
+
+THE FOX
+
+A Fox got caught in a trap. She tore off her tail, and got away. She
+began to contrive how to cover up her shame. She called together the
+Foxes, and begged them to cut off their tails.
+
+"A tail," she said, "is a useless thing. In vain do we drag along a dead
+weight."
+
+One of the Foxes said:
+
+"You would not be speaking thus, if you were not tailless!"
+
+The tailless Fox grew silent and went away.
+
+
+THE WILD ASS AND THE TAME ASS
+
+A Wild Ass saw a Tame Ass. The Wild Ass went up to him and began to
+praise his life, saying how smooth his body was, and what sweet feed he
+received. Later, when the Tame Ass was loaded down, and a driver began
+to goad him with a stick, the Wild Ass said:
+
+"No, brother, I do not envy you: I see that your life is going hard with
+you."
+
+
+THE STAG
+
+A Stag went to the brook to quench his thirst. He saw himself in the
+water, and began to admire his horns, seeing how large and branching
+they were; and he looked at his feet, and said: "But my feet are
+unseemly and thin."
+
+Suddenly a Lion sprang out and made for the Stag. The Stag started to
+run over the open plain. He was getting away, but there came a forest,
+and his horns caught in the branches, and the lion caught him. As the
+Stag was dying, he said:
+
+"How foolish I am! That which I thought to be unseemly and thin was
+saving me, and what I gloried in has been my ruin."
+
+
+THE DOG AND THE WOLF
+
+A Dog fell asleep back of the yard. A Wolf ran up and wanted to eat him.
+
+Said the Dog:
+
+"Wolf, don't eat me yet: now I am lean and bony. Wait a little,--my
+master is going to celebrate a wedding; then I shall have plenty to eat;
+I shall grow fat. It will be better to eat me then."
+
+The Wolf believed her, and went away. Then he came a second time, and
+saw the Dog lying on the roof. The Wolf said to her:
+
+"Well, have they had the wedding?"
+
+The Dog replied:
+
+"Listen, Wolf! If you catch me again asleep in front of the yard, do not
+wait for the wedding."
+
+
+THE GNAT AND THE LION
+
+A Gnat came to a Lion, and said:
+
+"Do you think that you have more strength than I? You are mistaken! What
+does your strength consist in? Is it that you scratch with your claws,
+and gnaw with your teeth? That is the way the women quarrel with their
+husbands. I am stronger than you: if you wish let us fight!"
+
+And the Gnat sounded his horn, and began to bite the Lion on his bare
+cheeks and his nose. The Lion struck his face with his paws and
+scratched it with his claws. He tore his face until the blood came, and
+gave up.
+
+The Gnat trumpeted for joy, and flew away. Then he became entangled in a
+spider's web, and the spider began to suck him up. The Gnat said:
+
+"I have vanquished the strong beast, the Lion, and now I perish from
+this nasty spider."
+
+
+THE HORSE AND HIS MASTERS
+
+A gardener had a Horse. She had much to do, but little to eat; so she
+began to pray to God to get another master. And so it happened. The
+gardener sold the Horse to a potter. The Horse was glad, but the potter
+had even more work for her to do. And again the Horse complained of her
+lot, and began to pray that she might get a better master. And this
+prayer, too, was fulfilled. The potter sold the Horse to a tanner. When
+the Horse saw the skins of horses in the tanner's yard, she began to
+cry:
+
+"Woe to me, wretched one! It would be better if I could stay with my old
+masters. It is evident they have sold me now not for work, but for my
+skin's sake."
+
+
+THE OLD MAN AND DEATH
+
+An Old Man cut some wood, which he carried away. He had to carry it far.
+He grew tired, so he put down his bundle, and said:
+
+"Oh, if Death would only come!"
+
+Death came, and said:
+
+"Here I am, what do you want?"
+
+The Old Man was frightened, and said:
+
+"Lift up my bundle!"
+
+
+THE LION AND THE FOX
+
+A Lion, growing old, was unable to catch the animals, and so intended to
+live by cunning. He went into a den, lay down there, and pretended that
+he was sick. The animals came to see him, and he ate up those that went
+into his den. The Fox guessed the trick. She stood at the entrance of
+the den, and said:
+
+"Well, Lion, how are you feeling?"
+
+The Lion answered:
+
+"Poorly. Why don't you come in?"
+
+The Fox replied:
+
+"I do not come in because I see by the tracks that many have entered,
+but none have come out."
+
+
+THE STAG AND THE VINEYARD
+
+A Stag hid himself from the hunters in a vineyard. When the hunters
+missed him, the Stag began to nibble at the grape-vine leaves.
+
+The hunters noticed that the leaves were moving, and so they thought,
+"There must be an animal under those leaves," and fired their guns, and
+wounded the Stag.
+
+The Stag said, dying:
+
+"It serves me right for wanting to eat the leaves that saved me."
+
+
+THE CAT AND THE MICE
+
+A house was overrun with Mice. A Cat found his way into the house, and
+began to catch them. The Mice saw that matters were bad, and said:
+
+"Mice, let us not come down from the ceiling! The Cat cannot get up
+there."
+
+When the Mice stopped coming down, the Cat decided that he must catch
+them by a trick. He grasped the ceiling with one leg, hung down from it,
+and made believe that he was dead.
+
+A Mouse looked out at him, but said:
+
+"No, my friend! Even if you should turn into a bag, I would not go up to
+you."
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE GOAT
+
+A Wolf saw a Goat browsing on a rocky mountain, and he could not get at
+her; so he said to her:
+
+"Come down lower! The place is more even, and the grass is much sweeter
+to feed on."
+
+But the Goat answered:
+
+"You are not calling me down for that, Wolf: you are troubling yourself
+not about my food, but about yours."
+
+
+THE REEDS AND THE OLIVE-TREE
+
+The Olive-tree and the Reeds quarrelled about who was stronger and
+sounder. The Olive-tree laughed at the Reeds because they bent in every
+wind. The Reeds kept silence. A storm came: the Reeds swayed, tossed,
+bowed to the ground,--and remained unharmed. The Olive-tree strained her
+branches against the wind,--and broke.
+
+
+THE TWO COMPANIONS
+
+Two Companions were walking through the forest when a Bear jumped out on
+them. One started to run, climbed a tree, and hid himself, but the other
+remained in the road. He had nothing to do, so he fell down on the
+ground and pretended that he was dead.
+
+The Bear went up to him, and sniffed at him; but he had stopped
+breathing.
+
+The Bear sniffed at his face; he thought that he was dead, and so went
+away.
+
+When the Bear was gone, the Companion climbed down from the tree and
+laughing, said: "What did the Bear whisper in your ear?"
+
+"He told me that those who in danger run away from their companions are
+bad people."
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
+
+A Wolf saw a Lamb drinking at a river. The Wolf wanted to eat the Lamb,
+and so he began to annoy him. He said:
+
+"You are muddling my water and do not let me drink."
+
+The Lamb said:
+
+"How can I muddle your water? I am standing downstream from you;
+besides, I drink with the tips of my lips."
+
+And the Wolf said:
+
+"Well, why did you call my father names last summer?"
+
+The Lamb said:
+
+"But, Wolf, I was not yet born last summer."
+
+The Wolf got angry, and said:
+
+"It is hard to get the best of you. Besides, my stomach is empty, so I
+will devour you."
+
+
+THE LION, THE WOLF, AND THE FOX
+
+An old, sick Lion was lying in his den. All the animals came to see the
+king, but the Fox kept away. So the Wolf was glad of the chance, and
+began to slander the Fox before the Lion.
+
+"She does not esteem you in the least," he said, "she has not come once
+to see the king."
+
+The Fox happened to run by as he was saying these words. She heard what
+the Wolf had said, and thought:
+
+"Wait, Wolf, I will get my revenge on you."
+
+So the Lion began to roar at the Fox, but she said:
+
+"Do not have me killed, but let me say a word! I did not come to see you
+because I had no time. And I had no time because I ran over the whole
+world to ask the doctors for a remedy for you. I have just got it, and
+so I have come to see you."
+
+The Lion said:
+
+"What is the remedy?"
+
+"It is this: if you flay a live Wolf, and put his warm hide on you--"
+
+When the Lion stretched out the Wolf, the Fox laughed, and said:
+
+"That's it, my friend: masters ought to be led to do good, not evil."
+
+
+THE LION, THE ASS, AND THE FOX
+
+The Lion, the Ass, and the Fox went out to hunt. They caught a large
+number of animals, and the Lion told the Ass to divide them up. The Ass
+divided them into three equal parts and said: "Now, take them!"
+
+The Lion grew angry, ate up the Ass, and told the Fox to divide them up
+anew. The Fox collected them all into one heap, and left a small bit for
+herself. The Lion looked at it and said:
+
+"Clever Fox! Who taught you to divide so well?"
+
+She said:
+
+"What about that Ass?"
+
+
+THE PEASANT AND THE WATER-SPRITE
+
+A Peasant lost his axe in the river; he sat down on the bank in grief,
+and began to weep.
+
+The Water-sprite heard the Peasant and took pity on him. He brought a
+gold axe out of the river, and said: "Is this your axe?"
+
+The Peasant said: "No, it is not mine."
+
+The Water-sprite brought another, a silver axe.
+
+Again the Peasant said: "It is not my axe."
+
+Then the Water-sprite brought out the real axe.
+
+The Peasant said: "Now this is my axe."
+
+The Water-sprite made the Peasant a present of all three axes, for
+having told the truth.
+
+At home the Peasant showed his axes to his friends, and told them what
+had happened to him.
+
+One of the peasants made up his mind to do the same: he went to the
+river, purposely threw his axe into the water, sat down on the bank, and
+began to weep.
+
+The Water-sprite brought out a gold axe, and asked: "Is this your axe?"
+
+The Peasant was glad, and called out: "It is mine, mine!"
+
+The Water-sprite did not give him the gold axe, and did not bring him
+back his own either, because he had told an untruth.
+
+
+THE RAVEN AND THE FOX
+
+A Raven got himself a piece of meat, and sat down on a tree. The Fox
+wanted to get it from him. She went up to him, and said:
+
+"Oh, Raven, as I look at you,--from your size and beauty,--you ought to
+be a king! And you would certainly be a king, if you had a good voice."
+
+The Raven opened his mouth wide, and began to croak with all his might
+and main. The meat fell down. The Fox caught it and said:
+
+"Oh, Raven! If you had also sense, you would certainly be a king."
+
+
+
+
+II. ADAPTATIONS AND IMITATIONS OF HINDOO FABLES
+
+
+THE SNAKE'S HEAD AND TAIL
+
+The Snake's Tail had a quarrel with the Snake's Head about who was to
+walk in front. The Head said:
+
+"You cannot walk in front, because you have no eyes and no ears."
+
+The Tail said:
+
+"Yes, but I have strength, I move you; if I want to, I can wind myself
+around a tree, and you cannot get off the spot."
+
+The Head said:
+
+"Let us separate!"
+
+And the Tail tore himself loose from the Head, and crept on; but the
+moment he got away from the Head, he fell into a hole and was lost.
+
+
+FINE THREAD
+
+A Man ordered some fine thread from a Spinner. The Spinner spun it for
+him, but the Man said that the thread was not good, and that he wanted
+the finest thread he could get. The Spinner said:
+
+"If this is not fine enough, take this!" and she pointed to an empty
+space.
+
+He said that he did not see any. The Spinner said:
+
+"You do not see it, because it is so fine. I do not see it myself."
+
+The Fool was glad, and ordered some more thread of this kind, and paid
+her for what he got.
+
+
+THE PARTITION OF THE INHERITANCE
+
+A Father had two Sons. He said to them: "When I die, divide everything
+into two equal parts."
+
+When the Father died, the Sons could not divide without quarrelling.
+They went to a Neighbour to have him settle the matter. The Neighbour
+asked them how their Father had told them to divide. They said:
+
+"He ordered us to divide everything into two equal parts."
+
+The Neighbour said:
+
+"If so, tear all your garments into two halves, break your dishes into
+two halves, and cut all your cattle into two halves!"
+
+The Brothers obeyed their Neighbour, and lost everything.
+
+
+THE MONKEY
+
+A Man went into the woods, cut down a tree, and began to saw it. He
+raised the end of the tree on a stump, sat astride over it, and began to
+saw. Then he drove a wedge into the split that he had sawed, and went on
+sawing; then he took out the wedge and drove it in farther down.
+
+A Monkey was sitting on a tree and watching him. When the Man lay down
+to sleep, the Monkey seated herself astride the tree, and wanted to do
+the same; but when she took out the wedge, the tree sprang back and
+caught her tail. She began to tug and to cry. The Man woke up, beat the
+Monkey, and tied a rope to her.
+
+
+THE MONKEY AND THE PEASE
+
+A Monkey was carrying both her hands full of pease. A pea dropped on the
+ground; the Monkey wanted to pick it up, and dropped twenty peas. She
+rushed to pick them up and lost all the rest. Then she flew into a
+rage, swept away all the pease and ran off.
+
+
+THE MILCH COW
+
+A Man had a Cow; she gave each day a pot full of milk. The Man invited a
+number of guests. To have as much milk as possible, he did not milk the
+Cow for ten days. He thought that on the tenth day the Cow would give
+him ten pitchers of milk.
+
+But the Cow's milk went back, and she gave less milk than before.
+
+
+THE DUCK AND THE MOON
+
+A Duck was swimming in the pond, trying to find some fish, but she did
+not find one in a whole day. When night came, she saw the Moon in the
+water; she thought that it was a fish, and plunged in to catch the Moon.
+The other ducks saw her do it and laughed at her.
+
+That made the Duck feel so ashamed and bashful that when she saw a fish
+under the Water, she did not try to catch it, and so died of hunger.
+
+
+THE WOLF IN THE DUST
+
+A Wolf wanted to pick a sheep out of a flock, and stepped into the wind,
+so that the dust of the flock might blow on him.
+
+The Sheep Dog saw him, and said:
+
+"There is no sense, Wolf, in your walking in the dust: it will make your
+eyes ache."
+
+But the Wolf said:
+
+"The trouble is, Doggy, that my eyes have been aching for quite awhile,
+and I have been told that the dust from a flock of sheep will cure the
+eyes."
+
+
+THE MOUSE UNDER THE GRANARY
+
+A Mouse was living under the granary. In the floor of the granary there
+was a little hole, and the grain fell down through it. The Mouse had an
+easy life of it, but she wanted to brag of her ease: she gnawed a larger
+hole in the floor, and invited other mice.
+
+"Come to a feast with me," said she; "there will be plenty to eat for
+everybody."
+
+When she brought the mice, she saw there was no hole. The peasant had
+noticed the big hole in the floor, and had stopped it up.
+
+
+THE BEST PEARS
+
+A master sent his Servant to buy the best-tasting pears. The Servant
+came to the shop and asked for pears. The dealer gave him some; but the
+Servant said:
+
+"No, give me the best!"
+
+The dealer said:
+
+"Try one; you will see that they taste good."
+
+"How shall I know," said the Servant, "that they all taste good, if I
+try one only?"
+
+He bit off a piece from each pear, and brought them to his master. Then
+his master sent him away.
+
+
+THE FALCON AND THE COCK
+
+The Falcon was used to the master, and came to his hand when he was
+called; the Cock ran away from his master and cried when people went up
+to him. So the Falcon said to the Cock:
+
+"In you Cocks there is no gratitude; one can see that you are of a
+common breed. You go to your masters only when you are hungry. It is
+different with us wild birds. We have much strength, and we can fly
+faster than anybody; still we do not fly away from people, but of our
+own accord go to their hands when we are called. We remember that they
+feed us."
+
+Then the Cock said:
+
+"You do not run away from people because you have never seen a roast
+Falcon, but we, you know, see roast Cocks."
+
+
+THE JACKALS AND THE ELEPHANT
+
+The Jackals had eaten up all the carrion in the woods, and had nothing
+to eat. So an old Jackal was thinking how to find something to feed on.
+He went to an Elephant, and said:
+
+"We had a king, but he became overweening: he told us to do things that
+nobody could do; we want to choose another king, and my people have sent
+me to ask you to be our king. You will have an easy life with us.
+Whatever you will order us to do, we will do, and we will honour you in
+everything. Come to our kingdom!"
+
+The Elephant consented, and followed the Jackal. The Jackal brought him
+to a swamp. When the Elephant stuck fast in it, the Jackal said:
+
+"Now command! Whatever you command, we will do."
+
+The Elephant said:
+
+"I command you to pull me out from here."
+
+The Jackal began to laugh, and said:
+
+"Take hold of my tail with your trunk, and I will pull you out at once."
+
+The Elephant said:
+
+"Can I be pulled out by a tail?"
+
+But the Jackal said to him:
+
+"Why, then, do you command us to do what is impossible? Did we not drive
+away our first king for telling us to do what could not be done?"
+
+When the Elephant died in the swamp the Jackals came and ate him up.
+
+
+THE HERON, THE FISHES, AND THE CRAB
+
+A Heron was living near a pond. She grew old, and had no strength left
+with which to catch the fish. She began to contrive how to live by
+cunning. So she said to the Fishes:
+
+"You Fishes do not know that a calamity is in store for you: I have
+heard the people say that they are going to let off the pond, and catch
+every one of you. I know of a nice little pond back of the mountain. I
+should like to help you, but I am old, and it is hard for me to fly."
+
+The Fishes begged the Heron to help them. So the Heron said:
+
+"All right, I will do what I can for you, and will carry you over: only
+I cannot do it at once,--I will take you there one after another."
+
+And the Fishes were happy; they kept begging her: "Carry me over! Carry
+me over!"
+
+And the Heron started carrying them. She would take one up, would carry
+her into the field, and would eat her up. And thus she ate a large
+number of Fishes.
+
+In the pond there lived an old Crab. When the Heron began to take out
+the Fishes, he saw what was up, and said:
+
+"Now, Heron, take me to the new abode!"
+
+The Heron took the Crab and carried him off. When she flew out on the
+field, she wanted to throw the Crab down. But the Crab saw the
+fish-bones on the ground, and so squeezed the Heron's neck with his
+claws, and choked her to death. Then he crawled back to the pond, and
+told the Fishes.
+
+
+THE WATER-SPRITE AND THE PEARL
+
+A Man was rowing in a boat, and dropped a costly pearl into the sea. The
+Man returned to the shore, took a pail, and began to draw up the water
+and to pour it out on the land. He drew the water and poured it out for
+three days without stopping.
+
+On the fourth day the Water-sprite came out of the sea, and asked:
+
+"Why are you drawing the water?"
+
+The Man said:
+
+"I am drawing it because I have dropped a pearl into it."
+
+The Water-sprite asked him:
+
+"Will you stop soon?"
+
+The Man said:
+
+"I will stop when I dry up the sea."
+
+Then the Water-sprite returned to the sea, brought back that pearl, and
+gave it to the Man.
+
+
+THE BLIND MAN AND THE MILK
+
+A Man born blind asked a Seeing Man:
+
+"Of what colour is milk?"
+
+The Seeing Man said: "The colour of milk is the same as that of white
+paper."
+
+The Blind Man asked: "Well, does that colour rustle in your hands like
+paper?"
+
+The Seeing Man said: "No, it is as white as white flour."
+
+The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as soft and as powdery as flour?"
+
+The Seeing Man said: "No, it is simply as white as a white hare."
+
+The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as fluffy and soft as a hare?"
+
+The Seeing Man said: "No, it is as white as snow."
+
+The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as cold as snow?"
+
+And no matter how many examples the Seeing Man gave, the Blind Man was
+unable to understand what the white colour of milk was like.
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE BOW
+
+A hunter went out to hunt with bow and arrows. He killed a goat. He
+threw her on his shoulders and carried her along. On his way he saw a
+boar. He threw down the goat, and shot at the boar and wounded him. The
+boar rushed against the hunter and butted him to death, and himself died
+on the spot. A Wolf scented the blood, and came to the place where lay
+the goat, the boar, the man, and his bow. The Wolf was glad, and said:
+
+"Now I shall have enough to eat for a long time; only I will not eat
+everything at once, but little by little, so that nothing may be lost:
+first I will eat the tougher things, and then I will lunch on what is
+soft and sweet."
+
+The Wolf sniffed at the goat, the boar, and the man, and said:
+
+"This is all soft food, so I will eat it later; let me first start on
+these sinews of the bow."
+
+And he began to gnaw the sinews of the bow. When he bit through the
+string, the bow sprang back and hit him on his belly. He died on the
+spot, and other wolves ate up the man, the goat, the boar, and the Wolf.
+
+
+THE BIRDS IN THE NET
+
+A Hunter set out a net near a lake and caught a number of birds. The
+birds were large, and they raised the net and flew away with it. The
+Hunter ran after them. A Peasant saw the Hunter running, and said:
+
+"Where are you running? How can you catch up with the birds, while you
+are on foot?"
+
+The Hunter said:
+
+"If it were one bird, I should not catch it, but now I shall."
+
+And so it happened. When evening came, the birds began to pull for the
+night each in a different direction: one to the woods, another to the
+swamp, a third to the field; and all fell with the net to the ground,
+and the Hunter caught them.
+
+
+THE KING AND THE FALCON
+
+A certain King let his favourite Falcon loose on a hare, and galloped
+after him.
+
+The Falcon caught the hare. The King took him away, and began to look
+for some water to drink. The King found it on a knoll, but it came only
+drop by drop. The King fetched his cup from the saddle, and placed it
+under the water. The Water flowed in drops, and when the cup was filled,
+the King raised it to his mouth and wanted to drink it. Suddenly the
+Falcon fluttered on the King's arm and spilled the water. The King
+placed the cup once more under the drops. He waited for a long time for
+the cup to be filled even with the brim, and again, as he carried it to
+his mouth, the Falcon flapped his wings and spilled the water.
+
+When the King filled his cup for the third time and began to carry it to
+his mouth, the Falcon again spilled it. The King flew into a rage and
+killed him by flinging him against a stone with all his force. Just then
+the King's servants rode up, and one of them ran up-hill to the spring,
+to find as much water as possible, and to fill the cup. But the servant
+did not bring the water; he returned with the empty cup, and said:
+
+"You cannot drink that water; there is a snake in the spring, and she
+has let her venom into the water. It is fortunate that the Falcon has
+spilled the water. If you had drunk it, you would have died."
+
+The King said:
+
+"How badly I have repaid the Falcon! He has saved my life, and I killed
+him."
+
+
+THE KING AND THE ELEPHANTS
+
+An Indian King ordered all the Blind People to be assembled, and when
+they came, he ordered that all the Elephants be shown to them. The Blind
+Men went to the stable and began to feel the Elephants. One felt a leg,
+another a tail, a third the stump of a tail, a fourth a belly, a fifth a
+back, a sixth the ears, a seventh the tusks, and an eighth a trunk.
+
+Then the King called the Blind Men, and asked them: "What are my
+Elephants like?"
+
+One Blind Man said: "Your Elephants are like posts." He had felt the
+legs.
+
+Another Blind Man said: "They are like bath brooms." He had felt the end
+of the tail.
+
+A third said: "They are like branches." He had felt the tail stump.
+
+The one who had touched a belly said: "The Elephants are like a clod of
+earth."
+
+The one who had touched the sides said: "They are like a wall."
+
+The one who had touched a back said: "They are like a mound."
+
+The one who had touched the ears said: "They are like a mortar."
+
+The one who had touched the tusks said: "They are like horns."
+
+The one who had touched the trunk said that they were like a stout rope.
+
+And all the Blind Men began to dispute and to quarrel.
+
+
+WHY THERE IS EVIL IN THE WORLD
+
+A Hermit was living in the forest, and the animals were not afraid of
+him. He and the animals talked together and understood each other.
+
+Once the Hermit lay down under a tree, and a Raven a Dove, a Stag, and
+a Snake gathered in the same place, to pass the night. The animals began
+to discuss why there was evil in the world.
+
+The Raven said:
+
+"All the evil in the world comes from hunger. When I eat my fill, I sit
+down on a branch and croak a little, and it is all jolly and good, and
+everything gives me pleasure; but let me just go without eating a day or
+two, and everything palls on me so that I do not feel like looking at
+God's world. And something draws me on, and I fly from place to place,
+and have no rest. When I catch a glimpse of some meat, it makes me only
+feel sicker than ever, and I make for it without much thinking. At times
+they throw sticks and stones at me, and the wolves and dogs grab me, but
+I do not give in. Oh, how many of my brothers are perishing through
+hunger! All evil comes from hunger."
+
+The Dove said:
+
+"According to my opinion, the evil does not come from hunger, but from
+love. If we lived singly, the trouble would not be so bad. One head is
+not poor, and if it is, it is only one. But here we live in pairs. And
+you come to like your mate so much that you have no rest: you keep
+thinking of her all the time, wondering whether she has had enough to
+eat, and whether she is warm. And when your mate flies away from you,
+you feel entirely lost, and you keep thinking that a hawk may have
+carried her off, or men may have caught her; and you start out to find
+her, and fly to your ruin,--either into the hawk's claws, or into a
+snare. And when your mate is lost, nothing gives you any joy. You do not
+eat or drink, and all the time search and weep. Oh, so many of us perish
+in this way! All the evil is not from hunger, but from love."
+
+The Snake said:
+
+"No, the evil is not from hunger, nor from love, but from rage. If we
+lived peacefully, without getting into a rage, everything would be nice
+for us. But, as it is, whenever a thing does not go exactly right, we
+get angry, and then nothing pleases us. All we think about is how to
+revenge ourselves on some one. Then we forget ourselves, and only hiss,
+and creep, and try to find some one to bite. And we do not spare a
+soul,--we even bite our own father and mother. We feel as though we
+could eat ourselves up. And we rage until we perish. All the evil in the
+World comes from rage."
+
+The Stag said:
+
+"No, not from rage, or from love, or from hunger does all the evil in
+the world come, but from terror. If it were possible not to be afraid,
+everything would be well. We have swift feet and much strength: against
+a small animal we defend ourselves with our horns, and from a large one
+we flee. But how can I help becoming frightened? Let a branch crackle in
+the forest, or a leaf rustle, and I am all atremble with fear, and my
+heart flutters as though it wanted to jump out, and I fly as fast as I
+can. Again, let a hare run by, or a bird flap its wings, or a dry twig
+break off, and you think that it is a beast, and you run straight up
+against him. Or you run away from a dog and run into the hands of a man.
+Frequently you get frightened and run, not knowing whither, and at full
+speed rush down a steep hill, and get killed. We have no rest. All the
+evil comes from terror."
+
+Then the Hermit said:
+
+"Not from hunger, not from love, not from rage, not from terror are all
+our sufferings, but from our bodies comes all the evil in the world.
+From them come hunger, and love, and rage, and terror."
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE HUNTERS
+
+A Wolf devoured a sheep. The Hunters caught the Wolf and began to beat
+him. The Wolf said:
+
+"In vain do you beat me: it is not my fault that I am gray,--God has
+made me so."
+
+But the Hunters said:
+
+"We do not beat the Wolf for being gray, but for eating the sheep."
+
+
+THE TWO PEASANTS
+
+Once upon a time two Peasants drove toward each other and caught in each
+other's sleighs. One cried:
+
+"Get out of my way,--I am hurrying to town."
+
+But the other said:
+
+"Get out of my way, I am hurrying home."
+
+They quarrelled for some time. A third Peasant saw them and said:
+
+"If you are in a hurry, back up!"
+
+
+THE PEASANT AND THE HORSE
+
+A Peasant went to town to fetch some oats for his Horse. He had barely
+left the village, when the Horse began to turn around, toward the house.
+The Peasant struck the Horse with his whip. She went on, and kept
+thinking about the Peasant:
+
+"Whither is that fool driving me? He had better go home."
+
+Before reaching town, the Peasant saw that the Horse trudged along
+through the mud with difficulty, so he turned her on the pavement; but
+the Horse began to turn back from the street. The Peasant gave the Horse
+the whip, and jerked at the reins; she went on the pavement, and
+thought:
+
+"Why has he turned me on the pavement? It will only break my hoofs. It
+is rough underfoot."
+
+The Peasant went to the shop, bought the oats, and drove home. When he
+came home, he gave the Horse some oats. The Horse ate them and thought:
+
+"How stupid men are! They are fond of exercising their wits on us, but
+they have less sense than we. What did he trouble himself about? He
+drove me somewhere. No matter how far we went, we came home in the end.
+So it would have been better if we had remained at home from the start:
+he could have been sitting on the oven, and I eating oats."
+
+
+THE TWO HORSES
+
+Two Horses were drawing their carts. The Front Horse pulled well, but
+the Hind Horse kept stopping all the time. The load of the Hind Horse
+was transferred to the front cart; when all was transferred, the Hind
+Horse went along with ease, and said to the Front Horse:
+
+"Work hard and sweat! The more you try, the harder they will make you
+work."
+
+When they arrived at the tavern, their master said:
+
+"Why should I feed two Horses, and haul with one only? I shall do better
+to give one plenty to eat, and to kill the other: I shall at least have
+her hide."
+
+So he did.
+
+
+THE AXE AND THE SAW
+
+Two Peasants went to the forest to cut wood. One of them had an axe, and
+the other a saw. They picked out a tree, and began to dispute. One said
+that the tree had to be chopped, while the other said that it had to be
+sawed down.
+
+A third Peasant said:
+
+"I will easily make peace between you: if the axe is sharp, you had
+better chop it; but if the saw is sharp you had better saw it."
+
+He took the axe, and began to chop it; but the axe was so dull that it
+was not possible to cut with it. Then he took the saw; the saw was
+worthless, and did not saw. So he said:
+
+"Stop quarrelling awhile; the axe does not chop, and the saw does not
+saw. First grind your axe and file your saw, and then quarrel."
+
+But the Peasants grew angrier still at one another, because one had a
+dull axe, and the other a dull saw. And they came to blows.
+
+
+THE DOGS AND THE COOK
+
+A Cook was preparing a dinner. The Dogs were lying at the kitchen door.
+The Cook killed a calf and threw the guts out into the yard. The Dogs
+picked them up and ate them, and said:
+
+"He is a good Cook: he cooks well."
+
+After awhile the Cook began to clean pease, turnips, and onions, and
+threw out the refuse. The Dogs made for it; but they turned their noses
+up, and said:
+
+"Our Cook has grown worse: he used to cook well, but now he is no longer
+any good."
+
+But the Cook paid no attention to the Dogs, and continued to fix the
+dinner in his own way. The family, and not the Dogs, ate the dinner, and
+praised it.
+
+
+THE HARE AND THE HARRIER
+
+A Hare once said to a Harrier:
+
+"Why do you bark when you run after us? You would catch us easier, if
+you ran after us in silence. With your bark you only drive us against
+the hunter: he hears where we are running; and he rushes out with his
+gun and kills us, and does not give you anything."
+
+The Harrier said:
+
+"That is not the reason why I bark. I bark because, when I scent your
+odour, I am angry, and happy because I am about to catch you; I do not
+know why, but I cannot keep from barking."
+
+
+THE OAK AND THE HAZELBUSH
+
+An old Oak dropped an acorn under a Hazelbush. The Hazelbush said to the
+Oak:
+
+"Have you not enough space under your own branches? Drop your acorns in
+an open space. Here I am myself crowded by my shoots, and I do not drop
+my nuts to the ground, but give them to men."
+
+"I have lived for two hundred years," said the Oak, "and the Oakling
+which will sprout from that acorn will live just as long."
+
+Then the Hazelbush flew into a rage, and said:
+
+"If so, I will choke your Oakling, and he will not live for three days."
+
+The Oak made no reply, but told his son to sprout out of that acorn. The
+acorn got wet and burst, and clung to the ground with his crooked
+rootlet, and sent up a sprout.
+
+The Hazelbush tried to choke him, and gave him no sun. But the Oakling
+spread upwards and grew stronger in the shade of the Hazelbush. A
+hundred years passed. The Hazelbush had long ago dried up, but the Oak
+from that acorn towered to the sky and spread his tent in all
+directions.
+
+
+THE HEN AND THE CHICKS
+
+A Hen hatched some Chicks, but did not know how to take care of them. So
+she said to them:
+
+"Creep back into your shells! When you are inside your shells, I will
+sit on you as before, and will take care of you."
+
+The Chicks did as they were ordered and tried to creep into their
+shells, but were unable to do so, and only crushed their wings. Then one
+of the Chicks said to his mother:
+
+"If we are to stay all the time in our shells, you ought never to have
+hatched us."
+
+
+THE CORN-CRAKE AND HIS MATE
+
+A Corn-crake had made a nest in the meadow late in the year, and at
+mowing time his Mate was still sitting on her eggs. Early in the morning
+the peasants came to the meadow, took off the coats, whetted their
+scythes, and started one after another to mow down the grass and to put
+it down in rows. The Corn-crake flew up to see what the mowers were
+doing. When he saw a peasant swing his scythe and cut a snake in two, he
+rejoiced and flew back to his Mate and said:
+
+"Don't fear the peasants! They have come to cut the snakes to pieces;
+they have given us no rest for quite awhile."
+
+But his Mate said:
+
+"The peasants are cutting the grass, and with the grass they are cutting
+everything which is in their way,--the snakes, and the Corn-crake's
+nest, and the Corn-crake's head. My heart forebodes nothing good: but I
+cannot carry away the eggs, nor fly from the nest, for fear of chilling
+them."
+
+When the mowers came to the nest of the Corn-crake, one of the peasants
+swung his scythe and cut off the head of the Corn-crake's Mate, and put
+the eggs in his bosom and gave them to his children to play with.
+
+
+THE COW AND THE BILLY GOAT
+
+An old woman had a Cow and a Billy Goat. The two pastured together. At
+milking the Cow was restless. The old woman brought out some bread and
+salt, and gave it to the Cow, and said:
+
+"Stand still, motherkin; take it, take it! I will bring you some more,
+only stand still."
+
+On the next evening the Goat came home from the field before the Cow,
+and spread his legs, and stood in front of the old woman. The old woman
+wanted to strike him with the towel, but he stood still, and did not
+stir. He remembered that the woman had promised the Cow some bread if
+she would stand still. When the woman saw that he would not budge, she
+picked up a stick, and beat him with it.
+
+When the Goat went away, the woman began once more to feed the Cow with
+bread, and to talk to her.
+
+"There is no honesty in men," thought the Goat. "I stood still better
+than the Cow, and was beaten for it."
+
+He stepped aside, took a run, hit against the milk-pail, spilled the
+milk, and hurt the old woman.
+
+
+THE FOX'S TAIL
+
+A Man caught a Fox, and asked her:
+
+"Who has taught you Foxes to cheat the dogs with your tails?"
+
+The Fox asked: "How do you mean, to cheat? We do not cheat the dogs, but
+simply run from them as fast as we can."
+
+The Man said:
+
+"Yes, you do cheat them with your tails. When the dogs catch up with you
+and are about to clutch you, you turn your tails to one side; the dogs
+turn sharply after the tail, and then you run in the opposite
+direction."
+
+The Fox laughed, and said:
+
+"We do not do so in order to cheat the dogs, but in order to turn
+around; when a dog is after us, and we see that we cannot get away
+straight ahead, we turn to one side, and in order to do that suddenly,
+we have to swing the tail to the other side, just as you do with your
+arms, when you have to turn around. That is not our invention; God
+himself invented it when He created us, so that the dogs might not be
+able to catch all the Foxes."
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+
+1869-1872
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+
+
+
+
+THE FOUNDLING
+
+
+A poor woman had a daughter by the name of M�sha. M�sha went in the
+morning to fetch water, and saw at the door something wrapped in rags.
+When she touched the rags, there came from it the sound of "Ooah, ooah,
+ooah!" M�sha bent down and saw that it was a tiny, red-skinned baby. It
+was crying aloud: "Ooah, ooah!"
+
+M�sha took it into her arms and carried it into the house, and gave it
+milk with a spoon. Her mother said:
+
+"What have you brought?"
+
+"A baby. I found it at our door."
+
+The mother said:
+
+"We are poor as it is; we have nothing to feed the baby with; I will go
+to the chief and tell him to take the baby."
+
+M�sha began to cry, and said:
+
+"Mother, the child will not eat much; leave it here! See what red,
+wrinkled little hands and fingers it has!"
+
+Her mother looked at them, and she felt pity for the child. She did not
+take the baby away. M�sha fed and swathed the child, and sang songs to
+it, when it went to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+THE PEASANT AND THE CUCUMBERS
+
+
+A peasant once went to the gardener's, to steal cucumbers. He crept up
+to the cucumbers, and thought:
+
+"I will carry off a bag of cucumbers, which I will sell; with the money
+I will buy a hen. The hen will lay eggs, hatch them, and raise a lot of
+chicks. I will feed the chicks and sell them; then I will buy me a young
+sow, and she will bear a lot of pigs. I will sell the pigs, and buy me a
+mare; the mare will foal me some colts. I will raise the colts, and sell
+them. I will buy me a house, and start a garden. In the garden I will
+sow cucumbers, and will not let them be stolen, but will keep a sharp
+watch on them. I will hire watchmen, and put them in the cucumber patch,
+while I myself will come on them, unawares, and shout: 'Oh, there, keep
+a sharp lookout!'"
+
+And this he shouted as loud as he could. The watchmen heard it, and they
+rushed out and beat the peasant.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRE
+
+
+During harvest-time the men and women went out to work. In the village
+were left only the old and the very young. In one hut there remained a
+grandmother with her three grandchildren.
+
+The grandmother made a fire in the oven, and lay down to rest herself.
+Flies kept alighting on her and biting her. She covered her head with a
+towel and fell asleep. One of the grandchildren, M�sha (she was three
+years old), opened the oven, scraped some coals into a potsherd, and
+went into the vestibule. In the vestibule lay sheaves: the women were
+getting them bound.
+
+M�sha brought the coals, put them under the sheaves, and began to blow.
+When the straw caught fire, she was glad; she went into the hut and took
+her brother Kiry�sha by the arm (he was a year and a half old, and had
+just learned to walk), and brought him out, and said to him:
+
+"See, Kiry�sha, what a fire I have kindled."
+
+The sheaves were already burning and crackling. When the vestibule was
+filled with smoke, M�sha became frightened and ran back into the house.
+Kiry�sha fell over the threshold, hurt his nose, and began to cry; M�sha
+pulled him into the house, and both hid under a bench.
+
+The grandmother heard nothing, and did not wake. The elder boy, V�nya
+(he was eight years old), was in the street. When he saw the smoke
+rolling out of the vestibule, he ran to the door, made his way through
+the smoke into the house, and began to waken his grandmother; but she
+was dazed from her sleep, and, forgetting the children, rushed out and
+ran to the farmyards to call the people.
+
+In the meantime M�sha was sitting under the bench and keeping quiet; but
+the little boy cried, because he had hurt his nose badly. V�nya heard
+his cry, looked under the bench, and called out to M�sha:
+
+"Run, you will burn!"
+
+M�sha ran to the vestibule, but could not pass for the smoke and fire.
+She turned back. Then V�nya raised a window and told her to climb
+through it. When she got through, V�nya picked up his brother and
+dragged him along. But the child was heavy and did not let his brother
+take him. He cried and pushed V�nya. V�nya fell down twice, and when he
+dragged him up to the window, the door of the hut was already burning.
+V�nya thrust the child's head through the window and wanted to push him
+through; but the child took hold of him with both his hands (he was very
+much frightened) and would not let them take him out. Then V�nya cried
+to M�sha:
+
+"Pull him by the head!" while he himself pushed him behind.
+
+And thus they pulled him through the window and into the street.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD HORSE
+
+
+In our village there was an old, old man, P�men Timof�ich. He was ninety
+years old. He was living at the house of his grandson, doing no work.
+His back was bent: he walked with a cane and moved his feet slowly.
+
+He had no teeth at all, and his face was wrinkled. His nether lip
+trembled; when he walked and when he talked, his lips smacked, and one
+could not understand what he was saying.
+
+We were four brothers, and we were fond of riding. But we had no gentle
+riding-horses. We were allowed to ride only on one horse,--the name of
+that horse was Raven.
+
+One day mamma allowed us to ride, and all of us went with the valet to
+the stable. The coachman saddled Raven for us, and my eldest brother was
+the first to take a ride. He rode for a long time; he rode to the
+threshing-floor and around the garden, and when he came back, we
+shouted:
+
+"Now gallop past us!"
+
+My elder brother began to strike Raven with his feet and with the whip,
+and Raven galloped past us.
+
+After him, my second brother mounted the horse. He, too, rode for quite
+awhile, and he, too, urged Raven on with the whip and galloped up the
+hill. He wanted to ride longer, but my third brother begged him to let
+him ride at once.
+
+My third brother rode to the threshing-floor, and around the garden, and
+down the village, and raced up-hill to the stable. When he rode up to
+us Raven was panting, and his neck and shoulders were dark from sweat.
+
+When my turn came, I wanted to surprise my brothers and to show them how
+well I could ride, so I began to drive Raven with all my might, but he
+did not want to get away from the stable. And no matter how much I beat
+him, he would not run, but only shied and turned back. I grew angry at
+the horse, and struck him as hard as I could with my feet and with the
+whip. I tried to strike him in places where it would hurt most; I broke
+the whip and began to strike his head with what was left of the whip.
+But Raven would not run. Then I turned back, rode up to the valet, and
+asked him for a stout switch. But the valet said to me:
+
+"Don't ride any more, sir! Get down! What use is there in torturing the
+horse?"
+
+I felt offended, and said:
+
+"But I have not had a ride yet. Just watch me gallop! Please, give me a
+good-sized switch! I will heat him up."
+
+Then the valet shook his head, and said:
+
+"Oh, sir, you have no pity; why should you heat him up? He is twenty
+years old. The horse is worn out; he can barely breathe, and is old. He
+is so very old! Just like P�men Timof�ich. You might just as well sit
+down on Timof�ich's back and urge him on with a switch. Well, would you
+not pity him?"
+
+I thought of P�men, and listened to the valet's words. I climbed down
+from the horse and, when I saw how his sweaty sides hung down, how he
+breathed heavily through his nostrils, and how he switched his bald
+tail, I understood that it was hard for the horse. Before that I used to
+think that it was as much fun for him as for me. I felt so sorry for
+Raven that I began to kiss his sweaty neck and to beg his forgiveness
+for having beaten him.
+
+Since then I have grown to be a big man, and I always am careful with
+the horses, and always think of Raven and of P�men Timof�itch whenever I
+see anybody torture a horse.
+
+
+
+
+HOW I LEARNED TO RIDE
+
+
+When I was a little fellow, we used to study every day, and only on
+Sundays and holidays went out and played with our brothers. Once my
+father said:
+
+"The children must learn to ride. Send them to the riding-school!"
+
+I was the youngest of the brothers, and I asked:
+
+"May I, too, learn to ride?"
+
+My father said:
+
+"You will fall down."
+
+I began to beg him to let me learn, and almost cried. My father said:
+
+"All right, you may go, too. Only look out! Don't cry when you fall off.
+He who does not once fall down from a horse will not learn to ride."
+
+When Wednesday came, all three of us were taken to the riding-school. We
+entered by a large porch, and from the large porch went to a smaller
+one. Beyond the porch was a very large room: instead of a floor it had
+sand. And in this room were gentlemen and ladies and just such boys as
+we. That was the riding-school. The riding-school was not very light,
+and there was a smell of horses, and you could hear them snap whips and
+call to the horses, and the horses strike their hoofs against the wooden
+walls. At first I was frightened and could not see things well. Then our
+valet called the riding-master, and said:
+
+"Give these boys some horses: they are going to learn how to ride."
+
+The master said:
+
+"All right!"
+
+Then he looked at me, and said:
+
+"He is very small, yet."
+
+But the valet said:
+
+"He promised not to cry when he falls down."
+
+The master laughed and went away.
+
+Then they brought three saddled horses, and we took off our cloaks and
+walked down a staircase to the riding-school. The master was holding a
+horse by a cord, and my brothers rode around him. At first they rode at
+a slow pace, and later at a trot. Then they brought a pony. It was a red
+horse, and his tail was cut off. He was called Ruddy. The master
+laughed, and said to me:
+
+"Well, young gentleman, get on your horse!"
+
+I was both happy and afraid, and tried to act in such a manner as not to
+be noticed by anybody. For a long time I tried to get my foot into the
+stirrup, but could not do it because I was too small. Then the master
+raised me up in his hands and put me on the saddle. He said:
+
+"The young master is not heavy,--about two pounds in weight, that is
+all."
+
+At first he held me by my hand, but I saw that my brothers were not
+held, and so I begged him to let go of me. He said:
+
+"Are you not afraid?"
+
+I was very much afraid, but I said that I was not. I was so much afraid
+because Ruddy kept dropping his ears. I thought he was angry at me. The
+master said:
+
+"Look out, don't fall down!" and let go of me. At first Ruddy went at a
+slow pace, and I sat up straight. But the saddle was sleek, and I was
+afraid I would slip off. The master asked me:
+
+"Well, are you fast in the saddle?"
+
+I said:
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"If so, go at a slow trot!" and the master clicked his tongue.
+
+Ruddy started at a slow trot, and began to jog me. But I kept silent,
+and tried not to slip to one side. The master praised me:
+
+"Oh, a fine young gentleman, indeed!"
+
+I was very glad to hear it.
+
+Just then the master's friend went up to him and began to talk with him,
+and the master stopped looking at me.
+
+Suddenly I felt that I had slipped a little to one side on my saddle. I
+wanted to straighten myself up, but was unable to do so. I wanted to
+call out to the master to stop the horse, but I thought it would be a
+disgrace if I did it, and so kept silence. The master was not looking at
+me and Ruddy ran at a trot, and I slipped still more to one side. I
+looked at the master and thought that he would help me, but he was still
+talking with his friend, and without looking at me kept repeating:
+
+"Well done, young gentleman!"
+
+I was now altogether to one side, and was very much frightened. I
+thought that I was lost; but I felt ashamed to cry. Ruddy shook me up
+once more, and I slipped off entirely and fell to the ground. Then Ruddy
+stopped, and the master looked at the horse and saw that I was not on
+him. He said:
+
+"I declare, my young gentleman has dropped off!" and walked over to me.
+
+When I told him that I was not hurt, he laughed and said:
+
+"A child's body is soft."
+
+I felt like crying. I asked him to put me again on the horse, and I was
+lifted on the horse. After that I did not fall down again.
+
+Thus we rode twice a week in the riding-school, and I soon learned to
+ride well, and was not afraid of anything.
+
+
+
+
+THE WILLOW
+
+
+During Easter week a peasant went out to see whether the ground was all
+thawed out.
+
+He went into the garden and touched the soil with a stick. The earth was
+soft. The peasant went into the woods; here the catkins were already
+swelling on the willows. The peasant thought:
+
+"I will fence my garden with willows; they will grow up and will make a
+good hedge!"
+
+He took his axe, cut down a dozen willows, sharpened them at the end,
+and stuck them in the ground.
+
+All the willows sent up sprouts with leaves, and underground let out
+just such sprouts for roots; and some of them took hold of the ground
+and grew, and others did not hold well to the ground with their roots,
+and died and fell down.
+
+In the fall the peasant was glad at the sight of his willows: six of
+them had taken root. The following spring the sheep killed two willows
+by gnawing at them, and only two were left. Next spring the sheep
+nibbled at these also. One of them was completely ruined, and the other
+came to, took root, and grew to be a tree. In the spring the bees just
+buzzed in the willow. In swarming time the swarms were often put out on
+the willow, and the peasants brushed them in. The men and women
+frequently ate and slept under the willow, and the children climbed on
+it and broke off rods from it.
+
+The peasant that had set out the willow was long dead, and still it
+grew. His eldest son twice cut down its branches and used them for
+fire-wood. The willow kept growing. They trimmed it all around, and cut
+it down to a stump, but in the spring it again sent out twigs, thinner
+ones than before, but twice as many as ever, as is the case with a
+colt's forelock.
+
+And the eldest son quit farming, and the village was given up, but the
+willow grew in the open field. Other peasants came there, and chopped
+the willow, but still it grew. The lightning struck it; but it sent
+forth side branches, and it grew and blossomed. A peasant wanted to cut
+it down for a block, but he gave it up, it was too rotten. It leaned
+sidewise, and held on with one side only; and still it grew, and every
+year the bees came there to gather the pollen.
+
+One day, early in the spring, the boys gathered under the willow, to
+watch the horses. They felt cold, so they started a fire. They gathered
+stubbles, wormwood, and sticks. One of them climbed on the willow and
+broke off a lot of twigs. They put it all in the hollow of the willow
+and set fire to it. The tree began to hiss and its sap to boil, and the
+smoke rose and the tree burned; its whole inside was smudged. The young
+shoots dried up, the blossoms withered.
+
+The children drove the horses home. The scorched willow was left all
+alone in the field. A black raven flew by, and he sat down on it, and
+cried:
+
+"So you are dead, old smudge! You ought to have died long ago!"
+
+
+
+
+B�LKA
+
+
+I had a small bulldog. He was called B�lka. He was black; only the tips
+of his front feet were white. All bulldogs have their lower jaws longer
+than the upper, and the upper teeth come down behind the nether teeth,
+but B�lka's lower jaw protruded so much that I could put my finger
+between the two rows of teeth. His face was broad, his eyes large,
+black, and sparkling; and his teeth and incisors stood out prominently.
+He was as black as a negro. He was gentle and did not bite, but he was
+strong and stubborn. If he took hold of a thing, he clenched his teeth
+and clung to it like a rag, and it was not possible to tear him off, any
+more than as though he were a lobster.
+
+Once he was let loose on a bear, and he got hold of the bear's ear and
+stuck to him like a leech. The bear struck him with his paws and
+squeezed him, and shook him from side to side, but could not tear
+himself loose from him, and so he fell down on his head, in order to
+crush B�lka; but B�lka held on to him until they poured cold water over
+him.
+
+I got him as a puppy, and raised him myself. When I went to the
+Caucasus, I did not want to take him along, and so went away from him
+quietly, ordering him to be shut up. At the first station I was about to
+change the relay, when suddenly I saw something black and shining coming
+down the road. It was B�lka in his brass collar. He was flying at full
+speed toward the station. He rushed up to me, licked my hand, and
+stretched himself out in the shade under the cart. His tongue stuck out
+a whole hand's length. He now drew it in to swallow the spittle, and
+now stuck it out again a whole hand's length. He tried to breathe fast,
+but could not do so, and his sides just shook. He turned from one side
+to the other, and struck his tail against the ground.
+
+I learned later that after I had left he had broken a pane, jumped out
+of the window, and followed my track along the road, and thus raced
+twenty versts through the greatest heat.
+
+
+
+
+B�LKA AND THE WILD BOAR
+
+
+Once we went into the Caucasus to hunt the wild boar, and B�lka went
+with me. The moment the hounds started, B�lka rushed after them,
+following their sound, and disappeared in the forest. That was in the
+month of November; the boars and sows are then very fat.
+
+In the Caucasus there are many edible fruits in the forests where the
+boars live: wild grapes, cones, apples, pears, blackberries, acorns,
+wild plums. And when all these fruits get ripe and are touched by the
+frost, the boars eat them and grow fat.
+
+At that time a boar gets so fat that he cannot run from the dogs. When
+they chase him for about two hours, he makes for the thicket and there
+stops. Then the hunters run up to the place where he stands, and shoot
+him. They can tell by the bark of the hounds whether the boar has
+stopped, or is running. If he is running, the hounds yelp, as though
+they were beaten; but when he stops, they bark as though at a man, with
+a howling sound.
+
+During that chase I ran for a long time through the forest, but not once
+did I cross a boar track. Finally I heard the long-drawn bark and howl
+of the hounds, and ran up to that place. I was already near the boar. I
+could hear the crashing in the thicket. The boar was turning around on
+the dogs, but I could not tell by the bark that they were not catching
+him, but only circling around him. Suddenly I heard something rustle
+behind me, and I saw that it was B�lka. He had evidently strayed from
+the hounds in the forest and had lost his way, and now was hearing their
+barking and making for them, like me, as fast as he could. He ran
+across a clearing through the high grass, and all I could see of him was
+his black head and his tongue clinched between his white teeth. I called
+him back, but he did not look around, and ran past me and disappeared in
+the thicket. I ran after him, but the farther I went, the more and more
+dense did the forest grow. The branches kept knocking off my cap and
+struck me in the face, and the thorns caught in my garments. I was near
+to the barking, but could not see anything.
+
+Suddenly I heard the dogs bark louder, and something crashed loudly, and
+the boar began to puff and snort. I immediately made up my mind that
+B�lka had got up to him and was busy with him. I ran with all my might
+through the thicket to that place. In the densest part of the thicket I
+saw a dappled hound. She was barking and howling in one spot, and within
+three steps from her something black could be seen moving around.
+
+When I came nearer, I could make out the boar, and I heard B�lka whining
+shrilly. The boar grunted and made for the hound; the hound took her
+tail between her legs and leaped away. I could see the boar's side and
+head. I aimed at his side and fired. I saw that I had hit him. The boar
+grunted and crashed through the thicket away from me. The dogs whimpered
+and barked in his track; I tried to follow them through the undergrowth.
+Suddenly I saw and heard something almost under my feet. It was B�lka.
+He was lying on his side and whining. Under him there was a puddle of
+blood. I thought the dog was lost; but I had no time to look after him,
+I continued to make my way through the thicket. Soon I saw the boar. The
+dogs were trying to catch him from behind, and he kept turning, now to
+one side, and now to another. When the boar saw me, he moved toward me.
+I fired a second time, almost resting the barrel against him, so that
+his bristles caught fire, and the boar groaned and tottered, and with
+his whole cadaver dropped heavily on the ground.
+
+When I came up, the boar was dead, and only here and there did his body
+jerk and twitch. Some of the dogs, with bristling hair, were tearing his
+belly and legs, while the others were lapping the blood from his wound.
+
+Then I thought of B�lka, and went back to find him. He was crawling
+toward me and groaning. I went up to him and looked at his wound. His
+belly was ripped open, and a whole piece of his guts was sticking out of
+his body and dragging on the dry leaves. When my companions came up to
+me, we put the guts back and sewed up his belly. While we were sewing
+him up and sticking the needle through his skin, he kept licking my
+hand.
+
+The boar was tied up to the horse's tail, to pull him out of the forest,
+and B�lka was put on the horse, and thus taken home. B�lka was sick for
+about six weeks, and got well again.
+
+
+
+
+PHEASANTS
+
+
+Wild fowls are called pheasants in the Caucasus. There are so many of
+them that they are cheaper there than tame chickens. Pheasants are
+hunted with the "hobby," by scaring up, and from under dogs. This is the
+way they are hunted with the "hobby." They take a piece of canvas and
+stretch it over a frame, and in the middle of the frame they make a
+cross piece. They cut a hole in the canvas. This frame with the canvas
+is called a hobby. With this hobby and with the gun they start out at
+dawn to the forest. The hobby is carried in front, and through the hole
+they look out for the pheasants. The pheasants feed at daybreak in the
+clearings. At times it is a whole brood,--a hen with all her chicks, and
+at others a cock with his hen, or several cocks together.
+
+The pheasants do not see the man, and they are not afraid of the canvas
+and let the hunter come close to them. Then the hunter puts down the
+hobby, sticks his gun through the rent, and shoots at whichever bird he
+pleases.
+
+This is the way they hunt by scaring up. They let a watch-dog into the
+forest and follow him. When the dog finds a pheasant, he rushes for it.
+The pheasant flies on a tree, and then the dog begins to bark at it. The
+hunter follows up the barking and shoots the pheasant in the tree. This
+chase would be easy, if the pheasant alighted on a tree in an open
+place, or if it sat still, so that it might be seen. But they always
+alight on dense trees, in the thicket, and when they see the hunter they
+hide themselves in the branches. And it is hard to make one's way
+through the thicket to the tree on which a pheasant is sitting, and hard
+to see it. So long as the dog alone barks at it, it is not afraid: it
+sits on a branch and preens and flaps its wings at the dog. But the
+moment it sees a man, it immediately stretches itself out along a bough,
+so that only an experienced hunter can tell it, while an inexperienced
+one will stand near by and see nothing.
+
+When the Cossacks steal up to the pheasants, they pull their caps over
+their faces and do not look up, because a pheasant is afraid of a man
+with his gun, but more still of his eyes.
+
+This is the way they hunt from under dogs. They take a setter and follow
+him to the forest. The dog scents the place where the pheasants have
+been feeding at daybreak, and begins to make out their tracks. No matter
+how the pheasants may have mixed them up, a good dog will always find
+the last track, that takes them out from the spot where they have been
+feeding. The farther the dog follows the track, the stronger will the
+scent be, and thus he will reach the place where the pheasant sits or
+walks about in the grass in the daytime. When he comes near to where the
+bird is, he thinks that it is right before him, and starts walking more
+cautiously so as not to frighten it, and will stop now and then, ready
+to jump and catch it. When the dog comes up very near to the pheasant,
+it flies up, and the hunter shoots it.
+
+
+
+
+MILTON AND B�LKA
+
+
+I bought me a setter to hunt pheasants with. The name of the dog was
+Milton. He was a big, thin, gray, spotted dog, with long lips and ears,
+and he was very strong and intelligent. He did not fight with B�lka. No
+dog ever tried to get into a fight with B�lka. He needed only to show
+his teeth, and the dogs would take their tails between their legs and
+slink away.
+
+Once I went with Milton to hunt pheasants. Suddenly B�lka ran after me
+to the forest. I wanted to drive him back, but could not do so; and it
+was too far for me to take him home. I thought he would not be in my
+way, and so walked on; but the moment Milton scented a pheasant in the
+grass and began to search for it, B�lka rushed forward and tossed from
+side to side. He tried to scare up the pheasant before Milton. He heard
+something in the grass, and jumped and whirled around; but he had a poor
+scent and could not find the track himself, but watched Milton, to see
+where he was running. The moment Milton started on the trail, B�lka ran
+ahead of him. I called B�lka back and beat him, but could not do a thing
+with him. The moment Milton began to search, he darted forward and
+interfered with him.
+
+I was already on the point of going home, because I thought that the
+chase was spoiled; but Milton found a better way of cheating B�lka. This
+is what he did: the moment B�lka rushed ahead of him, he gave up the
+trail and turned in another direction, pretending that he was searching
+there. B�lka rushed there where Milton was, and Milton looked at me and
+wagged his tail and went back to the right trail. B�lka again ran up to
+Milton and rushed past him, and again Milton took some ten steps to one
+side and cheated B�lka, and again led me straight; and so he cheated
+B�lka all the way and did not let him spoil the chase.
+
+
+
+
+THE TURTLE
+
+
+Once I went with Milton to the chase. Near the forest he began to
+search. He straightened out his tail, pricked his ears, and began to
+sniff. I fixed the gun and followed him. I thought that he was looking
+for a partridge, hare, or pheasant. But Milton did not make for the
+forest, but for the field. I followed him and looked ahead of me.
+Suddenly I saw what he was searching for. In front of him was running a
+small turtle, of the size of a cap. Its bare, dark gray head on a long
+neck was stretched out like a pestle; the turtle in walking stretched
+its bare legs far out, and its back was all covered with bark.
+
+When it saw the dog, it hid its legs and head and let itself down on the
+grass so that only its shell could be seen. Milton grabbed it and began
+to bite at it, but could not bite through it, because the turtle has
+just such a shell on its belly as it has on its back, and has only
+openings in front, at the back, and at the sides, where it puts forth
+its head, its legs, and its tail.
+
+I took the turtle away from Milton, and tried to see how its back was
+painted, and what kind of a shell it had, and how it hid itself. When
+you hold it in your hands and look between the shell, you can see
+something black and alive inside, as though in a cellar. I threw away
+the turtle, and walked on, but Milton would not leave it, and carried it
+in his teeth behind me. Suddenly Milton whimpered and dropped it. The
+turtle had put forth its foot inside of his mouth, and had scratched it.
+That made him so angry that he began to bark; he grasped it once more
+and carried it behind me. I ordered Milton to throw it away, but he
+paid no attention to me. Then I took the turtle from him and threw it
+away. But he did not leave it. He hurriedly dug a hole near it; when the
+hole was dug, he threw the turtle into it and covered it up with dirt.
+
+The turtles live on land and in the water, like snakes and frogs. They
+breed their young from eggs. These eggs they lay on the ground, and they
+do not hatch them, but the eggs burst themselves, like fish spawn, and
+the turtles crawl out of them. There are small turtles, not larger than
+a saucer, and large ones, seven feet in length and weighing seven
+hundredweights. The large turtles live in the sea.
+
+One turtle lays in the spring hundreds of eggs. The turtle's shells are
+its ribs. Men and other animals have each rib separate, while the
+turtle's ribs are all grown together into a shell. But the main thing is
+that with all the animals the ribs are inside the flesh, while the
+turtle has the ribs on the outside, and the flesh beneath them.
+
+
+
+
+B�LKA AND THE WOLF
+
+
+When I left the Caucasus, they were still fighting there, and in the
+night it was dangerous to travel without a guard.
+
+I wanted to leave as early as possible, and so did not lie down to
+sleep.
+
+My friend came to see me off, and we sat the whole evening and night in
+the village street, in front of my cabin.
+
+It was a moonlit night with a mist, and so bright that one could read,
+though the moon was not to be seen.
+
+In the middle of the night we suddenly heard a pig squealing in the yard
+across the street. One of us cried: "A wolf is choking the pig!"
+
+I ran into the house, grasped a loaded gun, and ran into the street.
+They were all standing at the gate of the yard where the pig was
+squealing, and cried to me: "Here!" Milton rushed after me,--no doubt he
+thought that I was going out to hunt with the gun; but B�lka pricked his
+short ears, and tossed from side to side, as though to ask me whom he
+was to clutch. When I ran up to the wicker fence, I saw a beast running
+straight toward me from the other side of the yard. That was the wolf.
+He ran up to the fence and jumped on it. I stepped aside and fixed my
+gun. The moment the wolf jumped down from the fence to my side, I aimed,
+almost touching him with the gun, and pulled the trigger; but my gun
+made "Click" and did not go off. The Wolf did not stop, but ran across
+the street.
+
+Milton and B�lka made for him. Milton was near to the wolf, but was
+afraid to take hold of him; and no matter how fast B�lka ran on his
+short legs, he could not keep up with him. We ran as fast as we could
+after the wolf, but both the wolf and the dogs disappeared from sight.
+Only at the ditch, at the end of the village, did we hear a low barking
+and whimpering, and saw the dust rise in the mist of the moon and the
+dogs busy with the wolf. When we ran up to the ditch, the wolf was no
+longer there, and both dogs returned to us with raised tails and angry
+faces. B�lka snarled and pushed me with his head: evidently he wanted to
+tell me something, but did not know how.
+
+We examined the dogs, and found a small wound on B�lka's head. He had
+evidently caught up with the wolf before he got to the ditch, but had
+not had a chance to get hold of him, while the wolf snapped at him and
+ran away. It was a small wound, so there was no danger.
+
+We returned to the cabin, and sat down and talked about what had
+happened. I was angry because the gun had missed fire, and thought of
+how the wolf would have remained on the spot, if the gun had shot. My
+friend wondered how the wolf could have crept into the yard. An old
+Cossack said that there was nothing remarkable about it, because that
+was not a wolf, but a witch who had charmed my gun. Thus we sat and kept
+talking. Suddenly the dogs darted off, and we saw the same wolf in the
+middle of the street; but this time he ran so fast when he heard our
+shout that the dogs could not catch up with him.
+
+After that the old Cossack was fully convinced that it was not a wolf,
+but a witch; but I thought that it was a mad wolf, because I had never
+seen or heard of such a thing as a wolf's coming back toward the people,
+after it had been driven away.
+
+In any case I poured some powder on B�lka's wound, and set it on fire.
+The powder flashed up and burned out the sore spot.
+
+I burned out the sore with powder, in order to burn away the poisonous
+saliva, if it had not yet entered the blood. But if the saliva had
+already entered the blood, I knew that the blood would carry it through
+the whole body, and then it would not be possible to cure him.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT HAPPENED TO B�LKA IN PYATIG�RSK
+
+
+From the Cossack village I did not travel directly to Russia, but first
+to Pyatig�rsk, where I stayed two months. Milton I gave away to a
+Cossack hunter, and B�lka I took along with me to Pyatig�rsk.
+
+Pyatig�rsk [in English, Five-Mountains] is called so because it is
+situated on Mount Besh-tau. And besh means in Tartar "five," and tau
+"mountain." From this mountain flows a hot sulphur stream. It is as hot
+as boiling water, and over the spot where the water flows from the
+mountain there is always a steam as from a samov�r.
+
+The whole place, on which the city stands, is very cheerful. From the
+mountain flow the hot springs, and at the foot of the mountain is the
+river Podk�mok. On the slopes of the mountain are forests; all around
+the city are fields, and in the distance are seen the mountains of the
+Caucasus. On these the snow never melts, and they are always as white as
+sugar. One large mountain, Elbrus, is like a white loaf of sugar; it can
+be seen from everywhere when the weather is clear. People come to the
+hot springs to be cured, and over them there are arbours and awnings,
+and all around them are gardens with walks. In the morning the music
+plays, and people drink the water, or bathe, or stroll about.
+
+The city itself is on the mountain, but at the foot of it there is a
+suburb. I lived in that suburb in a small house. The house stood in a
+yard, and before the windows was a small garden, and in the garden stood
+the landlord's beehives, not in hollow stems, as in Russia, but in
+round, plaited baskets. The bees are there so gentle that in the morning
+I used to sit with B�lka in that garden, amongst the beehives.
+
+B�lka walked about between the hives, and sniffed, and listened to the
+bees' buzzing; he walked so softly among them that he did not interfere
+with them, and they did not bother him.
+
+One morning I returned home from the waters, and sat down in the garden
+to drink coffee. B�lka began to scratch himself behind his ears, and
+made a grating noise with his collar. The noise worried the bees, and so
+I took the collar off. A little while later I heard a strange and
+terrible noise coming from the city. The dogs barked, howled, and
+whimpered, people shouted, and the noise descended lower from the
+mountain and came nearer and nearer to our suburb.
+
+B�lka stopped scratching himself, put his broad head with its white
+teeth between his fore legs, stuck out his tongue as he wished, and lay
+quietly by my side. When he heard the noise he seemed to understand what
+it was. He pricked his ears, showed his teeth, jumped up, and began to
+snarl. The noise came nearer. It sounded as though all the dogs of the
+city were howling, whimpering, and barking. I went to the gate to see
+what it was, and my landlady came out, too. I asked her:
+
+"What is this?"
+
+She said:
+
+"The prisoners of the jail are coming down to kill the dogs. The dogs
+have been breeding so much that the city authorities have ordered all
+the dogs in the city to be killed."
+
+"So they would kill B�lka, too, if they caught him?"
+
+"No, they are not allowed to kill dogs with collars."
+
+Just as I was speaking, the prisoners were coming up to our house. In
+front walked the soldiers, and behind them four prisoners in chains. Two
+of the prisoners had in their hands long iron hooks, and two had clubs.
+In front of our house, one of the prisoners caught a watch-dog with his
+hook and pulled it up to the middle of the street, and another began to
+strike it with the club.
+
+The little dog whined dreadfully, but the prisoners shouted and laughed.
+The prisoner with the hook turned over the dog, and when he saw that it
+was dead, he pulled out the hook and looked around for other dogs.
+
+Just then B�lka rushed headlong at that prisoner, as though he were a
+bear. I happened to think that he was without his collar, so I shouted:
+"B�lka, back!" and told the prisoners not to strike the dog. But the
+prisoner laughed when he saw B�lka, and with his hook nimbly struck him
+and caught him by his thigh. B�lka tried to get away; but the prisoner
+pulled him up toward him and told the other prisoner to strike him. The
+other raised his club, and B�lka would have been killed, but he jerked,
+and broke the skin at the thigh and, taking his tail between his legs,
+flew, with the red sore on his body, through the gate and into the
+house, and hid himself under my bed.
+
+He was saved because the skin had broken in the spot where the hook
+was.
+
+
+
+
+B�LKA'S AND MILTON'S END
+
+
+B�lka and Milton died at the same time. The old Cossack did not know how
+to get along with Milton. Instead of taking him out only for birds, he
+went with him to hunt wild boars. And that same fall a tusky boar ripped
+him open. Nobody knew how to sew him up, and so he died.
+
+B�lka, too, did not live long after the prisoners had caught him. Soon
+after his salvation from the prisoners he began to feel unhappy, and
+started to lick everything that he saw. He licked my hands, but not as
+formerly when he fawned. He licked for a long time, and pressed his
+tongue against me, and then began to snap. Evidently he felt like biting
+my hand, but did not want to do so. I did not give him my hand. Then he
+licked my boot and the foot of a table, and then he began to snap at
+these things. That lasted about two days, and on the third he
+disappeared, and no one saw him or heard of him.
+
+He could not have been stolen or run away from me. This happened six
+weeks after the wolf had bitten him. Evidently the wolf had been mad.
+B�lka had gone mad, and so went away. He had what hunters call the
+rabies. They say that this madness consists in this, that the mad animal
+gets cramps in its throat. It wants to drink and cannot, because the
+water makes the cramps worse. And so it gets beside itself from pain and
+thirst, and begins to bite. Evidently B�lka was beginning to have these
+cramps when he started to lick and then to bite my hand and the foot of
+the table.
+
+I went everywhere in the neighbourhood and asked about B�lka, but could
+not find out what had become of him, or how he had died. If he had been
+running about and biting, as mad dogs do, I should have heard of him. No
+doubt he ran somewhere into a thicket and there died by himself.
+
+The hunters say that when an intelligent dog gets the rabies, he runs to
+the fields and forests, and there tries to find the herb which he needs,
+and rolls in the dew, and gets cured. Evidently B�lka never got cured.
+He never came back.
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAY HARE
+
+
+A gray hare was living in the winter near the village. When night came,
+he pricked one ear and listened; then he pricked his second ear, moved
+his whiskers, sniffed, and sat down on his hind legs. Then he took a
+leap or two over the deep snow, and again sat down on his hind legs, and
+looked around him. Nothing could be seen but snow. The snow lay in waves
+and glistened like sugar. Over the hare's head hovered a frost vapour,
+and through this vapour could be seen the large, bright stars.
+
+The hare had to cross the highway, in order to come to a threshing-floor
+he knew of. On the highway the runners could be heard squeaking, and the
+horses snorting, and seats creaking in the sleighs.
+
+The hare again stopped near the road. Peasants were walking beside the
+sleighs, and the collars of their caftans were raised. Their faces were
+scarcely visible. Their beards, moustaches, and eyelashes were white.
+Steam rose from their mouths and noses. Their horses were sweaty, and
+the hoarfrost clung to the sweat. The horses jostled under their arches,
+and dived in and out of snow-drifts. The peasants ran behind the horses
+and in front of them, and beat them with their whips. Two peasants
+walked beside each other, and one of them told the other how a horse of
+his had once been stolen.
+
+When the carts passed by, the hare leaped across the road and softly
+made for the threshing-floor. A dog saw the hare from a cart. He began
+to bark and darted after the hare. The hare leaped toward the
+threshing-floor over the snow-drifts, which held him back; but the dog
+stuck fast in the snow after the tenth leap, and stopped. Then the hare,
+too, stopped and sat up on his hind legs, and then softly went on to the
+threshing-floor.
+
+On his way he met two other hares on the sowed winter field. They were
+feeding and playing. The hare played awhile with his companions, dug
+away the frosty snow with them, ate the wintergreen, and went on.
+
+In the village everything was quiet; the fires were out. All one could
+hear was a baby's cry in a hut and the crackling of the frost in the
+logs of the cabins. The hare went to the threshing-floor, and there
+found some companions. He played awhile with them on the cleared floor,
+ate some oats from the open granary, climbed on the kiln over the
+snow-covered roof, and across the wicker fence started back to his
+ravine.
+
+The dawn was glimmering in the east; the stars grew less, and the frost
+vapours rose more densely from the earth. In the near-by village the
+women got up, and went to fetch water; the peasants brought the feed
+from the barn; the children shouted and cried. There were still more
+carts going down the road, and the peasants talked aloud to each other.
+
+The hare leaped across the road, went up to his old lair, picked out a
+high place, dug away the snow, lay with his back in his new lair,
+dropped his ears on his back, and fell asleep with open eyes.
+
+
+
+
+GOD SEES THE TRUTH, BUT DOES NOT TELL AT ONCE
+
+
+In the city of Vlad�mir there lived a young merchant, Aks�nov by name.
+He had two shops and a house.
+
+Aks�nov was a light-complexioned, curly-headed, fine-looking man and a
+very jolly fellow and good singer. In his youth Aks�nov had drunk much,
+and when he was drunk he used to become riotous, but when he married he
+gave up drinking, and that now happened very rarely with him.
+
+One day in the summer Aks�nov went to the N�zhni-N�vgorod fair. As he
+bade his family good-bye, his wife said to him:
+
+"Iv�n Dm�trievich, do not start to-day! I have had a bad dream about
+you."
+
+Aks�nov laughed, and said:
+
+"Are you afraid that I might go on a spree at the fair?"
+
+His wife said:
+
+"I do not know what I am afraid of, but I had a bad dream: I dreamed
+that you came to town, and when you took off your cap I saw that your
+head was all gray."
+
+Aks�nov laughed.
+
+"That means that I shall make some profit. If I strike a good bargain,
+you will see me bring you some costly presents."
+
+And he bade his family farewell, and started.
+
+In the middle of his journey he met a merchant whom he knew, and they
+stopped together in a hostelry for the night. They drank their tea
+together, and lay down to sleep in two adjoining rooms. Aks�nov did not
+like to sleep long; he awoke in the middle of the night and, as it was
+easier to travel when it was cool, wakened his driver and told him to
+hitch the horses. Then he went to the "black" hut, paid his bill, and
+went away.
+
+[Illustration: "'Whose knife is this?'"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivsh�nko_]
+
+When he had gone about forty versts, he again stopped to feed the horses
+and to rest in the vestibule of a hostelry. At dinner-time he came out
+on the porch, and ordered the samov�r to be prepared for him. He took
+out his guitar and began to play. Suddenly a tr�yka with bells drove up
+to the hostelry, and from the cart leaped an officer with two soldiers,
+and he went up to Aks�nov, and asked him who he was and where he came
+from.
+
+Aks�nov told him everything as it was, and said:
+
+"Would you not like to drink tea with me?"
+
+But the officer kept asking him questions:
+
+"Where did you stay last night? Were you alone, or with a merchant? Did
+you see the merchant in the morning? Why did you leave so early in the
+morning?"
+
+Aks�nov wondered why they asked him about all that; he told them
+everything as it was, and said:
+
+"Why do you ask me this? I am not a thief, nor a robber. I am travelling
+on business of my own, and you have nothing to ask me about."
+
+Then the officer called the soldiers, and said:
+
+"I am the chief of the rural police, and I ask you this, because the
+merchant with whom you passed last night has been found with his throat
+cut. Show me your things, and you look through them!"
+
+They entered the house, took his valise and bag, and opened them and
+began to look through them. Suddenly the chief took a knife out of the
+bag, and cried out:
+
+"Whose knife is this?"
+
+Aks�nov looked, and saw that they had taken out a blood-stained knife
+from his bag, and he was frightened "How did the blood get on the
+knife?"
+
+Aks�nov wanted to answer, but could not pronounce a word.
+
+"I--I do not know--I--the knife--is not mine!"
+
+Then the chief said:
+
+"In the morning the merchant was found in his bed with his throat cut.
+No one but you could have done it. The house was locked from within, and
+there was no one in the house but you. Here is the bloody knife in your
+bag, and your face shows your guilt. Tell me, how did you kill him, and
+how much money did you rob him of?"
+
+Aks�nov swore that he had not done it; that he had not seen the merchant
+after drinking tea with him; that he had with him his own eight
+thousand; that the knife was not his. But his voice faltered, his face
+was pale, and he trembled from fear, as though he were guilty.
+
+The chief called in the soldiers, told them to bind him and to take him
+to the cart. When he was rolled into the cart with his legs tied, he
+made the sign of the cross and began to cry. They took away his money
+and things, and sent him to jail to the nearest town. They sent to
+Vlad�mir to find out what kind of a man Aks�nov was, and all the
+merchants and inhabitants of Vlad�mir testified to the fact that Aks�nov
+had drunk and caroused when he was young, but that he was a good man.
+Then they began to try him. He was tried for having killed the Ryaz�n
+merchant and having robbed him of twenty thousand roubles.
+
+The wife was grieving for her husband and did not know what to think.
+Her children were still young, and one was still at the breast. She took
+them all and went with them to the town where her husband was kept in
+prison. At first she was not admitted, but later she implored the
+authorities, and she was taken to her husband. When she saw him in
+prison garb and in chains, together with murderers, she fell to the
+ground and could not come to for a long time. Then she placed her
+children about her, sat down beside him, and began to tell him about
+house matters, and to ask him about everything which had happened. He
+told her everything. She said:
+
+"What shall I do?"
+
+He said:
+
+"We must petition the Tsar. An innocent man cannot be allowed to
+perish."
+
+His wife said that she had already petitioned the Tsar, but that the
+petition had not reached him. Aks�nov said nothing, and only lowered his
+head. Then his wife said:
+
+"You remember the dream I had about your getting gray. Indeed, you have
+grown gray from sorrow. If you had only not started then!"
+
+And she looked over his hair, and said:
+
+"Iv�n, my darling, tell your wife the truth: did you not do it?"
+
+Aks�nov said, "And you, too, suspect me!" and covered his face with his
+hands, and began to weep.
+
+Then a soldier came, and told his wife that she must leave with her
+children. And Aks�nov for the last time bade his family farewell.
+
+When his wife had left, Aks�nov thought about what they had been talking
+of. When he recalled that his wife had also suspected him and had asked
+him whether he had killed the merchant, he said to himself: "Evidently
+none but God can know the truth, and He alone must be asked, and from
+Him alone can I expect mercy." And from that time on Aks�nov no longer
+handed in petitions and stopped hoping, but only prayed to God.
+
+Aks�nov was sentenced to be beaten with the knout, and to be sent to
+hard labour. And it was done.
+
+He was beaten with the knout, and later, when the knout sores healed
+over, he was driven with other convicts to Siberia.
+
+In Siberia, Aks�nov passed twenty-six years at hard labour. His hair
+turned white like snow, and his beard grew long, narrow, and gray. All
+his mirth went away. He stooped, began to walk softly, spoke little,
+never laughed, and frequently prayed to God.
+
+In the prison Aks�nov learned to make boots, and with the money which he
+earned he bought himself the "Legends of the Holy Martyrs," and read
+them while it was light in the prison; on holidays he went to the prison
+church and read the Epistles, and sang in the choir,--his voice was
+still good. The authorities were fond of Aks�nov for his gentleness, and
+his prison comrades respected him and called him "grandfather" and
+"God's man." When there were any requests to be made of the authorities,
+his comrades always sent him to speak for them, and when the convicts
+had any disputes between themselves, they came to Aks�nov to settle
+them.
+
+No one wrote Aks�nov letters from his home, and he did not know whether
+his wife and children were alive, or not.
+
+Once they brought some new prisoners to the prison. In the evening the
+old prisoners gathered around the new men, and asked them from what town
+they came, or from what village, and for what acts they had been sent
+up. Aks�nov, too, sat down on the bed-boards near the new prisoners and,
+lowering his head, listened to what they were saying. One of the new
+prisoners was a tall, sound-looking old man of about sixty years of age,
+with a gray, clipped beard. He was telling them what he had been sent up
+for:
+
+"Yes, brothers, I have come here for no crime at all. I had unhitched a
+driver's horse from the sleigh. I was caught. They said, 'You stole it.'
+And I said, 'I only wanted to get home quickly, for I let the horse go.
+Besides, the driver is a friend of mine. I am telling you the
+truth.'--'No,' they said, 'you have stolen it.' But they did not know
+what I had been stealing, or where I had been stealing. There were
+crimes for which I ought to have been sent up long ago, but they could
+not convict me, and now I am here contrary to the law. 'You are
+lying,--you have been in Siberia, but you did not make a long visit
+there--'"
+
+"Where do you come from?" asked one of the prisoners.
+
+"I am from the city of Vlad�mir, a burgher of that place. My name is
+Mak�r, and by my father Sem�novich."
+
+Aks�nov raised his head, and asked:
+
+"Sem�novich, have you not heard in Vlad�mir about the family of Merchant
+Aks�nov? Are they alive?"
+
+"Yes, I have heard about them! They are rich merchants, even though
+their father is in Siberia. He is as much a sinner as I, I think. And
+you, grandfather, what are you here for?"
+
+Aks�nov did not like to talk of his misfortune. He sighed, and said:
+
+"For my sins have I passed twenty-six years at hard labour."
+
+Mak�r Sem�novich said:
+
+"For what sins?"
+
+Aks�nov said, "No doubt, I deserved it," and did not wish to tell him
+any more; but the other prison people told the new man how Aks�nov had
+come to be in Siberia. They told him how on the road some one had killed
+a merchant and had put the knife into his bag, and he thus was sentenced
+though he was innocent.
+
+When Mak�r Sem�novich heard that, he looked at Aks�nov, clapped his
+knees with his hands, and said:
+
+"What a marvel! What a marvel! But you have grown old, grandfather!"
+
+He was asked what he was marvelling at, and where he had seen Aks�nov,
+but Mak�r Sem�novich made no reply, and only said:
+
+"It is wonderful, boys, where we were fated to meet!"
+
+And these words made Aks�nov think that this man might know something
+about who had killed the merchant. He said:
+
+"Sem�novich, have you heard before this about that matter, or have we
+met before?"
+
+"Of course I have heard. The earth is full of rumours. That happened a
+long time ago: I have forgotten what I heard," said Mak�r Sem�novich.
+
+"Maybe you have heard who killed the merchant?" asked Aks�nov.
+
+Mak�r Sem�novich laughed and said:
+
+"I suppose he was killed by the man in whose bag the knife was found.
+Even if somebody stuck that knife into that bag, he was not caught, so
+he is no thief. And how could the knife have been put in? Was not the
+bag under your head? You would have heard him."
+
+The moment Aks�nov heard these words, he thought that that was the man
+who had killed the merchant. He got up and walked away. All that night
+Aks�nov could not fall asleep. He felt sad, and had visions: now he saw
+his wife such as she had been when she bade him farewell for the last
+time, as he went to the fair. He saw her, as though she was alive, and
+he saw her face and eyes, and heard her speak to him and laugh. Then he
+saw his children such as they had been then,--just as little,--one of
+them in a fur coat, the other at the breast. And he thought of himself,
+such as he had been then,--gay and young; he recalled how he had been
+sitting on the porch of the hostelry, where he was arrested, and had
+been playing the guitar, and how light his heart had been then. And he
+recalled the pillory, where he had been whipped, and the executioner,
+and the people all around, and the chains, and the prisoners, and his
+prison life of the last twenty-six years, and his old age. And such
+gloom came over him that he felt like laying hands on himself.
+
+"And all that on account of that evil-doer!" thought Aks�nov.
+
+And such a rage fell upon him against Mak�r Sem�novich, that he wanted
+to have his revenge upon him, even if he himself were to be ruined by
+it. He said his prayers all night long, but could not calm himself. In
+the daytime he did not walk over to Mak�r Sem�novich, and did not look
+at him.
+
+Thus two weeks passed. At night Aks�nov could not sleep, and he felt so
+sad that he did not know what to do with himself.
+
+Once, in the night, he walked all over the prison, and saw dirt falling
+from underneath one bedplace. He stopped to see what it was. Suddenly
+Mak�r Sem�novich jumped up from under the bed and looked at Aks�nov with
+a frightened face. Aks�nov wanted to pass on, so as not to see him; but
+Mak�r took him by his arm, and told him that he had dug a passage way
+under the wall, and that he each day carried the dirt away in his
+boot-legs and poured it out in the open, whenever they took the convicts
+out to work. He said:
+
+"Keep quiet, old man,--I will take you out, too. And if you tell, they
+will whip me, and I will not forgive you,--I will kill you."
+
+When Aks�nov saw the one who had done him evil, he trembled in his rage,
+and pulled away his arm, and said:
+
+"I have no reason to get away from here, and there is no sense in
+killing me,--you killed me long ago. And whether I will tell on you or
+not depends on what God will put into my soul."
+
+On the following day, when the convicts were taken out to work, the
+soldiers noticed that Mak�r Sem�novich was pouring out the dirt, and so
+they began to search in the prison, and found the hole. The chief came
+to the prison and began to ask all who had dug the hole. Everybody
+denied it. Those who knew had not seen Mak�r Sem�novich, because they
+knew that for this act he would be whipped half-dead. Then the chief
+turned to Aks�nov. He knew that Aks�nov was a just man, and said:
+
+"Old man, you are a truthful man, tell me before God who has done that."
+
+Mak�r Sem�novich stood as though nothing had happened and looked at the
+chief, and did not glance at Aks�nov. Aks�nov's arms and lips trembled,
+and he could not utter a word for long time. He thought: "If I protect
+him, why should I forgive him, since he has ruined me? Let him suffer
+for my torments! And if I tell on him, they will indeed whip him to
+death. And suppose that I have a wrong suspicion against him. Will that
+make it easier for me?"
+
+The chief said once more:
+
+"Well, old man, speak, tell the truth! Who has been digging it?"
+
+Aks�nov looked at Mak�r Sem�novich, and said:
+
+"I cannot tell, your Honour. God orders me not to tell. And I will not
+tell. Do with me as you please,--you have the power."
+
+No matter how much the chief tried, Aks�nov would not say anything more.
+And so they did not find out who had done the digging.
+
+On the following night, as Aks�nov lay down on the bed-boards and was
+just falling asleep, he heard somebody come up to him and sit down at
+his feet. He looked in the darkness and recognized Mak�r. Aks�nov said:
+
+"What more do you want of me? What are you doing here?"
+
+Mak�r Sem�novich was silent. Aks�nov raised himself, and said:
+
+"What do you want? Go away, or I will call the soldier."
+
+Mak�r bent down close to Aks�nov, and said to him in a whisper:
+
+[Illustration: "'God will forgive you'"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivsh�nko_]
+
+"Iv�n Dm�trievich, forgive me!"
+
+Aks�nov said:
+
+"For what shall I forgive you?"
+
+"It was I who killed the merchant and put the knife into your bag. I
+wanted to kill you, too, but they made a noise in the yard, so I put the
+knife into your bag and climbed through the window."
+
+Aks�nov was silent and did not know what to say. Mak�r Sem�novich
+slipped down from the bed, made a low obeisance, and said:
+
+"Iv�n Dm�trievich, forgive me, forgive me for God's sake! I will declare
+that it was I who killed the merchant,--you will be forgiven. You will
+return home."
+
+Aks�nov said:
+
+"It is easy for you to speak so, but see how I have suffered! Where
+shall I go now? My wife has died, my children have forgotten me. I have
+no place to go to--"
+
+Mak�r Sem�novich did not get up from the floor. He struck his head
+against the earth, and said:
+
+"Iv�n Dm�trievich, forgive me! When they whipped me with the knout I
+felt better than now that I am looking at you. You pitied me, and did
+not tell on me. Forgive me, for Christ's sake! Forgive me, the accursed
+evil-doer!" And he burst out into tears.
+
+When Aks�nov heard Mak�r Sem�novich crying, he began to weep himself,
+and said:
+
+"God will forgive you. Maybe I am a hundred times worse than you!"
+
+And suddenly a load fell off from his soul. And he no longer pined for
+his home, and did not wish to leave the prison, but only thought of his
+last hour.
+
+Mak�r Sem�novich did not listen to Aks�nov, but declared his guilt. When
+the decision came for Aks�nov to leave,--he was dead.
+
+
+
+
+HUNTING WORSE THAN SLAVERY
+
+
+We were hunting bears. My companion had a chance to shoot at a bear: he
+wounded him, but only in a soft spot. A little blood was left on the
+snow, but the bear got away.
+
+We met in the forest and began to discuss what to do: whether to go and
+find that bear, or to wait two or three days until the bear should lie
+down again.
+
+We asked the peasant bear drivers whether we could now surround the
+bear. An old bear driver said:
+
+"No, we must give the bear a chance to calm himself. In about five days
+it will be possible to surround him, but if we go after him now he will
+only be frightened and will not lie down."
+
+But a young bear driver disputed with the old man, and said that he
+could surround him now.
+
+"Over this snow," he said, "the bear cannot get away far,--he is fat. He
+will lie down to-day again. And if he does not, I will overtake him on
+snow-shoes."
+
+My companion, too, did not want to surround the bear now, and advised
+waiting.
+
+But I said:
+
+"What is the use of discussing the matter? Do as you please, but I will
+go with Demy�n along the track. If we overtake him, so much is gained;
+if not,--I have nothing else to do to-day anyway, and it is not yet
+late."
+
+And so we did.
+
+My companions went to the sleigh, and back to the village, but Demy�n
+and I took bread with us, and remained in the woods.
+
+When all had left us, Demy�n and I examined our guns, tucked our fur
+coats over our belts, and followed the track.
+
+It was fine weather, chilly and calm. But walking on snow-shoes was a
+hard matter: the snow was deep and powdery.
+
+The snow had not settled in the forest, and, besides, fresh snow had
+fallen on the day before, so that the snow-shoes sunk half a foot in the
+snow, and in places even deeper.
+
+The bear track could be seen a distance away. We could see the way the
+bear had walked, for in spots he had fallen in the snow to his belly and
+had swept the snow aside. At first we walked in plain sight of the
+track, through a forest of large trees; then, when the track went into a
+small pine wood, Demy�n stopped.
+
+"We must now give up the track," he said. "He will, no doubt, lie down
+here. He has been sitting on his haunches,--you can see it by the snow.
+Let us go away from the track, and make a circle around him. But we must
+walk softly and make no noise, not even cough, or we shall scare him."
+
+We went away from the track, to the left. We walked about five hundred
+steps and there we again saw the track before us. We again followed the
+track, and this took us to the road. We stopped on the road and began to
+look around, to see in what direction the bear had gone. Here and there
+on the road we could see the bear's paws with all the toes printed on
+the snow, while in others we could see the tracks of a peasant's bast
+shoes. He had, evidently, gone to the village.
+
+We walked along the road. Demy�n said to me:
+
+"We need not watch the road; somewhere he will turn off the road, to the
+right or to the left,--we shall see in the snow. Somewhere he will turn
+off,--he will not go to the village."
+
+We walked thus about a mile along the road; suddenly we saw the track
+turn off from the road. We looked at it, and see the wonder! It was a
+bear's track, but leading not from the road to the woods, but from the
+woods to the road: the toes were turned to the road. I said:
+
+"That is another bear."
+
+Demy�n looked at it, and thought awhile.
+
+"No," he said, "that is the same bear, only he has begun to cheat. He
+left the road backwards."
+
+We followed the track, and so it was. The bear had evidently walked
+about ten steps backwards from the road, until he got beyond a fir-tree,
+and then he had turned and gone on straight ahead. Demy�n stopped, and
+said:
+
+"Now we shall certainly fall in with him. He has no place but this swamp
+to lie down in. Let us surround him."
+
+We started to surround him, going through the dense pine forest. I was
+getting tired, and it was now much harder to travel. Now I would strike
+against a juniper-bush, and get caught in it; or a small pine-tree would
+get under my feet; or the snow-shoes would twist, as I was not used to
+them; or I would strike a stump or a block under the snow. I was
+beginning to be worn out. I took off my fur coat, and the sweat was just
+pouring down from me. But Demy�n sailed along as in a boat. It looked as
+though the snow-shoes walked under him of their own accord. He neither
+caught in anything, nor did his shoes turn on him.
+
+And he even threw my fur coat over his shoulders, and kept urging me on.
+
+We made about three versts in a circle, and walked past the swamp.
+Demy�n suddenly stopped in front of me, and waved his hand. I walked
+over to him. Demy�n bent down, and pointed with his hand, and whispered
+to me:
+
+"Do you see, a magpie is chattering on a windfall: the bird is scenting
+the bear from a distance. It is he."
+
+We walked to one side, made another verst, and again hit the old trail.
+Thus we had made a circle around the bear, and he was inside of it. We
+stopped. I took off my hat and loosened my wraps: I felt as hot as in a
+bath, and was as wet as a mouse. Demy�n, too, was all red, and he wiped
+his face with his sleeve.
+
+"Well," he said, "we have done our work, sir, so we may take a rest."
+
+The evening glow could be seen through the forest. We sat down on the
+snow-shoes to rest ourselves. We took the bread and salt out of the
+bags; first I ate a little snow, and then the bread. The bread tasted to
+me better than any I had eaten in all my life. We sat awhile; it began
+to grow dark. I asked Demy�n how far it was to the village.
+
+"About twelve versts. We shall reach it in the night; but now we must
+rest. Put on your fur coat, sir, or you will catch a cold."
+
+Demy�n broke off some pine branches, knocked down the snow, made a bed,
+and we lay down beside each other, with our arms under our heads. I do
+not remember how I fell asleep. I awoke about two hours later. Something
+crashed.
+
+I had been sleeping so soundly that I forgot where I was. I looked
+around me: what marvel was that? Where was I? Above me were some white
+chambers, and white posts, and on everything glistened white tinsel. I
+looked up: there was a white, checkered cloth, and between the checks
+was a black vault in which burned fires of all colours. I looked around,
+and I recalled that we were in the forest, and that the snow-covered
+trees had appeared to me as chambers, and that the fires were nothing
+but the stars that flickered between the branches.
+
+In the night a hoarfrost had fallen, and there was hoarfrost on the
+branches, and on my fur coat, and Demy�n was all covered with hoarfrost,
+and hoarfrost fell from above. I awoke Demy�n. We got up on our
+snow-shoes and started. The forest was quiet. All that could be heard
+was the sound we made as we slid on our snow-shoes over the soft snow,
+or when a tree would crackle from the frost, and a hollow sound would
+pass through the whole woods. Only once did something living stir close
+to us and run away again. I thought it was the bear. We walked over to
+the place from where the noise had come, and we saw hare tracks. The
+young aspens were nibbled down. The hares had been feeding on them.
+
+We came out to the road, tied the snow-shoes behind us, and walked down
+the road. It was easy to walk. The snow-shoes rattled and rumbled over
+the beaten road; the snow creaked under our boots; the cold hoarfrost
+stuck to our faces like down. And the stars seemed to run toward us
+along the branches: they would flash, and go out again,--just as though
+the sky were walking round and round.
+
+My companion was asleep,--I awoke him. We told him how we had made a
+circle around the bear, and told the landlord to collect the drivers for
+the morning. We ate our supper and lay down to sleep.
+
+I was so tired that I could have slept until dinner, but my companion
+woke me. I jumped up and saw that my companion was all dressed and busy
+with his gun.
+
+"Where is Demy�n?"
+
+"He has been in the forest for quite awhile. He has investigated the
+circle, and has been back to take the drivers out."
+
+I washed myself, put on my clothes, and loaded my guns. We seated
+ourselves in the sleigh, and started.
+
+There was a severe frost, the air was calm, and the sun could not be
+seen: there was a mist above, and the hoarfrost was settling.
+
+We travelled about three versts by the road, and reached the forest. We
+saw a blue smoke in a hollow, and peasants, men and women, were there
+with clubs.
+
+We climbed out of the sleigh and went up to the people. The peasants
+were sitting and baking potatoes, and joking with the women.
+
+Demy�n was with them. The people got up, and Demy�n took them away to
+place them in our last night's circuit. The men and women stretched
+themselves out in single file,--there were thirty of them and they could
+be seen only from the belt up,--and went into the woods; then my
+companion and I followed their tracks.
+
+Though they had made a path, it was hard to walk; still, we could not
+fall, for it was like walking between two walls.
+
+Thus we walked for half a verst. I looked up, and there was Demy�n
+running to us from the other side on snow-shoes, and waving his hand for
+us to come to him.
+
+We went up to him, and he showed us where to stand. I took up my
+position and looked around.
+
+To the left of me was a tall pine forest. I could see far through it,
+and beyond the trees I saw the black spot of a peasant driver. Opposite
+me was a young pine growth, as tall as a man's stature. In this pine
+growth the branches were hanging down and stuck together from the snow.
+The path through the middle of the pine grove was covered with snow.
+This path was leading toward me. To the right of me was a dense pine
+forest, and beyond the pine grove there was a clearing. And on this
+clearing I saw Demy�n place my companion.
+
+I examined my two guns and cocked them, and began to think where to take
+up a stand. Behind me, about three steps from me, there was a pine-tree.
+"I will stand by that pine, and will lean the other gun against it." I
+made my way to that pine, walking knee-deep in snow. I tramped down a
+space of about four feet each way, and there took my stand. One gun I
+took into my hands, and the other, with hammers raised, I placed against
+the tree. I unsheathed my dagger and put it back in the scabbard, to be
+sure that in case of need it would come out easily.
+
+I had hardly fixed myself, when Demy�n shouted from the woods:
+
+"Start it now, start it!"
+
+And as Demy�n shouted this, the peasants in the circuit cried, each with
+a different tone of voice: "Come now! OO-oo-oo!" and the women cried, in
+their thin voices: "Ai! Eekh!"
+
+The bear was in the circle. Demy�n was driving him. In the circuit the
+people shouted, and only my companion and I stood still, did not speak
+or move, and waited for the bear. I stood, and looked, and listened, and
+my heart went pitapat. I was clutching my gun and trembling. Now, now he
+will jump out, I thought, and I will aim and shoot, and he will fall--
+Suddenly I heard to the left something tumbling through the snow, only
+it was far away. I looked into the tall pine forest: about fifty steps
+from me, behind the trees, stood something large and black. I aimed and
+waited. I thought it might come nearer. I saw it move its ears and turn
+around. Now I could see the whole of him from the side. It was a huge
+beast. I aimed hastily. Bang! I heard the bullet strike the tree.
+Through the smoke I saw the bear make back for the cover and disappear
+in the forest. "Well," I thought, "my business is spoiled: he will not
+run up to me again; either my companion will have a chance to shoot at
+him, or he will go through between the peasants, but never again toward
+me." I reloaded the gun, and stood and listened. The peasants were
+shouting on all sides, but on the right, not far from my companion, I
+heard a woman yell, "Here he is! Here he is! Here he is! This way! This
+way! Oi, oi, oi! Ai, ai, ai!"
+
+There was the bear, in full sight. I was no longer expecting the bear
+to come toward me, and so looked to the right toward my companion. I saw
+Demy�n running without the snow-shoes along the path, with a stick in
+his hand, and going up to my companion, sitting down near him, and
+pointing with the stick at something, as though he were aiming. I saw my
+companion raise his gun and aim at where Demy�n was pointing. Bang! he
+fired it off.
+
+"Well," I thought, "he has killed him." But I saw that my companion was
+not running toward the bear. "Evidently he missed him, or did not strike
+him right. He will get away," I thought, "but he will not come toward
+me."
+
+What was that? Suddenly I heard something in front of me: somebody was
+flying like a whirlwind, and scattering the snow near by, and panting. I
+looked ahead of me, but he was making headlong toward me along the path
+through the dense pine growth. I could see that he was beside himself
+with fear. When he was within five steps of me I could see the whole of
+him: his chest was black and his head was enormous, and of a reddish
+colour. He was flying straight toward me, and scattering the snow in all
+directions. I could see by the bear's eyes that he did not see me and in
+his fright was rushing headlong. He was making straight for the pine
+where I was standing. I raised my gun, and shot, but he came still
+nearer. I saw that I had not hit him: the bullet was carried past him.
+He heard nothing, plunged onward, and did not see me. I bent down the
+gun, almost rested it against his head. Bang! This time I hit him, but
+did not kill him.
+
+He raised his head, dropped his ears, showed his teeth,--and straight
+toward me. I grasped the other gun; but before I had it in my hand, he
+was already on me, knocked me down, and flew over me. "Well," I thought,
+"that is good, he will not touch me." I was just getting up, when I
+felt something pressing against me and holding me down. In his onrush he
+ran past me, but he turned around and rushed against me with his whole
+breast. I felt something heavy upon me, something warm over my face, and
+I felt him taking my face into his jaws. My nose was already in his
+mouth, and I felt hot, and smelled his blood. He pressed my shoulders
+with his paws, and I could not stir. All I could do was to pull my head
+out of his jaws and press it against my breast, and I turned my nose and
+eyes away. But he was trying to get at my eyes and nose. I felt him
+strike the teeth of his upper jaw into my forehead, right below the
+hair, and the lower jaw into the cheek-bones below the eyes, and he
+began to crush me. It was as though my head were cut with knives. I
+jerked and pulled out my head, but he chawed and chawed and snapped at
+me like a dog. I would turn my head away, and he would catch it again.
+"Well," I thought, "my end has come." Suddenly I felt lighter. I looked
+up, and he was gone: he had jumped away from me, and was running now.
+
+When my companion and Demy�n saw that the bear had knocked me into the
+snow, they dashed for me. My companion wanted to get there as fast as
+possible, but lost his way; instead of running on the trodden path, he
+ran straight ahead, and fell down. While he was trying to get out of the
+snow, the bear was gnawing at me. Demy�n ran up to me along the path,
+without a gun, just with the stick which he had in his hands, and he
+shouted, "He is eating up the gentleman! He is eating up the gentleman!"
+And he kept running and shouting, "Oh, you wretched beast! What are you
+doing? Stop! Stop!"
+
+The bear listened to him, stopped, and ran away. When I got up, there
+was much blood on the snow, just as though a sheep had been killed, and
+over my eyes the flesh hung in rags. While the wound was fresh I felt no
+pain.
+
+My companion ran up to me, and the peasants gathered around me. They
+looked at my wounds, and washed them with snow. I had entirely forgotten
+about the wounds, and only asked, "Where is the bear? Where has he
+gone?"
+
+Suddenly we heard, "Here he is! Here he is!" We saw the bear running
+once more against us. We grasped our guns, but before we fired he ran
+past us. The bear was mad: he wanted to bite me again, but when he saw
+so many people he became frightened. We saw by the track that the bear
+was bleeding from the head. We wanted to follow him up, but my head hurt
+me, and so we drove to town to see a doctor.
+
+The doctor sewed up my wounds with silk, and they began to heal.
+
+A month later we went out again to hunt that bear; but I did not get the
+chance to kill him. The bear would not leave the cover, and kept walking
+around and around and roaring terribly. Demy�n killed him. My shot had
+crushed his lower jaw and knocked out a tooth.
+
+This bear was very large, and he had beautiful black fur. I had the skin
+stuffed, and it is lying now in my room. The wounds on my head have
+healed, so that one can scarcely see where they were.
+
+
+
+
+A PRISONER OF THE CAUCASUS
+
+
+I.
+
+A certain gentleman was serving as an officer in the Caucasus. His name
+was Zhil�n.
+
+One day he received a letter from home. His old mother wrote to him:
+
+"I have grown old, and I should like to see my darling son before my
+death. Come to bid me farewell and bury me, and then, with God's aid,
+return to the service. I have also found a bride for you: she is bright
+and pretty and has property. If you take a liking to her, you can marry
+her, and stay here for good."
+
+Zhil�n reflected: "Indeed, my old mother has grown feeble; perhaps I
+shall never see her again. I must go; and if the bride is a good girl, I
+may marry her."
+
+He went to the colonel, got a furlough, bade his companions good-bye,
+treated his soldiers to four buckets of v�dka, and got himself ready to
+go.
+
+At that time there was a war in the Caucasus. Neither in the daytime,
+nor at night, was it safe to travel on the roads. The moment a Russian
+walked or drove away from a fortress, the Tartars either killed him or
+took him as a prisoner to the mountains. It was a rule that a guard of
+soldiers should go twice a week from fortress to fortress. In front and
+in the rear walked soldiers, and between them were other people.
+
+It was in the summer. The carts gathered at daybreak outside the
+fortress, and the soldiers of the convoy came out, and all started.
+Zhil�n rode on horseback, and his cart with his things went with the
+caravan.
+
+They had to travel twenty-five versts. The caravan proceeded slowly; now
+the soldiers stopped, and now a wheel came off a cart, or a horse
+stopped, and all had to stand still and wait.
+
+The sun had already passed midday, but the caravan had made only half
+the distance. It was dusty and hot; the sun just roasted them, and there
+was no shelter: it was a barren plain, with neither tree nor bush along
+the road.
+
+Zhil�n rode out ahead. He stopped and waited for the caravan to catch up
+with him. He heard them blow the signal-horn behind: they had stopped
+again.
+
+Zhil�n thought: "Why can't I ride on, without the soldiers? I have a
+good horse under me, and if I run against Tartars, I will gallop away.
+Or had I better not go?"
+
+He stopped to think it over. There rode up to him another officer,
+Kostyl�n, with a gun, and said:
+
+"Let us ride by ourselves, Zhil�n! I cannot stand it any longer: I am
+hungry, and it is so hot. My shirt is dripping wet."
+
+Kostyl�n was a heavy, stout man, with a red face, and the perspiration
+was just rolling down his face. Zhil�n thought awhile and said:
+
+"Is your gun loaded?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Well, then, we will go, but on one condition, that we do not separate."
+
+And so they rode ahead on the highway. They rode through the steppe, and
+talked, and looked about them. They could see a long way off.
+
+When the steppe came to an end, the road entered a cleft between two
+mountains. So Zhil�n said:
+
+"We ought to ride up the mountain to take a look; for here they may
+leap out on us from the mountain without our seeing them."
+
+But Kostyl�n said:
+
+"What is the use of looking? Let us ride on!"
+
+Zhil�n paid no attention to him.
+
+"No," he said, "you wait here below, and I will take a look up there."
+
+And he turned his horse to the left, up-hill. The horse under Zhil�n was
+a thoroughbred (he had paid a hundred roubles for it when it was a colt,
+and had himself trained it), and it carried him up the slope as though
+on wings. The moment he reached the summit, he saw before him a number
+of Tartars on horseback, about eighty fathoms away. There were about
+thirty of them. When he saw them, he began to turn back; and the Tartars
+saw him, and galloped toward him, and on the ride took their guns out of
+the covers. Zhil�n urged his horse down-hill as fast as its legs would
+carry him, and he shouted to Kostyl�n:
+
+"Take out the gun!" and he himself thought about his horse: "Darling,
+take me away from here! Don't stumble! If you do, I am lost. If I get to
+the gun, they shall not catch me."
+
+But Kostyl�n, instead of waiting, galloped at full speed toward the
+fortress, the moment he saw the Tartars. He urged the horse on with the
+whip, now on one side, and now on the other. One could see through the
+dust only the horse switching her tail.
+
+Zhil�n saw that things were bad. The gun had disappeared, and he could
+do nothing with a sword. He turned his horse back to the soldiers,
+thinking that he might get away. He saw six men crossing his path. He
+had a good horse under him, but theirs were better still, and they
+crossed his path. He began to check his horse: he wanted to turn around;
+but the horse was running at full speed and could not be stopped, and he
+flew straight toward them. He saw a red-bearded Tartar on a gray horse,
+who was coming near to him. He howled and showed his teeth, and his gun
+was against his shoulder.
+
+"Well," thought Zhil�n, "I know you devils. When you take one alive, you
+put him in a hole and beat him with a whip. I will not fall into your
+hands alive----"
+
+Though Zhil�n was not tall, he was brave. He drew his sword, turned his
+horse straight against the Tartar, and thought:
+
+"Either I will knock his horse off its feet, or I will strike the Tartar
+with my sword."
+
+Zhil�n got within a horse's length from him, when they shot at him from
+behind and hit the horse. The horse dropped on the ground while going at
+full speed, and fell on Zhil�n's leg.
+
+He wanted to get up, but two stinking Tartars were already astride of
+him. He tugged and knocked down the two Tartars, but three more jumped
+down from their horses and began to strike him with the butts of their
+guns. Things grew dim before his eyes, and he tottered. The Tartars took
+hold of him, took from their saddles some reserve straps, twisted his
+arms behind his back, tied them with a Tartar knot, and fastened him to
+the saddle. They knocked down his hat, pulled off his boots, rummaged
+all over him, and took away his money and his watch, and tore all his
+clothes.
+
+Zhil�n looked back at his horse. The dear animal was lying just as it
+had fallen down, and only twitched its legs and did not reach the ground
+with them; in its head there was a hole, and from it the black blood
+gushed and wet the dust for an ell around.
+
+A Tartar went up to the horse, to pull off the saddle. The horse was
+struggling still, and so he took out his dagger and cut its throat. A
+whistling sound came from the throat, and the horse twitched, and was
+dead.
+
+The Tartars took off the saddle and the trappings. The red-bearded
+Tartar mounted his horse, and the others seated Zhil�n behind him. To
+prevent his falling off, they attached him by a strap to the Tartar's
+belt, and they rode off to the mountains.
+
+Zhil�n was sitting back of the Tartar, and shaking and striking with his
+face against the stinking Tartar's back. All he saw before him was the
+mighty back, and the muscular neck, and the livid, shaved nape of his
+head underneath his cap. Zhil�n's head was bruised, and the blood was
+clotted under his eyes. And he could not straighten himself on the
+saddle, nor wipe off his blood. His arms were twisted so badly that his
+shoulder bones pained him.
+
+They rode for a long time from one mountain to another, and forded a
+river, and came out on a path, where they rode through a ravine.
+
+Zhil�n wanted to take note of the road on which they were travelling,
+but his eyes were smeared with blood, and he could not turn around.
+
+It was getting dark. They crossed another stream and rode up a rocky
+mountain. There was an odour of smoke, and the dogs began to bark. They
+had come to a native village. The Tartars got down from their horses;
+the Tartar children gathered around Zhil�n, and screamed, and rejoiced,
+and aimed stones at him.
+
+The Tartar drove the boys away, took Zhil�n down from his horse, and
+called a labourer. There came a Nogay, with large cheek-bones; he wore
+nothing but a shirt. The shirt was torn and left his breast bare. The
+Tartar gave him a command. The labourer brought the stocks,--two oak
+planks drawn through iron rings, and one of these rings with a clasp and
+lock.
+
+They untied Zhil�n's hands, put the stocks on him, and led him into a
+shed: they pushed him in and locked the door. Zhil�n fell on the manure
+pile. He felt around in the darkness for a soft spot, and lay down
+there.
+
+[Illustration: "They rode off to the mountains"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivsh�nko_]
+
+
+II.
+
+Zhil�n lay awake nearly the whole night. The nights were short. He saw
+through a chink that it was getting light. He got up, made the chink
+larger, and looked out.
+
+Through the chink Zhil�n saw the road: it went down-hill; on the right
+was a Tartar cabin, and near it two trees. A black dog lay on the
+threshold, and a goat strutted about with her kids, which were jerking
+their little tails. He saw a young Tartar woman coming up the hill; she
+wore a loose coloured shirt and pantaloons and boots, and her head was
+covered with a caftan, and on her head there was a large tin pitcher
+with water. She walked along, jerking her back, and bending over, and by
+the hand she led a young shaven Tartar boy in nothing but his shirt. The
+Tartar woman went into the cabin with the water, and out came the Tartar
+of the day before, with the red beard, wearing a silk half-coat, a
+silver dagger on a strap, and shoes on his bare feet. On his head there
+was a tall, black sheepskin hat, tilted backwards. He came out, and he
+stretched himself and smoothed his red beard. He stood awhile, gave the
+labourer an order, and went away.
+
+Then two boys rode by, taking the horses to water. The muzzles of the
+horses were wet. Then there ran out some other shaven boys, in nothing
+but their shirts, with no trousers; they gathered in a crowd, walked
+over to the shed, picked up a stick, and began to poke it through the
+chink. When Zhil�n shouted at the children, they screamed and started to
+run back, so that their bare knees glistened in the sun.
+
+Zhil�n wanted to drink,--his throat was all dried up. He thought: "If
+they would only come to see me!" He heard them open the shed. The red
+Tartar came in, and with him another, black-looking fellow, of smaller
+stature. His eyes were black and bright, his cheeks ruddy, his small
+beard clipped; his face looked jolly, and he kept laughing all the time.
+This swarthy fellow was dressed even better: he had on a silk half-coat,
+of a blue colour, embroidered with galloons. In his belt there was a
+large silver dagger; his slippers were of red morocco and also
+embroidered with silver. Over his thin slippers he wore heavier shoes.
+His cap was tall, of white astrakhan.
+
+The red Tartar came in. He said something, as though scolding, and
+stopped. He leaned against the door-post, dangled his dagger, and like a
+wolf looked furtively at Zhil�n. But the swarthy fellow--swift, lively,
+walking around as though on springs--went up straight to Zhil�n,
+squatted down, showed his teeth, slapped him on the shoulder, began to
+rattle off something in his language, winked with his eyes, clicked his
+tongue, and kept repeating: "Goot Uruss! Goot Uruss!"
+
+Zhil�n did not understand a thing and said:
+
+"Give me to drink, give me water to drink!"
+
+The swarthy fellow laughed. "Goot Uruss!" he kept rattling off.
+
+Zhil�n showed with his lips and hands that he wanted something to drink.
+
+The swarthy fellow understood what he wanted, laughed out, looked
+through the door, and called some one: "Dina!"
+
+In came a thin, slender little girl, of about thirteen years of age, who
+resembled the swarthy man very much. Evidently she was his daughter. Her
+eyes, too, were black and bright, and her face was pretty. She wore a
+long blue shirt, with broad sleeves and without a belt. The skirt, the
+breast, and the sleeves were trimmed with red. On her legs were
+pantaloons, and on her feet slippers, with high-heeled shoes over them;
+on her neck she wore a necklace of Russian half-roubles. Her head was
+uncovered; her braid was black, with a ribbon through it, and from the
+ribbon hung small plates and a Russian rouble.
+
+Her father gave her a command. She ran away, and came back and brought a
+small tin pitcher. She gave him the water, and herself squatted down,
+bending up in such a way that her shoulders were below her knees. She
+sat there, and opened her eyes, and looked at Zhil�n drinking, as though
+he were some animal.
+
+Zhil�n handed her back the pitcher. She jumped away like a wild goat.
+Even her father laughed. He sent her somewhere else. She took the
+pitcher and ran away; she brought some fresh bread on a round board, and
+again sat down, bent over, riveted her eyes on him, and kept looking.
+
+The Tartars went away and locked the door.
+
+After awhile the Nogay came to Zhil�n, and said:
+
+"Ai-da, master, ai-da!"
+
+He did not know any Russian, either. All Zhil�n could make out was that
+he should follow him.
+
+Zhil�n started with the stocks, and he limped and could not walk, so
+much did the stocks pull his legs aside. Zhil�n went out with the Nogay.
+He saw a Tartar village of about ten houses, and a church of theirs,
+with a small tower. Near one house stood three horses, all saddled. Boys
+were holding the reins. From the house sprang the swarthy Tartar, and he
+waved his hand for Zhil�n to come up. He laughed all the while, and
+talked in his language, and disappeared through the door.
+
+Zhil�n entered the house. It was a good living-room,--the walls were
+plastered smooth with clay. Along the front wall lay coloured cushions,
+and at the sides hung costly rugs; on the rugs were guns, pistols,
+swords,--all in silver. By one wall there was a small stove, on a level
+with the floor. The floor was of dirt and as clean as a threshing-floor,
+and the whole front corner was carpeted with felt; and over the felt lay
+rugs, and on the rugs cushions. On these rugs sat the Tartars, in their
+slippers without their outer shoes: there were the swarthy fellow, the
+red Tartar, and three guests. At their backs were feather cushions, and
+before them, on a round board, were millet cakes and melted butter in a
+bowl, and Tartar beer, "buza," in a small pitcher. They were eating with
+their hands, and their hands were all greasy from the butter.
+
+The swarthy man jumped up and ordered Zhil�n to be placed to one side,
+not on a rug, but on the bare floor; he went back to his rug, and
+treated his guests to millet cakes and buza. The labourer placed Zhil�n
+where he had been ordered, himself took off his outer shoes, put them at
+the door, where stood the other shoes, and sat down on the felt next to
+the masters. He looked at them as they ate, and wiped off his spittle.
+
+The Tartars ate the cakes. Then there came a Tartar woman, in a shirt
+like the one the girl had on, and in pantaloons, and with a kerchief
+over her head. She carried away the butter and the cakes, and brought a
+small wash-basin of a pretty shape, and a pitcher with a narrow neck.
+The Tartars washed their hands, then folded them, knelt down, blew in
+every direction, and said their prayers. Then one of the Tartar guests
+turned to Zhil�n, and began to speak in Russian:
+
+"You," he said, "were taken by Kazi-Muhammed," and he pointed to the red
+Tartar, "and he gave you to Abdul-Murat." He pointed to the swarthy man.
+"Abdul-Murat is now your master."
+
+Zhil�n kept silence. Then Abdul-Murat began to speak. He pointed to
+Zhil�n, and laughed, and kept repeating:
+
+"Soldier Uruss! Goot Uruss!"
+
+The interpreter said:
+
+"He wants you to write a letter home that they may send a ransom for
+you. When they send it, you will be set free."
+
+Zhil�n thought awhile and said:
+
+"How much ransom does he want?"
+
+The Tartars talked together; then the interpreter said:
+
+"Three thousand in silver."
+
+"No," said Zhil�n, "I cannot pay that."
+
+Abdul jumped up, began to wave his hands and to talk to Zhil�n, thinking
+that he would understand him. The interpreter translated. He said:
+
+"How much will you give?"
+
+Zhil�n thought awhile, and said:
+
+"Five hundred roubles."
+
+Then the Tartars began to talk a great deal, all at the same time. Abdul
+shouted at the red Tartar. He was so excited that the spittle just
+spirted from his mouth.
+
+But the red Tartar only scowled and clicked his tongue.
+
+They grew silent, and the interpreter said:
+
+"The master is not satisfied with five hundred roubles. He has himself
+paid two hundred for you. Kazi-Muhammed owed him a debt. He took you for
+that debt. Three thousand roubles, nothing less will do. And if you do
+not write, you will be put in a hole and beaten with a whip."
+
+"Oh," thought Zhil�n, "it will not do to show that I am frightened; that
+will only be worse." He leaped to his feet, and said:
+
+"Tell that dog that if he is going to frighten me, I will not give him a
+penny, and I will refuse to write. I have never been afraid of you dogs,
+and I never will be."
+
+The interpreter translated, and all began to speak at the same time.
+
+They babbled for a long time; then the swarthy Tartar jumped up and
+walked over to Zhil�n:
+
+"Uruss," he said, "dzhigit, dzhigit Uruss!"
+
+Dzhigit in their language means a "brave." And he laughed; he said
+something to the interpreter, and the interpreter said:
+
+"Give one thousand roubles!"
+
+Zhil�n stuck to what he had said:
+
+"I will not give more than five hundred. And if you kill me, you will
+get nothing."
+
+The Tartars talked awhile and sent the labourer somewhere, and
+themselves kept looking now at Zhil�n and now at the door. The labourer
+came, and behind him walked a fat man; he was barefoot and tattered; he,
+too, had on the stocks.
+
+Zhil�n just shouted, for he recognized Kostyl�n. He, too, had been
+caught. They were placed beside each other. They began to talk to each
+other, and the Tartars kept silence and looked at them. Zhil�n told what
+had happened to him; and Kostyl�n told him that his horse had stopped
+and his gun had missed fire, and that the same Abdul had overtaken and
+captured him.
+
+Abdul jumped up, and pointed to Kostyl�n, and said something. The
+interpreter translated it, and said that both of them belonged to the
+same master, and that the one who would first furnish the money would be
+the first to be released.
+
+"Now you," he said, "are a cross fellow, but your friend is meek; he has
+written a letter home, and they will send five thousand roubles. He will
+be fed well, and will not be insulted."
+
+So Zhil�n said:
+
+"My friend may do as he pleases; maybe he is rich, but I am not. As I
+have said, so will it be. If you want to, kill me,--you will not gain by
+it,--but more than five hundred will I not give."
+
+They were silent for awhile. Suddenly Abdul jumped up, fetched a small
+box, took out a pen, a piece of paper, and some ink, put it all before
+Zhil�n, slapped him on the shoulder, and motioned for him to write. He
+agreed to the five hundred.
+
+"Wait awhile," Zhil�n said to the interpreter. "Tell him that he has to
+feed us well, and give us the proper clothes and shoes, and keep us
+together,--it will be jollier for us,--and take off the stocks." He
+looked at the master and laughed. The master himself laughed. He
+listened to the interpreter, and said:
+
+"I will give you the best of clothes,--a Circassian mantle and
+boots,--you will be fit to marry. We will feed you like princes. And if
+you want to stay together, you may live in the shed. But the stocks
+cannot be taken off, for you will run away. For the night we will take
+them off."
+
+He ran up to Zhil�n, and tapped him on the shoulder:
+
+"You goot, me goot!"
+
+Zhil�n wrote the letter, but he did not address it right. He thought he
+would run away.
+
+Zhil�n and Kostyl�n were taken back to the shed. They brought for them
+maize straw, water in a pitcher, bread, two old mantles, and worn
+soldier boots. They had evidently been pulled off dead soldiers. For the
+night the stocks were taken off, and they were locked in the barn.
+
+
+III.
+
+Zhil�n and his companion lived thus for a whole month. Their master kept
+laughing.
+
+"You, Iv�n, goot, me, Abdul, goot!"
+
+But he did not feed them well. All he gave them to eat was unsalted
+millet bread, baked like pones, or entirely unbaked dough.
+
+Kostyl�n wrote home a second letter. He was waiting for the money to
+come, and felt lonesome. He sat for days at a time in the shed counting
+the days before the letter would come, or he slept. But Zhil�n knew
+that his letter would not reach any one, and so he did not write
+another.
+
+"Where," he thought, "is my mother to get so much money? As it is, she
+lived mainly by what I sent her. If she should collect five hundred
+roubles, she would be ruined in the end. If God grants it, I will manage
+to get away from here."
+
+And he watched and thought of how to get away.
+
+He walked through the village and whistled, or he sat down somewhere to
+work with his hands, either making a doll from clay, or weaving a fence
+from twigs. Zhil�n was a great hand at all kinds of such work.
+
+One day he made a doll, with a nose, and hands, and legs, in a Tartar
+shirt, and put the doll on the roof. The Tartar maidens were going for
+water. His master's daughter, Dina, saw the doll, and she called up the
+Tartar girls. They put down their pitchers, and looked, and laughed.
+Zhil�n took down the doll and gave it to them. They laughed, and did not
+dare take it. He left the doll, and went back to the shed to see what
+they would do.
+
+Dina ran up, looked around, grasped the doll, and ran away with it.
+
+In the morning, at daybreak, he saw Dina coming out with the doll in
+front of the house. The doll was all dressed up in red rags, and she was
+rocking the doll and singing to it in her fashion. The old woman came
+out. She scolded her, took the doll away from her and broke it, and sent
+Dina to work.
+
+Zhil�n made another doll, a better one than before, and he gave it to
+Dina. One day Dina brought him a small pitcher. She put it down, herself
+sat down and looked at him, and laughed, as she pointed to the pitcher.
+
+"What is she so happy about?" thought Zhil�n.
+
+He took the pitcher and began to drink. He thought it was water, but,
+behold, it was milk. He drank the milk, and said:
+
+"It is good!"
+
+Dina was very happy.
+
+"Good, Iv�n, good!" and she jumped up, clapped her hands, took away the
+pitcher, and ran off.
+
+From that time she brought him milk every day on the sly. The Tartars
+make cheese-cakes from goat milk, and dry them on the roofs,--and so she
+brought him those cakes also. One day the master killed a sheep, so she
+brought him a piece of mutton in her sleeve. She would throw it down and
+run away.
+
+One day there was a severe storm, and for an hour the rain fell as
+though from a pail. All the streams became turbid. Where there was a
+ford, the water was now eight feet deep, and stones were borne down.
+Torrents were running everywhere, and there was a roar in the mountains.
+When the storm was over, streams were coming down the village in every
+direction. Zhil�n asked his master to let him have a penknife, and with
+it he cut out a small axle and little boards, and made a wheel, and to
+each end of the wheel he attached a doll.
+
+The girls brought him pieces of material, and he dressed the dolls: one
+a man, the other a woman. He fixed them firmly, and placed the wheel
+over a brook. The wheel began to turn, and the dolls to jump.
+
+The whole village gathered around it; boys, girls, women, and men came,
+and they clicked with their tongues:
+
+"Ai, Uruss! Ai, Iv�n!"
+
+Abdul had a Russian watch, but it was broken. He called Zhil�n, showed
+it to him, and clicked his tongue. Zhil�n said:
+
+"Let me have it! I will fix it!"
+
+He took it to pieces with a penknife; then he put it together, and gave
+it back to him. The watch was running now.
+
+The master was delighted. He brought his old half-coat,--it was all in
+rags,--and made him a present of it. What could he do but take it? He
+thought it would be good enough to cover himself with in the night.
+
+After that the rumour went abroad that Zhil�n was a great master. They
+began to come to him from distant villages: one, to have him fix a
+gun-lock or a pistol, another, to set a clock a-going. His master
+brought him tools,--pinchers, gimlets, and files.
+
+One day a Tartar became sick: they sent to Zhil�n, and said, "Go and
+cure him!" Zhil�n did not know anything about medicine. He went, took a
+look at him, and thought, "Maybe he will get well by himself." He went
+to the barn, took some water and sand, and mixed it. In the presence of
+the Tartars he said a charm over the water, and gave it to him to drink.
+Luckily for him, the Tartar got well.
+
+Zhil�n began to understand their language. Some of the Tartars got used
+to him. When they needed him, they called, "Iv�n, Iv�n!" but others
+looked at him awry, as at an animal.
+
+The red Tartar did not like Zhil�n. Whenever he saw him, he frowned and
+turned away, or called him names. There was also an old man; he did not
+live in the village, but came from farther down the mountain. Zhil�n saw
+him only when he came to the mosque, to pray to God. He was a small man;
+his cap was wrapped with a white towel. His beard and moustache were
+clipped, and they were as white as down; his face was wrinkled and as
+red as a brick. His nose was hooked, like a hawk's beak, and his eyes
+were gray and mean-looking; of teeth he had only two tusks. He used to
+walk in his turban, leaning on a crutch, and looking around him like a
+wolf. Whenever he saw Zhil�n, he grunted and turned away.
+
+One day Zhil�n went down-hill, to see where the old man was living. He
+walked down the road, and saw a little garden, with a stone fence, and
+inside the fence were cherry and apricot trees, and stood a hut with a
+flat roof. He came closer to it, and he saw beehives woven from straw,
+and bees were swarming around and buzzing. The old man was kneeling, and
+doing something to a hive. Zhil�n got up higher, to get a good look, and
+made a noise with his stocks. The old man looked around and shrieked; he
+pulled the pistol out from his belt and fired at Zhil�n. He had just
+time to hide behind a rock.
+
+The old man went to the master to complain about Zhil�n. The master
+called up Zhil�n, and laughed, and asked:
+
+"Why did you go to the old man?"
+
+"I have not done him any harm," he said. "I just wanted to see how he
+lives."
+
+The master told the old man that. But the old man was angry, and hissed,
+and rattled something off; he showed his teeth and waved his hand
+threateningly at Zhil�n.
+
+Zhil�n did not understand it all; but he understood that the old man was
+telling his master to kill all the Russians, and not to keep them in the
+village. The old man went away.
+
+Zhil�n asked his master what kind of a man that old Tartar was. The
+master said:
+
+"He is a big man! He used to be the first dzhigit: he killed a lot of
+Russians, and he was rich. He had three wives and eight sons. All of
+them lived in the same village. The Russians came, destroyed the
+village, and killed seven of his sons. One son was left alive, and he
+surrendered himself to the Russians. The old man went and surrendered
+himself, too, to the Russians. He stayed with them three months, found
+his son there, and killed him, and then he ran away. Since then he has
+stopped fighting. He has been to Mecca, to pray to God, and that is why
+he wears the turban. He who has been to Mecca is called a Hadji and puts
+on a turban. He has no use for you fellows. He tells me to kill you;
+but I cannot kill you,--I have paid for you; and then, Iv�n, I like you.
+I not only have no intention of killing you, but I would not let you go
+back, if I had not given my word to you." He laughed as he said that,
+and added in Russian: "You, Iv�n, good, me, Abdul, good!"
+
+
+IV.
+
+Zhil�n lived thus for a month. In the daytime he walked around the
+village and made things with his hands, and when night came, and all was
+quiet in the village, he began to dig in the shed. It was difficult to
+dig on account of the rocks, but he sawed the stones with the file, and
+made a hole through which he meant to crawl later. "First I must find
+out what direction to go in," he thought; "but the Tartars will not tell
+me anything."
+
+So he chose a time when his master was away; he went after dinner back
+of the village, up-hill, where he could see the place. But when his
+master went away, he told his little boy to keep an eye on Zhil�n and to
+follow him everywhere. So the boy ran after Zhil�n, and said:
+
+"Don't go! Father said that you should not go there. I will call the
+people!"
+
+Zhil�n began to persuade him.
+
+"I do not want to go far," he said; "I just want to walk up the
+mountain: I want to find an herb with which to cure you people. Come
+with me; I cannot run away with the stocks. To-morrow I will make you a
+bow and arrows."
+
+He persuaded the boy, and they went together. As he looked up the
+mountain, it looked near, but with the stocks it was hard to walk; he
+walked and walked, and climbed the mountain with difficulty. Zhil�n sat
+down and began to look at the place. To the south of the shed there was
+a ravine, and there a herd of horses was grazing, and in a hollow could
+be seen another village. At that village began a steeper mountain, and
+beyond that mountain there was another mountain. Between the mountains
+could be seen a forest, and beyond it again the mountains, rising higher
+and higher. Highest of all, there were white mountains, capped with
+snow, just like sugar loaves. And one snow mountain stood with its cap
+above all the rest. To the east and the west there were just such
+mountains; here and there smoke rose from villages in the clefts.
+
+"Well," he thought, "that is all their side."
+
+He began to look to the Russian side. At his feet was a brook and his
+village, and all around were little gardens. At the brook women were
+sitting,--they looked as small as dolls,--and washing the linen. Beyond
+the village and below it there was a mountain, and beyond that, two
+other mountains, covered with forests; between the two mountains could
+be seen an even spot, and on that plain, far, far away, it looked as
+though smoke were settling. Zhil�n recalled where the sun used to rise
+and set when he was at home in the fortress. He looked down there,--sure
+enough, that was the valley where the Russian fortress ought to be.
+There, then, between those two mountains, he had to run.
+
+The sun was beginning to go down. The snow-capped mountains changed from
+white to violet; it grew dark in the black mountains; vapour arose from
+the clefts, and the valley, where our fortress no doubt was, gleamed in
+the sunset as though on fire. Zhil�n began to look sharply,--something
+was quivering in the valley, like smoke rising from chimneys. He was
+sure now that it must be the Russian fortress.
+
+It grew late; he could hear the mullah call; the flock was being driven,
+and the cows lowed. The boy said to him, "Come!" but Zhil�n did not feel
+like leaving.
+
+They returned home. "Well," thought Zhil�n, "now I know the place, and I
+must run." He wanted to run that same night. The nights were dark,--the
+moon was on the wane. Unfortunately the Tartars returned toward evening.
+At other times they returned driving cattle before them, and then they
+were jolly. But this time they did not drive home anything, but brought
+back a dead Tartar, a red-haired companion of theirs. They came back
+angry, and all gathered to bury him. Zhil�n, too, went out to see. They
+wrapped the dead man in linen, without putting him in a coffin, and
+carried him under the plane-trees beyond the village, and placed him on
+the grass. The mullah came, and the old men gathered around him, their
+caps wrapped with towels, and took off their shoes and seated themselves
+in a row on their heels, in front of the dead man.
+
+At their head was the mullah, and then three old men in turbans, sitting
+in a row, and behind them other Tartars. They sat, and bent their heads,
+and kept silence. They were silent for quite awhile. Then the mullah
+raised his head, and said:
+
+"Allah!" (That means "God.") He said that one word, and again they
+lowered their heads and kept silence for a long time; they sat without
+stirring. Again the mullah raised his head:
+
+"Allah!" and all repeated, "Allah!" and again they were silent. The dead
+man lay on the grass, and did not stir, and they sat about him like the
+dead. Not one of them stirred. One could hear only the leaves on the
+plane-tree rustling in the breeze. Then the mullah said a prayer, and
+all got up, lifted the dead body, and carried it away. They took it to a
+grave,--not a simple grave, but dug under like a cave. They took the
+dead man under his arms and by his legs, bent him over, let him down
+softly, pushed him under in a sitting posture, and fixed his arms on his
+body.
+
+A Nogay dragged up a lot of green reeds; they bedded the grave with it,
+then quickly filled it with dirt, levelled it up, and put a stone up
+straight at the head of it. They tramped down the earth, and again sat
+down in a row near the grave. They were silent for a long time.
+
+"Allah, Allah, Allah!" They sighed and got up.
+
+A red-haired Tartar distributed money to the old men; then he got up,
+took a whip, struck himself three times on his forehead, and went home.
+
+Next morning Zhil�n saw the red Tartar take a mare out of the village,
+and three Tartars followed him. They went outside the village; then the
+red-haired Tartar took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves,--he had
+immense arms,--and took out his dagger and whetted it on a steel. The
+Tartars jerked up the mare's head, and the red-haired man walked over to
+her, cut her throat, threw her down, and began to flay her,--to rip the
+skin open with his fists. Then came women and girls, and they began to
+wash the inside and the entrails. Then they chopped up the mare and
+dragged the flesh to the house. And the whole village gathered at the
+house of the red-haired Tartar to celebrate the dead man's wake.
+
+For three days did they eat the horse-flesh, drink buza, and remember
+the dead man. On the fourth day Zhil�n saw them get ready to go
+somewhere for a dinner. They brought horses, dressed themselves up, and
+went away,--about ten men, and the red Tartar with them; Abdul was the
+only one who was left at home. The moon was just beginning to increase,
+and the nights were still dark.
+
+"Well," thought Zhil�n, "to-night I must run," and he told Kostyl�n so.
+But Kostyl�n was timid.
+
+"How can we run? We do not know the road."
+
+"I know it."
+
+"But we cannot reach it in the night."
+
+"If we do not, we shall stay for the night in the woods. I have a lot of
+cakes with me. You certainly do not mean to stay. It would be all right
+if they sent the money; but suppose they cannot get together so much.
+The Tartars are mean now, because the Russians have killed one of
+theirs. I understand they want to kill us now."
+
+Kostyl�n thought awhile:
+
+"Well, let us go!"
+
+
+V.
+
+Zhil�n crept into the hole and dug it wider, so that Kostyl�n could get
+through; and then they sat still and waited for everything to quiet down
+in the village.
+
+When all grew quiet, Zhil�n crawled through the hole and got out. He
+whispered to Kostyl�n to crawl out. Kostyl�n started to come out, but he
+caught a stone with his foot, and it made a noise. Now their master had
+a dappled watch-dog, and he was dreadfully mean; his name was Ulyashin.
+Zhil�n had been feeding him before. When Ulyashin heard the voice, he
+began to bark and rushed forward, and with him other dogs. Zhil�n gave a
+low whistle and threw a piece of cake to the dog, and the dog recognized
+him and wagged his tail and stopped barking.
+
+The master heard it, and he called out from the hut, "Hait, hait,
+Ulyashin!"
+
+But Zhil�n was scratching Ulyashin behind his ears; so the dog was
+silent and rubbed against his legs and wagged his tail.
+
+They sat awhile around the corner. All was silent; nothing could be
+heard but the sheep coughing in the hut corner, and the water rippling
+down the pebbles. It was dark; the stars stood high in the heaven; the
+young moon shone red above the mountain, and its horns were turned
+upward. In the clefts the mist looked as white as milk.
+
+Zhil�n got up and said to his companion:
+
+"Now, my friend, let us start!"
+
+They started. They had made but a few steps, when they heard the mullah
+sing out on the roof: "Allah besmillah! Ilrakhman!" That meant that the
+people were going to the mosque. They sat down again, hiding behind a
+wall. They sat for a long time, waiting for the people to pass by. Again
+everything was quiet.
+
+"Well, with God's aid!" They made the sign of the cross, and started.
+They crossed the yard and went down-hill to the brook; they crossed the
+brook and walked down the ravine. The mist was dense and low on the
+ground, and overhead the stars were, oh, so visible. Zhil�n saw by the
+stars in what direction they had to go. In the mist it felt fresh, and
+it was easy to walk, only the boots were awkward, they had worn down so
+much. Zhil�n took off his boots and threw them away, and marched on
+barefoot. He leaped from stone to stone, and kept watching the stars.
+Kostyl�n began to fall behind.
+
+"Walk slower," he said. "The accursed boots,--they have chafed my feet."
+
+"Take them off! You will find it easier without them."
+
+Kostyl�n walked barefoot after that; but it was only worse: he cut his
+feet on the rocks, and kept falling behind. Zhil�n said to him:
+
+"If you bruise your feet, they will heal up; but if they catch you; they
+will kill you,--so it will be worse."
+
+Kostyl�n said nothing, but he groaned as he walked. They walked for a
+long time through a ravine. Suddenly they heard dogs barking. Zhil�n
+stopped and looked around; he groped with his hands and climbed a hill.
+
+"Oh," he said, "we have made a mistake,--we have borne too much to the
+right. Here is a village,--I saw it from the mountain; we must go back
+and to the left, and up the mountain. There must be a forest here."
+
+But Kostyl�n said:
+
+"Wait at least awhile! Let me rest: my feet are all blood-stained."
+
+"Never mind, friend, they will heal up! Jump more lightly,--like this!"
+
+And Zhil�n ran back, and to the left, up the mountain into the forest.
+Kostyl�n kept falling behind and groaning. Zhil�n hushed him, and walked
+on.
+
+They got up the mountain, and there, indeed, was a forest. They went
+into the forest, and tore all the clothes they had against the thorns.
+They struck a path in the forest, and followed it.
+
+"Stop!" Hoofs were heard tramping on the path. They stopped to listen.
+It was the sound of a horse's hoofs. They started, and again it began to
+thud. They stopped, and it, too, stopped. Zhil�n crawled up to it, and
+saw something standing in the light on the road. It was not exactly a
+horse, and again it was like a horse with something strange above it,
+and certainly not a man. He heard it snort. "What in the world is it?"
+Zhil�n gave a light whistle, and it bolted away from the path, so that
+he could hear it crash through the woods: the branches broke off, as
+though a storm went through them.
+
+Kostyl�n fell down in fright. But Zhil�n laughed and said:
+
+"That is a stag. Do you hear him break the branches with his horns? We
+are afraid of him, and he is afraid of us."
+
+They walked on. The Pleiades were beginning to settle,--it was not far
+from morning. They did not know whether they were going right, or not.
+Zhil�n thought that that was the path over which they had taken him, and
+that he was about ten versts from his own people; still there were no
+certain signs, and, besides, in the night nothing could be made out.
+They came out on a clearing. Kostyl�n sat down, and said:
+
+"Do as you please, but I will not go any farther! My feet refuse to
+move."
+
+Zhil�n begged him to go on.
+
+"No," he said, "I cannot walk on."
+
+Zhil�n got angry, spit out in disgust, and scolded him.
+
+"Then I will go by myself,--good-bye!"
+
+Kostyl�n got up and walked on. They walked about four versts. The mist
+grew denser in the forest, and nothing could be seen in front of them,
+and the stars were quite dim.
+
+Suddenly they heard a horse tramping in front of them. They could hear
+the horse catch with its hoofs in the stones. Zhil�n lay down on his
+belly, and put his ear to the ground to listen.
+
+"So it is, a rider is coming this way!"
+
+They ran off the road, sat down in the bushes, and waited. Zhil�n crept
+up to the road, and saw a Tartar on horseback, driving a cow before him,
+and mumbling something to himself. The Tartar passed by them. Zhil�n
+went back to Kostyl�n.
+
+"Well, with God's help, he is gone. Get up, and let us go!"
+
+Kostyl�n tried to get up, but fell down.
+
+"I cannot, upon my word, I cannot. I have no strength."
+
+The heavy, puffed-up man was in a perspiration, and as the cold mist in
+the forest went through him and his feet were all torn, he went all to
+pieces. Zhil�n tried to get him up, but Kostyl�n cried:
+
+"Oh, it hurts!"
+
+Zhil�n was frightened.
+
+"Don't shout so! You know that the Tartar is not far off,--he will hear
+you." But he thought: "He is, indeed, weak, so what shall I do with him?
+It will not do to abandon my companion."
+
+"Well," he said, "get up, get on my back, and I will carry you, if you
+cannot walk."
+
+He took Kostyl�n on his back, put his hands on Kostyl�n's legs, walked
+out on the road, and walked on.
+
+"Only be sure," he said, "and do not choke me with your hands, for
+Christ's sake. Hold on to my shoulders!"
+
+It was hard for Zhil�n: his feet, too, were blood-stained, and he was
+worn out. He kept bending down, straightening up Kostyl�n, and throwing
+him up, so that he might sit higher, and dragged him along the road.
+
+Evidently the Tartar had heard Kostyl�n's shout. Zhil�n heard some one
+riding from behind and calling in his language. Zhil�n made for the
+brush. The Tartar pulled out his gun and fired; he screeched in his
+fashion, and rode back along the road.
+
+"Well," said Zhil�n, "we are lost, my friend! That dog will collect the
+Tartars and they will start after us. If we cannot make another three
+versts, we are lost." But he thought about Kostyl�n: "The devil has
+tempted me to take this log along. If I had been alone, I should have
+escaped long ago."
+
+Kostyl�n said:
+
+"Go yourself! Why should you perish for my sake?"
+
+"No, I will not go,--it will not do to leave a comrade."
+
+He took him once more on his shoulders, and held on to him. Thus they
+walked another verst. The woods extended everywhere, and no end was to
+be seen. The mist was beginning to lift, and rose in the air like little
+clouds, and the stars could not be seen. Zhil�n was worn out.
+
+They came to a little spring by the road; it was lined with stones.
+Zhil�n stopped and put down Kostyl�n.
+
+"Let me rest," he said, "and get a drink! We will eat our cakes. It
+cannot be far now."
+
+He had just got down to drink, when he heard the tramping of horses
+behind them. Again they rushed to the right, into the bushes, down an
+incline, and lay down.
+
+They could hear Tartar voices. The Tartars stopped at the very spot
+where they had left the road. They talked awhile, then they made a
+sound, as though sicking dogs. Something crashed through the bushes, and
+a strange dog made straight for them. It stopped and began to bark.
+
+Then the Tartars came down,--they, too, were strangers. They took them,
+bound them, put them on their horses, and carried them off.
+
+They travelled about three versts, when they were met by Abdul, the
+prisoners' master, and two more Tartars. They talked with each other,
+and the prisoners were put on the other horses and taken back to the
+village.
+
+Abdul no longer laughed, and did not speak one word with them.
+
+They were brought to the village at daybreak, and were placed in the
+street. The children ran up and beat them with stones and sticks, and
+screamed.
+
+The Tartars gathered in a circle, and the old man from down-hill came,
+too. They talked together. Zhil�n saw that they were sitting in judgment
+on them, discussing what to do with them. Some said that they ought to
+be sent farther into the mountains, but the old man said that they
+should be killed. Abdul disputed with them and said:
+
+"I have paid money for them, and I will get a ransom for them."
+
+But the old man said:
+
+"They will not pay us anything; they will only give us trouble. It is a
+sin to feed Russians. Kill them, and that will be the end of it."
+
+They all went their way. The master walked over to Zhil�n and said:
+
+"If the ransom does not come in two weeks, I will beat you to death. And
+if you try to run again I will kill you like a dog. Write a letter, and
+write it well!"
+
+Paper was brought to them, and they wrote the letters. The stocks were
+put on them, and they were taken back of the mosque. There was a ditch
+there, about twelve feet in depth,--and into this ditch they were let
+down.
+
+
+VI.
+
+They now led a very hard life. The stocks were not taken off, and they
+were not let out into the wide world. Unbaked dough was thrown down to
+them, as to dogs, and water was let down to them in a pitcher. There was
+a stench in the ditch, and it was close and damp. Kostyl�n grew very
+ill, and swelled, and had a breaking out on his whole body; and he kept
+groaning all the time, or he slept. Zhil�n was discouraged: he saw that
+the situation was desperate. He did not know how to get out of it.
+
+He began to dig, but there was no place to throw the dirt in; the master
+saw it, and threatened to kill him.
+
+One day he was squatting in the ditch, and thinking of the free world,
+and he felt pretty bad. Suddenly a cake fell down on his knees, and a
+second, and some cherries. He looked up,--it was Dina. She looked at
+him, laughed, and ran away. Zhil�n thought: "Maybe Dina will help me."
+
+He cleaned up a place in the ditch, scraped up some clay, and began to
+make dolls. He made men, horses, and dogs. He thought: "When Dina comes
+I will throw them to her."
+
+But on the next day Dina did not come. Zhil�n heard the tramping of
+horses; somebody rode by, and the Tartars gathered at the mosque; they
+quarrelled and shouted, and talked about the Russians. And he heard the
+old man's voice. He could not make out exactly what it was, but he
+guessed that the Russians had come close to the village, and that the
+Tartars were afraid that they might come to the village, and they did
+not know what to do with the prisoners.
+
+They talked awhile and went away. Suddenly he heard something rustle
+above him. He looked up; Dina was squatting down, and her knees towered
+above her head; she leaned over, and her necklace hung down and dangled
+over the ditch. Her little eyes glistened like stars. She took two
+cheese-cakes out of her sleeve and threw them down to him. Zhil�n said
+to her:
+
+"Why have you not been here for so long? I have made you some toys. Here
+they are!"
+
+He began to throw one after the other to her, but she shook her head,
+and did not look at them.
+
+"I do not want them," she said. She sat awhile in silence, and said;
+"Iv�n, they want to kill you!" She pointed with her hand to her neck.
+
+"Who wants to kill me?"
+
+"My father,--the old men tell him to. I am sorry for you."
+
+So Zhil�n said:
+
+"If you pity me, bring me a long stick!"
+
+She shook her head, to say that she could not. He folded his hands, and
+began to beg her:
+
+"Dina, if you please! Dear Dina, bring it to me!"
+
+"I cannot," she said. "The people are at home, and they would see me."
+
+And she went away.
+
+Zhil�n was sitting there in the evening, and thinking what would happen.
+He kept looking up. The stars could be seen, and the moon was not yet
+up. The mullah called, and all grew quiet. Zhil�n was beginning to fall
+asleep; he thought the girl would be afraid.
+
+Suddenly some clay fell on his head. He looked up and saw a long pole
+coming down at the end of the ditch. It tumbled, and descended, and came
+down into the ditch. Zhil�n was happy; he took hold of it and let it
+down,--it was a stout pole. He had seen it before on his master's roof.
+
+He looked up: the stars were shining high in the heavens, and over the
+very ditch Dina's eyes glistened in the darkness. She bent her face over
+the edge of the ditch, and whispered: "Iv�n, Iv�n!" and waved her hands
+in front of her face, as much as to say: "Speak softly!"
+
+"What is it?" asked Zhil�n.
+
+"They are all gone. There are two only at the house."
+
+So Zhil�n said:
+
+"Kostyl�n, come, let us try for the last time; I will give you a lift."
+
+Kostyl�n would not even listen.
+
+"No," he said, "I shall never get away from here. Where should I go,
+since I have no strength to turn around?"
+
+"If so, good-bye! Do not think ill of me!"
+
+He kissed Kostyl�n.
+
+He took hold of the pole, told Dina to hold on to it, and climbed up.
+Two or three times he slipped down: the stocks were in his way. Kostyl�n
+held him up, and he managed to get on. Dina pulled him by the shirt with
+all her might, and laughed.
+
+Zhil�n took the pole, and said:
+
+"Take it to where you found it, for if they see it, they will beat you."
+
+She dragged the pole away, and Zhil�n went down-hill. He crawled down an
+incline, took a sharp stone, and tried to break the lock of the stocks.
+But the lock was a strong one, and he could not break it. He heard some
+one running down the hill, leaping lightly. He thought it was Dina. Dina
+ran up, took a stone, and said:
+
+"Let me do it!"
+
+She knelt down and tried to break it; but her arms were as thin as
+rods,--there was no strength in them. She threw away the stone, and
+began to weep. Zhil�n again worked on the lock, and Dina squatted near
+him, and held on to his shoulder. Zhil�n looked around; on the left,
+beyond the mountain, he saw a red glow,--the moon was rising.
+
+"Well," he thought, "before the moon is up I must cross the ravine and
+get to the forest."
+
+He got up, threw away the stone, and, though in the stocks, started to
+go.
+
+"Good-bye, Dina dear! I will remember you all my life."
+
+Dina took hold of him; she groped all over him, trying to find a place
+to put the cakes. He took them from her.
+
+"Thank you," he said, "you are a clever girl. Who will make dolls for
+you without me?" And he patted her on the head.
+
+Dina began to cry. She covered her eyes with her hands, and ran up-hill
+like a kid. In the darkness he could hear the ornaments in the braid
+striking against her shoulders.
+
+Zhil�n made the sign of the cross, took the lock of his fetters in his
+hand, that it might not clank, and started down the road, dragging his
+feet along, and looking at the glow, where the moon was rising. He
+recognized the road. By the straight road it would be about eight
+versts. If he only could get to the woods before the moon was entirely
+out! He crossed a brook,--and it was getting light beyond the mountain.
+He walked through the ravine; he walked and looked, but the moon was not
+yet to be seen. It was getting brighter, and on one side of the ravine
+everything could be seen more and more clearly. The shadow was creeping
+down the mountain, up toward him.
+
+Zhil�n walked and kept in the shade. He hurried on, but the moon was
+coming out faster still; the tops of the trees on the right side were
+now in the light. As he came up to the woods, the moon came out entirely
+from behind the mountains, and it grew bright and white as in the
+daytime. All the leaves could be seen on the trees. The mountains were
+calm and bright; it was as though everything were dead. All that could
+be heard was the rippling of a brook below.
+
+He reached the forest,--he came across no men. Zhil�n found a dark spot
+in the woods and sat down to rest himself.
+
+He rested, and ate a cake. He found a stone, and began once more to
+break down the lock. He bruised his hands, but did not break the lock.
+He got up, and walked on. He marched about a verst, but his strength
+gave out,--his feet hurt him so. He would make ten steps and then stop.
+"What is to be done?" he thought. "I will drag myself along until my
+strength gives out entirely. If I sit down, I shall not be able to get
+up. I cannot reach the fortress, so, when day breaks, I will lie down in
+the forest for the day, and at night I will move on."
+
+He walked the whole night. He came across two Tartars only, but he heard
+them from afar, and so hid behind a tree.
+
+The moon was beginning to pale, and Zhil�n had not yet reached the edge
+of the forest.
+
+"Well," he thought, "I will take another thirty steps, after which I
+will turn into the forest, where I will sit down."
+
+He took the thirty steps, and there he saw that the forest came to an
+end. He went to the edge of it, and there it was quite light. Before him
+lay the steppe and the fortress, as in the palm of the hand, and to the
+left, close by at the foot of the mountain, fires were burning and going
+out, and the smoke was spreading, and men were near the camp-fires.
+
+He took a sharp look at them: the guns were glistening,--those were
+Cossacks and soldiers.
+
+Zhil�n was happy. He collected his last strength and walked down-hill.
+And he thought: "God forfend that a Tartar rider should see me in the
+open! Though it is not far off, I should not get away."
+
+No sooner had he thought so, when, behold, on a mound stood three
+Tartars, not more than 150 fathoms away. They saw him, and darted toward
+him. His heart just sank in him. He waved his arms and shouted as loud
+as he could:
+
+"Brothers! Help, brothers!"
+
+Our men heard him, and away flew the mounted Cossacks. They started
+toward him, to cut off the Tartars.
+
+The Cossacks had far to go, but the Tartars were near. And Zhil�n
+collected his last strength, took the stocks in his hand, and ran toward
+the Cossacks. He was beside himself, and he made the sign of the cross,
+and shouted:
+
+"Brothers! Brothers! Brothers!"
+
+There were about fifteen Cossacks.
+
+The Tartars were frightened, and they stopped before they reached him.
+And Zhil�n ran up to the Cossacks.
+
+The Cossacks surrounded him, and asked:
+
+"Who are you? Where do you come from?"
+
+But Zhil�n was beside himself, and he wept, and muttered:
+
+"Brothers! Brothers!"
+
+The soldiers ran out, and surrounded Zhil�n: one gave him bread, another
+gruel, a third v�dka; one covered him with a cloak, another broke off
+the lock.
+
+The officers heard of it, and took him to the fortress. The soldiers
+were happy, and his companions came to see him.
+
+Zhil�n told them what had happened, and said:
+
+"So I have been home, and got married! No, evidently that is not my
+fate."
+
+And he remained in the service in the Caucasus. Not till a month later
+was Kostyl�n ransomed for five thousand. He was brought back more dead
+than alive.
+
+
+
+
+ERM�K
+
+
+In the reign of Iv�n Vas�levich the Terrible there were the rich
+merchants, the Strogan�vs, and they lived in Perm, on the river K�ma.
+They heard that along the river K�ma, in a circle of 140 versts, there
+was good land: the soil had not been ploughed for centuries, the forests
+had not been cut down for centuries. In the forests were many wild
+animals, and along the river fish lakes, and no one was living on that
+land, but only Tartars passed through it.
+
+The Strogan�vs wrote a letter to the Tsar:
+
+"Give us this land, and we will ourselves build towns there and gather
+people and settle them there, and will not allow the Tartars to pass
+through it."
+
+The Tsar agreed to it, and gave them the land. The Strogan�vs sent out
+clerks to gather people. And there came to them a large number of roving
+people. Whoever came received from the Strogan�vs land, forest, and
+cattle, and no tenant pay was collected. All they had to do was to live
+and, in case of need, to go out in mass to fight the Tartars. Thus the
+land was settled by the Russian people.
+
+About twenty years passed. The Strogan�vs grew richer yet, and that
+land, 140 versts around, was not enough for them. They wanted to have
+more land still. About one hundred versts from them were high mountains,
+the Ural Mountains, and beyond them, they had heard, there was good
+land, and to that land there was no end. This land was ruled by a small
+Siberian prince, Kuchum by name. In former days Kuchum had sworn
+allegiance to the Russian Tsar, but later he began to rebel, and he
+threatened to destroy Strogan�v's towns.
+
+So the Strogan�vs wrote to the Tsar:
+
+"You have given us land, and we have conquered it and turned it over to
+you; now the thievish Tsarling Kuchum is rebelling against you, and
+wants to take that land away and ruin us. Command us to take possession
+of the land beyond the Ural Mountains; we will conquer Kuchum, and will
+bring all his land under your rule."
+
+The Tsar assented, and wrote back:
+
+"If you have sufficient force, take the land away from Kuchum. Only do
+not entice many people away from Russia."
+
+When the Strogan�vs got that letter from the Tsar, they sent out clerks
+to collect more people. And they ordered them to persuade mostly the
+Cossacks from the V�lga and the Don to come. At that time many Cossacks
+were roving along the V�lga and the Don. They used to gather in bands of
+two, three, or six hundred men, and to select an atam�n, and to row down
+in barges, to capture ships and rob them, and for the winter they stayed
+in little towns on the shore.
+
+The clerks arrived at the V�lga, and there they asked who the famous
+Cossacks of that region were. They were told:
+
+"There are many Cossacks. It is impossible to live for them. There is
+M�shka Cherk�shenin, and Sar�-Azm�n; but there is no fiercer one than
+Erm�k Timof�ich, the atam�n. He has a thousand men, and not only the
+merchants and the people are afraid of him, but even the Tsarian army
+does not dare to cope with him."
+
+And the clerks went to Erm�k the atam�n, and began to persuade him to go
+to the Strogan�vs. Erm�k received the clerks, listened to their
+speeches, and promised to come with his people about the time of the
+Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.
+
+Near the holiday of the Assumption there came to the Strogan�vs six
+hundred Cossacks, with their atam�n, Erm�k Timof�ich. At first Strogan�v
+sent them against the neighbouring Tartars. The Cossacks annihilated
+them. Then, when nothing was doing, the Cossacks roved in the
+neighbourhood and robbed.
+
+So Strogan�v sent for Erm�k, and said:
+
+"I will not keep you any longer, if you are going to be so wanton."
+
+But Erm�k said:
+
+"I do not like it myself, but I cannot control my people, they are
+spoiled. Give us work to do!"
+
+So Strogan�v said:
+
+"Go beyond the Ural and fight Kuchum, and take possession of his land.
+The Tsar will reward you for it."
+
+And he showed the Tsar's letter to Erm�k. Erm�k rejoiced, and collected
+his men, and said:
+
+"You are shaming me before my master,--you are robbing without reason.
+If you do not stop, he will drive you away, and where will you go then?
+At the V�lga there is a large Tsarian army; we shall be caught, and then
+we shall suffer for our old misdeeds. But if you feel lonesome, here is
+work for you."
+
+And he showed them the Tsar's letter, in which it said that Strogan�v
+had been permitted to conquer land beyond the Ural. The Cossacks had a
+consultation, and agreed to go. Erm�k went to Strogan�v, and they began
+to deliberate how they had best go.
+
+They discussed how many barges they needed, how much grain, cattle,
+guns, powder, lead, how many captive Tartar interpreters, and how many
+foreigners as masters of gunnery.
+
+Strogan�v thought:
+
+"Though it may cost me much, I must give them everything or else they
+will stay here and will ruin me."
+
+Strogan�v agreed to everything, gathered what was needed, and fitted out
+Erm�k and the Cossacks.
+
+On the 1st of September the Cossacks rowed with Erm�k up the river
+Ch�sovaya on thirty-two barges, with twelve men in each. For four days
+they rowed up the river, and then they turned into Ser�bryanaya River.
+Beyond that point it was impossible to navigate. They asked the guides,
+and learned that from there they had to cross the mountains and walk
+overland about two hundred versts, and then the rivers would begin
+again. The Cossacks stopped, built a town, and unloaded all their
+equipment; they abandoned the boats, made carts, put everything upon
+them, and started overland, across the mountains. All those places were
+covered with forest, and nobody was living there. They marched for about
+ten days, and struck the river Zhar�vnya. Here they stopped again, and
+made themselves boats. They loaded them, and rowed down the river. They
+rowed five days, and then came more cheerful places,--meadows, forests,
+lakes. There was a plenty of fish and of animals, and animals that had
+not been scared by hunters. They rowed another day, and sailed into the
+river T�ra. Along the T�ra they came on Tartar people and towns.
+
+Erm�k sent some Cossacks to take a look at a town, to see what it was
+like, and whether there was any considerable force in it. Twenty
+Cossacks went there, and they frightened all the Tartars, and seized the
+whole town, and captured all the cattle. Some of the Tartars they
+killed, and others they brought back alive.
+
+Erm�k asked the Tartars through his interpreters what kind of people
+they were, and under whose rule they were living. The Tartars said that
+they were in the Siberian kingdom, and that their king was Kuchum.
+
+Erm�k let the Tartars go, but three of the more intelligent he took with
+him, to show him the road.
+
+They rowed on. The farther they rowed, the larger did the river grow;
+and the farther they went, the better did the places become.
+
+They met more and more people; only they were not strong men. And all
+the towns that were near the river the Cossacks conquered.
+
+In one town they captured a large number of Tartars and one old man who
+was held in respect. They asked him what kind of a man he was. He said:
+
+"I am Tauzik, a servant of my king, Kuchum, who has made me a commander
+in this town."
+
+Erm�k asked Tauzik about his king; how far his city of Sib�r was;
+whether Kuchum had a large force; whether he had much wealth. Tauzik
+told him everything. He said:
+
+"Kuchum is the first king in the world. His city of Sib�r is the largest
+city in the world. In that city," he said, "there are as many people and
+as many cattle as there are stars in the heaven. There is no counting
+his force, and not all the kings of the world can conquer him."
+
+But Erm�k said:
+
+"We Russians have come here to conquer your king and to take his city,
+and to put it into the hands of the Russian Tsar. We have a large force.
+Those who have come with me are only the advance-guard; those that are
+rowing down behind us in barges are numberless, and all of them have
+guns. Our guns pierce trees, not like your bows and arrows. Just look!"
+
+And Erm�k fired at a tree, and pierced it, and the Cossacks began to
+shoot on all sides. Tauzik in fright fell on his knees. Erm�k said to
+him:
+
+"Go to your King Kuchum and tell him what you have seen! Let him
+surrender, and if he does not, we will destroy him."
+
+And he dismissed Tauzik.
+
+The Cossacks rowed on. They sailed into the river Tob�l, and were
+getting nearer to the city of Sib�r. They sailed up to the small river
+Babas�n, and there they saw a small town on its bank, and around the
+town a large number of Tartars.
+
+They sent an interpreter to the Tartars, to find out what kind of people
+they were. The interpreter returned, and said:
+
+"That is Kuchum's army that has gathered there. The leader of that army
+is Kuchum's own son-in-law, Mametkul. He has commanded me to tell you
+that you must return, or else he will destroy you."
+
+Erm�k gathered his Cossacks, landed on the bank, and began to shoot at
+the Tartars. The moment the Tartars heard the shooting, they began to
+run. The Cossacks ran after them, and killed some, and captured others.
+Mametkul barely escaped.
+
+The Cossacks sailed on. They sailed into a broad, rapid river, the
+Irt�sh. Down Irt�sh River they sailed for a day, and came to a fair
+town, and there they stopped. The Cossacks went to the town. As they
+were coming near, the Tartars began to shoot their arrows, and they
+wounded three Cossacks. Then Erm�k sent an interpreter to tell the
+Tartars that they must surrender the town, or else they would all be
+killed. The interpreter went, and he returned, and said:
+
+"Here lives Kuchum's servant, Atik Murza Kachara. He has a large force,
+and he says that he will not surrender the town."
+
+Erm�k gathered the Cossacks, and said:
+
+"Boys, if we do not take this town, the Tartars will rejoice, and will
+not let us pass on. The more we strike them with terror, the easier will
+it be. Land all, and attack them all at once!"
+
+So they did. There were many Tartars there, and they were brave.
+
+When the Cossacks rushed at them, the Tartars began to shoot their
+arrows. They covered the Cossacks with them. Some were killed, and some
+wounded.
+
+The Cossacks became enraged, and when they got to the Tartars, they
+killed all they could lay their hands on.
+
+In this town the Cossacks found much property,--cattle, rugs, furs, and
+honey. They buried the dead, rested themselves, took away much property,
+and sailed on. They did not sail far, when they saw on the shore, like a
+city, an endless number of troops, and the whole army surrounded by a
+ditch and the ditch protected by timber. The Cossacks stopped. They
+deliberated. Erm�k gathered a circle about him.
+
+"Well, boys, what shall we do?"
+
+The Cossacks were frightened. Some said that they ought to sail past,
+while others said that they ought to go back.
+
+And they looked gloomy and began to scold Erm�k. They said:
+
+"Why did you bring us here? Already a few of ours have been killed, and
+many have been wounded; and all of us will perish here."
+
+They began to weep.
+
+But Erm�k said to his sub-atam�n, Iv�n Kolts�:
+
+"Well, V�nya, what do you think?"
+
+And Kolts� said:
+
+"What do I think? If they do not kill us to-day, they will to-morrow;
+and if not to-morrow, we shall die anyway on the oven. In my opinion, we
+ought to go out on the shore and rush in a body against the Tartars.
+Maybe God will give us victory."
+
+Erm�k said:
+
+"You are a brave man, V�nya! That is what must be done. Oh, you boys!
+You are not Cossacks, but old women. All you are good for is to catch
+sturgeon and frighten Tartar women. Can't you see for yourselves? If we
+turn back we shall be destroyed; and if we stay here, they will destroy
+us. How can we go back? After a little work, it will come easier.
+Listen, boys! My father had a strong mare. Down-hill she would pull and
+on an even place she would pull. But when it came to going up-hill, she
+became stubborn and turned back, thinking that it would be easier. But
+my father took a club and belaboured her with it. She twisted and tugged
+and broke the whole cart. My father unhitched her from the cart and gave
+her a terrible whacking. If she had pulled the cart, she would have
+suffered no torment. So it is with us, boys. There is only one thing
+left for us to do, and that is to make straight for the Tartars."
+
+The Cossacks laughed, and said:
+
+"Timof�ich, you are evidently more clever than we are. You have no
+business to ask us fools. Take us where you please. A man does not die
+twice, and one death cannot be escaped."
+
+And Erm�k said:
+
+"Listen, boys! This is what we shall do. They have not yet seen us all.
+Let us divide into three parts. Those in the middle will march straight
+against them, and the other two divisions will surround them on the
+right and on the left. When the middle detachment begins to walk toward
+them, they will think that we are all there, and so they will leap
+forward. Then we will strike them from the sides. That's the way, boys!
+If we beat these, we shall not have to be afraid of anybody. We shall
+ourselves be kings."
+
+And so they did. When the middle detachment with Erm�k advanced, the
+Tartars screamed and leaped forward; then they were attacked by Iv�n
+Kolts� on the right, and by Meshchery�kov the atam�n on the left. The
+Tartars were frightened, and ran. The Cossacks killed a great many of
+them. After that nobody dared to oppose Erm�k. And thus he entered the
+very city of Sib�r. And there Erm�k settled down as though he were a
+king.
+
+Then kinglets came to see Erm�k, to bow to him. Tartars began to settle
+down in Sib�r, and Kuchum and his son-in-law Mametkul were afraid to go
+straight at him, but kept going around in a circle, wondering how they
+might destroy him.
+
+In the spring, during high water, the Tartars came running to Erm�k, and
+said:
+
+"Mametkul is again going against you: he has gathered a large army, and
+is making a stand near the river Vag�y."
+
+Erm�k made his way over rivers, swamps, brooks, and forests, stole up
+with his Cossacks, rushed against Mametkul, killed a large number of
+Tartars, and took Mametkul alive and brought him to Sib�r. After that
+there were only a few unruly Tartars left, and Erm�k went that summer
+against those that had not yet surrendered; and along the Irt�sh and the
+Ob Erm�k conquered so much land that one could not march around it in
+two months.
+
+When Erm�k had conquered all that land, he sent a messenger to the
+Strogan�vs, and a letter:
+
+"I have taken Kuchum's city," he said, "and have captured Mametkul, and
+have brought all the people here under my rule. Only I have lost many
+Cossacks. Send people to us that we may feel more cheerful. There is no
+end to the wealth in this country."
+
+He sent to them many costly furs,--fox, marten, and sable furs.
+
+Two years passed after that. Erm�k was still holding Sib�r, but no aid
+came from Russia, and few Russians were left with Erm�k.
+
+One day the Tartar Karacha sent a messenger to Erm�k, saying:
+
+"We have surrendered to you, but now the Nogays are oppressing us. Send
+your brave men to aid us! We shall together conquer the Nogays. And we
+swear to you that we shall not insult your brave men."
+
+Erm�k believed their oath, and sent forty men under Iv�n Kolts�. When
+these forty men came there, the Tartars rushed against them and killed
+them, so there were still fewer Cossacks left.
+
+Another time some Bukhara merchants sent word to Erm�k that they were on
+their way to the city of Sib�r with goods, but that Kuchum had taken his
+stand with an army and would not let them pass through.
+
+Erm�k took with him fifty men and went out to clear the road for the
+Bukhara merchants. He came to the Irt�sh River, but did not find the
+Bukharans. He remained there over night. It was a dark night, and it
+rained. The Cossacks had just lain down to sleep, when suddenly the
+Tartars rushed out and threw themselves on the sleepy men and began to
+strike them down. Erm�k jumped up and began to fight. He was wounded in
+the hand. He ran toward the river. The Tartars after him. He threw
+himself into the river. That was the last time he was seen. His body was
+not recovered, and no one found out how he died.
+
+The following year came the Tsar's army, and the Tartars were pacified.
+
+
+
+
+
+NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES
+
+1869-1872
+
+
+
+
+NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FROM PHYSICS
+
+
+
+
+THE MAGNET
+
+
+I.
+
+In olden days there was a shepherd whose name was Magnes. Magnes lost a
+sheep. He went to the mountains to find it. He came to a place where
+there were barren rocks. He walked over these rocks, and felt that his
+boots were sticking to them. He touched them with his hand, but they
+were dry and did not stick to his hand. He started to walk again, and
+again his boots stuck to the rocks. He sat down, took off one of his
+boots, took it into his hand, and touched the rocks with it.
+
+Whenever he touched them with his skin, or with the sole of his boot,
+they did not stick; but when he touched them with the nails, they did
+stick.
+
+Magnes had a cane with an iron point.
+
+He touched a rock with the wood; it did not stick; he touched it with
+the iron end, and it stuck so that he could not pull it off.
+
+Magnes looked at the stone, and he saw that it looked like iron, and he
+took pieces of that stone home with him. Since then that rock has been
+known, and has been called Magnet.
+
+
+II.
+
+Magnet is found in the earth with iron ore. Where there is magnet in the
+ore, the iron is of the best quality. The magnet resembles iron.
+
+If you put a piece of iron on a magnet, the iron itself begins to
+attract other iron. And if you put a steel needle on a magnet, and hold
+it thus for awhile, the needle will become a magnet, and will attract
+iron. If two magnets are brought together at their ends, one side will
+turn away from the other, while the other sides will be attracted.
+
+If a magnetic rod is broken in two, each half will attract at one end,
+and will turn away at the other end. Cut it again, and the same will
+happen; cut it again, as often as you please, and still the same will
+happen: equal ends will turn away from each other, while opposite ends
+will be attracted, as though the magnet were pushing away at one end,
+and pulling in at the other. No matter how you may break it, it will be
+as though there were a bump at one end, and a saucer at the other.
+Whichever way you put them together,--a bump and a saucer will meet, but
+a bump and a bump, or a saucer and a saucer will not.
+
+
+III.
+
+If you magnetize a needle (holding it for awhile over a magnet), and
+attach it in the middle to a pivot in such a way that it can move freely
+around, and let it loose, it will turn with one end toward midday
+(south), and with the other toward midnight (north).
+
+When the magnet was not known, people did not sail far out to sea. When
+they went out far into the sea, so that land was not to be seen, they
+could tell only by the stars and the sun where they had to sail. But
+when it was dark, and the sun or stars could not be seen, they did not
+know which way to sail. And a ship was borne by the winds and carried on
+rocks and wrecked.
+
+So long as the magnet was not known, they did not sail far from the
+shore; but when the magnet was discovered, they made a magnetic needle
+on a pivot, so that it should move around freely. By this needle they
+could tell in which direction to sail. With the magnetic needle they
+began to sail farther away from the shores, and since then they have
+discovered many new seas.
+
+On ships there is always a magnetic needle (compass), and there is a
+measuring-rope with knots at the stern of a ship. This rope is fixed in
+such a way that when it unrolls, they can tell how far the ship has
+travelled. And thus, in sailing in a boat, they always know in what spot
+it is, whether far from the shore, and in what direction it is sailing.
+
+
+
+
+MOISTURE
+
+
+I.
+
+Why does a spider sometimes make a close cobweb, and sit in the very
+middle of its nest, and at other times leave its nest and start a new
+spider-web?
+
+The spider makes its cobweb according to the weather, both the present
+and the future weather. Looking at a spider, you can tell what kind of
+weather it is going to be: if it sits tightly in the middle of the
+cobweb and does not come out, it means that it is going to rain. If it
+leaves the nest and makes new cobwebs, it is going to clear off.
+
+How can the spider know in advance what weather it is going to be?
+
+The spider's senses are so fine that as soon as the moisture begins to
+gather in the air,--though we do not yet feel it, and for us the weather
+is clear,--for the spider it is already raining.
+
+Just as a naked man will feel the moisture, when a man in his clothes
+does not, so it is already raining for a spider, while for us it is only
+getting ready to rain.
+
+
+II.
+
+Why do the doors swell in the winter and close badly, while in the
+summer they shrink and close well?
+
+Because in the fall and winter the wood is saturated with water, like a
+sponge, and spreads out, while in the summer the water comes out as a
+vapour, and the wood shrinks.
+
+Why does soft wood, like aspen, swell more, and oak less?
+
+Because in the hard wood, in the oak, the empty places are smaller, and
+the water cannot gather there, while in the soft wood in the aspen,
+there are larger empty places, and the water can gather there. In rotten
+wood these empty places are still larger, and so rotten wood swells most
+and shrinks most.
+
+Beehives are made out of the softest and rottenest wood; the very best
+are made from rotten willow wood. Why? Because the air passes through
+the rotten wood, and in such a hive the bees feel better.
+
+Why do boards warp?
+
+Because they dry unevenly. If you place a damp board with one side
+toward the stove, the water will leave it, and the board will contract
+on that side and will pull the other side along; but the damp side
+cannot contract, because it is full of water, and so the whole board
+will be bent.
+
+To keep the floors from warping, the dry boards are cut into small
+pieces, and these pieces are boiled in water. When all the water is
+boiled out of them, they are glued together, and then they never warp
+(parquetry).
+
+
+
+
+THE DIFFERENT CONNECTION OF PARTICLES
+
+
+Why are cart bolsters cut and wheel naves turned not from oak, but from
+birch? Bolsters and naves have to be strong, and oak is not more
+expensive than birch.
+
+Because oak splits lengthwise, and birch does not split, but ravels out.
+
+Because, though oak is more firmly connected than birch, it is connected
+in such a way that it splits lengthwise, while birch does not.
+
+Why are wheels and runners bent from oak and elm, and not from birch and
+linden?
+
+Because, when oak and elm are steamed in a bath, they bend and do not
+break, while birch and linden ravel in every direction.
+
+This is again for the same reason, that is, that the particles of the
+wood in the oak and in the birch are differently connected.
+
+
+
+
+CRYSTALS
+
+
+If you pour salt into water and stir it, the salt will begin to melt and
+will entirely disappear; but if you pour more and still more salt into
+it, the salt will in the end not dissolve, and no matter how much you
+may stir after that, the salt will remain as a white powder. The water
+is saturated with the salt and cannot receive any more. But heat the
+water and it will receive more; and the salt which did not dissolve in
+the cold water, will melt in hot water. But pour in more salt, even the
+hot water will not receive it. And if you heat the water still more, the
+water will pass away in steam, and more of the salt will be left.
+
+Thus, for everything which dissolves in the water there is a measure
+after which the water will not dissolve any more. Of anything, more will
+be dissolved in hot than in cold water, and in each case, when it is
+saturated, it will not receive any more. The thing will be left, but the
+water will go away in steam.
+
+If the water is saturated with saltpetre powder, and then more saltpetre
+is added, and all is heated and is allowed to cool off without being
+stirred, the superfluous saltpetre will not settle as a powder at the
+bottom of the water, but will all gather in little six-edged columns,
+and will settle at the bottom and at the sides, one column near another.
+If the water is saturated with saltpetre powder and is put in a warm
+place, the water will go away in vapours, and the superfluous saltpetre
+will again gather in six-edged columns.
+
+If water is saturated with simple salt and heated, and is allowed to
+pass away in vapour, the superfluous salt will not settle as powder, but
+as little cubes. If the water is saturated both with salt and saltpetre,
+the superfluous salt and saltpetre will not mix, but will settle each in
+its own way: the saltpetre in columns, and the salt in cubes.
+
+If water is saturated with lime, or with some other salt, and anything
+else, each thing will settle in its own way, when the water passes away
+in vapour: one in three-edged columns, another in eight-edged columns, a
+third in bricks, a fourth in little stars,--each in its own way. These
+figures are different in each solid thing. At times these forms are as
+large as a hand,--such stones are found in the ground. At times these
+forms are so small that they cannot be made out with the naked eye; but
+in each thing there is its own form.
+
+If, when the water is saturated with saltpetre, and little figures are
+forming in it, a corner be broken off one of these little figures with a
+needle, new pieces of saltpetre will come up and will fix the broken end
+as it ought to be,--into a six-edged column. The same will happen to
+salt and to any other thing. All the tiny particles turn around and
+attach themselves with the right side to each other.
+
+When ice freezes, the same takes place.
+
+A snowflake flies, and no figure is seen in it; but the moment it
+settles on anything dark and cold, on cloth, on fur,--you can make out
+its figure; you will see a little star, or a six-cornered little board.
+On the windows the steam does not freeze in any form whatever, but
+always as a star.
+
+What is ice? It is cold, solid water. When liquid water becomes solid,
+it forms itself into figures and the heat leaves it. The same takes
+place with saltpetre: when it changes from a liquid into solid figures,
+the heat leaves it. The same is true of salt, of melted cast-iron, when
+it changes from a liquid into a solid. Whenever a thing changes from a
+liquid into a solid, heat leaves it, and it forms figures. And when it
+changes from a solid to a liquid it takes up heat, and the cold leaves
+it, and its figures are dissolved.
+
+Bring in melted iron and let it cool off; bring in hot dough and let it
+cool off; bring in slacked lime and let it cool off,--and it will be
+warm. Bring in ice and let it melt,--and it will grow cold. Bring in
+saltpetre, salt, or any other thing that dissolves in the water, and
+melt it in the water, and it will grow cold. In order to freeze
+ice-cream, they put salt in the water.
+
+
+
+
+INJURIOUS AIR
+
+
+In the village of Nik�lskoe, the people went on a holiday to mass. In
+the manor yard were left the cow-tender, the elder, and the groom. The
+cow-tender went to the well for water. The well was in the yard itself.
+She pulled out the bucket, but could not hold it. The bucket pulled away
+from her, struck the side of the well, and tore the rope. The cow-tender
+returned to the hut and said to the elder:
+
+"Aleks�ndr! Climb down into the well,--I have dropped the bucket into
+it."
+
+Aleks�ndr said:
+
+"You have dropped it, so climb down yourself."
+
+The cow-tender said that she did not mind fetching it herself, if he
+would let her down.
+
+The elder laughed at her, and said:
+
+"Well, let us go! You have an empty stomach now, so I shall be able to
+hold you up, for after dinner I could not do it."
+
+The elder tied a stick to a rope, and the woman sat astride it, took
+hold of the rope, and began to climb down into the well, while the elder
+turned the well-wheel. The well was about twenty feet deep, and there
+was less than three feet of water in it. The elder let her down slowly,
+and kept asking:
+
+"A little more?"
+
+And the cow-tender cried from below:
+
+"Just a little more!"
+
+Suddenly the elder felt the rope give way: he called the cow-tender, but
+she did not answer. The elder looked into the well, and saw the
+cow-tender lying with her head in the water, and with her feet in the
+air. The elder called for help, but there was nobody near by; only the
+groom came. The elder told him to hold the wheel, and he himself pulled
+out the rope, sat down on the stick, and went down into the well.
+
+The moment the groom let the elder down to the water, the same thing
+happened to the elder. He let go of the rope and fell head foremost upon
+the woman. The groom began to cry, and ran to church to call the people.
+Mass was over, and people were walking home. All the men and women
+rushed to the well. They gathered around it, and everybody holloaed, but
+nobody knew what to do. The young carpenter Iv�n made his way through
+the crowd, took hold of the rope, sat down on the stick, and told them
+to let him down. Iv�n tied himself to the rope with his belt. Two men
+let him down, and the rest looked into the well, to see what would
+become of Iv�n. Just as he was getting near the water, he dropped his
+hands from the rope, and would have fallen down head foremost, if the
+belt had not held him. All shouted, "Pull him out!" and Iv�n was pulled
+out.
+
+He hung like dead down from the belt, and his head was drooping and
+beating against the sides of the well. His face was livid. They took him
+off the rope and put him down on the ground. They thought that he was
+dead; but he suddenly drew a deep breath, began to rattle, and soon
+revived.
+
+Others wanted to climb down, but an old peasant said that they could not
+go down because there was bad air in the well, and that that bad air
+killed people. Then the peasants ran for hooks and began to pull out the
+elder and the woman. The elder's mother and wife cried at the well, and
+others tried to quiet them; in the meantime the peasants put down the
+hooks and tried to get out the dead people. Twice they got the elder
+half-way up by his clothes; but he was heavy, and his clothes tore and
+he fell down. Finally they stuck two hooks into him and pulled him out.
+Then they pulled out the cow-tender. Both were dead and did not revive.
+
+Then, when they examined the well, they found that indeed there was bad
+air down in the well.
+
+This air is so heavy that neither man nor any animal can live in it.
+They let down a cat into the well, and the moment she reached the place
+where the bad air was, she died. Not only can no animal live there, even
+no candle will burn in it. They let down a candle, and the moment it
+reached that spot, it went out.
+
+There are places underground where that air gathers, and when a person
+gets into one of those places, he dies at once. For this purpose they
+have lamps in the mines, and before a man goes down to such a place,
+they let down the lamp. If it goes out, no man can go there; then they
+let down fresh air until the lamp will burn.
+
+Near the city of Naples there is one such cave. There is always about
+three feet of bad air in it on the ground, but above it the air is good.
+A man can walk through the cave, and nothing will happen to him, but a
+dog will die the moment it enters.
+
+Where does this bad air come from? It is made of the same good air that
+we breathe. If you gather a lot of people in one place, and close all
+the doors and windows, so that no fresh air can get in, you will get the
+same kind of an air as in the well, and people will die.
+
+One hundred years ago, during a war, the Hindoos captured 146 Englishmen
+and shut them up in a cave underground, where the air could not get in.
+
+After the captured Englishmen had been there a few hours they began to
+die, and toward the end of the night 123 had died, and the rest came out
+more dead than alive, and ailing. At first the air had been good in the
+cave; but when the captives had inhaled all the good air, and no fresh
+air came in, it became bad, just like what was in the well, and they
+died.
+
+Why does the good air become bad when many people come together?
+
+Because, when people breathe, they take in good air and breathe out bad
+air.
+
+
+
+
+HOW BALLOONS ARE MADE
+
+
+If you take a blown-up bladder under water and let go of it, it will fly
+up to the surface of the water and will swim on it. Just so, when water
+is boiled in a pot, it becomes light at the bottom, over the fire,--it
+is turned into a gas; and when a little of that water-gas is collected
+it goes up as a bubble. First comes up one bubble, then another, and
+when the whole water is heated, the bubbles come up without stopping.
+Then the water boils.
+
+Just as the bubbles leap to the surface, full of vapoury water, because
+they are lighter than water, just so will a bladder which is filled with
+hydrogen, or with hot air, rise, because hot air is lighter than cold
+air, and hydrogen is lighter than any other gases.
+
+Balloons are made with hydrogen or with hot air. With hydrogen they are
+made as follows: They make a large bladder, attach it by ropes to posts,
+and fill it with hydrogen. The moment the ropes are untied, the balloon
+flies up in the air, and keeps flying up until it gets beyond the air
+which is heavier than hydrogen. When it gets up into the light air, it
+begins to swim in it like a bladder on the surface of the water.
+
+With hot air balloons are made like this: They make a large empty ball,
+with a neck below, like an upturned pitcher, and to the mouth of it they
+attach a bunch of cotton, and that cotton is soaked with spirits, and
+lighted. The fire heats the air in the balloon, and makes it lighter
+than the cold air, and the balloon is drawn upward, like the bladder in
+the water. And the balloon will fly up until it comes to the air which
+is lighter than the hot air in the balloon.
+
+Nearly one hundred years ago two Frenchmen, the brothers Montgolfier,
+invented the air balloons. They made a balloon of canvas and paper and
+filled it with hot air,--the balloon flew. Then they made another, a
+larger balloon, and tied under the balloon a sheep, a cock, and a duck,
+and let it off. The balloon rose and came down safely. Then they
+attached a little basket under the balloon, and a man seated himself in
+it. The balloon flew so high that it disappeared from view; it flew
+away, and came down safely. Then they thought of filling a balloon with
+hydrogen, and began to fly higher and faster.
+
+In order to fly with a balloon, they attach a basket under the balloon,
+and in this basket two, three, and even eight persons are seated, and
+they take with them food and drink.
+
+In order to rise and come down as one pleases, there is a valve in the
+balloon, and the man who is flying with it can pull a rope and open or
+close the valve. If the balloon rises too high, and the man who is
+flying wants to come down, he opens the valve,--the gas escapes, the
+balloon is compressed, and begins to come down. Then there are always
+bags with sand in the balloon. When a bag with sand is thrown out, the
+balloon gets lighter, and it flies up. If the one who is flying wants to
+get down, but sees that it is not what he wants below him,--either a
+river or a forest,--he throws out the sand from the bags, and the
+balloon grows lighter and rises again.
+
+
+
+
+GALVANISM
+
+
+There was once a learned Italian, Galvani. He had an electric machine,
+and he showed his students what electricity was. He rubbed the glass
+hard with silk with something smeared over it, and then he approached to
+the glass a brass knob which was attached to the glass, and a spark flew
+across from the glass to the brass knob. He explained to them that the
+same kind of a spark came from sealing-wax and amber. He showed them
+that feathers and bits of paper were now attracted, and now repelled, by
+electricity, and explained to them the reason of it. He did all kinds of
+experiments with electricity, and showed them all to his students.
+
+Once his wife grew ill. He called a doctor and asked him how to cure
+her. The doctor told him to prepare a frog soup for her. Galvani gave
+order to have edible frogs caught. They caught them for him, killed
+them, and left them on his table.
+
+Before the cook came after the frogs, Galvani kept on showing the
+electric machine to his students, and sending sparks through it.
+
+Suddenly he saw the dead frogs jerk their legs on the table. He watched
+them, and saw that every time when he sent a spark through the machine,
+the frogs jerked their legs. Galvani collected more frogs, and began to
+experiment with them. And every time he sent a spark through the
+machine, the dead frogs moved their legs as though they were alive.
+
+It occurred to Galvani that live frogs moved their legs because
+electricity passed through them. Galvani knew that there was
+electricity in the air; that it was more noticeable in the amber and
+glass, but that it was also in the air, and that thunder and lightning
+came from the electricity in the air.
+
+So he tried to discover whether the dead frogs would not move their legs
+from the electricity in the air. For this purpose he took the frogs,
+skinned them, chopped off their heads, and hung them on brass hooks on
+the roof, beneath an iron gutter. He thought that as soon as there
+should be a storm, and the air should be filled with electricity, it
+would pass by the brass rod to the frogs, and they would begin to move.
+
+But the storm passed several times, and the frogs did not move. Galvani
+was just taking them down, and as he did so a frog's leg touched the
+iron gutter, and it jerked. Galvani took down the frogs and made the
+following experiment: he tied to the brass hook an iron wire, and
+touched the leg with the wire, and it jerked.
+
+So Galvani decided that the animals lived because there was electricity
+in them, and that the electricity jumped from the brain to the flesh,
+and that made the animals move. Nobody had at that time tried this
+matter and they did not know any better, and so they all believed
+Galvani. But at that time another learned man, Volta, experimented in
+his own way, and proved to everybody that Galvani was mistaken. He tried
+touching the frog differently from what Galvani had done, not with a
+copper hook with an iron wire, but either with a copper hook and a
+copper wire, or an iron hook and an iron wire,--and the frogs did not
+move. The frogs moved only when Volta touched them with an iron wire
+that was connected with a copper wire.
+
+Volta thought that the electricity was not in the dead frog but in the
+iron and copper. He experimented and found it to be so: whenever he
+brought together the iron and the copper, there was electricity; and
+this electricity made the dead frogs jerk their legs. Volta tried to
+produce electricity differently from what it had been produced before.
+Before that they used to get electricity by rubbing glass or
+sealing-wax. But Volta got electricity by uniting iron and copper. He
+tried to connect iron and copper and other metals, and by the mere
+combination of metals, silver, platinum, zinc, lead, iron, he produced
+electric sparks.
+
+After Volta they tried to increase electricity by pouring all kinds of
+liquids--water and acids--between the metals. These liquids made the
+electricity more powerful, so that it was no longer necessary, as
+before, to rub in order to produce it; it is enough to put pieces of
+several metals in a bowl and fill it with a liquid, and there will be
+electricity in that bowl, and the sparks will come from the wires.
+
+When this kind of electricity was discovered, people began to apply it:
+they invented a way of gold and silver plating by means of electricity,
+and electric light, and a way to transmit signs from place to place over
+a long distance by means of electricity.
+
+For this purpose pieces of different metals are placed in jars, and
+liquids are poured into them. Electricity is collected in these jars,
+and is transferred by means of wires to the place where it is wanted,
+and from that place the wire is put into the ground. The electricity
+runs through the ground back to the jars, and rises from the earth by
+means of the other wire; thus the electricity keeps going around and
+around, as in a ring,--from the wire into the ground, and along the
+ground, and up the wire, and again through the earth. Electricity can
+travel in either direction, just as one wants to send it: it can first
+go along the wire and return through the earth, or first go through the
+earth, and then return through the wire. Above the wire, in the place
+where the signs are given, there is attached a magnetic hand, and that
+hand turns in one direction, when the electricity is allowed to pass
+through the wire and back through the earth, and in another direction,
+when the electricity is sent through the earth and back through the
+wire. Along this hand there are certain signs, and by means of these
+signs they write from one place to another on the telegraph.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUN'S HEAT
+
+
+Go out in the winter on a calm, frosty day into the field, or into the
+woods, and look about you and listen: all around you is snow, the rivers
+are frozen, dry grass blades stick out of the grass, the trees are
+bare,--nothing is moving.
+
+Look in the summer: the rivers are running and rippling, in every puddle
+the frogs croak and plunge in; the birds fly from place to place, and
+whistle, and sing; the flies and the gnats whirl around and buzz; the
+trees and the grass grow and wave to and fro.
+
+Freeze a pot with water, and it will become as hard as a rock. Put the
+frozen pot on the fire: the ice will begin to break, and melt, and move;
+the water will begin to stir, and bubbles will rise; then, when it
+begins to boil, it whirls about and makes a noise. The same happens in
+the world from the heat. Without heat everything is dead; with the heat
+everything moves and lives. If there is little heat, there is little
+motion; with more heat, there is more motion; with much heat, there is
+much motion; with very much heat, there is also very much motion.
+
+Where does the heat in the world come from? The heat comes from the sun.
+
+In winter the sun travels low, to one side, and its beams do not fall
+straight upon the earth, and nothing moves. The sun begins to travel
+higher above our heads, and begins to shine straight down upon the
+earth, and everything is warmed up in the world, and begins to stir.
+
+The snow settles down; the ice begins to melt on the rivers; the water
+comes down from the mountains; the vapours rise from the water to the
+clouds, and rain begins to fall. Who does it all?--The sun. The seeds
+swell, and let out rootlets; the rootlets take hold of the ground; old
+roots send up new shoots, and the trees and the grass begin to grow. Who
+has done that?--The sun.
+
+The bears and moles get up; the flies and bees awaken; the gnats are
+hatched, and the fish come out from their eggs, when it is warm. Who has
+done it all?--The sun.
+
+The air gets warmed up in one place, and rises, and in its place comes
+colder air,--and there is a wind. Who has done that?--The sun.
+
+The clouds rise and begin to gather and to scatter,--and the lightning
+flashes. Who has made that fire?--The sun.
+
+The grass, the grain, the fruits, the trees grow up; animals find their
+food, men eat their fill, and gather food and fuel for the winter; they
+build themselves houses, railways, cities. Who has prepared it all?--The
+sun.
+
+A man has built himself a house. What has he made it of? Of timbers. The
+timbers were cut out of trees, but the trees are made to grow by the
+sun.
+
+The stove is heated with wood. Who has made the wood to grow?--The sun.
+
+Man eats bread, or potatoes. Who has made them grow?--The sun. Man eats
+meat. Who has made the animals, the birds to grow?--The grass. But the
+grass is made to grow by the sun.
+
+A man builds himself a house from brick and lime. The bricks and the
+lime are burnt by wood. The wood has been prepared by the sun.
+
+Everything that men need, that is for their use,--all that is prepared
+by the sun, and on all that goes much sun's heat. The reason that men
+need bread is because the sun has produced it, and because there is much
+sun's heat in it. Bread warms him who eats it.
+
+The reason that wood and logs are needed is because there is much heat
+in them. He who buys wood for the winter, buys sun's heat; and in the
+winter he burns the wood whenever he wants it, and lets the sun's heat
+into his room.
+
+When there is heat, there is motion. No matter what motion it may
+be,--it all comes from heat, either directly from the sun's heat, or
+from the heat which the sun has prepared in the coal, the wood, the
+bread, and the grass.
+
+Horses and oxen pull, men work,--who moves them?--Heat. Where does the
+heat come from?--From the food. And the food has been prepared by the
+sun.
+
+Watermills and windmills turn around and grind. Who moves them?--Wind
+and water. And who drives the wind?--Heat. And who drives the
+water?--Again heat. Heat raises the water in the shape of vapour, and
+without this the water would not be falling down. A machine works,--it
+is moved by steam. And who makes steam?--Wood. And in the wood is the
+sun's heat.
+
+Heat makes motion, and motion makes heat. And both heat and motion are
+from the sun.
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FROM ZOOLOGY
+
+
+
+
+THE OWL AND THE HARE
+
+
+It was dusk. The owls began to fly through the forest to find some prey.
+
+A large hare leaped out on a clearing and began to smooth out his fur.
+An old owl looked at the hare, and seated himself on a branch; but a
+young owl said to him:
+
+"Why do you not catch the hare?"
+
+The old owl said:
+
+"He is too much for me: if I get caught in him, he will drag me into the
+woods."
+
+But the young owl said:
+
+"I will stick one claw into his body, and with the other I will clutch a
+tree."
+
+The young owl made for the hare, and stuck one claw into his back so
+that all his talons entered the flesh, and the other claw it got ready
+to push into the tree. The hare yanked the owl, while the owl held on to
+the tree, and thought, "He will not get away." The hare darted forward
+and tore the owl. One claw was left in the tree, and the other in the
+hare's back.
+
+The next year a hunter killed that hare, and wondered how the owl's
+talons had grown into the hare's back.
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE WOLVES TEACH THEIR WHELPS
+
+
+I was walking along the road, and heard a shout behind me. It was the
+shepherd boy who was shouting. He was running through the field, and
+pointing to something.
+
+I looked, and saw two wolves running through the field: one was
+full-grown, and the other a whelp. The whelp was carrying a dead lamb on
+his shoulders, and holding on to one of its legs with its teeth. The old
+wolf was running behind. When I saw the wolves, I ran after them with
+the shepherd, and we began to shout. In response to our cries came
+peasants with dogs.
+
+The moment the old wolf saw the dogs and the people, he ran up to the
+whelp, took the lamb away from him, threw it over his back, and both
+wolves ran as fast as they could, and disappeared from view.
+
+Then the boy told what had happened: the large wolf had leaped out from
+the ravine, had seized the lamb, killed it, and carried it off.
+
+The whelp ran up to him and grasped the lamb. The old wolf let the whelp
+carry the lamb, while he himself ran slowly beside him.
+
+Only when there was danger, did the old wolf stop his teaching and
+himself take the lamb.
+
+
+
+
+HARES AND WOLVES
+
+
+The hares feed at night on tree bark; the field hares eat the winter rye
+and the grass, and the threshing-floor hares eat the grain in the
+granary. Through the night the hares make a deep, visible track through
+the snow. The hares are hunted by men, and dogs, and wolves, and foxes,
+and ravens, and eagles. If a hare walked straight ahead, he would be
+easily caught in the morning by his tracks; but God has made a hare
+timid, and his timidity saves him.
+
+A hare goes at night fearlessly through the forests and fields, making
+straight tracks; but as soon as morning comes and his enemies wake up,
+and he hears the bark of dogs, or the squeak of sleighs, or the voice of
+peasants, or the crashing of a wolf through the forest, he begins to
+toss from side to side in his fear. He jumps forward, gets frightened at
+something, and runs back on his track. He hears something again, and he
+leaps at full speed to one side and runs away from his old track. Again
+something makes a noise, and the hare turns back, and again leaps to one
+side. When it is daylight, he lies down.
+
+In the morning the hunters try to follow the hare tracks, and they get
+mixed up on the double tracks and long leaps, and marvel at the hare's
+cunning. But the hare did not mean to be cunning. He is merely afraid of
+everything.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCENT
+
+
+Man sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, smells with his nose,
+tastes with his mouth, and feels with his fingers. One man's eyes see
+better, another man's see worse. One hears from a distance, and another
+is deaf. One has keen senses and smells a thing from a distance, while
+another smells at a rotten egg and does not perceive it. One can tell a
+thing by the touch, and another cannot tell by touch what is wood and
+what paper. One will take a substance in his mouth and will find it
+sweet, while another will swallow it without making out whether it is
+bitter or sweet.
+
+Just so the different senses differ in strength in the animals. But with
+all the animals the sense of smell is stronger than in man.
+
+When a man wants to recognize a thing, he looks at it, listens to the
+noise that it makes, now and then smells at it, or tastes it; but, above
+all, a man has to feel a thing, to recognize it.
+
+But nearly all animals more than anything else need to smell a thing. A
+horse, a wolf, a dog, a cow, a bear do not know a thing until they smell
+it.
+
+When a horse is afraid of anything, it snorts,--it clears its nose so as
+to scent better, and does not stop being afraid until it has smelled the
+object well.
+
+A dog frequently follows its master's track, but when it sees him, it
+does not recognize him and begins to bark, until it smells him and finds
+out that that which has looked so terrible is its master.
+
+Oxen see other oxen stricken down, and hear them roar in the
+slaughter-house, but still do not understand what is going on. But an ox
+or a cow need only find a spot where there is ox blood, and smell it,
+and it will understand and will roar and strike with its feet, and
+cannot be driven off the spot.
+
+An old man's wife had fallen ill; he went himself to milk the cow. The
+cow snorted,--she discovered that it was not her mistress, and would not
+give him any milk. The mistress told her husband to put on her fur coat
+and kerchief,--and the cow gave milk; but the old man threw open the
+coat, and the cow scented him, and stopped giving milk.
+
+When hounds follow an animal's trail, they never run on the track
+itself, but to one side, about twenty paces from it. When an
+inexperienced hunter wants to show the dog the scent, and sticks its
+nose on the track, it will always jump to one side. The track itself
+smells so strong to the dog that it cannot make out on the track whether
+the animal has run ahead or backward. It runs to one side, and then only
+discovers in what direction the scent grows stronger, and so follows the
+animal. The dog does precisely what we do when somebody speaks very loud
+in our ears; we step a distance away, and only then do we make out what
+is being said. Or, if anything we are looking at is too close, we step
+back and only then make it out.
+
+Dogs recognize each other and make signs to each other by means of their
+scent.
+
+The scent is more delicate still in insects. A bee flies directly to the
+flower that it wants to reach; a worm crawls to its leaf; a bedbug, a
+flea, a mosquito scents a man a hundred thousand of its steps away.
+
+If the particles which separate from a substance and enter our noses are
+small, how small must be those particles that reach the organ of smell
+of the insects!
+
+
+
+
+TOUCH AND SIGHT
+
+
+Twist the forefinger over the middle finger and touch a small ball with
+them, so that it may roll between the two fingers, and shut your eyes.
+You will think that there are two balls. Open your eyes,--and you will
+see that it is one ball. The fingers have deceived you, but the eyes
+correct you.
+
+Look (best of all sidewise) at a good, clean mirror,--you will think
+that it is a window or a door, and that there is something behind it.
+Touch it with a finger,--and you will see that it is a mirror. The eyes
+have deceived you, but the fingers correct you.
+
+
+
+
+THE SILKWORM
+
+
+I had some old mulberry-trees in my garden. My grandfather had planted
+them. In the fall I was given a dram of silkworm eggs, and was advised
+to hatch them and raise silkworms. These eggs are dark gray and so small
+that in that dram I counted 5,835 of them. They are smaller than the
+tiniest pin-head. They are quite dead; only when you crush them do they
+crack.
+
+The eggs had been lying around on my table, and I had almost forgotten
+about them.
+
+One day, in the spring, I went into the orchard and noticed the buds
+swelling on the mulberry-trees, and where the sun beat down, the leaves
+were out. I thought of the silkworm eggs, and took them apart at home
+and gave them more room. The majority of the eggs were no longer dark
+gray, as before, but some were light gray, while others were lighter
+still, with a milky shade.
+
+The next morning, I looked at the eggs, and saw that some of the worms
+had hatched out, while other eggs were quite swollen. Evidently they
+felt in their shells that their food was ripening.
+
+The worms were black and shaggy, and so small that it was hard to see
+them. I looked at them through a magnifying-glass, and saw that in the
+eggs they lay curled up in rings, and when they came out they
+straightened themselves out. I went to the garden for some mulberry
+leaves; I got about three handfuls of leaves, which I put on my table,
+and began to fix a place for the worms, as I had been taught to do.
+
+While I was fixing the paper, the worms smelled their food and started
+to crawl toward it. I pushed it away, and began to entice the worms to a
+leaf, and they made for it, as dogs make for a piece of meat, crawling
+after the leaf over the cloth of the table and across pencils, scissors,
+and papers. Then I cut off a piece of paper, stuck holes through it with
+a penknife, placed the leaf on top of it, and with the leaf put it down
+on the worms. The worms crawled through the holes, climbed on the leaf,
+and started to eat.
+
+When the other worms hatched out, I again put a piece of paper with a
+leaf on them, and all crawled through the holes and began to eat. The
+worms gathered on each leaf and nibbled at it from its edges. Then, when
+they had eaten everything, they crawled on the paper and looked for more
+food. Then I put on them new sheets of perforated paper with mulberry
+leaves upon them, and they crawled over to the new food.
+
+They were lying on my shelf, and when there was no leaf, they climbed
+about the shelf, and came to its very edge, but they never fell down,
+though they are blind. The moment a worm comes to an edge, it lets out a
+web from its mouth before descending, and then it attaches itself to it
+and lets itself down; it hangs awhile in the air, and watches, and if it
+wants to get down farther, it does so, and if not, it pulls itself up by
+its web.
+
+For days at a time the worms did nothing but eat. I had to give them
+more and more leaves. When a new leaf was brought, and they transferred
+themselves to it, they made a noise as though a rain were falling on
+leaves,--that was when they began to eat the new leaf.
+
+Thus the older worms lived for five days. They had grown very large and
+began to eat ten times as much as ever. On the fifth day, I knew, they
+would fall asleep, and waited for that to happen. Toward evening, on the
+fifth day, one of the older worms stuck to the paper and stopped eating
+and stirring.
+
+The whole next day I watched it for a long time. I knew that worms
+moulted several times, because they grew up and found it close in their
+old hide, and so put on a new one.
+
+My friend and I watched it by turns. In the evening my friend called
+out:
+
+"It has begun to undress itself,--come!"
+
+I went up to him, and saw that the worm had stuck with its old hide to
+the paper, had torn a hole at the mouth, thrust forth its head, and was
+writhing and working to get out, but the old shirt held it fast. I
+watched it for a long time as it writhed and could not get out, and I
+wanted to help it. I barely touched it with my nail, but soon saw that I
+had done something foolish. Under my nail there was something liquid,
+and the worm died. At first I thought that it was blood, but later I
+learned that the worm has a liquid mass under its skin, so that the
+shirt may come off easier. With my nail I no doubt disturbed the new
+shirt, for, though the worm crawled out, it soon died.
+
+The other worms I did not touch. All of them came out of their shirts in
+the same manner; only a few died, and nearly all came out safely, though
+they struggled hard for a long time.
+
+After shedding their skins, the worms began to eat more voraciously, and
+more leaves were devoured. Four days later they again fell asleep, and
+again crawled out of their skins. A still larger quantity of leaves was
+now consumed by them, and they were now a quarter of an inch in length.
+Six days later they fell asleep once more, and once more came out in new
+skins, and now were very large and fat, and we had barely time to get
+leaves ready for them.
+
+On the ninth day the oldest worms quit eating entirely and climbed up
+the shelves and rods. I gathered them in and gave them fresh leaves, but
+they turned their heads away from them, and continued climbing. Then I
+remembered that when the worms get ready to roll up into larv�, they
+stop eating and climb upward.
+
+I left them alone, and began to watch what they would do.
+
+The eldest worms climbed to the ceiling, scattered about, crawled in all
+directions, and began to draw out single threads in various directions.
+I watched one of them. It went into a corner, put forth about six
+threads each two inches long, hung down from them, bent over in a
+horseshoe, and began to turn its head and let out a silk web which began
+to cover it all over. Toward evening it was covered by it as though in a
+mist; the worm could scarcely be seen. On the following morning the worm
+could no longer be seen; it was all wrapped in silk, and still it spun
+out more.
+
+Three days later it finished spinning, and quieted down. Later I learned
+how much web it had spun in those three days. If the whole web were to
+be unravelled, it would be more than half a mile in length, seldom less.
+And if we figure out how many times the worm has to toss its head in
+these three days in order to let out all the web, it will appear that in
+these three days the worm tosses its head 300,000 times. Consequently,
+it makes one turn a second, without stopping. But after the work, when
+we took down a few cocoons and broke them open, we found inside the
+worms all dried up and white, looking like pieces of wax.
+
+I knew that from these larv� with their white, waxen bodies would come
+butterflies; but as I looked at them, I could not believe it. None the
+less I went to look at them on the twentieth day, to see what had become
+of them.
+
+On the twentieth day, I knew, there was to be a change. Nothing was to
+be seen, and I was beginning to think that something was wrong, when
+suddenly I noticed that the end of one of the cocoons grew dark and
+moist. I thought that it had probably spoiled, and wanted to throw it
+away. But then I thought that perhaps it began that way, and so I
+watched to see what would happen. And, indeed, something began to move
+at the wet end. For a long time I could not make out what it was. Later
+there appeared something like a head with whiskers. The whiskers moved.
+Then I noticed a leg sticking out through the hole, then another, and
+the legs scrambled to get out of the cocoon. It came out more and more,
+and I saw a wet butterfly. When all six legs scrambled out, the back
+jumped out, too, and the butterfly crawled out and stopped. When it
+dried it was white; it straightened its wings, flew away, circled
+around, and alighted on the window.
+
+Two days later the butterfly on the window-sill laid eggs in a row, and
+stuck them fast. The eggs were yellow. Twenty-five butterflies laid
+eggs. I collected five thousand eggs. The following year I raised more
+worms, and had more silk spun.
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FROM BOTANY
+
+
+
+
+THE APPLE-TREE
+
+
+I set out two hundred young apple-trees, and for three years I dug
+around them in the spring and the fall, and in winter wrapped them with
+straw against the hares. On the fourth year, when the snow melted, I
+went to take a look at my apple-trees. They had grown stouter during the
+winter: the bark was glossy and filled with sap; all the branches were
+sound, and at all the tips and axils there were pea-shaped flower-buds.
+Here and there the buds were bursting, and the purple edges of the
+flower-leaves could be seen. I knew that all the buds would be blossoms
+and fruit, and I was delighted as I looked at the apple-trees. But when
+I took off the wrapping from the first tree, I saw that down at the
+ground the bark was nibbled away, like a white ring, to the very wood.
+The mice had done that. I unwrapped a second tree, and the same had
+happened there. Of the two hundred trees not one was unharmed. I smeared
+pitch and wax on the nibbled spots; but when the trees were all in
+bloom, the blossoms at once fell off; there came out small leaves, and
+they, too, dropped off. The bark became wrinkled and black. Out of the
+two hundred apple-trees only nine were left. On these nine trees the
+bark had not been gnawed through all around, but strips of bark were
+left on the white ring. On the strips, where the bark held together,
+there grew out knots, and, although the trees suffered, they lived. All
+the rest were ruined; below the rings there came out shoots, but they
+were all wild.
+
+The bark of the tree is like the arteries in man: through the arteries
+the blood goes to the whole body, and through the bark the sap goes
+along the tree and reaches the branches, leaves, and flowers. The whole
+inside of a tree may be taken out, as is often the case with old
+willows, and yet the tree will live so long as the bark is alive; but
+when the bark is ruined, the tree is gone. If a man's arteries are cut
+through, he will die, in the first place, because the blood will flow
+out, and in the second, because the blood will not be distributed
+through the body.
+
+Even thus a birch dries up when the children bore a hole into it, in
+order to drink its sap, and all the sap flows out of it.
+
+Just so the apple-trees were ruined because the mice gnawed the bark all
+around, and the sap could not rise from the roots to the branches,
+leaves, and flowers.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD POPLAR
+
+
+For five years our garden was neglected. I hired labourers with axes and
+shovels, and myself began to work with them in the garden. We cut out
+and chopped out all the dry branches and wild shoots, and the
+superfluous trees and bushes. The poplars and bird-cherries grew ranker
+than the rest and choked the other trees. A poplar grows out from the
+roots, and it cannot be dug out, but the roots have to be chopped out
+underground.
+
+Beyond the pond there stood an enormous poplar, two men's embraces in
+circumference. About it there was a clearing, and this was all overgrown
+with poplar shoots. I ordered them to be cut out: I wanted the spot to
+look more cheerful, but, above all, I wanted to make it easier for the
+old poplar, because I thought that all those young trees came from its
+roots, and were draining it of its sap. When we cut out these young
+poplars, I felt sorry as I saw them chop out the sap-filled roots
+underground, and as all four of us pulled at the poplar that had been
+cut down, and could not pull it out. It held on with all its might, and
+did not wish to die. I thought that, no doubt, they had to live, since
+they clung so much to life. But it was necessary to cut them down, and
+so I did it. Only later, when nothing could be done, I learned that they
+ought not to have been cut down.
+
+I thought that the shoots were taking the sap away from the old poplar,
+but it turned out quite differently. When I was cutting them down, the
+old poplar was already dying. When the leaves came out, I saw (it grew
+from two boughs) that one bough was bare; and that same summer it dried
+up completely. The tree had been dying for quite awhile, and the tree
+knew it, so it tried to give its life to the shoots.
+
+That was the reason why they grew so fast. I wanted to make it easier
+for the tree, and only killed all its children.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRD-CHERRY
+
+
+A bird-cherry grew out on a hazel bush path and choked the bushes. I
+deliberated for a long time whether I had better cut down the
+bird-cherry, or not. This bird-cherry grew not as a bush, but as a tree,
+about six inches in diameter and thirty feet high, full of branches and
+bushy, and all besprinkled with bright, white, fragrant blossoms. You
+could smell it from a distance. I should not have cut it down, but one
+of the labourers (to whom I had before given the order to cut down the
+bird-cherry) had begun to chop it without me. When I came, he had
+already cut in about three inches, and the sap splashed under the axe
+whenever it struck the same cut. "It cannot be helped,--apparently such
+is its fate," I thought, and I picked up an axe myself and began to chop
+it with the peasant.
+
+It is a pleasure to do any work, and it is a pleasure to chop. It is a
+pleasure to let the axe enter deeply in a slanting line, and then to
+chop out the chip by a straight stroke, and to chop farther and farther
+into the tree.
+
+I had entirely forgotten the bird-cherry, and was thinking only of
+felling it as quickly as possible. When I got tired, I put down my axe
+and with the peasant pressed against the tree and tried to make it fall.
+We bent it: the tree trembled with its leaves, and the dew showered down
+upon us, and the white, fragrant petals of the blossoms fell down.
+
+At the same time something seemed to cry,--the middle of the tree
+creaked; we pressed against it, and it was as though something wept,
+there was a crash in the middle, and the tree tottered. It broke at the
+notch and, swaying, fell with its branches and blossoms into the grass.
+The twigs and blossoms trembled for awhile after the fall, and stopped.
+
+"It was a fine tree!" said the peasant. "I am mightily sorry for it!"
+
+I myself felt so sorry for it that I hurried away to the other
+labourers.
+
+
+
+
+HOW TREES WALK
+
+
+One day we were cleaning an overgrown path on a hillock near the pond.
+We cut down a lot of brier bushes, willows, and poplars,--then came the
+turn of a bird-cherry. It was growing on the path, and it was so old and
+stout that it could not be less than ten years old. And yet I knew that
+five years ago the garden had been cleaned. I could not understand how
+such an old bird-cherry could have grown out there. We cut it down and
+went farther. Farther away, in another thicket, there grew a similar
+bird-cherry, even stouter than the first. I looked at its root, and saw
+that it grew under an old linden. The linden with its branches choked
+it, and it had stretched out about twelve feet in a straight line, and
+only then came out to the light, raised its head, and began to blossom.
+
+I cut it down at the root, and was surprised to find it so fresh, while
+the root was rotten. After we had cut it down, the peasants and I tried
+to pull it off; but no matter how much we jerked at it, we were unable
+to drag it away: it seemed to have stuck fast. I said:
+
+"Look whether it has not caught somewhere."
+
+A workman crawled under it, and called out:
+
+"It has another root; it is out on the path!"
+
+I walked over to him, and saw that it was so.
+
+Not to be choked by the linden, the bird-cherry had gone away from
+underneath the linden out on the path, about eight feet from its former
+root. The root which I had cut down was rotten and dry, but the new one
+was fresh. The bird-cherry had evidently felt that it could not exist
+under the linden, so it had stretched out, dropped a branch to the
+ground, made a root of that branch, and left the other root. Only then
+did I understand how the first bird-cherry had grown out on the road. It
+had evidently done the same,--only it had had time to give up the old
+root, and so I had not found it.
+
+
+
+
+THE DECEMBRISTS
+
+Fragments of a Novel
+
+1863-1878
+
+
+
+
+THE DECEMBRISTS
+
+A Novel
+
+
+FIRST FRAGMENT
+
+I.
+
+This happened not long ago, in the reign of Alexander II., in our days
+of civilization, progress, questions, regeneration of Russia, and so
+forth, and so forth; at a time when the victorious Russian army was
+returning from Sevastopol, surrendered to the enemy; when all of Russia
+celebrated the annihilation of the Black Sea fleet, and white-stoned
+Moscow received and congratulated with this happy event the remainders
+of the crews of that fleet, offering them a good Russian cup of v�dka,
+and bread and salt, according to the good Russian custom, and bowing
+down to their feet. It was that time when Russia, in the person of
+far-sighted virgin politicians, lamented the shattered dream of a Te
+Deum in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and the loss of two great men, so
+painful for the country, who had perished during the war (one, who had
+been carried away by the desire to celebrate the Te Deum in the
+above-mentioned cathedral at the earliest time possible, and who fell in
+the fields of Wallachia, but who, at least, left two squadrons of
+hussars in the same fields, and the other, an unappreciated man, who had
+distributed tea, other people's money, and bed-sheets to the wounded,
+without stealing any of these things); that time, when on all sides, in
+all branches of human activities, great men--generals, administrators,
+economists, writers, orators, and simply great men, without any especial
+calling or purpose--sprang up in Russia like mushrooms; that time, when,
+at the jubilee of a Moscow actor, there appeared the public opinion,
+confirmed by a toast, which began to rebuke all the criminals,--when
+menacing commissions galloped south from St. Petersburg, to convict and
+punish the evil-doers of the commissariat,--when in all the cities
+dinners with speeches were given to the heroes of Sevastopol, and when
+to them, with arms and legs torn off, toasts were drunk, on meeting them
+on the bridges and on the highways; that time, when oratorical talents
+developed so rapidly in the nation that a certain dram-shopkeeper
+everywhere and upon all occasions wrote and printed and recited by rote
+at dinners such strong speeches, that the guardians of the peace had to
+take repressive measures against the dram-shopkeeper's eloquence,--when
+in the very English club a special room was set aside for the discussion
+of public matters,--when periodicals sprang up under the most
+diversified standards,--periodicals that evolved European principles on
+a European basis, but with a Russian world conception, and periodicals
+on an exclusively Russian basis, but with a European world
+conception,--when suddenly there appeared so many periodicals that all
+names seemed to be exhausted,--"The Messenger," and "The Word," and "The
+Speaker," and "The Observer," and "The Star," and "The Eagle," and many
+more, and, in spite of it, there appeared ever new names; that time,
+when the constellation of philosophic writers made its appearance to
+prove that science was national, and not national, and non-national, and
+so forth, and the constellation of artistic writers, who described a
+grove, and the sunrise, and a storm, and the love of a Russian maiden,
+and the indolence of a certain official, and the bad conduct of many
+officials; that time, when on all sides appeared questions (as in the
+year '56 they called every concourse of circumstances, of which no one
+could make any sense), questions of cadet corps, universities,
+censorship, oral judicature, finance, banking, police, emancipation, and
+many more:--everybody tried to discover ever new questions, everybody
+tried to solve them, wrote, read, spoke, made projects, wanted to mend
+everything, destroy, change, and all Russians, like one man, were in
+indescribable ecstasy.
+
+That is a state of affairs which has been twice repeated in the Russia
+of the nineteenth century,--the first time, when in the year '12 we
+repulsed Napoleon I., and the second time, when in the year '56 we were
+repulsed by Napoleon III. Great, unforgettable time of the regeneration
+of the Russian people! Like the Frenchman who said that he has not lived
+who has not lived through the great French Revolution, I venture to say
+that he who has not lived through the year '56 in Russia does not know
+what life is. The writer of these lines not only lived through that
+time, but was one of the actors of that period. Not only did he pass
+several weeks in one of the blindages of Sevastopol, but he also wrote a
+work on the Crimean War, which brought him great fame, and in which he
+described clearly and minutely how the soldiers fired their guns from
+the bastions, how the wounds were dressed at the ambulance, and how they
+buried people in the cemetery. Having achieved these deeds, the writer
+of these lines arrived in the centre of the empire,--a rocket
+establishment,--where he cut the laurels for his deeds. He saw the
+transports of the two capitals and of the whole nation, and experienced
+in his person to what extent Russia knew how to reward real deserts. The
+mighty of this world sought his friendship, pressed his hands, gave him
+dinners, urged him to come to their houses, and, in order to learn the
+details of the war from him, informed him of their own sentimentalities.
+Consequently the writer of these lines can appreciate that great and
+memorable time. But that is another matter.
+
+At that very time, two vehicles on wheels and a sleigh were standing at
+the entrance of the best Moscow hotel. A young man ran through the door,
+to find out about quarters. In one of the vehicles sat an old man with
+two ladies. He was talking about the condition of Blacksmith Bridge in
+the days of the French. It was the continuation of a conversation
+started as they entered Moscow, and now the old man with the white
+beard, in his unbuttoned fur coat, calmly continued his conversation in
+the vehicle, as though he intended to stay in it overnight. His wife and
+daughter listened to him, but kept looking at the door with some
+impatience. The young man emerged from the door with the porter and room
+servant.
+
+"Well, Sergy�y," asked the mother, thrusting her emaciated face out into
+the glare of the lamplight.
+
+Either because it was his habit, or because he did not wish the porter
+to take him for a lackey on account of the short fur coat which he wore,
+Sergy�y replied in French that there were rooms to be had, and opened
+the carriage door. The old man looked for a moment at his son, and again
+turned to the dark corner of the vehicle, as though nothing else
+concerned him:
+
+"There was no theatre then."
+
+"Pierre!" said his wife, lifting her cloak; but he continued:
+
+"Madame Chalm� was in Tversk�ya Street--"
+
+Deep in the vehicle could be heard a youthful, sonorous laugh.
+
+"Papa, step out! You are forgetting where we are."
+
+The old man only then seemed to recall that they had arrived, and looked
+around him.
+
+"Do step out!"
+
+He pulled his cap down, and submissively passed through the door. The
+porter took him under his arm, but, seeing that the old man was walking
+well, he at once offered his services to the lady. Judging from the
+sable cloak, and from the time it took for her to emerge, and from the
+way she pressed down on his arm, and from the way she, leaning on her
+son's arm, walked straight toward the porch, without looking to either
+side, Nat�lya Nikol�evna, his wife, seemed to the porter to be an
+important personage. He did not even separate the young lady from the
+maids, who climbed out from the other vehicle; like them, she carried a
+bundle and a pipe, and walked behind. He recognized her only by her
+laughing and by her calling the old man father.
+
+"Not that way, father,--to the right!" she said, taking hold of the
+sleeve of his sheepskin coat. "To the right."
+
+On the staircase there resounded, through the noise of the steps, the
+doors, and the heavy breathing of the elderly lady, the same laughter
+which had been heard in the vehicle, and about which any one who heard
+it thought: "How excellently she laughs,--I just envy her."
+
+Their son, Sergy�y, had attended to all the material conditions on the
+road, and, though he lacked knowledge of the matter, he had attended to
+it with the energy and self-satisfying activity which are characteristic
+of twenty-five years of age. Some twenty times, and apparently for no
+important reason, he ran down to the sleigh in his greatcoat, and ran
+up-stairs again, shivering in the cold and taking two or three steps at
+a time with his long, youthful legs. Nat�lya Nikol�evna asked him not to
+catch a cold, but he said that it was all right, and continued to give
+orders, slamming doors, and walking, and, when it seemed that only the
+servants and peasants had to be attended to, he several times walked
+through all the rooms, leaving the drawing-room by one door, and coming
+in through another, as though he were looking for something else to do.
+
+"Well, papa, will you be driven to the bath-house? Shall I find out?" he
+asked.
+
+His papa was deep in thought and, it seemed, was not at all conscious of
+where he was. He did not answer at once. He heard the words, but did not
+comprehend them. Suddenly he comprehended.
+
+"Yes, yes, yes. Find out, if you please, at Stone Bridge."
+
+The head of the family walked through the rooms with hasty, agitated
+steps, and seated himself in a chair.
+
+"Now we must decide what to do, how to arrange matters," he said. "Help
+along, children, lively! Like good fellows, drag things around, put them
+up, and to-morrow we shall send Ser�zha with a note to sister M�rya
+Iv�novna, to the Nik�tins, or we shall go there ourselves. Am I right,
+Nat�sha? But now, fix things!"
+
+"To-morrow is Sunday. I hope, Pierre, that first of all you will go to
+mass," said his wife, kneeling in front of a trunk and opening it.
+
+"That is so, it is Sunday! We shall by all means all of us go to the
+Cathedral of the Assumption. Thus will our return begin. O Lord! When I
+think of the day when I was for the last time in the Cathedral of the
+Assumption! Do you remember, Nat�sha? But that is another matter."
+
+And the head of the family rose quickly from the chair, on which he had
+just seated himself.
+
+"Now we must settle down!"
+
+And without doing anything, he kept walking from one room to another.
+
+"Well, shall we drink tea? Or are you tired, and do you want to rest?"
+
+"Yes, yes," replied his wife, taking something out from the trunk. "You
+wanted to go to the bath-house, did you not?"
+
+"Yes--in my day it was near Stone Bridge. Ser�zha, go and find out
+whether there is still a bath-house near Stone Bridge. This room here
+Ser�zha and I shall occupy. Ser�zha! Will you be comfortable here?"
+
+But Ser�zha had gone to find out about the bath-house.
+
+"No, that will not do," he continued. "You will not have a straight
+passage to the drawing-room. What do you think, Nat�sha?"
+
+"Calm yourself, Pierre, everything will come out all right," Nat�sha
+said, from another room, where peasants were bringing in things.
+
+But Pierre was still under the influence of that ecstatic mood which the
+arrival had evoked in him.
+
+"Look there,--don't mix up Ser�zha's things! You have thrown his
+snow-shoes down in the drawing-room." And he himself picked them up and
+with great care, as though the whole future order of the quarters
+depended upon it, leaned them against the door-post and tried to make
+them stand there. But the snow-shoes did not stick to it, and, the
+moment Pierre walked away from them, fell with a racket across the door.
+Nat�lya Nikol�evna frowned and shuddered, but, seeing the cause of the
+fall, she said:
+
+"S�nya, darling, pick them up!"
+
+"Pick them up, darling," repeated the husband, "and I will go to the
+landlord, or else you will never get done. I must talk things over with
+him."
+
+"You had better send for him, Pierre. Why should you trouble yourself?"
+
+Pierre assented.
+
+"S�nya, bring him here, what do you call him? M. Cavalier, if you
+please. Tell him that we want to speak about everything."
+
+"Chevalier, papa," said S�nya, ready to go out.
+
+Nat�lya Nikol�evna, who was giving her commands in a soft voice, and was
+softly stepping from room to room, now with a box, now with a pipe, now
+with a pillow, imperceptibly finding places for a mountain of baggage,
+in passing S�nya, had time to whisper to her:
+
+"Do not go yourself, but send a man!"
+
+While a man went to call the landlord, Pierre used his leisure, under
+the pretext of aiding his consort, in crushing a garment of hers and in
+stumbling against an empty box. Steadying himself with his hand against
+the wall, the Decembrist looked around with a smile; but S�nya was
+looking at him with such smiling eyes that she seemed to be waiting for
+permission to laugh. He readily granted her that permission, and himself
+burst out into such a good-natured laugh that all those who were in the
+room, his wife, the maids, and the peasants, laughed with him. This
+laughter animated the old man still more. He discovered that the divan
+in the room for his wife and daughter was not standing very conveniently
+for them, although they affirmed the opposite, and asked him to calm
+himself. Just as he was trying with his own hands to help a peasant to
+change the position of that piece of furniture, the landlord, a
+Frenchman, entered the room.
+
+"You sent for me," the landlord asked sternly and, in proof of his
+indifference, if not contempt, slowly drew out his handkerchief, slowly
+unfolded it, and slowly cleared his nose.
+
+"Yes, my dear sir," said Peter Iv�novich, stepping up toward him, "you
+see, we do not know ourselves how long we are going to stay here, I and
+my wife--" and Peter Iv�novich, who had the weakness of seeing a
+neighbour in every man, began to expound his plans and affairs to him.
+
+M. Chevalier did not share that view of people and was not interested in
+the information communicated to him by Peter Iv�novich, but the good
+French which Peter Iv�novich spoke (the French language, as is known, is
+something like rank in Russia) and his lordly manner somewhat raised the
+landlord's opinion about the newcomers.
+
+"What can I do for you?" he asked.
+
+This question did not embarrass Peter Iv�novich. He expressed his desire
+to have rooms, tea, a samov�r, supper, dinner, food for the servants, in
+short, all those things for which hotels exist, and when M. Chevalier,
+marvelling at the innocence of the old man, who apparently imagined that
+he was in the Trukhm�n steppe, or supposed that all these things would
+be given him without pay, informed him that he could have all those
+things, Peter Iv�novich was in ecstasy.
+
+"Now that is nice! Very nice! And so we shall get things all fixed.
+Well, then please--" but he felt embarrassed to be speaking all the time
+about himself, and he began to ask M. Chevalier about his family and his
+business. When Sergy�y Petr�vich returned to the room, he did not seem
+to approve of his father's address; he observed the landlord's
+dissatisfaction, and reminded his father of the bath. But Peter
+Iv�novich was interested in the question of how a French hotel could be
+run in Moscow in the year '56, and of how Madame Chevalier passed her
+time. Finally the landlord himself bowed and asked him whether he was
+not pleased to order anything.
+
+"We will have tea, Nat�sha. Yes? Tea, then, if you please! We will have
+some other talks, my dear monsieur! What a charming man!"
+
+"And the bath, papa?"
+
+"Oh, yes, then we shall have no tea."
+
+Thus the only result from the conversation with the newly arrived guests
+was taken from the landlord. But Peter Iv�novich was now proud and happy
+of his arrangements. The drivers, who came to ask a _pourboire_, vexed
+him, because Ser�zha had no change, and Peter Iv�novich was on the point
+of sending once more for the landlord, but the happy thought that
+others, too, ought to be happy on that evening helped him out of that
+predicament. He took two three-rouble bills, and, sticking one bill into
+the hand of one of the drivers, he said, "This is for you" (Peter
+Iv�novich was in the habit of saying "you" to all without exception,
+unless to a member of his family); "and this is for you," he said,
+transferring the other bill from the palm of his hand to that of the
+driver, in some such manner as people do when paying a doctor for a
+visit. After attending to all these things, he was taken to the
+bath-house.
+
+S�nya, who was sitting on the divan, put her hand under her head and
+burst out laughing.
+
+"Oh, how nice it is, mamma! Oh, how nice!"
+
+Then she placed her feet on the divan, stretched herself, adjusted
+herself, and fell into the sound, calm sleep of a healthy girl of
+eighteen years of age, after six weeks on the road. Nat�lya Nikol�evna,
+who was still busy taking out things in her sleeping-room, heard, no
+doubt with her maternal ear, that S�nya was not stirring, and went out
+to take a look at her. She took a pillow and, raising the girl's
+reddened, dishevelled head with her large white hand, placed her on the
+pillow. S�nya drew a deep, deep sigh, shrugged her shoulders, and put
+her head on the pillow, without saying "_Merci_," as though that had all
+been done of its own accord.
+
+"Not on that bed, not on that, Gavr�lovna, K�tya," Nat�lya Nikol�evna
+immediately turned to the maids who were making a bed, and with one
+hand, as though in passing, she adjusted the straying hair of her
+daughter. Without stopping and without hurrying, Nat�lya Nikol�evna
+dressed herself, and upon the arrival of her husband and her son
+everything was ready: the trunks were no longer in the rooms; in
+Pierre's sleeping-room everything was arranged as it had been for
+several decades in Irk�tsk: the morning-gown, the pipe, the
+tobacco-pouch, the sugared water, the Gospel, which he read at night,
+and even the image stuck to the rich wall-paper in the rooms of
+Chevalier, who never used such adornments, but on that evening they
+appeared in all the rooms of the third division of the hotel.
+
+Having dressed herself, Nat�lya Nikol�evna adjusted her collar and
+cuffs, which, in spite of the journey, were still clean, combed herself,
+and seated herself opposite the table. Her beautiful black eyes gazed
+somewhere into the distance: she looked and rested herself. She seemed
+to be resting, not from the unpacking alone, nor from the road, nor from
+the oppressive years,--she seemed to be resting from her whole life, and
+the distance into which she was gazing, and in which she saw living and
+beloved faces, was that rest which she was wishing for. Whether it was
+an act of love, which she had done for her husband, or the love which
+she had experienced for her children when they were young, or whether it
+was a heavy loss, or a peculiarity of her character,--everyone who
+looked at that woman could not help seeing that nothing could be
+expected from her, that she had long ago given all of herself to life,
+and that nothing was left of her. All that there was left was something
+worthy of respect, something beautiful and sad, as a reminiscence, as
+the moonlight. She could not be imagined otherwise than surrounded by
+all the comforts of life. It was impossible for her ever to be hungry,
+or to eat eagerly, or to have on soiled clothes, or to stumble, or to
+forget to clear her nose. It was a physical impossibility. Why it was
+so, I do not know, but every motion of hers was dignity, grace,
+gentleness toward all those who could enjoy her sight.
+
+    "Sie pflegen und weben
+    Himmlische Rosen ins irdische Leben."
+
+She knew those verses and loved them, but was not guided by them. All
+her nature was an expression of that thought; all her life was this one
+unconscious weaving of invisible roses in the lives of those with whom
+she came in contact. She had followed her husband to Siberia only
+because she loved him; she had not thought what she could do for him,
+and instinctively had done everything. She had made his bed, had put
+away his things, had prepared his dinner and his tea, and, above all,
+had always been where he was, and no woman could have given more
+happiness to her husband.
+
+In the drawing-room the samov�r was boiling on the round table. Nat�lya
+Nikol�evna sat near it. S�nya wrinkled her face and smiled under her
+mother's hand, which was tickling her, when father and son, with
+wrinkled finger-tips and glossy cheeks and foreheads (the father's bald
+spot was particularly glistening), with fluffy white and black hair, and
+with beaming countenances, entered the room.
+
+"It has grown brighter since you have come in," said Nat�lya Nikol�evna.
+"O Lord, how white you are!"
+
+She had been saying that each Saturday, for several decades, and each
+Saturday Pierre experienced bashfulness and delight, whenever he heard
+that. They seated themselves at the table; there was an odour of tea and
+of the pipe, and there were heard the voices of the parents, the
+children, and the servants, who received their cups in the same room.
+They recalled everything funny that had happened on the road, admired
+S�nya's hair-dressing, and laughed. Geographically they were all
+transferred a distance of five thousand versts, into an entirely
+different, strange milieu, but morally they were that evening still at
+home, just such as the peculiar, long, solitary family life had made
+them to be. It will not be so to-morrow. Peter Iv�novich seated himself
+near the samov�r, and lighted his pipe. He was not in a cheerful mood.
+
+"So here we are," he said, "and I am glad that we shall not see any one
+to-night; this is the last evening we shall pass with the family," and
+he washed these words down with a large mouthful of tea.
+
+"Why the last, Pierre?"
+
+"Why? Because the eaglets have learned to fly, and they have to make
+their own nests, and from here they will fly each in a different
+direction--"
+
+"What nonsense!" said S�nya, taking his glass from him, and smiling at
+him, as she smiled at everything. "The old nest is good enough!"
+
+"The old nest is a sad nest; the old man did not know how to make
+it,--he was caught in a cage, and in the cage he reared his young ones,
+and was let out only when his wings no longer would hold him up. No, the
+eaglets must make their nests higher up, more auspiciously, nearer to
+the sun; that is what they are his children for, that his example might
+serve them; but the old one will look on, so long as he is not blind,
+and will listen, when he becomes blind-- Pour in some rum, more,
+more--enough!"
+
+"We shall see who is going to leave," replied S�nya, casting a cursory
+glance at her mother, as though she felt uneasy speaking in her
+presence. "We shall see who is going to leave," she continued. "I am not
+afraid for myself, neither am I for Ser�zha." (Ser�zha was walking up
+and down in the room, thinking of how clothes would be ordered for him
+to-morrow, and wondering whether he had better go to the tailor, or send
+for him; he was not interested in S�nya's conversation with his father.)
+S�nya began to laugh.
+
+"What is the matter? What?" asked her father.
+
+"You are younger than we, papa. Much younger, indeed," she said, again
+bursting out into a laugh.
+
+"Indeed!" said the old man, and his austere wrinkles formed themselves
+into a gentle, and yet contemptuous, smile.
+
+Nat�lya Nikol�evna bent away from the samov�r which prevented her seeing
+her husband.
+
+"S�nya is right. You are still sixteen years old, Pierre. Ser�zha is
+younger in feelings, but you are younger in soul. I can foresee what he
+will do, but you will astound me yet."
+
+Whether he recognized the justice of this remark, or was flattered by
+it, he did not know what reply to make, and only smoked in silence,
+drank his tea, and beamed with his eyes. But Ser�zha, with
+characteristic egoism of youth, interested in what was said about him,
+entered into the conversation and affirmed that he was really old, that
+his arrival in Moscow and the new life, which was opening before him,
+did not gladden him in the least, and that he calmly reflected on the
+future and looked forward toward it.
+
+"Still, it is the last evening," repeated Peter Iv�novich. "It will not
+be again to-morrow."
+
+And he poured a little more rum into his glass. He sat for a long time
+at the tea-table, with an expression as though he wished to say many
+things, but had no hearers. He moved up the rum toward him, but his
+daughter softly carried away the bottle.
+
+II.
+
+When M. Chevalier, who had been up-stairs to look after his guests,
+returned to his room and gave the benefit of his observations on the
+newcomers to his life companion, in laces and a silk garment, who in
+Parisian fashion was sitting back of the counter, several habitual
+visitors of the establishment were sitting in the room. Ser�zha, who had
+been down-stairs, had taken notice of that room and of its visitors. If
+you have been in Moscow, you have, no doubt, noticed that room yourself.
+
+If you, a modest man who do not know Moscow, have missed a dinner to
+which you are invited, or have made a mistake in your calculations,
+imagining that the hospitable Muscovites would invite you to dinner, or
+simply wish to dine in the best restaurant, you enter the lackeys' room.
+Three or four lackeys jump up: one of them takes off your fur coat and
+congratulates you on the occasion of the New Year, or of the
+Butter-week, or of your arrival, or simply remarks that you have not
+called for a long while, though you have never been in that
+establishment before.
+
+You enter, and the first thing that strikes your eyes is a table set, as
+you in the first moment imagine, with an endless quantity of palatable
+dishes. But that is only an optical illusion, for the greater part of
+that table is occupied by pheasants in feather, raw lobsters, boxes with
+perfume and pomatum, and bottles with cosmetics and candy. Only at the
+very edge, if you look well, will you find the v�dka and a piece of
+bread with butter and sardines, under a wire globe, which is quite
+useless in Moscow in the month of December, even though it is precisely
+such as those which are used in Paris. Then, beyond the table, you see
+the room, where behind a counter sits a Frenchwoman, of extremely
+repulsive exterior, but wearing the cleanest of gloves and a most
+exquisite, fashionable gown. Near the Frenchwoman you will see an
+officer in unbuttoned uniform, taking a dram of v�dka, a civilian
+reading a newspaper, and somebody's military or civilian legs lying on a
+velvet chair, and you will hear French conversation, and more or less
+sincere, loud laughter.
+
+If you wish to know what is going on in that room, I should advise you
+not to enter within, but only to look in, as though merely passing by to
+take a sandwich. Otherwise you will feel ill at ease from the
+interrogative silence and glances, and you will certainly take your tail
+between your legs and skulk away to one of the tables in the large hall,
+or to the winter garden. Nobody will keep you from doing so. These
+tables are for everybody, and there, in your solitude, you may call Dey
+a gar�on and order as many truffles as you please. The room with the
+Frenchwoman, however, exists for the select, golden Moscow youth, and it
+is not so easy to find your way among the select as you imagine.
+
+On returning to this room, M. Chevalier told his wife that the gentleman
+from Siberia was dull, but that his son and daughter were fine people,
+such as could be raised only in Siberia.
+
+"You ought just to see the daughter! She is a little rose-bush!"
+
+"Oh, this old man is fond of fresh-looking women," said one of the
+guests, who was smoking a cigar. (The conversation, of course, was
+carried on in French, but I render it in Russian, as I shall continue to
+do in this story.)
+
+"Oh, I am very fond of them!" replied M. Chevalier. "Women are my
+passion. Do you not believe me?"
+
+"Do you hear, Madame Chevalier?" shouted a stout officer of Cossacks,
+who owed a big bill in the institution and was fond of chatting with the
+landlord.
+
+"He shares my taste," said M. Chevalier, patting the stout man on his
+epaulet.
+
+"And is this Siberian young lady really pretty?"
+
+M. Chevalier folded his fingers and kissed them.
+
+After that the conversation between the guests became confidential and
+very jolly. They were talking about the stout officer; he smiled as he
+listened to what they were saying about him.
+
+"How can one have such perverted taste!" cried one, through the
+laughter. "Mlle. Clarisse! You know, Str�gov prefers such of the women
+as have chicken calves."
+
+Though Mlle. Clarisse did not understand the salt of that remark, she
+behind her counter burst out into a laughter as silvery as her bad
+teeth and advanced years permitted.
+
+"Has the Siberian lady turned him to such thoughts?" and she laughed
+more heartily still. M. Chevalier himself roared with laughter, as he
+said:
+
+"_Ce vieux coquin_," patting the officer of Cossacks on his head and
+shoulders.
+
+"But who are they, those Siberians? Mining proprietors or merchants?"
+one of the gentlemen asked, during a pause in the laughter.
+
+"Nik�ta, ask ze passport from ze chentleman zat as come," said M.
+Chevalier.
+
+"We, Alexander, ze Autocrat--" M. Chevalier began to read the passport,
+which had been brought in the meantime, but the officer of Cossacks tore
+it out of his hands, and his face expressed surprise.
+
+"Guess who it is," he said, "for you all know him by reputation."
+
+"How can we guess? Show it to us! Well, Abdel Kader, ha, ha, ha! Well,
+Cagliostro-- Well, Peter III.--ha, ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"Well, read it!"
+
+The officer of Cossacks unfolded the paper and read the name of him who
+once had been Prince Peter Iv�novich, and the family name which
+everybody knows and pronounces with a certain respect and pleasure, when
+speaking of a person bearing that name, as of a near and familiar
+person. We shall call him Lab�zov. The officer of Cossacks had a dim
+recollection that this Peter Lab�zov had been something important in the
+year '25, and that he had been sent to hard labour,--but what he had
+been famous for, he did not exactly know. But of the others not one knew
+anything about him, and they replied:
+
+"Oh, yes, the famous prince," just as they would have said, "Of course,
+he is famous!" about Shakespeare, who had written the "�neid." But they
+recognized him from the explanations of the stout officer, who told
+them that he was a brother of Prince Iv�n, an uncle of the Ch�kins, of
+Countess Prut, in short, the well-known--
+
+"He must be very rich, if he is a brother of Prince Iv�n," remarked one
+of the young men, "if the fortune has been returned to him. It has been
+returned to some."
+
+"What a lot of exiles are returning nowadays!" remarked another.
+"Really, fewer seem to have been sent away, than are returning now.
+Zhik�nski, tell us that story of the 18th!" he turned to an officer of
+sharp-shooters, who had the reputation of being a good story-teller.
+
+"Do tell it!"
+
+"In the first place, it is a true story, and happened here, at
+Chevalier's, in the large hall. Three Decembrists came to have their
+dinner. They were sitting at one table, eating, drinking, talking.
+Opposite them sat down a gentleman of respectable mien, of about the
+same age, and he listened to their talking about Siberia. He asked them
+something, they exchanged a few words, began to converse, and it turned
+out that he, too, was from Siberia.
+
+"'And do you know Nerch�nsk?'
+
+"'Indeed I do, I lived there.'
+
+"'And do you know Taty�na Iv�novna?'
+
+"'Of course I do!'
+
+"'Permit me to ask you,--were you, too, exiled?'
+
+"'Yes, I had the misfortune to suffer, and you?'
+
+"'We are all exiles of the 14th of December. It is strange that we
+should not know you, if you, too, were exiled for the 14th. Permit me to
+know your name!'
+
+"'F�dorov.'
+
+"'Also for the 14th?'
+
+"'No, for the 18th.'
+
+"'For the 18th?'
+
+"'For the 18th of September, for a gold watch. I was falsely accused of
+having stolen it, and I suffered, though innocent.'"
+
+All of them rolled in laughter, except the story-teller, who with a most
+serious face looked at the outstretched hearers and swore that it was a
+true story.
+
+Soon after the story one of the young men got up and went to the club.
+He passed through the halls which were filled with tables at which old
+men were playing whist; turned into the "infernal region," where the
+famous "Puchin" had begun his game against the "company;" stood for
+awhile near one of the billiard-tables, where, holding on to the
+cushion, a distinguished old man was fumbling around and with difficulty
+striking a ball; looked into the library, where a general, holding a
+newspaper a distance away from him, was reading it slowly above his
+glasses, and a registered young man turned the leaves of one periodical
+after another, trying to make no noise; and finally seated himself on a
+divan in the billiard-room, near some young people who were playing
+pyramids, and who were as much gilded as he was.
+
+It was a day of dinners, and there were there many gentlemen who always
+frequented the club. Among them was Iv�n Vav�lovich P�khtin. He was a
+man of about forty years of age, of medium stature, fair-complexioned,
+with broad shoulders and hips, with a bare head, and a glossy, happy,
+clean-shaven face. He was not playing at pyramids, but had just sat down
+beside Prince D----, with whom he was on "thou" terms, and had accepted
+a glass of champagne which had been offered to him. He had located
+himself so comfortably after the dinner, having quietly unbuckled his
+trousers at the back, that it looked as though he could sit there all
+his life, smoking a cigar, drinking champagne, and feeling the proximity
+of princes, counts, and the children of ministers. The news of the
+arrival of the Lab�zovs interfered with his calm.
+
+"Where are you going, P�khtin," said a minister's son, having noticed
+during the game that P�khtin had got up, pulled his waistcoat down, and
+emptied his champagne in a large gulp.
+
+"Sy�vernikov has invited me," said P�khtin, feeling a restlessness in
+his legs. "Well, will you go there?"
+
+"Anast�sya, Anast�sya, please unlock the door for me." That was a
+well-known gipsy-song, which was in vogue at that time.
+
+"Perhaps. And you?"
+
+"Where shall I, an old married man, go?"
+
+"Well!"
+
+P�khtin, smiling, went to the glass hall, to join Sy�vernikov. He was
+fond of having his last word appear to be a joke. And so it came out at
+that time, too.
+
+"Well, how is the countess's health?" he asked, walking over to
+Sy�vernikov, who had not called him at all, but who, according to
+P�khtin's surmise, should more than any one else learn of the arrival of
+the Lab�zovs. Sy�vernikov had somehow been mixed up with the affair of
+the 14th, and was a friend of the Decembrists. The countess's health was
+much better, and P�khtin was very glad to hear it.
+
+"Do you know, Lab�zov has arrived; he is staying at Chevaliers."
+
+"You don't say so! We are old friends. How glad I am! How glad! The poor
+old fellow must have grown old. His wife wrote to my wife--"
+
+But Sy�vernikov did not finish saying what it was she had written,
+because his partners, who were playing without trumps, had made some
+mistake. While speaking with Iv�n P�vlovich, he kept an eye on them, and
+now he leaned forward with his whole body against the table, and,
+thumping it with his hands, he tried to prove that they ought to have
+played from the seven. Iv�n P�vlovich got up and, going up to another
+table, in the middle of a conversation informed another worthy gentleman
+of his bit of news, again got up, and repeated the same at a third
+table. The worthy gentlemen were all glad to hear of the arrival of the
+Lab�zovs, so that, upon returning to the billiard-room, Iv�n P�vlovich,
+who at first had had his misgivings about whether he had to rejoice in
+the return of the Lab�zovs, or not, no longer started with an
+introduction about the ball, about an article in the _Messenger_, about
+health, or weather, but approached everybody directly with the
+enthusiastic announcement of the safe return of the famous Decembrist.
+
+The old man, who was still vainly endeavouring to hit the white ball
+with his cue, would, in P�khtin's opinion, be very much delighted to
+hear the news. He went up to him.
+
+"Are you playing well, your Excellency?" he said, just as the old man
+stuck his cue into the marker's red waistcoat, wishing to indicate that
+it had to be chalked.
+
+"Your Excellency" was not said, as you might think, from a desire of
+being subservient (no, that was not the fashion in '56). Iv�n P�vlovich
+was in the habit of calling the old man by his name and patronymic, but
+this was said partly as a joke on men who spoke that way, partly in
+order to hint that he knew full well to whom he was talking, and yet was
+taking liberties, and partly in truth: altogether it was a very delicate
+jest.
+
+"I have just learned that Peter Lab�zov has returned. Straight from
+Siberia, with his whole family."
+
+These words P�khtin pronounced just as the old man again missed his
+ball, for such was his bad luck.
+
+"If he has returned as cracked as he went away, there is no cause for
+rejoicing," gruffly said the old man, who was irritated by his
+incomprehensible failure.
+
+This statement vexed Iv�n P�vlovich, and again he was at a loss whether
+there was any cause for rejoicing at Lab�zov's return, and, in order
+fully to settle his doubt, he directed his steps to a room, where
+generally assembled the clever people, who knew the meaning and value of
+each thing, and, in short, knew everything. Iv�n P�vlovich was on the
+same footing of friendship with the frequenters of the intellectual room
+as with the gilded youths and with the dignitaries. It is true, he had
+no special place of his own in the intellectual room, but nobody was
+surprised to see him enter and seat himself on a divan. They were just
+discussing in what year and upon what occasion there had taken place a
+quarrel between two Russian journalists. Waiting for a moment of
+silence, Iv�n P�vlovich communicated his bit of news, not as something
+joyous, nor as an unimportant event, but as though part of the
+conversation. But immediately, from the way the "intellectuals" (I use
+the word "intellectuals" as a name for the frequenters of the
+"intellectual" room) received the news and began to discuss it, Iv�n
+P�vlovich understood that it belonged there, and that only there would
+it receive such an elaboration as to enable him to carry it farther and
+_savoir � quoi s'en tenir_.
+
+"Lab�zov was the only one who was wanting," said one of the
+intellectuals; "now all the living Decembrists have returned to Russia."
+
+"He was one of the herd of the famous--" said P�khtin, still with an
+inquisitive glance, prepared to make that quotation both jocular and
+serious.
+
+"Indeed, Lab�zov was one of the most remarkable men of that time," began
+an intellectual. "In 1819 he was an ensign of the Sem�novski regiment,
+and was sent abroad with messages to Duke Z----. Then he returned and in
+the year '24 was received in the First Masonic lodge. The Masons of that
+time used all to gather at the house of D---- and at his house. He was
+very rich. Prince Zh----, F�dor D----, Iv�n P----, those were his
+nearest friends. Then his uncle, Prince Visari�n, to remove the young
+man from that society, took him to Moscow."
+
+"Pardon me, Nikol�y Step�novich," another intellectual interrupted him,
+"it seems to me that that happened in the year '23, because Visari�n
+Lab�zov was appointed a commander of the Third Corps in '24, and was
+then in Warsaw. He had offered him an adjutantship, and after his
+refusal, he was removed. However, pardon me for interrupting you."
+
+"Not at all. Proceed!"
+
+"Pardon me!"
+
+"Proceed! You ought to know that better than I, and, besides, your
+memory and knowledge have been sufficiently attested here."
+
+"In Moscow he against his uncle's will left the army," continued the one
+whose memory and knowledge had been attested, "and there he gathered
+around him a second society, of which he was the progenitor and the
+heart, if it be possible so to express it. He was rich, handsome,
+clever, educated; they say he was exceedingly amiable. My aunt used to
+tell me that she did not know a more bewitching man. Here he married
+Miss Kr�nski, a few months before the revolt broke out."
+
+"The daughter of Nikol�y Kr�nski, the one of Borodin� fame, you know,"
+somebody interrupted him.
+
+"Well, yes. Her immense fortune he still possesses, but his own paternal
+estate passed over to his younger brother, Prince Iv�n, who is now
+Ober-Hof-Kaffermeister" (he gave him some such name) "and was a
+minister."
+
+"The best thing is what he did for his brother," continued the narrator.
+"When he was arrested, there was one thing which he succeeded in
+destroying, and that was his brother's letters and documents."
+
+"Was his brother mixed up in it, too?"
+
+The narrator did not say "Yes," but compressed his lips and gave a
+significant wink.
+
+"Then, during all the inquests Peter Lab�zov kept denying everything
+which concerned his brother, and so suffered more than the rest. But the
+best part of it is that Prince Iv�n got all the property, and never sent
+a penny to his brother."
+
+"They say that Peter Lab�zov himself declined it," remarked one of the
+hearers.
+
+"Yes; but he declined it only because Prince Iv�n wrote him before the
+coronation, excusing himself and saying that if he had not taken it, it
+would have been confiscated, and that he had children and debts, and
+that now he was unable to return it to him. Peter Lab�zov replied to him
+in two lines: 'Neither I nor my heirs have any right, nor can have any
+right, to the property legally appropriated by you.' That was all. How
+was that? And Prince Iv�n swallowed it, and in delight locked up that
+document with the notes in a safe, and showed it to no one."
+
+One of the peculiarities of the intellectual room was that its visitors
+knew, whenever they wanted to know, everything that was taking place in
+the world, no matter how secret the event might have been.
+
+"Still it is a question," said a new interlocutor, "whether it was just
+to deprive the children of Prince Iv�n of the property, with which they
+have grown up and have been educated, and to which they thought they had
+a right."
+
+Thus the conversation was transferred to an abstract sphere, which did
+not interest P�khtin.
+
+He felt the necessity of communicating the news to fresh people, and so
+he rose and, speaking to the right and to the left, walked from one hall
+to another. One of his fellow officers stopped him to give him the news
+of Lab�zov's arrival.
+
+"Who does not know that?" replied Iv�n P�vlovich, with a calm smile,
+turning to the exit. The news had had time to complete its circle, and
+was again returning to him.
+
+There was nothing else to do in the club, and he went to an evening
+party. It was not a special entertainment, but a salon where guests were
+received any evening. There were there eight ladies, and one old
+colonel, and all found it terribly dull. P�khtin's firm gait alone and
+his smiling face cheered the ladies and maidens. And the news was the
+more appropriate, since the old Countess Fuks and her daughter were
+present in the salon. When P�khtin told nearly word for word what he had
+heard in the intellectual room, Madame Fuks, shaking her head and
+marvelling at her old age, began to recall how she used to go out
+together with Nat�sha Kr�nski, the present Princess Lab�zov.
+
+"Her marriage is a very romantic story, and all that happened under my
+eyes. Nat�sha was almost engaged to My�tlin, who was later killed in a
+duel with Debras. Just then Prince Peter arrived in Moscow, fell in love
+with her, and proposed to her. But her father, who wanted My�tlin very
+much,--they were, in general, afraid of Lab�zov because he was a
+Mason,--refused him. The young man continued to see her at balls,
+everywhere, and became friendly with My�tlin, whom he begged to decline.
+My�tlin agreed to do so, and he persuaded her to elope. She, too,
+agreed, but the last repentance----" (the conversation was taking place
+in French), "and she went to her father and said that everything was
+ready for the elopement, and she could leave him, but hoped for his
+magnanimity. And, indeed, her father forgave her,--everybody begged for
+her,--and gave his consent. Thus the wedding was celebrated, and it was
+a jolly wedding! Who of us thought that a year later she would follow
+him to Siberia! She, an only daughter, the most beautiful, the richest
+woman of that time. Emperor Alexander always used to notice her at
+balls, and had danced with her so often. Countess G---- gave a _bal
+costum�_,--I remember it as though it were to-day,--and she was a
+Neapolitan maid, oh, so charming! Whenever he came to Moscow, he used to
+ask, '_que fait la belle Napolitaine_?' And suddenly this woman, in such
+a condition (she bore a child on the way), did not stop for a moment to
+think, without preparing anything, without collecting her things, just
+as she was, when they took him, followed him a distance of five thousand
+versts."
+
+"Oh, what a remarkable woman!" said the hostess.
+
+"Both he and she were remarkable people," said another lady. "I have
+been told,--I don't know whether it is true,--that wherever they worked
+in the mines in Siberia, or whatever it is called, the convicts, who
+were with them, improved in their presence."
+
+"But she has never worked in the mines," P�khtin corrected her.
+
+How much that year '56 meant! Three years before no one had been
+thinking of the Lab�zovs, and if any one recalled them, it was with that
+unaccountable feeling of dread with which one speaks of one lately dead;
+but now they vividly recalled all the former relations, all the
+beautiful qualities, and each lady was making a plan for getting the
+monopoly of the Lab�zovs, in order to treat the other guests to them.
+
+"Their son and their daughter have come with them," said P�khtin.
+
+"If they are only as handsome as their mother used to be," said Countess
+Fuks. "Still, their father, too, was very, very handsome."
+
+"How could they educate their children there?" asked the hostess.
+
+"They say, nicely. They say that the young man is as nice, as amiable,
+and as cultured as though he had been brought up in Paris."
+
+"I predict great success to that young person," said a homely spinster.
+"All those Siberian ladies have something pleasantly trivial about them,
+which everybody, however, likes."
+
+"Yes, yes," said another spinster.
+
+"Here we have another rich prospective bride," said a third spinster.
+
+The old colonel, of German origin, who had come to Moscow three years
+before, in order to marry a rich girl, decided as quickly as possible,
+before the young people knew anything about it, to present himself and
+propose. But the spinsters and ladies thought almost the same about the
+young Siberian.
+
+"No doubt that is the one I am destined to marry," thought a spinster
+who had been going out for eight years.
+
+"No doubt it was for the best that that stupid officer of the Chevalier
+Guards did not propose to me. I should certainly have been unhappy."
+
+"Well, they will again grow yellow with envy, if this one, too, falls in
+love with me," thought a young and pretty lady.
+
+We hear much about the provincialism of small towns,--but there is
+nothing worse than the provincialism of the upper classes. There are no
+new persons there, and society is prepared to receive all kinds of new
+persons, if they should make their appearance; but they are rarely, very
+rarely, recognized as belonging to their circle and accepted, as was the
+case with the Lab�zovs, and the sensation produced by them is stronger
+than in a provincial town.
+
+III.
+
+"This is Moscow, white-stoned Mother Moscow," said Peter Iv�novich,
+rubbing his eyes in the morning, and listening to the tolling of the
+bells which was proceeding from Gazette Lane. Nothing so vividly
+resurrects the past as sounds, and these sounds of the Moscow bells,
+combined with the sight of a white wall opposite the window, and with
+the rumbling of wheels, so vividly reminded him not only of the Moscow
+which he had known thirty-five years before, but also of the Moscow with
+the Kremlin, with the palaces, with Iv�n the bell, and so forth, which
+he had been carrying in his heart, that he experienced a childish joy at
+being a Russian, and in Moscow.
+
+There appeared the Bukhara morning-gown, wide open over the broad chest
+with its chintz shirt, the pipe with its amber, the lackey with soft
+manners, tea, the odour of tobacco; a loud male voice was heard in
+Chevalier's apartments; there resounded the morning kisses, and the
+voices of daughter and son, and the Decembrist was as much at home as in
+Irk�tsk, and as he would have been in New York or in Paris.
+
+No matter how much I should like to present to my readers the Decembrist
+hero above all foibles, I must confess, for truth's sake, that Peter
+Iv�novich took great pains in shaving and combing himself, and in
+looking at himself in the mirror. He was dissatisfied with the garments,
+which had been made in Siberia with little elegance, and two or three
+times he buttoned and unbuttoned his coat.
+
+But Nat�lya Nikol�evna entered the drawing-room, rustling with her black
+moire gown, with mittens and with ribbons in her cap, which, though not
+according to the latest fashion, were so arranged that, far from making
+her appear _ridicule_, they made her look _distingu�e_. For this ladies
+have a special sixth sense and perspicacity, which cannot be compared to
+anything.
+
+S�nya, too, was so dressed that, although she was two years behind in
+fashion, she could not be reproached in any way. On her mother
+everything was dark and simple, and on the daughter bright and
+cheerful.
+
+Ser�zha had just awakened, and so they went by themselves to mass.
+Father and mother sat in the back seat, and their daughter was opposite
+them. Vas�li climbed on the box, and the hired carriage took them to the
+Kremlin. When they got out of the carriage, the ladies adjusted their
+robes, and Peter Iv�novich took the arm of his Nat�lya Nikol�evna, and,
+throwing back his head, walked up to the door of the church. Many
+people, merchants, officers, and everybody else, could not make out what
+kind of people they were.
+
+Who was that old man with his old sunburnt, and still unblanched face,
+with the large, straight work wrinkles of a peculiar fold, different
+from the wrinkles acquired in the English club, with snow-white hair and
+beard, with a good, proud glance and energetic movements? Who was that
+tall lady with that determined gait, and those weary, dimmed, large,
+beautiful eyes? Who was that fresh, stately, strong young lady, neither
+fashionable, nor timid? Merchants? No, no merchants. Germans? No, no
+Germans. Gentlefolk? No, they are different,--they are distinguished
+people. Thus thought those who saw them in church, and for some reason
+more readily and cheerfully made way for them than for men in thick
+epaulets. Peter Iv�novich bore himself just as majestically as at the
+entrance, and prayed quietly, with reserve, and without forgetting
+himself. Nat�lya Nikol�evna glided down on her knees, took out a
+handkerchief, and wept much during the cherubical song. S�nya seemed to
+be making an effort over herself in order to pray. Devotion did not come
+to her, but she did not look around, and diligently made the signs of
+the cross.
+
+Ser�zha stayed at home, partly because he had overslept himself, partly
+because he did not like to stand through a mass, which made his legs
+faint,--a matter he was unable to understand, since it was a mere trifle
+for him to walk forty miles on snow-shoes, whereas standing through
+twelve pericopes was the greatest physical torture for him,--but chiefly
+because he felt that more than anything he needed a new suit of clothes.
+He dressed himself and went to Blacksmith Bridge. He had plenty of
+money. His father had made it a rule, ever since his son had passed his
+twenty-first year, to let him have as much money as he wished. It lay
+with him to leave his parents entirely without money.
+
+How sorry I am for the 250 roubles which he threw away in Kuntz's shop
+of ready-made clothes! Any one of the gentlemen who met Ser�zha would
+have been only too happy to show him around, and would have regarded it
+as a piece of happiness to go with him to get his clothes made. But, as
+it was, he was a stranger in the crowd, and, making his way in his cap
+along Blacksmith Bridge, he went to the end, without looking into the
+shops, opened the door, and came out from it in a cinnamon-coloured
+half-dress coat, which was tight (though at that time they wore wide
+coats), and in loose black trousers (though they wore tight trousers),
+and in a flowery atlas waistcoat, which not one of the gentlemen, who
+were in Chevalier's special room, would have allowed their lackeys to
+wear, and bought a number of other a things; on the other hand, Kuntz
+marvelled at the young man's slender waist, the like of which, as he
+explained to everybody, he had never seen. Ser�zha knew that he had a
+beautiful waist, and he was very much flattered by the praise of a
+stranger, such as Kuntz was.
+
+He came out with 250 roubles less, but was dressed badly, in fact so
+badly that his apparel two days later passed over into Vas�li's
+possession and always remained a disagreeable memory for Ser�zha.
+
+At home he went down-stairs, seated himself in the large hall, looking
+now and then into the sanctum, and ordered a breakfast of such strange
+dishes that the servant in the kitchen had to laugh. Then he asked for
+a periodical, and pretended to be reading. When the servant, encouraged
+by the inexperience of the young man, addressed some questions to him,
+Ser�zha said, "Go to your place!" and blushed. But he said this so
+proudly that the servant obeyed. Mother, father, and daughter, upon
+returning home, found his clothes excellent.
+
+Do you remember that joyous sensation of childhood, when you were
+dressed up for your name-day and taken to mass, and when, upon returning
+with a holiday expression in your clothes, upon your countenance, and in
+your soul, you found toys and guests at home? You knew that on that day
+there would be no classes, that even the grown-ups celebrated on that
+day, and that that was a day of exceptions and pleasures for the whole
+house; you knew that you alone were the cause of that holiday, and that
+you would be forgiven, no matter what you might do, and you were
+surprised to see that the people in the streets did not celebrate along
+with your home folk, and the sounds were more audible, and the colours
+brighter,--in short, a name-day sensation. It was a sensation of that
+kind that Peter Iv�novich experienced on his return from church.
+
+P�khtin's solicitude of the evening before did not pass in vain: instead
+of toys Peter Iv�novich found at home several visiting-cards of
+distinguished Muscovites, who, in the year '56, regarded it as their
+peremptory duty to show every attention possible to a famous exile, whom
+they would under no consideration have wished to see three years before.
+In the eyes of Chevalier, the porter, and the servants of the hotel, the
+appearance of carriages asking for Peter Iv�novich, on that one morning
+increased their respect and subserviency tenfold.
+
+All those were name-day toys for Peter Iv�novich. No matter how much
+tried in life, how clever a man may be, the expression of respect from
+people respected by a large number of men is always agreeable. Peter
+Iv�novich felt light of heart when Chevalier, bowing, offered to change
+his apartments and asked him to order anything he might need, and
+assured him that he regarded Peter Iv�novich's visit as a piece of luck,
+and when, examining the visiting-cards and throwing them into a vase, he
+called out the names of Count S----, Prince D----, and so forth.
+
+Nat�lya Nikol�evna said that she would not receive anybody and that she
+would go at once to the house of M�rya Iv�novna, to which Peter
+Iv�novich consented, though he wished very much to talk to some of the
+visitors.
+
+Only one visitor managed to get through before the refusal to meet him.
+That was P�khtin. If this man had been asked why he went away from the
+Prech�stenka to go to Gazette Lane, he would have been unable to give
+any excuse, except that he was fond of everything new and remarkable,
+and so had come to see Peter Iv�novich, as something rare. One would
+think that, coming to see a stranger for no other reason than that, he
+would have been embarrassed. But the contrary was true. Peter Iv�novich
+and his son and S�nya Petr�vna became embarrassed. Nat�lya Nikol�evna
+was too much of a _grande dame_ to become embarrassed for any reason
+whatever. The weary glance of her beautiful black eyes was calmly
+lowered on P�khtin. But P�khtin was refreshing, self-contented, and
+gaily amiable, as always. He was a friend of M�rya Iv�novna's.
+
+"Ah!" said Nat�lya Nikol�evna.
+
+"Not a friend,--the difference of our years,--but she has always been
+kind to me."
+
+P�khtin was an old admirer of Peter Iv�novich's,--he knew his
+companions. He hoped that he could be useful to the newcomers. He would
+have appeared the previous evening, but could not find the time, and
+begged to be excused, and sat down and talked for a long time.
+
+"Yes, I must tell you, I have found many changes in Russia since then,"
+Peter Iv�novich said, in reply to a question.
+
+The moment Peter Iv�novich began to speak, you ought to have seen with
+what respectful attention P�khtin received every word that flew out of
+the mouth of the distinguished old man, and how after each sentence, at
+times after a word, P�khtin with a nod, a smile, or a motion of his eyes
+gave him to understand that he had received and accepted the memorable
+sentence or word.
+
+The weary glance approved of that manoeuvre. Sergy�y Petr�vich seemed to
+be afraid lest his father's conversation should not be weighty enough,
+corresponding to the attention of the hearer. S�nya Petr�vna, on the
+contrary, smiled that imperceptible self-satisfied smile which people
+smile who have caught a man's ridiculous side. It seemed to her that
+nothing was to be got from him, that he was a "shy�shka," as she and her
+brother nicknamed a certain class of people.
+
+Peter Iv�novich declared that during his journey he had seen enormous
+changes, which gave him pleasure.
+
+"There is no comparison, the masses--the peasants--stand so much higher
+now, have so much greater consciousness of their dignity," he said, as
+though repeating some old phrases. "I must say that the masses have
+always interested me most. I am of the opinion that the strength of
+Russia does not lie in us, but in the masses," and so forth.
+
+Peter Iv�novich with characteristic zeal evolved his more or less
+original ideas in regard to many important subjects. We shall hear more
+of them in fuller form. P�khtin was melting for joy, and fully agreed
+with him in everything.
+
+"You must by all means meet the Aks�tovs. Will you permit me to
+introduce them to you, prince? You know they have permitted him to
+publish his periodical. To-morrow, they say, the first number will
+appear. I have also read his remarkable article on the consistency of
+the theory of science in the abstract. Remarkably interesting. Another
+article, the history of Servia in the eleventh century, of that famous
+general Karbov�nets, is also very interesting. Altogether an enormous
+step."
+
+"Indeed," said Peter Iv�novich. But he was apparently not interested in
+all these bits of information; he did not even know the names and merits
+of all those men whom P�khtin quoted as universally known.
+
+But Nat�lya Nikol�evna, without denying the necessity of knowing all
+these men and conditions, remarked in justification of her husband that
+Pierre received his periodicals very late. He read entirely too much.
+
+"Papa, shall we not go to aunty?" asked S�nya, upon coming in.
+
+"We shall, but we must have our breakfast. Won't you have anything?"
+
+P�khtin naturally declined, but Peter Iv�novich, with the hospitality
+characteristic of every Russian and of him in particular, insisted that
+P�khtin should eat and drink something. He himself emptied a wine-glass
+of v�dka and a tumbler of Bordeaux. P�khtin noticed that as he was
+filling his glass, Nat�lya accidentally turned away from it, and the son
+cast a peculiar glance on his father's hands.
+
+After the wine, Peter Iv�novich, in response to P�khtin's questions
+about what his opinion was in respect to the new literature, the new
+tendency, the war, the peace (P�khtin had a knack of uniting the most
+diversified subjects into one senseless but smooth conversation), in
+response to these questions Peter Iv�novich at once replied with one
+general _profession de foi_, and either under the influence of the wine,
+or of the subject of the conversation, he became so excited that tears
+appeared in his eyes, and P�khtin, too, was in ecstasy, and himself
+became tearful, and without embarrassment expressed his conviction that
+Peter Iv�novich was now in advance of all the foremost men and should
+become the head of all the parties. Peter Iv�novich's eyes became
+inflamed,--he believed what P�khtin was telling him,--and he would have
+continued talking for a long time, if S�nya Petr�vna had not schemed to
+get Nat�lya Nikol�evna to put on her mantilla, and had not come herself
+to raise Peter Iv�novich from his seat. He poured out the rest of the
+wine into a glass, but S�nya Petr�vna drank it.
+
+"What is this?"
+
+"I have not had any yet, papa, pardon."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"Well, let us go to M�rya Iv�novna's. You will excuse us, Monsieur
+P�khtin."
+
+And Peter Iv�novich left the room, carrying his head high. In the
+vestibule he met a general, who had come to call on his old
+acquaintance. They had not seen each other for thirty-five years. The
+general was toothless and bald.
+
+"How fresh you still are!" he said. "Evidently Siberia is better than
+St. Petersburg. These are your family,--introduce me to them! What a
+fine fellow your son is! So to dinner to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, yes, by all means."
+
+On the porch they met the famous Chikh�ev, another old acquaintance.
+
+"How did you find out that I had arrived?"
+
+"It would be a shame for Moscow if it did not know it. It is a shame
+that you were not met at the barrier. Where do you dine? No doubt with
+your sister, M�rya Iv�novna. Very well, I shall be there myself."
+
+Peter Iv�novich always had the aspect of a proud man for one who could
+not through that exterior make out the expression of unspeakable
+goodness and impressionableness; but just then even M�rya Nikol�evna was
+delighted to see his unwonted dignity, and S�nya Petr�vna smiled with
+her eyes, as she looked at him. They arrived at the house of M�rya
+Iv�novna. M�rya Iv�novna was Peter Iv�novich's godmother and ten years
+his senior. She was an old maid.
+
+Her history, why she did not get married, and how she had passed her
+youth, I will tell some time later.
+
+She had lived uninterruptedly for forty years in Moscow. She had neither
+much intelligence, nor great wealth, and she did not think much of
+connections,--on the contrary; and there was not a man who did not
+respect her. She was so convinced that everybody ought to respect her
+that everybody actually respected her. There were some young liberals
+from the university who did not recognize her power, but these gentlemen
+made a bold front only in her absence. She needed only to enter the
+drawing-room with her royal gait, to say something in her calm manner,
+to smile her kindly smile, and they were vanquished. Her society
+consisted of everybody. She looked upon all of Moscow as her home folk,
+and treated them as such. She had friends mostly among the young people
+and clever men, but women she did not like. She had also dependents,
+whom our literature has for some reason included with the Hungarian
+woman and with generals in one common class for contempt; but M�rya
+Iv�novna considered it better for Sk�pin, who had been ruined in cards,
+and Madame By�shev, whom her husband had driven away, to be living with
+her than in misery, and so she kept them.
+
+But the two great passions in M�rya Iv�novna's present life were her two
+brothers. Peter Iv�novich was her idol. Prince Iv�n was hateful to her.
+She had not known that Peter Iv�novich had arrived; she had attended
+mass, and was just finishing her coffee.
+
+At the table sat the vicar of Moscow, Madame By�shev, and Sk�pin. M�rya
+Iv�novna was telling them about young Count V----, the son of P----
+Z----, who had returned from Sevastopol, and with whom she was in love.
+(She had some passion all the time.) He was to dine with her on that
+day. The vicar got up and bowed himself out. M�rya Iv�novna did not keep
+him,--she was a freethinker in this respect: she was pious, but had no
+use for monks and laughed at the ladies that ran after them, and boldly
+asserted that in her opinion monks were just such men as we sinful
+people, and that it was better to find salvation in the world than in a
+monastery.
+
+"Give the order not to receive anybody, my dear," she said, "I will
+write to Pierre. I cannot understand why he is not coming. No doubt,
+Nat�lya Nikol�evna is ill."
+
+M�rya Iv�novna was of the opinion that Nat�lya Nikol�evna did not like
+her and was her enemy. She could not forgive her because it was not she,
+his sister, who had given up her property and had followed him to
+Siberia, but Nat�lya Nikol�evna, and because her brother had definitely
+declined her offer when she got ready to go with him. After thirty-five
+years she was beginning to believe that Nat�lya Nikol�evna was the best
+woman in the world and his guardian angel; but she was envious, and it
+seemed all the time to her that she was not a good woman.
+
+She got up, took a few steps in the parlour, and was on the point of
+entering the cabinet when the door opened, and Madame By�shev's
+wrinkled, grayish face, expressing joyous terror, was thrust through the
+door.
+
+"M�rya Iv�novna, prepare yourself," she said.
+
+"A letter?"
+
+"No, something better--"
+
+But before she had a chance to finish, a man's loud voice was heard in
+the antechamber:
+
+"Where is she? Go, Nat�sha."
+
+"He!" muttered M�rya Iv�novna, walking with long, firm steps toward her
+brother. She met them all as though she had last seen them the day
+before.
+
+"When didst thou arrive? Where have you stopped? How have you come,--in
+a carriage?" Such were the questions which M�rya Iv�novna put, walking
+with them to the drawing-room and not hearing the answers, and looking
+with large eyes, now upon one, and now upon another. Madame By�shev was
+surprised at this calm, even indifference, and did not approve of it.
+They all smiled; the conversation died down, and M�rya Iv�novna looked
+silently and seriously at her brother.
+
+"How are you?" asked Peter Iv�novich, taking her hand, and smiling.
+
+Peter Iv�novich said "you" to her, though she had said "thou." M�rya
+Iv�novna once more looked at his gray beard, his bald head, his teeth,
+his wrinkles, his eyes, his sunburnt face, and recognized all that.
+
+"Here is my S�nya."
+
+But she did not look around.
+
+"What a stup--" her voice faltered, and she took hold of his bald head
+with her large white hands. "What a stupid you are," she had intended to
+say, "not to have prepared me," but her shoulders and breast began to
+tremble, her old face twitched, and she burst out into sobs, pressing to
+her breast his bald head, and repeating: "What a stupid you are not to
+have prepared me!"
+
+Peter Iv�novich no longer appeared as such a great man to himself, not
+so important as he had appeared on Chevalier's porch. His back was
+resting against a chair, but his head was in his sister's arms, his nose
+was pressed against her corset, his nose was tickled, his hair
+dishevelled, and there were tears in his eyes. But he felt happy.
+
+When this outburst of joyous tears was over, M�rya Iv�novna understood
+what had happened and believed it, and began to examine them all. But
+several times during the course of the day, whenever she recalled what
+he had been then, and what she had been, and what they were now, and
+whenever the past misfortunes, and past joys and loves, vividly rose in
+her imagination, she was again seized by emotion, and got up and
+repeated: "What a stupid you are, Pierre, what a stupid not to have
+prepared me!"
+
+"Why did you not come straight to me? I should have found room for you,"
+said M�rya Iv�novna. "At least, stay to dinner. You will not feel
+lonesome, Sergy�y,--a young, brave Sevastopol soldier is dining here
+to-day. Do you not know Nikol�y Mikh�ylovich's son? He is a writer,--has
+written something nice. I have not read it, but they praise it, and he
+is a dear fellow,--I shall send for him. Chikh�ev, too, wanted to come.
+He is a babbler,--I do not like him. Has he already called on you? Have
+you seen Nik�ta? That is all nonsense. What do you intend to do? How are
+you, how is your health, Nat�lya? What are you going to do with this
+young fellow, and with this beauty?"
+
+But the conversation somehow did not flow.
+
+Before dinner Nat�lya Nikol�evna went with the children to an old aunt;
+brother and sister were left alone, and he began to tell her of his
+plans.
+
+"S�nya is a young lady, she has to be taken out; consequently, we are
+going to live in Moscow," said M�rya Iv�novna.
+
+"Never."
+
+"Ser�zha has to serve."
+
+"Never."
+
+"You are still as crazy as ever."
+
+But she was just as fond of the crazy man.
+
+"First we must stay here, then go to the country, and show everything to
+the children."
+
+"It is my rule not to interfere in family matters," said M�rya
+Iv�novna, after calming down from her agitation, "and not to give
+advice. A young man has to serve, that I have always thought, and now
+more than ever. You do not know, Pierre, what these young men nowadays
+are. I know them all: there, Prince Dm�tri's son is all ruined. Their
+own fault. I am not afraid of anybody, I am an old woman. It is not
+good." And she began to talk about the government. She was dissatisfied
+with it for the excessive liberty which was given to everything. "The
+one good thing they have done was to let you out. That is good."
+
+Pierre began to defend it, but M�rya Iv�novna was not P�khtin: they
+could come to no terms. She grew excited.
+
+"What business have you to defend it? You are just as senseless as ever,
+I see."
+
+Peter Iv�novich grew silent, with a smile which showed that he did not
+surrender, but that he did not wish to quarrel with M�rya Iv�novna.
+
+"You are smiling. We know that. You do not wish to discuss with me, a
+woman," she, said, merrily and kindly, and casting a shrewd, intelligent
+glance at her brother, such as could not be expected from her old,
+large-featured face. "You could not convince me, my friend. I am ending
+my three score and ten. I have not been a fool all that time, and have
+seen a thing or two. I have read none of your books, and I never will.
+There is only nonsense in them!"
+
+"Well, how do you like my children? Ser�zha?" Peter Iv�novich said, with
+the same smile.
+
+"Wait, wait!" his sister replied, with a threatening gesture. "Don't
+switch me off on your children! We shall have time to talk about them.
+Here is what I wanted to tell you. You are a senseless man, as senseless
+as ever, I see it in your eye. Now they are going to carry you in their
+arms. Such is the fashion. You are all in vogue now. Yes, yes, I see by
+your eyes that you are as senseless as ever," she added, in response to
+his smile. "Keep away, I implore you in the name of Jesus Christ our
+Lord, from those modern liberals. God knows what they are up to. I know
+it will not end well. Our government is silent just now, but when it
+comes later to showing up the nails, you will recall my words. I am
+afraid lest you should get mixed up in things again. Give it up! It is
+all nonsense. You have children."
+
+"Evidently you do not know me, M�rya Iv�novna," said her brother.
+
+"All right, all right, we shall see. Either I do not know you, or you do
+not know yourself. I just told you what I had on my heart, and if you
+will listen to me, well and good. Now we can talk about Ser�zha. What
+kind of a lad is he?" She wanted to say, "I do not like him very much,"
+but she only said: "He resembles his mother remarkably: they are like
+two drops of water. S�nya is you all over,--I like her very much, very
+much--so sweet and open. She is a dear. Where is she, S�nya? Yes, I
+forgot."
+
+"How shall I tell you? S�nya will make a good wife and a good mother,
+but my Ser�zha is clever, very clever,--nobody will take that from him.
+He studied well,--a little lazy. He is very fond of the natural
+sciences. We have been fortunate: we had an excellent, excellent
+teacher. He wants to enter the university,--to attend lectures on the
+natural sciences, chemistry--"
+
+M�rya Iv�novna scarcely listened when her brother began to speak of the
+natural sciences. She seemed to feel sad, especially when he mentioned
+chemistry. She heaved a deep sigh and replied directly to that train of
+thoughts which the natural sciences evoked in her.
+
+"If you knew how sorry I am for them, Pierre," she said, with sincere,
+calm, humble sadness. "So sorry, so sorry. A whole life before them. Oh,
+how much they will suffer yet!"
+
+"Well, we must hope that they will be more fortunate than we."
+
+"God grant it, God grant it! It is hard to live, Pierre! Take this one
+advice from me, my dear: don't philosophize! What a stupid you are,
+Pierre, oh, what a stupid! But I must attend to matters. I have invited
+a lot of people, but how am I going to feed them?" She flared up, turned
+away, and rang the bell.
+
+"Call Tar�s!"
+
+"Is the old man still with you?"
+
+"Yes; why, he is a boy in comparison with me."
+
+Tar�s was angry and clean, but he undertook to get everything done.
+
+Soon Nat�lya Nikol�evna and S�nya, agleam with cold and happiness, and
+rustling in their dresses, entered the room; Ser�zha was still out,
+attending to some purchases.
+
+"Let me get a good look at her!"
+
+M�rya Iv�novna took her face. Nat�lya Nikol�evna began to tell
+something.
+
+
+THE DECEMBRISTS
+
+SECOND FRAGMENT
+
+(Variant of the First Chapter)
+
+The litigation "about the seizure in the Government of P�nza, County of
+Krasnoslob�dsk, by the landed proprietor and ex-lieutenant of the
+Guards, Iv�n Ap�khtin, of four thousand desyat�nas of land from the
+neighbouring Crown peasants of the village of Izleg�shcha," was through
+the solicitude of the peasants' representative, Iv�n Mir�nov, decided in
+the court of the first instance--the County Court--in favour of the
+peasants, and the enormous parcel of land, partly in forest, and partly
+in ploughings which had been broken by Ap�khtin's serfs, in the year
+1815 returned into the possession of the peasants, and they in the year
+1816 sowed in this land and harvested.
+
+The winning of this irregular case by the peasants surprised all the
+neighbours and even the peasants themselves. This success of theirs
+could be explained only on the supposition that Iv�n Petr�vich Ap�khtin,
+a very meek, peaceful man, who was opposed to litigations and was
+convinced of the righteousness of this matter, had taken no measures
+against the action of the peasants. On the other hand, Iv�n Mir�nov, the
+peasants' representative, a dry, hook-nosed, literate peasant, who had
+been a township elder and had acted in the capacity of collector of
+taxes, had collected fifty kopeks from each peasant, which money he
+cleverly applied in the distribution of presents, and had very shrewdly
+conducted the whole affair.
+
+Immediately after the decision handed down by the County Court,
+Ap�khtin, seeing the danger, gave a power of attorney to the shrewd
+manumitted serf, Ily� Mitrof�nov, who appealed to the higher court
+against the decision of the County Court. Ily� Mitrof�nov managed the
+affair so shrewdly that, in spite of all the cunning of the peasants'
+representative, Iv�n Mir�nov, in spite of the considerable presents
+distributed by him to the members of the higher court, the case was
+retried in the Government Court in favour of the proprietor, and the
+land was to go back to him from the peasants, of which fact their
+representative was duly informed.
+
+The representative, Iv�n Mir�nov, told the peasants at the meeting of
+the Commune that the gentleman in the Government capital had pulled the
+proprietor's leg and had "mixed up" the whole business, so that they
+wanted to take the land back again, but that the proprietor would not be
+successful, because he had a petition all written up to be sent to the
+Senate, and that then the land would be for ever confirmed to the
+peasants; all they had to do was to collect a rouble from each soul. The
+peasants decided to collect the money and again to entrust the whole
+matter to Iv�n Mir�nov. When Mir�nov had all the money in his hands, he
+went to St. Petersburg.
+
+When, in the year 1817, during Passion-week,--it fell late that
+year,--the time came to plough the ground, the Izleg�shcha peasants
+began to discuss at a meeting whether they ought to plough the land
+under litigation during that year, or not; and, although Ap�khtin's
+clerk had come to see them during Lent with the order that they should
+not plough the land and should come to some agreement with him in regard
+to the rye already planted in what had been the doubtful, and now was
+Ap�khtin's land, the peasants, for the very reason that the winter crop
+had been sowed on the debatable land, and because Ap�khtin, in his
+desire to avoid being unfair to them, wished to arbitrate the matter
+with them, decided to plough the land under litigation and to take
+possession of it before touching any other fields.
+
+On the very day when the peasants went out to plough, which was Maundy
+Thursday, Iv�n Petr�vich Ap�khtin, who had been preparing himself for
+communion during the Passion-week, went to communion, and early in the
+morning drove to the church in the village of Izleg�shcha, of which he
+was a parishioner, and there he, without knowing anything about the
+matter, amicably chatted with the church elder. Iv�n Petr�vich had been
+to confession the night before, and had attended vigils at home; in the
+morning he had himself read the Rules, and at eight o'clock had left the
+house. They waited for him with the mass. As he stood at the altar,
+where he usually stood, Iv�n Petr�vich rather reflected than prayed,
+which made him dissatisfied with himself.
+
+Like many people of that time, and, so far as that goes, of all times,
+he was not quite clear in matters of religion. He was past fifty years
+of age; he never omitted carrying out any rite, attended church, and
+went to communion once a year; in talking to his only daughter, he
+instructed her in the articles of faith; but, if he had been asked
+whether he really believed, he would not have known what to reply.
+
+On that day more than on any other, he felt meek of spirit, and,
+standing at the altar, he, instead of praying, thought of how strangely
+everything was constructed in the world: there he was, almost an old
+man, taking the communion for perhaps the fortieth time in his life, and
+he knew that everybody, all his home folk and all the people in the
+church, looked at him as a model and took him for an example, and he
+felt himself obliged to act as an example in matters of religion,
+whereas he himself did not know anything, and soon, very soon, he would
+die, and even if he were killed he could not tell whether that in which
+he was showing an example to others was true. And it also seemed strange
+to him how every one considered--that he saw--old people to be firm and
+to know what was necessary and what not (thus he always thought about
+old men), and there he was old and positively failed to know, and was
+just as frivolous as he had been twenty years before; the only
+difference was that formerly he did not conceal it, while now he did.
+Just as in his childhood it had occurred to him during the service that
+he might crow like a cock, even so now all kinds of foolish things
+passed through his mind, and he, the old man, reverentially bent his
+head, touching the flagstones of the church with the old knuckles of his
+hands, and Father Vas�li was evidently timid in celebrating mass in his
+presence, and incited to zeal by his zeal.
+
+"If they only knew what foolish things are running through my head! But
+that is a sin, a sin; I must pray," he said to himself, when the service
+commenced; and, trying to catch the meaning of the responses, he began
+to pray. Indeed, he soon transferred himself in feeling to the prayer
+and thought of his sins and of everything which he regretted.
+
+A respectable-looking old man, bald-headed, with thick gray hair,
+dressed in a fur coat with a new white patch on one-half of his back,
+stepping evenly with his out-toeing bast shoes, went up to the altar,
+bowed low to him, tossed his hair, and went beyond the altar to place
+some tapers. This was the church elder, Iv�n Fed�tov, one of the best
+peasants of the village of Izleg�shcha. Iv�n Petr�vich knew him. The
+sight of this stern, firm face led Iv�n Petr�vich to a new train of
+thoughts. He was one of those peasants who wanted to take the land away
+from him, and one of the best and richest married farmers, who needed
+the land, who could manage it, and had the means to work it. His stern
+aspect, ceremonious bow, and measured gait, and the exactness of his
+wearing-apparel,--the leg-rags fitted his legs like stockings and the
+laces crossed each other symmetrically on either leg,--all his
+appearance seemed to express rebuke and enmity on account of the land.
+
+"I have asked forgiveness of my wife, of M�nya" (his daughter), "of the
+nurse, of my valet, Vol�dya, but it is his forgiveness that I ought to
+ask for, and I ought to forgive him," thought Iv�n Petr�vich, and he
+decided that after matins he would ask Iv�n Fed�tov to forgive him.
+
+And so he did.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were but few people in church. The country people were in the
+habit of going to communion in the first and in the fourth week. Now
+there were only forty men and women present, who had not had time to go
+to communion before, a few old peasant women, the church servants, and
+the manorial people of the Ap�khtins and his rich neighbours, the
+Chern�shevs. There was also there an old woman, a relative of the
+Chern�shevs, who was living with them, and a deacon's widow, whose son
+the Chern�shevs, in the goodness of their hearts, had educated and made
+a man of, and who now was serving as an official in the Senate. Between
+the matins and the mass there were even fewer people left in the church.
+There were left two beggar women, who were sitting in the corner and
+conversing with each other and looking at Iv�n Petr�vich with the
+evident desire to congratulate him and talk with him, and two
+lackeys,--one his own, in livery, and the other, Chern�shev's, who had
+come with the old woman. These two were also whispering in an animated
+manner to each other, just as Iv�n Petr�vich came out from the
+altar-place; when they saw him, they grew silent. There was also a
+woman in a tall head-gear with a pearl face-ornament and in a white fur
+coat, with which she covered up a sick child, who was crying, and whom
+she was attempting to quiet; and another, a stooping old woman, also in
+a head-gear, but with a woollen face-ornament and a white kerchief,
+which was tied in the fashion of old women, and in a gray gathered coat
+with an iris-design on the back, who, kneeling in the middle of the
+church, and turning to an old image between two latticed windows, over
+which hung a new scarf with red edges, was praying so fervently,
+solemnly, and impassionately that one could not fail directing one's
+attention to her.
+
+Before reaching the elder, who, standing at the little safe, was
+kneading over the remnants of some tapers into one piece of wax, Iv�n
+Petr�vich stopped to take a look at the praying woman. The old woman was
+praying well. She knelt as straight as it was possible to kneel in front
+of the image; all the members of her body were mathematically
+symmetrical; her feet behind her pressed with the tips of her bast shoes
+at the same angle against the stone floor; her body was bent back, to
+the extent to which her stooping shoulders permitted her to do so; her
+hands were quite regularly placed below her abdomen; her head was thrown
+back, and her face, with an expression of bashful commiseration,
+wrinkled, and with a dim glance, was turned straight toward the image
+with the scarf. Having remained in an immobile position for a minute or
+less,--evidently a definite space of time,--she heaved a deep sigh and,
+taking her right hand away, swung it above her head-gear, touched the
+crown of her head with folded fingers, and made ample crosses by
+carrying her hand down again to her abdomen and to her shoulders; then
+she swayed back and dropped her head on her hands, which were placed
+evenly on the floor, and again raised herself, and repeated the same.
+
+"Now she is praying," Iv�n Petr�vich thought, as he looked at her. "She
+does it differently from us sinners: this is faith, though I know that
+she is praying to her own image, or to her scarf, or to her adornment on
+the image, just like the rest of them. All right. What of it?" he said
+to himself, "every person has his own faith: she prays to her image, and
+I consider it necessary to beg the peasant's forgiveness."
+
+And he walked over to the elder, instinctively scrutinizing the church
+in order to see who was going to see his deed, which both pleased and
+shamed him. It was disagreeable to him, because the old beggar women
+would see it, and more disagreeable still, because M�shka, his lackey,
+would see it. In the presence of M�shka,--he knew how wide-awake and
+shrewd he was,--he felt that he should not have the strength to walk up
+to Iv�n Fed�tov. He beckoned to M�shka to come up to him.
+
+"What is it you wish?"
+
+"Go, my dear, and bring me the rug from the carriage, for it is too damp
+here for my feet."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+When M�shka went away, Iv�n Petr�vich at once went up to Iv�n Fed�tov.
+Iv�n Fed�tov was disconcerted, like a guilty person, at the approach of
+the gentleman. Timidity and hasty motions formed a queer contradiction
+to his austere face and curly steel-gray hair and beard.
+
+"Do you wish a dime taper?" he said, raising the desk, and now and then
+casting his large, beautiful eyes upon the master.
+
+"No, I do not want a taper, Iv�n. I ask you to forgive me for Christ's
+sake, if I have in any way offended you. Forgive me, for Christ's sake,"
+Iv�n Petr�vich repeated, with a low bow.
+
+Iv�n Fed�tov completely lost his composure and began to move restlessly,
+but when he comprehended it all, he smiled a gentle smile:
+
+"God forgives," he said. "It seems to me, I have received no offence
+from you. God will forgive you,--I have not been offended by you," he
+hastened to repeat.
+
+"Still--"
+
+"God will forgive you, Iv�n Petr�vich. So you want two dime tapers?"
+
+"Yes, two."
+
+"He is an angel, truly, an angel. He begs even a base peasant to forgive
+him. O Lord, true angels," muttered the deacon's widow, in an old black
+capote and black kerchief. "Truly, we ought to understand that."
+
+"Ah, Param�novna!" Iv�n Petr�vich turned to her. "Are you getting ready
+for communion, too? You, too, must forgive me, for Christ's sake."
+
+"God will forgive you, sir, angel, merciful benefactor! Let me kiss your
+hand!"
+
+"That will do, that will do, you know I do not like that," said Iv�n
+Petr�vich, smiling, and going away from the altar.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The mass, as always, did not take long to celebrate in the parish of
+Izleg�shcha, the more so since there were few communicants. Just as,
+after the Lord's Prayer, the regal doors were closed, Iv�n Petr�vich
+looked through the north door, to call M�shka to take off his fur coat.
+When the priest saw that motion, he angrily beckoned to the deacon, and
+the deacon almost ran out to call in the lackey. Iv�n Petr�vich was in a
+pretty good humour, but this subserviency and expression of respect from
+the priest who was celebrating mass again soured him entirely; his thin,
+bent, shaven lips were bent still more and his kindly eyes were lighted
+up by sarcasm.
+
+"He acts as though I were his general," he thought, and immediately he
+thought of the words of the German tutor, whom he had once taken to the
+altar to attend a Russian divine service, and who had made him laugh
+and had angered his wife, when he said, "_Der Pop war ganz b�se, dass
+ich ihm Alles nachgesehen hatte_." He also recalled the answer of the
+young Turk that there was no God, because he had eaten up the last piece
+of him. "And here I am going to communion," he thought, and, frowning,
+he made a low obeisance.
+
+He took off his bear-fur coat, and in his blue dress coat with bright
+buttons and in his tall white neckerchief and waistcoat, and tightly
+fitting trousers, and heelless, sharp-toed boots, went with his soft,
+modest, and light gait to make his obeisances to the large images. Here
+he again met that same obsequiousness from the other communicants, who
+gave up their places to him.
+
+"They act as though they said, '_Apr�s vous, s'il en reste_,'" he
+thought, awkwardly making side obeisances; this awkwardness was due to
+the fact that he was trying to find that mean in which there would be
+neither disrespect, nor hypocrisy. Finally the doors were opened. He
+said the prayer after the priest, repeating the words, "As a robber;"
+his neckerchief was covered with the chalice cloth, and he received his
+communion and the lukewarm water in the ancient dipper, having put new
+silver twenty-kopek pieces on ancient plates; after hearing the last
+prayers, he kissed the cross and, putting on his fur coat left the
+church, receiving congratulations and experiencing the pleasant
+sensation of having everything over. As he left the church, he again
+fell in with Iv�n Fed�tov.
+
+"Thank you, thank you!" he replied to his congratulations. "Well, are
+you going to plough soon?"
+
+"The boys have gone out, the boys have," replied Iv�n Fed�tov, more
+timidly even than before. He supposed that Iv�n Petr�vich knew whither
+the Izleg�shcha peasants had gone out to plough. "It is damp, though.
+Damp it is. It is early yet, early it is."
+
+Iv�n Petr�vich went up to his parents' monument, bowed to it, and went
+back to be helped into his six-in-hand with an outrider.
+
+"Well, thank God," he said to himself, swaying on the soft, round
+springs and looking at the vernal sky with the scattering clouds, at the
+bared earth and the white spots of unmelted snow, and at the tightly
+braided tail of a side horse, and inhaling the fresh spring air, which
+was particularly pleasant after the air in the church.
+
+"Thank God that I have been through the communion, and thank God that I
+now may take a pinch of snuff." And he took out his snuff-box and for a
+long time held the pinch between his fingers, smiling and, without
+letting the pinch out of the hand, raising his cap in response to the
+low bows of the people on the way, especially of the women, who were
+washing the tables and chairs in front of their houses, just as the
+carriage at a fast trot of the large horses of the six-in-hand plashed
+and clattered through the mud of the street of the village of
+Izleg�shcha.
+
+Iv�n Petr�vich held the pinch of snuff, anticipating the pleasure of
+snuffing, not only down the whole village, but even until they got out
+of a bad place at the foot of a hill, toward which the coachman
+descended not without anxiety: he held up the reins, seated himself more
+firmly, and shouted to the outrider to go over the ice. When they went
+around the bridge, over the bed of the river, and scrambled out of the
+breaking ice and mud, Iv�n Petr�vich, looking at two plovers that rose
+from the hollow, took the snuff and, feeling chilly, put on his glove,
+wrapped himself in his fur coat, plunged his chin into the high
+neckerchief, and said to himself, almost aloud, "Glorious!" which he was
+in the habit of saying secretly to himself whenever he felt well.
+
+In the night snow had fallen, and when Iv�n Petr�vich had driven to
+church the snow had not yet disappeared, but was soft; now, though there
+was no sun, it was all melted from the moisture, and on the highway, on
+which he had to travel for three versts before turning into Chirak�vo,
+the snow was white only in last year's grass, which grew in parallel
+lines along the ruts; but on the black road the horses splashed through
+the viscous mud. The good, well-fed, large horses of his own stud had no
+difficulty in pulling the carriage, and it just rolled over the grass,
+where it left black marks, and over the mud, without being at all
+detained. Iv�n Petr�vich was having pleasant reveries; he was thinking
+of his home, his wife, and his daughter.
+
+"M�nya will meet me at the porch, and with delight. She will see such
+holiness in me! She is a strange, sweet girl, but she takes everything
+too much to heart. The r�le of importance and of knowing everything that
+is going on in this world, which I must play before her, is getting to
+be too serious and ridiculous. If she knew that I am afraid of her!" he
+thought. "Well, K�to," (his wife) "will no doubt be in good humour
+to-day, she will purposely be in good humour, and we shall have a fine
+day. It will not be as it was last week on account of the Pr�shkin
+women. What a remarkable creature! How afraid of her I am! What is to be
+done? She does not like it herself." And he recalled a famous anecdote
+about a calf. A proprietor, having quarrelled with his wife, was sitting
+at a window, when he saw a frisky calf: "I should like to get you
+married!" he said. And Iv�n Petr�vich smiled again, according to his
+custom solving every difficulty and every perplexity by a joke, which
+generally was directed against himself.
+
+At the third verst, near a chapel, the outrider bore to the left, into a
+cross-road, and the coachman shouted to him for having turned in so
+abruptly that the centre horses were struck by the shaft; and the
+carriage almost glided all the way down-hill. Before reaching the house,
+the outrider looked back at the coachman and pointed to something; the
+coachman looked back at the lackey, and indicated something to him. And
+all of them looked in the same direction.
+
+"What are you looking at?" asked Iv�n Petr�vich.
+
+"Geese," said M�shka.
+
+"Where?"
+
+Though he strained his vision, he could not see them.
+
+"There they are. There is the forest, and there is the cloud, so be
+pleased to look between the two."
+
+Iv�n Petr�vich could not see anything.
+
+"It is time for them. Why, it is less than a week to Annunciation."
+
+"That's so."
+
+"Well, go on!"
+
+Near a puddle, M�shka jumped down from the footboard and tested the
+road, again climbed up, and the carriage safely drove on the pond dam in
+the garden, ascended the avenue, drove past the cellar and the laundry,
+from which water was falling, and nimbly rolled up and stopped at the
+porch. The Chern�shev calash had just left the yard. From the house at
+once ran the servants: gloomy old Dan�lych with the side whiskers,
+Nikol�y, M�shka's brother, and the boy Pavl�shka; and after them came a
+girl with large black eyes and red arms, which were bared above the
+elbow, and with just such a bared neck.
+
+"M�rya Iv�novna, M�rya Iv�novna! Where are you going? Your mother will
+be worried. You will have time," was heard the voice of fat Kater�na
+behind her.
+
+But the girl paid no attention to her; just as her father had expected
+her to do, she took hold of his arm and looked at him with a strange
+glance.
+
+"Well, papa, have you been to communion?" she asked, as though in dread.
+
+"Yes. You look as though you were afraid that I am such a sinner that I
+could not receive the communion."
+
+The girl was apparently offended by her father's jest at such a solemn
+moment. She heaved a sigh and, following him, held his hand, which she
+kissed.
+
+"Who is here?"
+
+"Young Chern�shev. He is in the drawing-room."
+
+"Is mamma up? How is she?"
+
+"Mamma feels better to-day. She is sitting down-stairs."
+
+In the passage room Iv�n Petr�vich was met by nurse Evpraks�ya, clerk
+Andr�y Iv�novich, and a surveyor, who was living at the house, in order
+to lay out some land. All of them congratulated Iv�n Petr�vich. In the
+drawing-room sat Lu�za K�rlovna Trug�ni, for ten years a friend of the
+house, an emigrant governess, and a young man of sixteen years,
+Chern�shev, with his French tutor.
+
+
+THE DECEMBRISTS
+
+THIRD FRAGMENT
+
+(Variant of the First Chapter)
+
+On the 2d of August, 1817, the sixth department of the Directing Senate
+handed down a decision in the debatable land case between the economic
+peasants of the village of Izleg�shcha and Chern�shev, which was in
+favour of the peasants and against Chern�shev. This decision was an
+unexpected and important calamitous event for Chern�shev. The case had
+lasted five years. It had been begun by the attorney of the rich village
+of Izleg�shcha with its three thousand inhabitants, and was won by the
+peasants in the County Court; but when, with the advice of lawyer Ily�
+Mitrof�nov, a manorial servant bought of Prince Saltyk�v, Prince
+Chern�shev carried the case to the Government, he won it and besides,
+the Izleg�shcha peasants were punished by having six of them, who had
+insulted the surveyor, put in jail.
+
+After that, Prince Chern�shev, with his good-natured and merry
+carelessness, entirely acquiesced, the more so since he knew full well
+that he had not "appropriated" any land of the peasants, as was said in
+the petition of the peasants. If the land was "appropriated," his father
+had done it, and since then more than forty years had passed. He knew
+that the peasants of the village of Izleg�shcha were getting along well
+without that land, had no need of it, and lived on terms of friendship
+with him, and was unable to understand why they had become so infuriated
+against him. He knew that he never offended and never wished to offend
+any one, that he lived in peace with everybody, and that he never wished
+to do otherwise, and so could not believe that any one should think of
+offending him. He hated litigations, and so did not defend his case in
+the Senate, in spite of the advice and earnest solicitations of his
+lawyer, Ily� Mitrof�nov; by allowing the time for the appeal to lapse,
+he lost the case in the Senate, and lost it in such a way that he was
+confronted with complete ruin. By the decree of the Senate he not only
+was to be deprived of five thousand desyat�nas of land, but also, for
+the illegal tenure of that land, was to be mulcted to the amount of
+107,000 roubles in favour of the peasants.
+
+Prince Chern�shev had eight thousand souls, but all the estates were
+mortgaged and he had large debts, so that this decree of the Senate
+ruined him with his whole large family. He had a son and five daughters.
+He thought of his case when it was too late to attend to it in the
+Senate. According to Ily� Mitrof�nov's words there was but one
+salvation, and that was, to petition the sovereign and to transfer the
+case to the Imperial Council. To obtain this it was necessary in person
+to approach one of the ministers or a member of the Council, or, better
+still, the emperor himself. Taking all that into consideration, Prince
+Grig�ri Iv�novich in the fall of the year 1817 with his whole family
+left his beloved estate of Stud�nets, where he had lived so long without
+leaving it, and went to Moscow. He started for Moscow, and not for St.
+Petersburg, because in the fall of that year the emperor with his whole
+court, with all the highest dignitaries, and with part of the Guards, in
+which the son of Grig�ri Iv�novich was serving, was to arrive in Moscow
+to lay the corner-stone of the Church of the Saviour in commemoration
+of the liberation of Russia from the French invasion.
+
+In August, immediately after receiving the terrible news of the decree
+of the Senate, Prince Grig�ri Iv�novich got ready to go to Moscow. At
+first the majordomo was sent away to fix the prince's own house on the
+Arb�t; then was sent out a caravan with furniture, servants, horses,
+carriages, and provisions. In September the prince with his whole family
+travelled in seven carriages, drawn by his own horses, and, after
+arriving in Moscow, settled in his house. Relatives, friends, visitors
+from the province and from St. Petersburg began to assemble in Moscow in
+the month of September. The Moscow life, with its entertainments, the
+arrival of his son, the d�buts of his daughters, and the success of his
+eldest daughter, Aleks�ndra, the only blonde among all the brunettes of
+the Chern�shevs, so much occupied and diverted the prince's attention
+that, in spite of the fact that here in Moscow he was spending
+everything which would be left to him after paying all he owed, he
+forgot his affair and was annoyed and tired whenever Ily� Mitrof�nov
+talked of it, and undertook nothing for the success of his case.
+
+Iv�n Mir�novich Ba�shkin, the chief attorney of the peasants, who had
+conducted the case against the prince with so much zeal in the Senate,
+who knew all the approaches to the secretaries and departmental chiefs,
+and who had so skilfully distributed the ten thousand roubles, collected
+from the peasants, in the shape of presents, now himself brought his
+activity to an end and returned to the village, where, with the money
+collected for him as a reward and with what was left of the presents, he
+bought himself a grove from a neighbouring proprietor and built there a
+hut and an office. The case was finished in the court of the highest
+instance, and everything would now proceed of its own accord.
+
+The only ones of those concerned in the case who could not forget it
+were the six peasants who were passing their seventh month in jail, and
+their families that were left without their heads. But nothing could be
+done in the matter. They were imprisoned in Krasnoslob�dsk, and their
+families tried to get along as well as they could. Nobody could be
+invoked in the case. Iv�n Mir�novich himself said that he could not take
+it up, because it was not a communal, nor a civil, but a criminal case.
+The peasants were in prison, and nobody paid any attention to them; but
+one family, that of Mikha�l Ger�simovich, particularly his wife
+T�khonovna, could not get used to the idea that the precious old man,
+Ger�simovich, was sitting in prison with a shaven head. T�khonovna could
+not rest quiet. She begged Mir�novich to take the case, but he declined
+it. Then she decided to go herself to pray to God for the old man. She
+had made a vow the year before that she would go on a pilgrimage to a
+saint, and had delayed it for another year only because she had had no
+time and did not wish to leave the house to the young daughters-in-law.
+Now that the misfortune had happened and Ger�simovich was put into jail,
+she recalled her vow; she turned her back on her house and, together
+with the deacon's wife of the same village, got ready to go on the
+pilgrimage.
+
+First they went to the county seat to see her old man in the prison and
+to take him some shirts; from there they went through the capital of the
+Government to Moscow. On her way T�khonovna told the deacon's wife of
+her sorrow, and the latter advised her to petition the emperor who, it
+was said, was to be in P�nza, telling her of various cases of pardon
+granted by him.
+
+When the pilgrims arrived in P�nza, they heard that there was there, not
+the emperor, but his brother Grand Duke Nikol�y P�vlovich. When he came
+out of the cathedral, T�khonovna pushed herself forward, dropped down on
+her knees, and began to beg for her husband. The grand duke was
+surprised, the governor was angry, and the old woman was taken to the
+lockup. The next day she was let out and she proceeded to Tr�itsa. In
+Tr�itsa she went to communion and confessed to Father Pa�si. At the
+confession she told him of her sorrow, and repented having petitioned
+the brother of the Tsar. Father Pa�si told her that there was no sin in
+that and that there was no sin in petitioning the Tsar even in a just
+case, and dismissed her. In Kh�tkov she called on the blessed abbess,
+and she ordered her to petition the Tsar himself.
+
+On their way back, T�khonovna and the deacon's wife stopped in Moscow to
+see the saints. Here she heard that the Tsar was there, and she thought
+that it was evidently God's command that she should petition the Tsar.
+All that had to be done was to write the petition.
+
+In Moscow the pilgrims stopped in a hostelry. They begged permission to
+stay there overnight; they were allowed to do so. After supper the
+deacon's wife lay down on the oven, and T�khonovna, placing her wallet
+under her head, lay down on a bench and fell asleep. In the morning,
+before daybreak, T�khonovna got up, woke the deacon's wife, and went
+out. The innkeeper spoke to her just as she walked into the yard.
+
+"You are up early, granny," he said.
+
+"Before we get there, it will be time for matins," T�khonovna replied.
+
+"God be with you, granny!"
+
+"Christ save you!" said T�khonovna, and the pilgrims went to the
+Kremlin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After standing through the matins and the mass, and having kissed the
+relics, the old women, with difficulty making their way, arrived at the
+house of the Chern�shevs. The deacon's wife said that the old lady had
+given her an urgent invitation to stop at her house, and had ordered
+that all pilgrims should be received.
+
+"There we shall find a man who will write the petition," said the
+deacon's wife, and the pilgrims started to blunder through the streets
+and ask their way. The deacon's wife had been there before, but had
+forgotten where it was. Two or three times they were almost crushed, and
+people shouted at them and scolded them. Once a policeman took the
+deacon's wife by the shoulder and, giving her a push, forbade her to
+walk through the street on which they were, and directed them through a
+forest of lanes. T�khonovna did not know that they were driven off the
+Vozdv�zhenka for the very reason that through that street was to drive
+the Tsar, of whom she was thinking all the time, and to whom she
+intended to give the petition.
+
+The deacon's wife walked, as always, heavily and complainingly, while
+T�khonovna, as usual, walked lightly and briskly, with the gait of a
+young woman. At the gate the pilgrims stopped. The deacon's wife did not
+recognize the house: there was there a new hut which she had not seen
+before; but on scanning the well with the pumps in the corner of the
+yard, she recognized it all. The dogs began to bark and made for the
+women with the staffs.
+
+"Don't mind them, aunties, they will not touch you. Away there, accursed
+ones!" the janitor shouted to the dogs, raising the broom on them. "They
+are themselves from the country, and just see them bark at country
+people! Come this way! You will stick in the mud,--God has not given any
+frost yet."
+
+But the deacon's wife, frightened by the dogs, and muttering in a
+whining tone, sat down on a bench near the gate and asked the janitor to
+take her by. T�khonovna made her customary bow to the janitor and,
+leaning on her crutch and spreading her feet, which were tightly
+covered with leg-rags, stopped near her, looking as always calmly in
+front of her and waiting for the janitor to come up to them.
+
+"Whom do you want?" the janitor asked.
+
+"Do you not recognize us, dear man? Is not your name Eg�r?" asked the
+deacon's wife. "We are coming back from the saints, and so are calling
+on her Serenity."
+
+"You are from Izleg�shcha," said the janitor. "You are the wife of the
+old deacon,--of course. All right, all right. Go to the house! Everybody
+is received here,--nobody is refused. And who is this one?"
+
+He pointed to T�khonovna.
+
+"From Izleg�shcha, Ger�simovich's wife,--used to be Fady�ev's,--I
+suppose you know her?" said T�khonovna. "I myself am from Izleg�shcha."
+
+"Of course! They say your husband has been put into jail."
+
+T�khonovna made no reply; she only sighed and with a strong motion threw
+her wallet and fur coat over her shoulder.
+
+The deacon's wife asked whether the old lady was at home and, hearing
+that she was, asked him to announce them to her. Then she asked about
+her son, who was an official and, thanks to the prince's influence, was
+serving in St. Petersburg. The janitor could not give her any
+information about him and directed them over a walk, which crossed the
+yard, to the servants' house. The old women went into the house, which
+was full of people,--women, children, both old and young,--all of them
+manorial servants, and prayed turning to the front corner. The deacon's
+wife was at once recognized by the laundress and the old lady's maid,
+and she was at once surrounded and overwhelmed with questions: they took
+off her wallet, placed her at the table, and offered her something to
+eat. In the meantime T�khonovna, having made the sign of the cross to
+the images and saluted everybody, was standing at the door, waiting to
+be invited in. At the very door, in front of the first window, sat an
+old man, making boots.
+
+"Sit down, granny! Don't stand up. Sit down here, and take off your
+wallet," he said.
+
+"There is not enough room to turn around as it is. Take her to the
+'black' room," said a woman.
+
+"This comes straight from Madame Chalm�," said a young lackey, pointing
+to the iris design on T�khonovna's peasant coat, "and the pretty
+stockings and shoes."
+
+He pointed to her leg-rags and bast shoes, which were new, as she had
+specially put them on for Moscow.
+
+"Par�sha, you ought to have such."
+
+"If you are to go to the 'black' room, all right; I will take you
+there." And the old man stuck in his awl and got up; but, on seeing a
+little girl, he called her to take the old woman to the black room.
+
+T�khonovna not only paid no attention to what was being said in her
+presence and of her, but did not even look or listen. From the time that
+she entered the house, she was permeated with the feeling of the
+necessity of working for God and with the other feeling, which had
+entered her soul, she did not know when, of the necessity of handing the
+petition. Leaving the clean servant room, she walked over to the
+deacon's wife and, bowing, said to her:
+
+"Mother Param�novna, for Christ's sake do not forget about my affair!
+See whether you can't find a man."
+
+"What does that woman need?"
+
+"She has suffered insult, and people have advised her to hand a petition
+to the Tsar."
+
+"Take her straight to the Tsar!" said the jesting lackey.
+
+"Oh, you fool, you rough fool," said the old shoemaker. "I will teach
+you a lesson with this last, then you will know how to grin at old
+people."
+
+The lackey began to scold, but the old man, paying no attention to him,
+took T�khonovna to the black room.
+
+T�khonovna was glad that she was sent out of the baking-room, and was
+taken to the black, the coachmen's room. In the baking-room everything
+looked clean, and the people were all clean, and T�khonovna did not feel
+at ease there. The black coachmen's room was more like the inside of a
+peasant house, and T�khonovna was more at home there. The black hut was
+a dark pine building, twenty by twenty feet, with a large oven, bed
+places, and hanging-beds, and a newly paved, dirt-covered floor. When
+T�khonovna entered the room, there were there the cook, a white,
+ruddy-faced, fat, manorial woman, with the sleeves of her chintz dress
+rolled up, who with difficulty was moving a pot in the oven with an
+oven-fork; then a young, small coachman, who was learning to play the
+balal�yka; an old man with an unshaven, soft white beard, who was
+sitting on a bed place with his bare feet and, holding a skein of silk
+between his lips, was sewing on some fine, good material, and a
+shaggy-haired, swarthy young man, in a shirt and blue trousers, with a
+coarse face, who, chewing bread, was sitting on a bench at the oven and
+leaning his head on both his arms, which were steadied against his
+knees.
+
+Barefoot N�stka with sparkling eyes ran into the room with her lithe,
+bare feet, in front of the old woman, jerking open the door, which stuck
+fast from the steam within, and squeaking in her thin voice:
+
+"Aunty Mar�na, Sim�nych sends this old woman, and says that she should
+be fed. She is from our parts: she has been with Param�novna to worship
+the saints. Param�novna is having tea.--Vl�sevna has sent for her--"
+
+The garrulous little girl would have gone on talking for quite awhile
+yet; the words just poured forth from her and, apparently, it gave her
+pleasure to hear her own voice. But Mar�na, who was in a perspiration,
+and who had not yet succeeded in pushing away the pot with the beet
+soup, which had caught in the hearth, shouted angrily at her:
+
+"Stop your babbling! What old woman am I to feed now? I have enough to
+do to feed our own people. Shoot you!" she shouted to the pot, which
+came very near falling down, as she removed it from the spot where it
+was caught.
+
+But when she was satisfied in regard to the pot, she looked around and,
+seeing trim T�khonovna with her wallet and correct peasant attire,
+making the sign of the cross and bowing low toward the front corner,
+felt ashamed of her words and, as though regaining her consciousness
+after the cares which had worn her out, she put her hand to her breast,
+where beneath the collar-bone buttons clasped her dress, and examined it
+to see whether it was buttoned, and then put her hands to her head to
+fasten the knot of the kerchief, which covered her greasy hair, and took
+up an attitude, leaning against the oven-fork and waiting for the salute
+of the trim old woman. T�khonovna made her last low obeisance to God,
+and turned around and saluted in three directions.
+
+"God aid you, good day!" she said.
+
+"You are welcome, aunty!" said the tailor.
+
+"Thank you, granny, take off your wallet! Sit down here," said the cook,
+pointing to a bench where sat the shaggy-haired man. "Move a little,
+can't you? Are you stuck fast?"
+
+The shaggy man, scowling more angrily still, rose, moved away, and,
+continuing to chew, riveted his eyes on the old woman. The young
+coachman made a bow and, stopping his playing, began to tighten the
+strings of his balal�yka, looking now at the old woman, and now at the
+tailor, not knowing how to treat the old woman,--whether respectfully,
+as he thought she ought to be treated, because the old woman wore the
+same kind of attire that his grandmother and mother wore at home (he
+had been taken from the village to be an outrider), or making fun of
+her, as he wished to do and as seemed to him to accord with his present
+condition, his blue coat and his boots. The tailor winked with one eye
+and seemed to smile, drawing the silk to one side of his mouth, and
+looked on. Mar�na started to put in another pot, but, even though she
+was busy working, she kept looking at the old woman, while she briskly
+and nimbly took off her wallet and, trying not to disturb any one, put
+it under the bench. N�stka ran up to her and helped her, by taking away
+the boots, which were lying in her way under the bench.
+
+"Uncle Pankr�t," she turned to the gloomy man, "I will put the boots
+here. Is it all right?"
+
+"The devil take them! Throw them into the oven, if you wish," said the
+gloomy man, throwing them into another corner.
+
+"N�stka, you are a clever girl," said the tailor. "A pilgrim has to be
+made comfortable."
+
+"Christ save you, girl! That is nice," said T�khonovna. "I am afraid I
+have put you out, dear man," she said, turning to Pankr�t.
+
+"All right," said Pankr�t.
+
+T�khonovna sat down on the bench, having taken off her coat and
+carefully folded it, and began to take off her footgear. At first she
+untied the laces, which she had taken special care in twisting smooth
+for her pilgrimage; then she carefully unwrapped the white lambskin
+leg-rags and, carefully rubbing them soft, placed them on her wallet.
+Just as she was working on her other foot, another of awkward Mar�na's
+pots got caught and spilled over, and she again started to scold
+somebody, catching the pot with the fork.
+
+"The hearth is evidently burned out, grandfather. It ought to be
+plastered," said T�khonovna.
+
+"When are you going to plaster it? The chimney never cools off: twice a
+day you have to bake bread; one set is taken out, and the other is
+started."
+
+In response to Mar�na's complaint about the bread-baking and the
+burnt-out hearth, the tailor defended the ways of the Chern�shev house
+and said that they had suddenly arrived in Moscow, that the hut was
+built and the oven put up in three weeks, and that there were nearly one
+hundred servants who had to be fed.
+
+"Of course, lots of cares. A large establishment," T�khonovna confirmed
+him.
+
+"Whence does God bring you?" the tailor turned to her.
+
+And T�khonovna, continuing to take off her foot-gear, at once told him
+where she came from, whither she had gone, and how she was going home.
+She did not say anything about the petition. The conversation never
+broke off. The tailor found out everything about the old woman, and the
+old woman heard all about awkward, pretty Mar�na. She learned that
+Mar�na's husband was a soldier, and she was made a cook; that the tailor
+was making caftans for the driving coachmen; that the stewardess's
+errand girl was an orphan, and that shaggy-haired, gloomy Pankr�t was a
+servant of the clerk, Iv�n Vas�levich.
+
+Pankr�t left the room, slamming the door. The tailor told her that he
+was a gruff peasant, but that on that day he was particularly rude
+because the day before he had smashed the clerk's knickknacks on the
+window, and that he was going to be flogged to-day in the stable. As
+soon as Iv�n Vas�levich should come, he would be flogged. The little
+coachman was a peasant lad, who had been made an outrider, and now that
+he was grown he had nothing to do but attend to the horses, and strum
+the balal�yka. But he was not much of a hand at it.
+
+
+
+
+ON POPULAR EDUCATION
+
+1875
+
+
+
+
+ON POPULAR EDUCATION
+
+
+I suppose each of us has had more than one occasion to come in contact
+with monstrous, senseless phenomena, and to find back of these phenomena
+put forward some important principle, which overshadowed those
+phenomena, so that in our youthful and even maturer years we began to
+doubt whether it was true that those phenomena were monstrous, and
+whether we were not mistaken. And having been unable to convince
+ourselves that monstrous phenomena might be good, or that the protection
+of an important principle was illegitimate, or that the principle was
+only a word, we remained in regard to those phenomena in an ambiguous,
+undecided condition.
+
+In such a state I was, and I assume many of us are, in respect to the
+principle of "development" which obfuscates pedagogy, in its connection
+with the rudiments. But popular education is too near to my heart, and I
+have busied myself too much with it, to remain too long in indecision.
+The monstrous phenomena of the imaginary development I could not call
+good, nor could I be persuaded that the development of the pupil was
+bad, and so I began to inquire what that development was. I do not
+consider it superfluous to communicate the deductions to which I have
+been led during the study of this matter.
+
+To define what is understood by the word "development," I shall take the
+manuals of Messrs. Bun�kov and Evtush�vski, as being new works, which
+combine all the latest deductions of German pedagogy, intended as guides
+for the teachers in the popular schools, and selected by the advocates
+of the sound method as manuals in their schools.
+
+In discussing what is to form the foundation for a choice of this or
+that method for the teaching of reading, Mr. Bun�kov says:
+
+"No, an opinion about the method of construction based on such
+near-sighted and flimsy foundations (that is, on experience) will be too
+doubtful. Only the theoretical substratum, based on the study of human
+nature, can make the judgments in this sphere firm and independent of
+all casualties, and to a considerable degree guard them against gross
+errors. Consequently for the final choice of the best method of teaching
+the rudiments, it is necessary first of all to stand on theoretic soil,
+on the basis of previous considerations, the general conditions of which
+give to this or that method the actual right to be called satisfactory
+from the pedagogical standpoint. These conditions are: (1) It has to be
+a method which is capable of developing the child's mental powers, so
+that the acquisition of the rudiments may be obtained together with the
+development and the strengthening of the reasoning powers. (2) It must
+introduce into the instruction the child's personal interest, so that
+the matter be furthered by this interest, and not by dulling violence.
+(3) It must represent in itself the process of self-instruction,
+inciting, supporting, and directing the child's self-activity. (4) It
+must be based on the impressions of hearing, as of the sense which
+serves for the acquisition of language. (5) It has to combine analysis
+with synthesis, beginning with the dismemberment of the complex whole
+into simple principles, and passing over to the composition of a complex
+whole out of the simple principles."
+
+So this is what the method of instruction is to be based upon. I will
+remark, not for contradiction, but for the sake of simplicity and
+clearness, that the last two statements are quite superfluous, because
+without the union of analysis and synthesis there can be not only no
+instruction, but also no other activity of the mind, and every
+instruction, except that of the deaf and dumb, is based on the sense of
+hearing. These two conditions are put down only for beauty's sake and
+for the obscuration of the style, so common in pedagogical treatises,
+and so have no meaning whatever. The first three at first sight appear
+quite true as a programme. Everybody, of course, would like to know how
+the method is secured that will "develop," that will "introduce into the
+instruction the pupil's personal interest," and that will "represent the
+process of self-instruction."
+
+But to the questions as to why this method combines all those qualities
+you will find an answer neither in the books of Messrs. Bun�kov and
+Evtush�vski, nor in any other pedagogical work of the founders of this
+school of pedagogy, unless they be those hazy discussions of this
+nature, such as that every instruction must be based on the union of
+analysis and synthesis, and by all means on the sense of hearing, and so
+forth; or you will find, as in Mr. Evtush�vski's book, expositions about
+how in man are formed impressions, sensations, representations, and
+concepts, and you will find the rule that "it is necessary to start from
+the object and lead the pupil up to the idea, and not start with the
+idea, which has no point of contact in his consciousness," and so forth.
+After such discussions there always follows the conclusion that
+therefore the method advocated by the pedagogue gives that exclusive
+real development which it was necessary to find.
+
+After the above-cited definition of what a good method ought to be, Mr.
+Bun�kov explains how children ought to be educated, and, having given an
+exposition of all the methods, which in my opinion and experience lead
+to results which are diametrically opposite to development, he says
+frankly and definitely:
+
+"From the standpoint of the above-mentioned fundamental principles for
+estimating the value of the satisfactoriness of the methods of
+rudimentary instruction, the method which we have just elucidated in its
+general features presents the following plastic qualities and
+peculiarities: (1) As a sound method it wholly preserves the
+characteristic peculiarities of all sound method,--it starts from the
+impressions of hearing, at once establishing the regular relation to
+language, and only later adds to them the impressions of sight, thus
+clearly distinguishing sound, matter, and the letter, its
+representation. (2) As a method which unites reading with writing it
+begins with decomposition and passes over to composition, combining
+analysis with synthesis. (3) As a method which passes over to the study
+of words and sounds from the study of objects it proceeds along a
+natural path, co�perates with the regular formation of concepts and
+ideas, and acts in a developing way on all the sides of the child's
+nature: it incites the children to be observant, to group their
+observations, to render them orally; it develops the external senses,
+mind, imagination, memory, the gift of speech, concentration,
+self-activity, the habit of work, the respect for order. (4) As a method
+which provides ample work to all the mental powers of the child, it
+introduces into instruction the personal interest, rousing in children
+willingness and love of work, and transforming it into a process of
+self-instruction."
+
+This is precisely what Mr. Evtush�vski does; but why it is all so
+remains inexplicable to him who is looking for actual reasons and does
+not become entangled in such words as psychology, didactics, methodics,
+heuristics. I advise all those who have no inclination for philosophy
+and therefore have no desire to verify all those deductions of the
+pedagogues not to be embarrassed by these words and to be assured that
+a thing which is not clear cannot be the basis of anything, least of all
+of such an important and simple thing as popular education.
+
+All the pedagogues of this school, especially the Germans, the founders
+of the school, start with the false idea that those philosophical
+questions which have remained as questions for all the philosophers from
+Plato to Kant, have been definitely settled by them. They are settled so
+definitely that the process of the acquisition by man of impressions,
+sensations, concepts, ratiocinations, has been analyzed by them down to
+its minutest details, and the component parts of what we call the soul
+or the essence of man have been dissected and divided into parts by
+them, and that, too, in such a thorough manner that on this firm basis
+can go up the faultless structure of the science of pedagogy. This fancy
+is so strange that I do not regard it as necessary to contradict it,
+more especially as I have done so in my former pedagogical essays. All I
+will say is that those philosophical considerations which the pedagogues
+of this school put at the basis of their theory not only fail to be
+absolutely correct, not only have nothing in common with real
+philosophy, but even lack a clear, definite expression with which the
+majority of the pedagogues might agree.
+
+But, perchance, the theory of the pedagogues of the new school, in spite
+of its unsuccessful references to philosophy, has some value in itself.
+And so we will examine it, to see what it consists in. Mr. Bun�kov says:
+
+"To these little savages (that is, the pupils) must be imparted the main
+order of school instruction, and into their consciousness must be
+introduced such initial concepts as they will have to come in contact
+with from the start, during the first lessons of drawing, reading,
+writing, and every elementary instruction, such as: the right side and
+the left, to the right--to the left, up--down, near by--around, in
+front--in back, close by--in the distance, before--behind,
+above--below, fast--slow, softly--aloud, and so forth. No matter how
+simple these concepts may be, I know from practice that even city
+children, from well-to-do families, are frequently, when they come to
+the elementary schools, unable to distinguish the right side from the
+left. I assume that there is no need of expatiating on the necessity of
+explaining such concepts to village children, for any one who has had to
+deal with village schools knows this as well as I do."
+
+And Mr. Evtush�vski says:
+
+"Without entering into the broad field of the debatable question about
+the innate ability of man, we only see that the child can have no innate
+concepts and ideas about real things,--they have to be formed, and on
+the skill with which they are formed by the educator and teacher depends
+both their regularity and their permanency. In watching the development
+of the child's soul one has to be much more cautious than in attending
+to his body. If the food for the body and the various bodily exercises
+are carefully chosen both as regards their quantity and their quality,
+in conformity with the man's growth, so much more cautious have we to be
+in the choice of food and exercises for the mind. A badly placed
+foundation will precariously support what is fastened to it."
+
+Mr. Bun�kov advises that ideas be imparted as follows:
+
+"The teacher may begin a conversation such as he deems fit: one will ask
+every pupil for his name; another about what is going on outside; a
+third about where each comes from, where he lives, what is going on at
+home,--and then he may pass over to the main subject. 'Where are you
+sitting now? Why did you come here? What are we going to do in this
+room? Yes, we are going to study in this room,--so let us call it a
+class-room. See what there is under your feet, below you. Look, but do
+not say anything. The one I will tell to speak shall answer. Tell me,
+what do you see under your feet? Repeat everything we have found out
+and have said about this room: in what room are we sitting? What are the
+parts of the room? What is there on the walls? What is standing on the
+floor?'
+
+"The teacher from the start establishes the order which is necessary for
+the success of his work: each pupil is to answer only when asked to do
+so; all the others are to listen and should be able to repeat the words
+of the teacher and of their companions; the desire to answer, when the
+teacher directs a question to everybody, is to be expressed by raising
+the left hand; the words are to be pronounced neither in a hurry, nor by
+drawing them out, but loudly, distinctly, and correctly. To obtain this
+latter result the teacher gives them a living example by his loud,
+correct, distinct enunciation, showing them in practice the difference
+between soft and loud, distinct and correct, slow and fast. The teacher
+should see to it that all the children take part in the work, by having
+somebody's question answered or repeated, now by one, now by another,
+and now by the whole class at once, but especially by rousing the
+indifferent, inattentive, and playful children: the first he must
+enliven by frequent questions, the second he must cause to concentrate
+themselves on the subject of the common work, and the third he must
+curb. During the first period the children ought to answer in full, that
+is, by repeating the question: 'We are sitting in the class-room' (and
+not in brief, 'In the class-room'); 'Above, over my head, I see the
+ceiling;' 'On the left I see three windows,' and so forth."
+
+Mr. Evtush�vski advises that in this way be begun all the lessons on
+numbers from 1 to 10, of which there are to be 120, and which are to be
+continued through the year.
+
+"One. The teacher shows the pupils a cube, and asks: 'How many cubes
+have I?' and taking several cubes into the other hand, he asks, 'And how
+many are there here?'--'Many, a few.'
+
+"'Name here in the class-room an object of which there are
+several.'--'Bench, window, wall, copy-book, pencil, slate-pencil, pupil,
+and so forth.'--'Name an object of which there is only one in the
+class-room.'--'The blackboard, stove, door, ceiling, floor, picture,
+teacher, and so forth.'--'If I put this cube away in my pocket, how many
+cubes will there be left in my hand?'--'Not one.'--'And how many must I
+again put into my hand, to have as many as before?'--'One.'--'What is
+meant by saying that P�tya fell down once? How many times did P�tya
+fall? Did he fall another time? Why does it say once?'--'Because we are
+speaking only of one case and not of another case.'--'Take your slates
+(or copy-books). Make on them a line of this size.' (The teacher draws
+on the blackboard a line two or four inches in length, or shows on the
+ruler that length.) 'Rub it off. How many lines are left?'--'Not
+one.'--'Draw several such lines.' It would be unnatural to invent any
+other exercises in order to acquaint the children with number one. It
+suffices to rouse in them that conception of unity which they, no doubt,
+had previous to their school instruction."
+
+Then Mr. Bun�kov speaks of exercises on the board, and so on, and Mr.
+Evtush�vski of the number four with its decomposition. Before examining
+the theory itself of the transmission of ideas, the question
+involuntarily arises whether that theory is not mistaken in its very
+problem. Has the condition of the pedagogical material with which it has
+to do been correctly defined? The first thing that startles us is the
+strange relation to some imaginary children, to such as I, at least,
+have never seen in the Russian Empire. The conversations, and the
+information which they impart, refer to children of less than two years
+of age, because two-year-old children know all that is contained in
+them, but as to the questions which have to be asked, they have
+reference to parrots. Any pupil of six, seven, eight, or nine years will
+not understand a thing in these questions, because he knows all about
+that, and cannot make out what it all means. The demands for such
+conversations evince either complete ignorance, or a desire to ignore
+that degree of development on which the pupils stand.
+
+Maybe the children of Hottentots and negroes, or some German children,
+do not know what is imparted to them in such conversations, but Russian
+children, except demented ones, all those who come to a school, not only
+know what is up and what down, what is a bench and what a table, what is
+two and what one, and so forth, but, in my experience, the peasant
+children who are sent to school by their parents can every one of them
+express their thoughts well and correctly, can understand another
+person's thought (if it is expressed in Russian), and can count to
+twenty and more; playing with knuckle-bones they count in pairs and
+sixes, and they know how many points and pairs there are in a six.
+Frequently the pupils who came to my school brought with them the
+problem with the geese, and explained it to me. But even if we admit
+that children possess no such conceptions as those the pedagogues want
+to impart to them by means of conversations, I do not find the method
+chosen by them to be correct.
+
+Thus, for example, Mr. Bun�kov has written a reader. This book is to be
+used in conjunction with the conversations to teach the children
+language. I have run through the book and have found it to be a series
+of bad language blunders, wherever extracts from other books are not
+quoted. The same complete ignorance of language I have found in Mr.
+Evtush�vski's problems. Mr. Evtush�vski wants to give ideas by means of
+problems. First of all he ought to have seen to it that the tool for the
+transmission of ideas, that is, the language, was correct.
+
+What has been mentioned here refers to the form in which the development
+is imparted. Let us look at the contents themselves. Mr. Bun�kov
+proposes the following questions to be put to the children: "Where can
+you see cats? where a magpie? where sand? where a wasp and a suslik?
+what are a suslik and a magpie and a cat covered with, and what are the
+parts of their bodies?" (The suslik is a favourite animal of pedagogy,
+no doubt because not one peasant child in the centre of Russia knows
+that word.)
+
+"Naturally the teacher does not always put these questions straight to
+the children, as forming the predetermined programme of the lesson; more
+frequently the small and undeveloped children have to be led up to the
+solution of the question of the programme by a series of suggestive
+questions, by directing their attention to the side of the subject which
+is more correct at the given moment, or by inciting them to recall
+something from their previous observations. Thus the teacher need not
+put the question directly: 'Where can a wasp be seen?' but, turning to
+this or that pupil, he may ask him whether he has seen a wasp, where he
+has seen it, and then only, combining the replies of several pupils,
+compose an answer to the first question of his programme. In answering
+the teacher's questions, the children will often connect several remarks
+that have no direct relation to the matter; for example, when the
+question is about what the parts of a magpie are, one may say
+irrelevantly that a magpie jumps, another that it chatters funnily, a
+third that it steals things,--let them add and give utterance to
+everything that arises in their memory or imagination,--it is the
+teacher's business to concentrate their attention in accordance with the
+programme, and these remarks and additions of the children he should
+take notice of for the purpose of elaborating the other parts of the
+programme. In viewing a new subject, the children at every convenient
+opportunity return to the subjects which have already been under
+consideration. Since they have observed that a magpie is covered with
+feathers, the teacher asks: 'Is the suslik also covered with feathers?
+What is it covered with? And what is a chicken covered with? and a
+horse? and a lizard?' When they have observed that a magpie has two
+legs, the teacher asks: 'How many legs has a dog? and a fox? and a
+chicken? and a wasp? What other animals do you know with two legs? with
+four? with six?'"
+
+Involuntarily the question arises: Do the children know, or do they not
+know, what is so well explained to them in these conversations? If the
+pupils know it all, then, upon occasion, in the street or at home, where
+they do not need to raise their left hands, they will certainly be able
+to tell it in more beautiful and more correct Russian than they are
+ordered to do. They will certainly not say that a horse is "covered"
+with wool; if so, why are they compelled to repeat these questions just
+as the teacher has put them? But if they do not know them (which is not
+to be admitted except as regards the suslik), the question arises: by
+what will the teacher be guided in what is with so much unction called
+the programme of questions,--by the science of zoology, or by logic? or
+by the science of eloquence? But if by none of the sciences, and merely
+by the desire to talk about what is visible in the objects, there are so
+many visible things in objects, and they are so diversified, that a
+guiding thread is needed to show what to talk upon, whereas in objective
+instruction there is no such thread, and there can be none.
+
+All human knowledge is subdivided for the purpose that it may more
+conveniently be gathered, united, and transmitted, and these
+subdivisions are called sciences. But outside their scientific
+classifications you may talk about objects anything you please, and you
+may say all the nonsense imaginable, as we actually see. In any case,
+the result of the conversation will be that the children are either
+made to learn by heart the teacher's words about the suslik, or to
+change their own words, place them in a certain order (not always a
+correct order), and to memorize and repeat them. For this reason all the
+manuals of this kind, in general all the exercises of development,
+suffer on the one hand from absolute arbitrariness, and on the other
+from superfluity. For example, in Mr. Bun�kov's book the only story
+which, it seems, is not copied from another author, is the following:
+
+"A peasant complained to a hunter about his trouble: a fox had carried
+off several of his chickens and one duck; the fox was not in the least
+afraid of watch-dog Dandy, who was chained up and kept barking all night
+long; in the morning he had placed a trap with a piece of roast meat in
+the fresh tracks on the snow,--evidently the red-haired sneak was
+disporting near the house, but he did not go into the trap. The hunter
+listened to what the peasant had to say to him, and said: 'Very well;
+now we will see who will be shrewder!' The hunter walked all day with
+his gun and with his dog, over the tracks of the fox, to discover how he
+found his way into the yard. In the daytime the sneak sleeps in his
+lair, and knows nothing of what is going on, so that had to be
+considered: on its path the hunter dug a hole and covered it with
+boards, dirt, and snow; a few steps from it he put down a piece of
+horseflesh. In the evening he seated himself with a loaded gun in his
+ambush, fixed things in such a way that he could see everything and
+shoot comfortably, and there he waited. It grew dark. The moon swam out.
+Cautiously, looking around and listening, the fox crept out of his lair,
+raised his nose, and sniffed. He at once smelled the odour of
+horseflesh, and ran at a slow trot to the place, and suddenly stopped
+and pricked his ears: the shrewd one saw that there was a mound there
+which had not been in that spot the previous evening. This mound
+apparently vexed him, and made him think; he took a large circle around
+it, and sniffed and listened, and sat down, and for a long time looked
+at the meat from a distance, so that the hunter could not shoot him,--it
+was too far. The fox thought and thought, and suddenly ran at full speed
+between the meat and the mound. Our hunter was careful, and did not
+shoot. He knew that the sneak was merely trying to find out whether
+anybody was sitting behind that mound; if he had shot at the running
+fox, he would certainly have missed him, and then he would not have seen
+the sneak, any more than he could see his own ears. Now the fox quieted
+down,--the mound no longer disturbed him: he walked briskly up to the
+meat, and ate it with great delight. Then the hunter aimed carefully,
+without haste, so that he might not miss him. Bang! The fox jumped up
+from pain and fell down dead."
+
+Everything is arbitrary here: it is an arbitrary invention to say that a
+fox could carry off a peasant's duck in winter, that peasants trap
+foxes, that a fox sleeps in the daytime in his lair (for he sleeps only
+at night); arbitrary is that hole which is uselessly dug in winter and
+covered with boards without being made use of; arbitrary is the
+statement that the fox eats horseflesh, which he never does; arbitrary
+is the supposed cunning of the fox, who runs past the hunter; arbitrary
+are the mound and the hunter, who does not shoot for fear of missing,
+that is, everything, from beginning to end, is bosh, for which any
+peasant boy might arraign the author of the story, if he could talk
+without raising his hand.
+
+Then a whole series of so-called exercises in Mr. Bun�kov's lessons is
+composed of such questions as: "Who bakes? Who chops? Who shoots?" to
+which the pupil is supposed to answer: "The baker, the wood-chopper, and
+the marksmen," whereas he might just as correctly answer that the woman
+bakes, the axe chops, and the teacher shoots, if he has a gun. Another
+arbitrary statement in that book is that the throat is a part of the
+mouth, and so on.
+
+All the other exercises, such as "The ducks fly, and the dogs?" or "The
+linden and birch are trees, and the horse?" are quite superfluous.
+Besides, it must be observed that if such conversations are really
+carried on with the pupils (which never happens) that is, if the pupils
+are permitted to speak and ask questions, the teacher, choosing simple
+subjects (they are most difficult), is at each step perplexed, partly
+through ignorance, and partly because _ein Narr kann mehr fragen, als
+zehn Weise antworten_.
+
+Exactly the same takes place in the instruction of arithmetic, which is
+based on the same pedagogical principle. Either the pupils are informed
+in the same way of what they already know, or they are quite arbitrarily
+informed of combinations of a certain character that are not based on
+anything. The lesson mentioned above and all the other lessons up to ten
+are merely information about what the children already know. If they
+frequently do not answer questions of that kind, this is due to the fact
+that the question is either wrongly expressed in itself, or wrongly
+expressed as regards the children. The difficulty which the children
+encounter in answering a question of that character is due to the same
+cause which makes it impossible for the average boy to answer the
+question: Three sons were to Noah,[1]--Shem, Ham, and Japheth,--who was
+their father? The difficulty is not mathematical, but syntactical, which
+is due to the fact that in the statement of the problem and in the
+question there is not one and the same subject; but when to the
+syntactical difficulty there is added the awkwardness of the proposer of
+the problems in expressing himself in Russian, the matter becomes of
+greater difficulty still to the pupil; but the trouble is no longer
+mathematical.
+
+  [Footnote 1: The Russian way of saying "Noah had three sons."]
+
+Let anybody understand at once Mr. Evtush�vski's problem: "A certain boy
+had four nuts, another had five. The second boy gave all his nuts to the
+first, and this one gave three nuts to a third, and the rest he
+distributed equally to three other friends. How many nuts did each of
+the last get?" Express the problem as follows: "A boy had four nuts. He
+was given five more. He gave away three nuts, and the rest he wants to
+give to three friends. How many can he give to each?" and a child of
+five years of age will solve it. There is no problem here at all, but
+the difficulty may arise only from a wrong statement of the problem, or
+from a weak memory. And it is this syntactical difficulty, which the
+children overcome by long and difficult exercises, that gives the
+teacher cause to think that, teaching the children what they know
+already, he is teaching them anything at all. Just as arbitrarily are
+the children taught combinations in arithmetic and the decomposition of
+numbers according to a certain method and order, which have their
+foundation only in the fancy of the teacher. Mr. Evtush�vski says:
+
+"Four. (1) The formation of the number. On the upper border of the board
+the teacher places three cubes together--I I I. How many cubes are there
+here? Then a fourth cube is added. And how many are there now? I I I I.
+How are four cubes formed from three and one? We have to add one cube to
+the three.
+
+"(2) Decomposition into component parts. How can four cubes be formed?
+or, How can four cubes be broken up? Four cubes may be broken up into
+two and two: II + II. Four cubes may be formed from one, and one, and
+one, and one more, or by taking four times one cube: I + I + I + I. Four
+cubes may be broken up into three and one: III + I. It may be formed
+from one, and one, and two: I + I + II. Can four cubes be put together
+in any other way? The pupils convince themselves that there can be no
+other decomposition, distinct from those already given. If the pupils
+begin to break the four cubes in this way: one, two, and one, or, two,
+one and one; or, one and three, the teacher will easily point out to
+them that these decompositions are only repetitions of what has been got
+before, only in a different order.
+
+"Every time, whenever the pupils indicate a new method of decomposition,
+the teacher places the cubes on a ledge of the blackboard in the manner
+here indicated. Thus there will be four cubes on the upper ledge; two
+and two in a second place; in a third place the four cubes will be
+separated at some distance from each other; in a fourth place, three and
+one, and in a fifth one, one, and two.
+
+"(3) Decomposition in order. It may easily happen that the children will
+at once point out the decomposition of the number into component parts
+in order; even then the third exercise cannot be regarded as
+superfluous: Here we have formed four cubes of twos, of separate cubes,
+and of threes,--in what order had we best place the cubes on the board?
+With what shall the decomposition of the four cubes begin? With the
+decomposition into separate cubes. How are four cubes to be formed from
+separate cubes? We must take four times one cube. How are four cubes to
+be formed from twos, from a pair? We must take two twos,--twice two
+cubes, two pairs of cubes. How shall we afterward break up the four
+cubes? They can be formed of threes: for this purpose we take three and
+one, or one and three. The teacher explains to the pupils that the last
+decomposition, that is, 1 1 2, does not come under the accepted order,
+and is a modification of one of the first three."
+
+Why does Mr. Evtush�vski not admit this last decomposition? Why must
+there be the order indicated by him? All that is a matter of mere
+arbitrariness and fancy. In reality, it is apparent to every thinking
+man that there is only one foundation for any composition and
+decomposition, and for the whole of mathematics. Here is the
+foundation: 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 1 = 4, and so forth,--precisely
+what the children learn at home, and what in common parlance is called
+counting to ten, to twenty, and so forth. This process is known to every
+pupil, and no matter what decomposition Mr. Evtush�vski may make, it is
+to be explained from this one. A boy that can count to four, considers
+four as a whole, and so also three, and two, and one. Consequently, he
+knows that four was produced from the consecutive addition of one.
+Similarly he knows that four is produced by adding twice one to two,
+just as he knows twice one is two. What, then, are the children taught
+here? That which they know, or that process of counting which they must
+learn according to the teacher's fancy.
+
+The other day I happened to witness a lesson in mathematics according to
+Grube's method. The pupil was asked: "How much is 8 and 7?" He hastened
+to answer and said 16. His neighbour, too, was in a hurry and, without
+raising his left hand, said: "8 and 8 is 16, and one less is 15." The
+teacher sternly stopped him, and compelled the first boy to add one
+after one to 8, until he came to 15, though the boy knew long ago that
+he had made a blunder. In that school they had reached the number 15,
+but 16 was supposed to be unknown yet.
+
+I am afraid that many people, reading all these long refutals of the
+methods of object instruction and counting according to Grube, which I
+am making, will say: "What is there here to talk about? Is it not
+evident that it is all mere nonsense which it is not worth while to
+criticize? Why pick out the errors and blunders of a Bun�kov and
+Evtush�vski, and criticize what is beneath all criticism?"
+
+That was the way I myself thought before I was led to see what was going
+on in the pedagogical world, when I convinced myself that Messrs.
+Bun�kov and Evtush�vski were not mere individuals, but authorities in
+our pedagogics, and that what they prescribe is actually carried out in
+our schools. In the backwoods we may find teachers, especially women,
+who spread Evtush�vski's and Bun�kov's manuals out before them and ask
+according to their prescription how much one feather and one feather is,
+and what a hen is covered with. All that would be funny if it were only
+an invention of the theorist, and not a guide in practical work, a guide
+that some follow already, and if it did not concern one of the most
+important affairs of life,--the education of the children. I was amused
+at it when I read it as theoretical fancies; but when I learned and saw
+that that was being practised on children, I felt pity for them and
+ashamed.
+
+From a theoretical standpoint, not to mention the fact that they
+faultily define the aim of education, the pedagogues of this school make
+this essential error, that they depart from the conditions of all
+instruction, whether this instruction be on the highest or lowest stage
+of the science, in a university or in a popular school. The essential
+conditions of all instruction consist in selecting the homogeneous
+phenomena from an endless number of heterogeneous phenomena, and in
+imparting the laws of these phenomena to the students. Thus, in the
+study of language, the pupils are taught the laws of the word, and in
+mathematics, the laws of the numbers. The study of language consists in
+imparting the laws of the decomposition and of the reverse composition
+of sentences, words, syllables, sounds,--and these laws form the subject
+of instruction. The instruction of mathematics consists in imparting the
+laws of the composition and decomposition of the numbers (but I beg to
+observe,--not in the process of the composition and the decomposition of
+the numbers, but in imparting the laws of that composition and
+decomposition). Thus, the first law consists in the ability of regarding
+a collection of units as a unit of a higher order, precisely what a
+child does when he says: "2 and 1 = 3." He regards 2 as a kind of unit.
+On this law are based the consequent laws of numeration, then of
+addition, and of the whole of mathematics. But arbitrary conversations
+about the wasp, and so forth, or problems within the limit of 10,--its
+decomposition in every manner possible,--cannot form a subject of
+instruction, because, in the first place, they transcend the subject
+and, in the second place, because they do not treat of its laws.
+
+That is the way the matter presents itself to me from its theoretical
+side; but theoretical criticism may frequently err, and so I will try to
+verify my deductions by means of practical data. G---- P---- has given
+us a sample of the practical results of both object instruction and of
+mathematics according to Grube's method. One of the older boys was told:
+"Put your hand under your book!" in order to prove that he had been
+taught the conceptions of "over" and "under," and the intelligent boy,
+who, I am sure, knew what "over" and "under" was, when he was three
+years old, put his hand on the book when he was told to put it under it.
+I have all the time observed such examples, and they prove more clearly
+than anything else how useless, strange, and disgraceful, I feel like
+saying, this object instruction is for Russian children. A Russian child
+cannot and will not believe (he has too much respect for the teacher and
+for himself) that the teacher is in earnest when he asks him whether the
+ceiling is above or below, or how many legs he has. In arithmetic, too,
+we have seen that pupils who did not even know how to write the numbers
+and during the whole time of the instruction were exercised only in
+mental calculations up to 10, for half an hour did not stop blundering
+in every imaginable way in response to questions which the teacher put
+to them within the limit of 10. Evidently the instruction of mental
+calculation brought no results, and the syntactical difficulty, which
+consists in unravelling a question that is improperly put, has remained
+the same as ever. And thus, the practical results of the examination
+which took place did not confirm the usefulness of the development.
+
+But I will be more exact and conscientious. Maybe the process of
+development, which at first is confined not so much to the study, as to
+the analysis of what the pupils know already, will produce results later
+on. Maybe the teacher, who at first takes possession of the pupils'
+minds by means of the analysis, later guides them firmly and with ease,
+and from the narrow sphere of the descriptions of a table and the count
+of 2 and 1 leads them into the real sphere of knowledge, in which the
+pupils are no longer confined to learning what they know already, but
+also learn something new, and learn that new information in a new, more
+convenient, more intelligent manner. This supposition is confirmed by
+the fact that all the German pedagogues and their followers, among them
+Mr. Bun�kov, say distinctly that object instruction is to serve as an
+introduction to "home science" and "natural science." But we should be
+looking in vain in Mr. Bun�kov's manual to find out how this "home
+science" is to be taught, if by this word any real information is to be
+understood, and not the descriptions of a hut and a vestibule,--which
+the children know already. Mr. Bun�kov, on page 200, after having
+explained that it is necessary to teach where the ceiling is and where
+the stove, says briefly:
+
+"Now it is necessary to pass over to the third stage of object
+instruction, the contents of which have been defined by me as follows:
+The study of the country, county, Government, the whole realm with its
+natural products and its inhabitants, in general outline, as a sketch of
+home science and the beginning of natural science, with the predominance
+of reading, which, resting on the immediate observations of the first
+two grades, broadens the mental horizon of the pupils,--the sphere of
+their concepts and ideas. We can see from the mere definition that here
+the objectivity appears as a complement to the explanatory reading and
+narrative of the teacher,--consequently, what is said in regard to the
+occupations of the third year has more reference to the discussion of
+the second occupation, which enters into the composition of the subject
+under instruction, which is called the native language,--the explanatory
+reading."
+
+We turn to the third year,--the explanatory reading, but there we find
+absolutely nothing to indicate how the new information is to be
+imparted, except that it is good to read such and such books, and in
+reading to put such and such questions. The questions are extremely
+queer (to me, at least), as, for example, the comparison of the article
+on water by Ush�nski and of the article on water by Aks�kov, and the
+request made of the pupils that they should explain that Aks�kov
+considers water as a phenomenon of Nature, while Ush�nski considers it
+as a substance, and so forth. Consequently, we find here again the same
+foisting of views on the pupils, and of subdivisions (generally
+incorrect) of the teacher, and not one word, not one hint, as to how any
+new knowledge is to be imparted.
+
+It is not known what shall be taught: natural history, or geography.
+There is nothing there but reading with questions of the character I
+have just mentioned. On the other side of the instruction about the
+word,--grammar and orthography,--we should just as much be looking in
+vain for any new method of instruction which is based on the preceding
+development. Again the old Perevl�vski's grammar, which begins with
+philosophical definitions and then with syntactical analysis, serves as
+the basis of all new grammatical exercises and of Mr. Bun�kov's manual.
+
+In mathematics, too, we should be looking in vain, at that stage where
+the real instruction in mathematics begins, for anything new and more
+easy, based on the whole previous instruction of the exercises of the
+second year up to 20. Where in arithmetic the real difficulties are met
+with, where it becomes necessary to explain the subject from all its
+sides to the pupil, as in numeration, in addition, subtraction,
+division, in the division and multiplication of fractions, you will not
+find even a shadow of anything easier, any new explanation, but only
+quotations from old arithmetics.
+
+The character of this instruction is everywhere one and the same. The
+whole attention is directed toward teaching the pupil what he already
+knows. And since the pupil knows what he is being taught, and easily
+recites in any order desired what he is asked to recite by the teacher,
+the teacher thinks that he is really teaching something, and the pupil's
+progress is great, and the teacher, paying no attention to what forms
+the real difficulty of teaching, that is, to teaching something new,
+most comfortably stumps about in one spot.
+
+This explains why our pedagogical literature is overwhelmed with manuals
+for object-lessons, with manuals about how to conduct kindergartens (one
+of the most monstrous excrescences of the new pedagogy), with pictures
+and books for reading, in which are eternally repeated the same articles
+about the fox and the blackcock, the same poems which for some reason
+are written out in prose in all kinds of permutations and with all kinds
+of explanations; but we have not a single new article for children's
+reading, not one Russian, nor Church-Slavic grammar, nor a Church-Slavic
+dictionary, nor an arithmetic, nor a geography, nor a history for the
+popular schools. All the forces are absorbed in writing text-books for
+the instruction of children in subjects they need not and ought not to
+be taught in school, because they are taught them in life. Of course,
+there is no end to the writing of such books; for there can be only one
+grammar and arithmetic, but of exercises and reflections, like those I
+have quoted from Bun�kov, and of the orders of the decomposition of
+numbers from Evtush�vski, there may be an endless number.
+
+Pedagogy is in the same condition in which a science would be that would
+teach how a man ought to walk; and people would try to discover rules
+about how to teach the children, how to enjoin them to contract this
+muscle, stretch that muscle, and so forth. This condition of the new
+pedagogy results directly from its two fundamental principles: (1) that
+the aim of the school is development and not science, and (2) that
+development and the means for attaining it may be theoretically defined.
+From this has consistently resulted that miserable and frequently
+ridiculous condition in which the whole matter of the schools now is.
+Forces are wasted in vain, and the masses, who at the present moment are
+thirsting for education, as the dried-up grass thirsts for rain, and are
+ready to receive it, and beg for it,--instead of a loaf receive a stone,
+and are perplexed to understand whether they were mistaken in regarding
+education as something good, or whether something is wrong in what is
+being offered to them. That matters are really so there cannot be the
+least doubt for any man who becomes acquainted with the present theory
+of teaching and knows the actual condition of the school among the
+masses. Involuntarily there arises the question: how could honest,
+cultured people, who sincerely love their work and wish to do good,--for
+such I regard the majority of my opponents to be,--have arrived at such
+a strange condition and be in such deep error?
+
+This question has interested me, and I will try to communicate those
+answers which have occurred to me. Many causes have led to it. The most
+natural cause which has led pedagogy to the false path on which it now
+stands, is the criticism of the old order, the criticism for the sake of
+criticism, without positing new principles in the place of those
+criticized. Everybody knows that criticizing is an easy business, and
+that it is quite fruitless and frequently harmful, if by the side of
+what is condemned one does not point out the principles on the basis of
+which this condemnation is uttered. If I say that such and such a thing
+is bad because I do not like it, or because everybody says that it is
+bad, or even because it is really bad, but do not know how it ought to
+be right, the criticism will always be useless and injurious. The views
+of the pedagogues of the new school are, above all, based on the
+criticism of previous methods. Even now, when it seems there would be no
+sense in striking a prostrate person, we read and hear in every manual,
+in every discussion, "that it is injurious to read without
+comprehension; that it is impossible to learn by heart the definitions
+of numbers and operations with numbers; that senseless memorizing is
+injurious; that it is injurious to operate with thousands without being
+able to count 2-3," and so forth. The chief point of departure is the
+criticism of the old methods and the concoction of new ones to be as
+diametrically opposed to the old as possible, but by no means the
+positing of new foundations of pedagogy, from which new methods might
+result.
+
+It is very easy to criticize the old-fashioned method of studying
+reading by means of learning by heart whole pages of the psalter, and of
+studying arithmetic by memorizing what a number is, and so forth. I will
+remark, in the first place, that nowadays there is no need of attacking
+these methods, because there will hardly be found any teachers who would
+defend them, and, in the second place, that if, criticizing such
+phenomena, they want to let it be known that I am a defender of the
+antiquated method of instruction, it is no doubt due to the fact that my
+opponents, in their youth, do not know that nearly twenty years ago I
+with all my might and main fought against those antiquated methods of
+pedagogy and co�perated in their abolition.
+
+And thus it was found that the old methods of instruction were not good
+for anything, and, without building any new foundation, they began to
+look for new methods. I say "without building any new foundation,"
+because there are only two permanent foundations of pedagogy:
+
+(1) The determination of the criterion of what ought to be taught, and
+(2) the criterion of how it has to be taught, that is, the determination
+that the chosen subjects are most necessary, and that the chosen method
+is the best.
+
+Nobody has even paid any attention to these foundations, and each school
+has in its own justification invented quasi-philosophical justificatory
+reflections. But this "theoretical substratum," as Mr. Bun�kov has
+accidentally expressed himself quite well, cannot be regarded as a
+foundation. For the old method of instruction possessed just such a
+theoretical substratum.
+
+The real, peremptory question of pedagogy, which fifteen years ago I
+vainly tried to put in all its significance, "Why ought we to know this
+or that, and how shall we teach it?" has not even been touched. The
+result of this has been that as soon as it became apparent that the old
+method was not good, they did not try to find out what the best method
+would be, but immediately set out to discover a new method which would
+be the very opposite of the old one. They did as a man may do who finds
+his house to be cold in winter and does not trouble himself about
+learning why it is cold, or how to help matters, but at once tries to
+find another house which will as little as possible resemble the one he
+is living in. I was then abroad, and I remember how I everywhere came
+across messengers roving all over Europe in search of a new faith, that
+is, officials of the ministry, studying German pedagogy.
+
+We have adopted the methods of instruction current with our nearest
+neighbours, the Germans, in the first place, because we are always
+prone to imitate the Germans; in the second, because it was the most
+complicated and cunning of methods, and if it comes to taking something
+from abroad, of course, it has to be the latest fashion and what is most
+cunning; in the third, because, in particular, these methods were more
+than any others opposed to the old way. And thus, the new methods were
+taken from the Germans, and not by themselves, but with a theoretical
+substratum, that is, with a quasi-philosophical justification of these
+methods.
+
+This theoretical substratum has done great service. The moment parents
+or simply sensible people, who busy themselves with the question of
+education, express their doubt about the efficacy of these methods, they
+are told: "And what about Pestalozzi, and Diesterweg, and Denzel, and
+Wurst, and methodics, heuristics, didactics, concentrism?" and the bold
+people wave their hands, and say: "God be with them,--they know better."
+In these German methods there also lay this other advantage (the cause
+why they stick so eagerly to this method), that with it the teacher does
+not need to try too much, does not need to go on studying, does not need
+to work over himself and the methods of instruction. For the greater
+part of the time the teacher teaches by this method what the children
+know, and, besides, teaches it from a text-book, and that is convenient.
+And unconsciously, in accordance with an innate human weakness, the
+teacher is fond of this convenience. It is very pleasant for me, with my
+firm conviction that I am teaching and doing an important and very
+modern work, to tell the children from the book about the suslik, or
+about a horse's having four legs, or to transpose the cubes by twos and
+by threes, and ask the children how much two and two is; but if, instead
+of telling about the suslik, the teacher had to tell or read something
+interesting, to give the foundations of grammar, geography, sacred
+history, and of the four operations, he would at once be led to working
+over himself, to reading much, and to refreshing his knowledge.
+
+Thus, the old method was criticized, and a new one was taken from the
+Germans. This method is so foreign to our Russian un-pedantic mental
+attitude, its monstrosity is so glaring, that one would think that it
+could never have been grafted on Russia, and yet it is being applied,
+even though only in a small measure, and in some way gives at times
+better results than the old church method. This is due to the fact that,
+since it was taken in our country (just as it originated in Germany)
+from the criticism of the old method, the faults of the former method
+have really been rejected, though, in its extreme opposition to the old
+method, which, with the pedantry characteristic of the Germans, has been
+carried to the farthest extreme, there have appeared new faults, which
+are almost greater than the former ones.
+
+Formerly reading was taught in Russia by attaching to the consonants
+useless endings (_buki_--_uki_, _vyedi_--_yedi_), and in Germany _es em
+de ce_, and so forth, by attaching a vowel to each consonant, now in
+front, and now behind, and that caused some difficulty. Now they have
+fallen into the other extreme, by trying to pronounce the consonants
+without the vowels, which is an apparent impossibility. In Ush�nski's
+grammar (Ush�nski is with us the father of the sound method), and in all
+the manuals on sound, a consonant is defined thus: "That sound which
+cannot be pronounced by itself." And it is this sound which the pupil is
+taught before any other. When I remarked that it is impossible to
+pronounce _b_ alone, but that it always gives you _b[)u]_, I was told
+that was due to the inability of some persons, and that it took great
+skill to pronounce a consonant. And I have myself seen a teacher correct
+a pupil more than ten times, though he seemed quite satisfactorily to
+pronounce short _b_, until at last the pupil began to talk nonsense. And
+it is with these _b's_, that is, sounds that cannot be pronounced, as
+Ush�nski defines them, or the pronunciation of which demands special
+skill, that the instruction of reading begins according to the pedantic
+German manuals.
+
+Formerly syllables were senselessly learned by heart (that was bad);
+diametrically opposed to this, the new fashion enjoins us not to divide
+up into syllables at all, which is absolutely impossible in a long word,
+and which in reality is never done. Every teacher, according to the
+sound method, feels the necessity of letting a pupil rest after a part
+of a word, having him pronounce it separately. Formerly they used to
+read the psalter, which, on account of its high and deep style, is
+incomprehensible to the children (which was bad); in contrast to this
+the children are made to read sentences without any contents whatever,
+to explain intelligible words, or to learn by heart what they cannot
+understand. In the old school the teacher did not speak to the pupil at
+all; now the teacher is ordered to talk to them on anything and
+everything, on what they know already, or what they do not need to know.
+In mathematics they formerly learned by heart the definition of
+operations, but now they no longer have anything to do with operations,
+for, according to Evtush�vski, they reach numeration only in the third
+year, and it is assumed that for a whole year they are to be taught
+nothing but numbers up to ten. Formerly the pupils were made to work
+with large abstract numbers, without paying any attention to the other
+side of mathematics, to the disentanglement of the problem (the
+formation of an equation). Now they are taught solving puzzles, forming
+equations with small numbers before they know numeration and how to
+operate with numbers, though experience teaches any teacher that the
+difficulty of forming equations or the solution of puzzles are overcome
+by a general development in life, and not in school.
+
+It has been observed--quite correctly--that there is no greater aid for
+a pupil, when he is puzzled by a problem with large numbers, than to
+give him the same problem with smaller numbers. The pupil, who in life
+learns to grope through problems with small numbers, is conscious of the
+process of solving, and transfers this process to the problem with large
+numbers. Having observed this, the new pedagogues try to teach only the
+solving of puzzles with small numbers, that is, what cannot form the
+subject of instruction and is only the work of life.
+
+In the instruction of grammar the new school has again remained
+consistent with its point of departure,--with the criticism of the old
+and the adoption of the diametrically opposite method. Formerly they
+used to learn by heart the definition of the parts of speech, and from
+etymology passed over to syntax; now they not only begin with syntax,
+but even with logic, which the children are supposed to acquire.
+According to the grammar of Mr. Bun�kov, which is an abbreviation of
+Perevl�vski's grammar, even with the same choice of examples, the study
+of grammar begins with syntactical analysis, which is so difficult and,
+I will say, so uncertain for the Russian language, which does not fully
+comply with the classic forms of syntax. To sum up, the new school has
+removed certain disadvantages, of which the chief are the superfluous
+addition to the consonants and the memorizing of definitions, and in
+this it is superior to the old method, and in reading and writing
+sometimes gives better results; but, on the other hand, it has
+introduced new defects, which are that the contents of the reading are
+most senseless and that arithmetic is no longer taught as a study.
+
+In practice (I can refer in this to all the inspectors of schools, to
+all the members of school councils, who have visited the schools, and to
+all the teachers), in practice, in the majority of schools, where the
+German method is prescribed, this is what takes place, with rare
+exceptions. The children learn not by the sound system, but by the
+method of letter composition; instead of saying _b_, _v_, they say
+_b[)u]_, _v[)u]_, and break up the words into syllables. The object
+instruction is entirely lost sight of, arithmetic does not proceed at
+all, and the children have absolutely nothing to read. The teachers
+quite unconsciously depart from the theoretical demands and fall in with
+the needs of the masses. These practical results, which are repeated
+everywhere, should, it seems, prove the incorrectness of the method
+itself; but among the pedagogues, those that write manuals and prescribe
+rules, there exists such a complete ignorance of and aversion to the
+knowledge of the masses and their demands that the relation of reality
+to these methods does not in the least impair the progress of their
+business. It is hard to imagine the conception about the masses which
+exists in this world of the pedagogues, and from which result their
+method and all the consequent manner of instruction.
+
+Mr. Bun�kov, in proof of how necessary the object instruction and
+development is for the children of a Russian school, with extraordinary
+na�vet� adduces Pestalozzi's words: "Let any one who has lived among the
+common people," he says, "contradict my words that there is nothing more
+difficult than to impart any idea to these creatures. Nobody, indeed,
+gainsays that. The Swiss pastors affirm that when the people come to
+them to receive instruction they do not understand what they are told,
+and the pastors do not understand what the people say to them. City
+dwellers who settle in the country are amazed at the inability of the
+country population to express themselves; years pass before the country
+servants learn to express themselves to their masters." This relation of
+the common people in Switzerland to the cultured class is assumed as the
+foundation for just such a relation in Russia.
+
+I regard it as superfluous to expatiate on what is known to everybody,
+that in Germany the people speak a special language, called
+Plattdeutsch, and that in the German part of Switzerland this
+Plattdeutsch is especially far removed from the German language, whereas
+in Russia we frequently speak a bad language, while the masses always
+speak a good Russian, and that in Russia it will be more correct to put
+these words of Pestalozzi in the mouth of peasants speaking of the
+teachers. A peasant and his boy will say quite correctly that it is very
+hard to understand what those creatures, meaning the teachers, say. The
+ignorance about the masses is so complete in this world of the
+pedagogues that they boldly say that to the peasant school come little
+savages, and therefore boldly teach them what is down and what up, that
+a blackboard is placed on a stand, and that underneath it there is a
+groove. They do not know that if the pupils asked the teacher, there
+would turn up very many things which the teacher would not know; that,
+for example, if you rub off the paint from the board, nearly any boy
+will tell you of what kind of wood the board is made, whether of pine,
+linden, or aspen, which the teacher cannot tell; that a boy will always
+tell better than the teacher about a cat or a chicken, because he has
+observed them better than the teacher; that instead of the problem about
+the wagons the boy knows the problems about the crows, about the cattle,
+and about the geese. (About the crows: There flies a flock of crows, and
+there stand some oak-trees: if two crows alight on each, a crow will be
+lacking; if one on each, an oak-tree will be lacking. How many crows and
+how many oak-trees are there? About the cattle: For one hundred roubles
+buy one hundred animals,--calves at half a rouble, cows at three
+roubles, and oxen at ten roubles. How many oxen, cows, and calves are
+there?) The pedagogues of the German school do not even suspect that
+quickness of perception, that real vital development, that contempt for
+everything false, that ready ridicule of everything false, which are
+inherent in every Russian peasant boy,--and only on that account so
+boldly (as I myself have seen), under the fire of forty pairs of
+intelligent youthful eyes, perform their tricks at the risk of ridicule.
+For this reason, a real teacher, who knows the masses, no matter how
+sternly he is enjoined to teach the peasant children what is up and what
+down, and that two and three is five, not one real teacher, who knows
+the pupils with whom he has to deal, will be able to do that.
+
+Thus, the chief causes which have led us into such error are: (1) the
+ignorance about the masses; (2) the involuntarily seductive ease of
+teaching the children what they already know; (3) our proneness to
+imitate the Germans, and (4) the criticism of the old, without putting
+down a new, foundation. This last cause has led the pedagogues of the
+new school to this, that, in spite of the extreme external difference of
+the new method from the old, it is identical with it in its foundation,
+and, consequently, in the methods of instruction and in the results. In
+either method the essential principle consists in the teacher's firm and
+absolute knowledge of what to teach and how to teach, and this knowledge
+of his he does not draw from the demands of the masses and from
+experience, but simply decides theoretically once for all that he must
+teach this or that and in such a way, and so he teaches. The pedagogue
+of the ancient school, which for briefness' sake I shall call the church
+school, knows firmly and absolutely that he must teach from the
+prayer-book and the psalter by making the children learn by rote, and he
+admits no alterations in his methods; in the same manner the teacher of
+the new, the German, school knows firmly and absolutely that he must
+teach according to Bun�kov and Evtush�vski, begin with the words
+"whisker" and "wasp," ask what is up and what down, and tell about the
+favourite suslik, and he admits no alterations in his method. Both of
+them base their opinion on the firm conviction that they know the best
+methods. From the identity of the foundations arises also a further
+similarity. If you tell a teacher of the church reading that it takes
+the children a long time and causes them difficulty to acquire reading
+and writing, he will reply that the main interest is not in the reading
+and writing, but in the "divine instruction," by which he means the
+study of the church books. The same you will be told by a teacher of
+Russian reading according to the German method. He will tell you (all
+say and write it) that the main question is not the rapidity of the
+acquisition of the art of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but in the
+"development." Both place the aim of instruction in something
+independent of reading, writing, and arithmetic, that is, of science, in
+something else, which is absolutely necessary.
+
+This similarity continues down to the minutest details. In either method
+all instruction previous to the school, all knowledge acquired outside
+the school, is not taken into account,--all entering pupils are regarded
+as equally ignorant, and all are made to learn from the beginning. If a
+boy who knows the letters and the syllables _a_, _be_, enters a church
+school, he is made to change them to _buki-az_--_ba_. The same is true
+of the German school.
+
+Just so, in either school it happens that some children cannot learn the
+rudiments.
+
+Just so, with either method, the mechanical side of instruction
+predominates over the mental. In either school the pupils excel in a
+good handwriting and good enunciation with absolutely exact reading,
+that is, not as it is spoken, but as it is written. Just so, with either
+method, there always reigns an external order in the school, and the
+children are in constant fear and can be guided only with the greatest
+severity. Mr. Korol�v has incidentally remarked that in instruction
+according to the sound method blows are not neglected. I have seen the
+same in the schools of the German method, and I assume that without
+blows it is impossible to get along even in the new German school,
+because, like the church school, it teaches without asking what the
+pupil finds interesting to know, but what, in the teacher's opinion,
+seems necessary, and so the school can be based only on compulsion.
+Compulsion is attained with children generally by means of blows. The
+church and the new German school, starting from the same principles and
+arriving at the same results, are absolutely identical. But, if it came
+to choosing one of the two, I should still prefer the church school. The
+defects are the same, but on the side of the church school is the custom
+of a thousand years and the authority of the church, which is so
+powerful with the masses.
+
+Having finished the analysis and criticism of the German school, I
+consider it necessary,--in view of what I have said, namely, that
+criticism is fruitful only when, condemning, it points out how that
+which is bad ought to be,--I consider it necessary to speak of those
+foundations of instruction which I regard as legitimate, and on which I
+rear my method of instruction.
+
+In order to elucidate in what I find these unquestionable foundations of
+every pedagogical activity, I shall be compelled to repeat myself, that
+is, to repeat what I said fifteen years ago in the pedagogical
+periodical, _Y�snaya Poly�na_, which I then published. This repetition
+will not be tedious for the pedagogues of the new school, because what I
+then wrote is not exactly forgotten, but has never been considered by
+the pedagogues,--and yet I still think that just what was expressed by
+me at that time might have placed pedagogy, as a theory, on a firm
+foundation. Fifteen years ago, when I took up the matter of popular
+education without any preconceived theories or views on the subject,
+with the one desire to advance the matter in a direct and
+straightforward manner, I, as a teacher in my school, was at once
+confronted with two questions: (1) What must I teach? and (2) How must
+I teach it?
+
+At that time, even as at the present, there existed the greatest
+diversity of opinion in the answers to these questions.
+
+I know that some pedagogues, who are locked up in their narrow
+theoretical world, think that there is no other light than what peeps
+through the windows, and that there is no longer any diversity of
+opinions.
+
+I ask those who think so to observe that it only seems so to them, just
+as it seems so to the circles that are opposed to them. In the whole
+mass of people who are interested in education, there exists, as it has
+existed before, the greatest diversity of opinions. Formerly, just as
+now, some, in reply to the question of what ought to be taught, said
+that outside of the rudiments the most useful information for a primary
+school is obtained from the natural sciences; others, even as now, that
+that was not necessary, and was even injurious; even as now, some
+proposed history, or geography, while others denied their necessity;
+some proposed the Church-Slavic language and grammar, and religion,
+while others found that, too, superfluous, and ascribed a prime
+importance to "development." On the question of how to teach there has
+always been a still greater diversity of answers. The most diversified
+methods of instructing in reading and arithmetic have been proposed.
+
+In the bookstalls there were sold, side by side, the self-teachers
+according to the _buki-az--ba_, Bun�kov's lessons, Zolot�v's charts,
+Madame Darag�n's alphabets, and all had their advocates. When I
+encountered these questions and found no answer for them in Russian
+literature, I turned to the literature of Europe. After having read what
+had been written on the subject and having made the personal
+acquaintance of the so-called best representatives of the pedagogical
+science in Europe, I not only failed to find anywhere an answer to the
+question I was interested in, but I convinced myself that this question
+does not even exist for pedagogy, as a science; that every pedagogue of
+any given school firmly believed that the methods which he used were the
+best, because they were based on absolute truth, and that it would be
+useless for him to look at them with a critical eye.
+
+However, because, as I said, I took up the matter of popular education
+without any preconceived notions, or because I took up the matter
+without prescribing laws from a distance about how I ought to teach, but
+became a schoolmaster in a village popular school in the backwoods,--I
+could not reject the idea that there must of necessity exist a criterion
+by means of which the question could be solved: What to teach and how to
+teach it. Should I teach the psalter by heart, or the classification of
+the organisms? Should I teach according to the sound alphabet,
+translated from the German, or from the prayer-book? In the solution of
+this question I was aided by a certain pedagogical tact, with which I am
+gifted, and especially by that close and impassioned relation in which I
+stood to the matter.
+
+When I entered at once into the closest direct relations with those
+forty tiny peasants that formed my school (I call them tiny peasants
+because I found in them the same characteristics of perspicacity, the
+same immense store of information from practical life, of jocularity,
+simplicity, and loathing for everything false, which distinguish the
+Russian peasant), when I saw that susceptibility, that readiness to
+acquire the information which they needed, I felt at once that the
+antiquated church method of instruction had outlived its usefulness and
+was not good for them. I began to experiment on other proposed methods
+of instruction; but, because compulsion in education, both by my
+conviction and by my character, are repulsive to me, I did not exercise
+any pressure, and, the moment I noticed that something was not readily
+received, I did not compel them, and looked for something else. From
+these experiments it appeared to me and to those teachers who instructed
+with me at Y�snaya Poly�na and in other schools on the same principle of
+freedom, that nearly everything which in the pedagogical world was
+written about schools was separated by an immeasurable abyss from
+reality, and that many of the proposed methods, such as object-lessons,
+the natural sciences, the sound method, and others, called forth
+contempt and ridicule, and were not accepted by the pupils. We began to
+look for those contents and those methods which were readily taken up by
+the pupils, and struck that which forms my method of instruction.
+
+But this method stood in a line with all other methods, and the question
+of why it was better than the rest remained as unsolved as before.
+Consequently, the question of what the criterion was as to what to teach
+and how to teach received an even greater meaning for me; only by
+solving it could I be convinced that what I taught was neither injurious
+nor useless. This question both then and now has appeared to me as a
+corner-stone of the whole pedagogy, and to the solution of this question
+I devoted the publication of the pedagogical periodical _Y�snaya
+Poly�na_. In several articles (I do not renounce anything I then said) I
+tried to put the question in all its significance and to solve it as
+much as I could. At that time I found no sympathy in all the pedagogical
+literature, not even any contradiction, but the most complete
+indifference to the question which I put. There were some attacks on
+certain details and trifles, but the question itself evidently did not
+interest any one. I was young then, and that indifference grieved me. I
+did not understand that with my question, "How do you know what to teach
+and how to teach?" I was like a man who, let us say, in a gathering of
+Turkish pashas discussing the question in what manner they may collect
+the greatest revenue from the people, should propose to them the
+following: "Gentlemen, in order to know how much revenue to collect from
+each, we must first analyze the question on what your right to exact
+that revenue is based." Obviously all the pashas would continue their
+discussion of the measures of extortion, and would reply only with
+silence to his irrelevant question. But the question cannot be
+circumvented. Fifteen years ago no attention was paid to it, and the
+pedagogues of every school, convinced that everybody else was talking to
+the wind and that they were right, most calmly prescribed their laws,
+basing their principles on philosophies of a very doubtful character,
+which they used as a substratum for their wee little theories.
+
+And yet, this question is not quite so difficult if we only renounce
+completely all preconceived notions. I have tried to elucidate and solve
+this question, and, without repeating those proofs, which he who wishes
+may read in the article, I will enunciate the results to which I was
+led. "The only criterion of pedagogy is freedom, the only
+method--experience." After fifteen years I have not changed my opinion
+one hair's breadth; but I consider it necessary to define with greater
+precision what I understand by these words, not only in respect to
+education in general, but also in respect to the particular question of
+popular education in a primary school. One hundred years ago the
+question what to teach and how to teach could have had no place either
+in Europe or with us. Education was inseparably connected with religion.
+To learn reading meant to learn Holy Writ. In the Mohammedan countries
+this relation of the rudiments and religion still persists in its full
+force. To learn means to learn the Koran, and, therefore, Arabic. But
+the moment religion ceased to be the criterion of what ought to be
+taught, and the school became independent of it, this question had to
+arise. But it did not arise because the school was not suddenly freed
+from its dependence on religion, but by imperceptible steps. Now it is
+accepted by everybody that religion cannot serve as the contents, nor as
+an indication of the method of education, and that education has
+different demands for its basis. In what do these demands consist? On
+what are they based? In order that these principles should be
+incontrovertible, it is necessary either that they be proved
+philosophically, incontrovertibly, or that, at least, all educated
+people should be agreed on them. But is it so? There can be no doubt
+whatsoever about this, that in philosophy have not been found those
+principles on which could be built up the decision of what ought to be
+taught, the more so since the matter itself is not an abstract, but a
+practical affair, which depends on an endless number of vital
+conditions. Still less can these principles be discovered in the common
+consent of all men who busy themselves with this matter, in the consent
+which we may take as a practical foundation, as an expression of the
+universal common sense. Not only in matters of popular, but even of
+higher education do we see a complete diversity of opinions among the
+best representatives of education, as, for example, in the question of
+classicism and realism. And yet, in spite of the absence of any
+foundations, we see education proceeding on its own path and on the
+whole being guided by only one principle, namely by freedom. There exist
+side by side the classical and the real school, each of which is
+prepared to regard itself as the only natural school, and both satisfy
+some want, for parents send their children to either.
+
+In the popular school the right to determine what the children shall
+learn, no matter from what standpoint we may consider this question,
+belongs just as much to the masses, that is, either to the pupils
+themselves, or to the parents who send the children to school, and so
+the answer to the question what the children are to be taught in a
+popular school can be got only from the masses. But, perhaps, we shall
+say that we, as highly cultured people, must not submit to the demands
+of the rude masses and that we must teach the masses what to wish. Thus
+many think, but to that I can give this one answer: give us a firm,
+incontrovertible foundation why this or that is chosen by you, show me a
+society in which the two diametrically opposed views on education do not
+exist among the highly cultured people; where it is not eternally
+repeated that if education falls into the hands of the clergy, the
+masses are educated in one sense, and if education falls into the hands
+of the progressists, the people are educated in another sense,--show me
+a state of society where that does not exist, and I will agree with you.
+So long as that does not exist, there is no criterion except the freedom
+of the learner, where, in matters of the popular school, the place of
+the learning children is taken by their parents, that is, by the needs
+of the masses.
+
+These needs are not only definite, quite clear, and everywhere the same
+throughout Russia, but also so intelligent and broad that they include
+all the most diversified demands of the people who are debating what the
+masses ought to be taught. These needs are: the knowledge of Russian and
+Church-Slavic reading, and calculation. The masses everywhere and always
+regard the natural sciences as useless trifles. Their programme is
+remarkable not only by its unanimity and firm definiteness, but, in my
+opinion, also by the breadth of its demands and the correctness of its
+view. The masses admit two spheres of knowledge, the most exact and the
+least subject to vacillation from a diversity of views,--the languages
+and mathematics; everything else they regard as trifles. I think that
+the masses are quite correct,--in the first place, because in this
+knowledge there can be no half information, no falseness, which they
+cannot bear, and, in the second, because the sphere of those two kinds
+of knowledge is immense. Russian and Church-Slavic grammar and
+calculation, that is, the knowledge of one dead and one living language,
+with their etymological and syntactical forms and their literatures, and
+arithmetic, that is, the foundation of all mathematics, form their
+programme of knowledge, which, unfortunately, but the rarest of the
+cultured class possess. In the third place, the masses are right,
+because by this programme they will be taught in the primary school only
+what will open to them the more advanced paths of knowledge, for it is
+evident that the thorough knowledge of two languages and their forms,
+and, in addition to them, of arithmetic, completely opens the paths to
+an independent acquisition of all other knowledge. The masses, as though
+feeling the false relation to them, when they are offered incoherent
+scraps of all kinds of information, repel that lie from themselves, and
+say: "I need know but this much,--the church language and my own and the
+laws of the numbers, but that other knowledge I will take myself if I
+want it."
+
+Thus, if we admit freedom as the criterion of what is to be taught, the
+programme of the popular schools is clearly and firmly defined, until
+the time when the masses shall express some new demands. Church-Slavic
+and Russian and arithmetic to their highest possible stages, and nothing
+else but that. That is the determination of the limits of the programme
+of the popular school, which, however, does not presume that all three
+subjects be introduced systematically. With such a programme the
+attainment of symmetrical results in all three subjects would naturally
+be desirable; but it cannot be said that the predominance of one subject
+over another would be injurious. The problem consists only in keeping
+within the limits of the programme. It may happen that from the demands
+of the parents, and especially from the knowledge of the teacher, this
+or that subject will be more prominent,--with a clerical person the
+Church-Slavic language, with a teacher from a county school--either
+Russian or arithmetic; in all these cases the demands of the masses will
+be satisfied, and the instruction will not depart from its fundamental
+criterion.
+
+The second part of the question, how to teach, that is, how to discover
+which method is the best, has remained just as unsolved.
+
+Just as in the first part of the question of what to teach, the
+assumption that on the basis of reflections it is possible to build a
+programme of instruction leads to contradictory schools, so it is also
+with the question as to how to teach. Let us take the very first
+stage of the teaching of reading. One asserts that it is easier to
+teach so from cards; another--according to the _b_, _v_ system; a
+third--according to Korf; a fourth--according to the _be_, _ve_, _ge_
+system, and so forth. It is said that the nuns teach reading in six
+weeks by the _buki-az_--_ba_ system. And every teacher, convinced of the
+superiority of his method, proves this superiority either by the fact
+that he teaches with it faster than others, or by reflections of the
+character which Mr. Bun�kov and the German pedagogues adduce. At the
+present time, when there are thousands of examples, we ought to know
+precisely by what to be guided in our choice. Neither theory, nor
+reflections, nor even the results of instruction can show this
+completely.
+
+Education and instruction are generally considered in the abstract, that
+is, the question is discussed how in the best and easiest manner to
+produce a certain act of instruction on a certain subject (whether it be
+one child or a mass of children). This view is quite faulty. All
+education and instruction can be viewed only as a certain relation of
+two persons or of two groups of persons having for their aim education
+or instruction. This definition, more general than all the other
+definitions, has special reference to popular education, where the
+question is the education of an immense number of persons, and where
+there can be no question about an ideal education. In general, with the
+popular education we cannot put the question, "How is the best education
+to be given?" just as with the question of the nutrition of the masses
+we cannot ask how the most nutritious and best loaf is to be baked. The
+question has to be put like this: "How is the best relation to be
+established between given people who want to learn and others who want
+to teach?" or, "How is the best bread to be made from given bolted
+flour?" Consequently the question of how to teach and what is the best
+method is a question of what will be the best relation between teacher
+and pupil.
+
+Nobody, I suppose, will deny that the best relation between teacher and
+pupil is that of naturalness, and that the contrary relation is that of
+compulsion. If so, the measure of all methods is to be found in the
+greater or lesser naturalness of relations and, therefore, in the lesser
+or greater compulsion in instruction. The less the children are
+compelled to learn, the better is the method; the more--the worse. I am
+glad that I do not have to prove this evident truth. Everybody is agreed
+that just as in hygiene the use of any food, medicine, exercise, that
+provokes loathing or pain, cannot be useful, so also in instruction can
+there be no necessity of compelling children to learn anything that is
+tiresome and repulsive to them, and that, if necessity demands that
+children be compelled, it only proves the imperfection of the method.
+Any one who has taught children has no doubt observed that the less the
+teacher himself knows the subject which he teaches and the less he likes
+it, the more will he have to have recourse to severity and compulsion;
+on the contrary, the more the teacher knows and loves his subject, the
+more natural and easy will his instruction be. With the idea that for
+successful instruction not compulsion is wanted, but the rousing of the
+pupil's interest, all the pedagogues of the school which is opposed to
+me agree. The only difference between us is that the conception that the
+teaching must rouse the child's interest is with them lost in a mass of
+other conflicting notions about "development," of the value of which
+they are convinced and in which they exercise compulsion; whereas I
+consider the rousing of the pupil's interest, the greatest possible
+ease, and, therefore, the non-compulsion and naturalness of instruction
+as the fundamental and only measure of good and bad instruction.
+
+Every progress of pedagogy, if we attentively consider the history of
+this matter, consists in an ever increasing approximation toward
+naturalness of relations between teacher and pupil, in a lessened
+compulsion, and in a greater ease of instruction.
+
+The objection was formerly made and, I know, is made even now that it is
+hard to find the limit of freedom which shall be permitted in school. To
+this I will reply that this limit is naturally determined by the
+teacher, his knowledge, his ability to manage the school; that this
+freedom cannot be prescribed; the measure of this freedom is only the
+result of the greater or lesser knowledge and talent of the teacher.
+This freedom is not a rule, but serves as a check in comparing schools
+between themselves, and as a check in comparing new methods which are
+introduced into the school curriculum. The school in which there is less
+compulsion is better than the one in which there is more. The method
+which at its introduction into the school does not demand an increase of
+discipline is good; but the one which demands greater severity is
+certainly bad. Take, for example, a more or less free school, such as
+mine was, and try to start a conversation in it about the table and the
+ceiling, or to transpose cubes,--you will see what it hubbub will arise
+in the school and how you will feel the necessity of restoring order by
+means of severity; try to tell them an interesting story, or to give
+them problems, or make one write on the board and let the others correct
+his mistakes, and allow them to leave the benches, and you will find
+them all occupied and there will be no naughtiness, and you will not
+have to increase your severity,--and you may safely say that the method
+is good.
+
+In my pedagogical articles I have given theoretical reasons why I find
+that only the freedom of choice on the side of the learners as to what
+they are to be taught and how can form a foundation of any instruction;
+in practice I have always applied these rules in the schools under my
+guidance, at first on a large scale, and later in narrower limits, and
+the results have always been very good, both for the teachers and the
+pupils, as also for the evolution of new methods,--and this I assert
+boldly, for hundreds of visitors have come to the Y�snaya Poly�na school
+and know all about it.
+
+The consequences of such a relation to the pupils has been for the
+teachers that they did not consider that method best which they knew,
+but tried to discover other methods, became acquainted with other
+teachers for the purpose of learning their methods, tested new methods,
+and, above all, were learning something all the time. A teacher never
+permitted himself to think that in cases of failure it was the pupils'
+fault,--their laziness, playfulness, dulness, deafness, stammering,--but
+was firmly convinced that he alone was to blame for it, and for every
+failure of a pupil or of all the pupils he tried to find a remedy. For
+the pupils the result was that they learned readily, always begged the
+teachers to give them evening classes in the winter, and were absolutely
+free in the school,--which, in my conviction and experience, is the
+chief condition for successful progress in instruction. Between teachers
+and pupils there were always established friendly, natural relations,
+with which alone it is possible for the teacher to know his pupils well.
+If, from a first, external impression of the school, we were to
+determine the difference between the church, the German, and my own
+school, it would be this: in a church school you hear a peculiar,
+unnatural, monotonous shouting of all the pupils and now and then the
+stern cries of the teacher; in the German school you hear only the
+teacher's voice and now and then the timid voices of the pupils; in mine
+you hear the loud voices of the teachers and the pupils, almost
+simultaneously.
+
+As for the methods of instruction the consequences were that not one
+method of instruction was adopted or rejected because it was liked or
+not, but only because it was accepted or not by the pupils without
+compulsion. But in addition to the good results which were always
+obtained without fail from the application of my method by myself and by
+everybody else (more than twenty teachers), who taught according to my
+method ("without fail" I say for the reason that not once did we have a
+pupil who did not learn the rudiments), besides these results, the
+application of the principles of which I have spoken had the effect that
+during these fifteen years all the various modifications, to which my
+method was subjected, not only did not remove it from the needs of the
+masses, but, on the contrary, brought it nearer and nearer to them. The
+masses, at least in our parts, know the method itself and discuss it,
+and prefer it to the church method, which I cannot say of the sound
+method. In the schools which are conducted according to my method the
+teacher cannot remain motionless in his knowledge, such as he is and
+must be with the method of sounds. If a teacher according to the new
+German fashion wants to go ahead and perfect himself, he has to follow
+the pedagogical literature, that is, to read all those new inventions
+about the conversations about the suslik and about the transposition of
+the squares. I do not think that that can promote his personal
+education. On the contrary, in my school, where the subjects of
+instruction, language and mathematics, demand positive knowledge, every
+teacher, in advancing his pupils, feels the need of learning himself,
+which was constantly the case with all the teachers I had.
+
+Besides, the methods of instruction themselves, which are not settled
+once for all, but always strive to be as easy and as simple as possible,
+are modified and improved from the indications which the teacher
+discovers in the relations of the learners to his instruction.
+
+The very opposite to this I see in what, unfortunately, takes place in
+the schools of the German pattern, which of late have been introduced in
+our country in an artificial manner. The failure to recognize that
+before deciding what to teach and how to teach we must solve the
+question how we can find that out has led the pedagogues to a complete
+disagreement with reality, and the abyss which fifteen years ago was
+felt to exist between theory and practice has now reached the farthest
+limits. Now that the masses are on all sides begging for education,
+while pedagogy has more than ever passed to personal fancies, this
+discord has reached incredible proportions.
+
+This discord between the demands of pedagogy and reality has of late
+found its peculiarly striking expression not only in the matter of
+instruction itself, but also in another very important side of the
+school, namely in its administration. In order to show in what condition
+this matter has been and might be, I shall speak of Krap�vensk County of
+the Government of T�la, in which I live, which I know, and which, from
+its position, forms the type of the majority of counties of central
+Russia.
+
+In 1862 fourteen schools were opened in a district of ten thousand
+souls, when I was rural judge; besides, there existed about ten schools
+in the district among the clericals and in the manors among the
+servants. In the three remaining districts of the county there were
+fifteen large and thirty small schools among the clericals and manorial
+servants. Without saying anything about the number of the learners, of
+which, I assume, there were in general not less than now, nor about the
+instruction itself, which was partly bad and partly good, but on the
+whole not worse than at present, I will tell how and on what that
+business was based.
+
+All schools were then, with few exceptions, based on a free agreement of
+the teacher with the parents of the pupils, or with the whole
+partnership of the peasants paying a lump sum for everybody. Such a
+relation between the parents or Communes and the teachers is even now
+met with in some exceedingly rare places of our county and of the
+Government in general. Everybody will agree that, leaving aside the
+question of the quality of instruction, such a relation of the teacher
+to the parents and peasants is most just, natural, and desirable. But,
+with the introduction of the law of 1864, this relation was abolished
+and is being abolished more and more. Everybody who knows the matter as
+it is will observe that with the abolition of this relation the people
+take less and less part in the matter of their education, which is only
+natural. In some County Councils the school tax of the peasants is even
+turned into the County Council, and the salary, appointment of teachers,
+location of schools,--all that is done quite independently of those for
+whom it is intended (in theory the peasants, no doubt, are members of
+the County Council, but in practice they have through this mediation no
+influence on their own schools). Nobody will, I suppose, assert that
+that is just, but some will say: "The illiterate peasants cannot judge
+what is good and what bad, and we must build for them as well as we
+can." But how do we know? Do we know firmly, are we all of one opinion,
+how to build schools? And does it not frequently turn out bad, for we
+have built much worse than they have?
+
+Thus, in relation to the administrative side of the schools I have again
+to put a third question, on the same basis of freedom: Why do we know
+how best to arrange a school? To this question German pedagogy gives an
+answer which is quite consistent with its whole system. It knows what
+the best school is, it has formed a clear, definite ideal, down to the
+minutest details, the benches, the hours of instruction, and so forth,
+and gives an answer: the school has to be such and such, according to
+this pattern,--this alone is good and every other school is injurious. I
+know that, although the desire of Henry IV. to give each Frenchman soup
+and a chicken was unrealizable, it was impossible to say that the desire
+was false. But the matter assumes an entirely different aspect when the
+soup is of a very questionable quality and is not a chicken soup, but a
+worthless broth. And yet the so-called science of pedagogy is in this
+matter indissolubly connected with power; both in Germany and with us
+there are prescribed certain ideal one-class, two-class schools, and so
+forth; and the pedagogical and the administrative powers do not wish to
+know the fact that the masses would like to attend to their own
+education. Let us see how such a view of popular education has been
+reflected in practice on the question of education.
+
+Beginning with the year 1862 the idea that education was necessary has
+more and more spread among the masses: on all sides schools were
+established by church servants, hired teachers, and the Communes.
+Whether good or bad, these schools were spontaneous and grew out
+directly from the needs of the masses; with the introduction of the law
+of 1864 this tendency was increased, and in 1870 there were, according
+to the reports, about sixty schools in Krap�vensk County. Since then
+officials of the ministry and members of the County Council have begun
+to meddle more and more with school matters, and in Krap�vensk County
+forty schools have been closed and schools of a lower order have been
+prohibited from being opened. I know that those who closed those schools
+affirm that these schools existed only nominally and were very bad; but
+I cannot believe it, because I know well-instructed pupils from three
+villages, Tr�sna, Lam�ntsovo, and Y�snaya Poly�na, where schools were
+closed. I also know�-and this will seem incredible to many�-what is
+meant by prohibiting the opening of schools. It means that, on the basis
+of a circular of the ministry of public instruction, which spoke of the
+prohibition of unreliable teachers (this, no doubt, had reference to the
+Nihilists), the school council transferred this prohibition to the minor
+schools, taught by sextons, soldiers, and so forth, which the peasants
+themselves had opened, and which, no doubt, are not at all comprised in
+the circular. But, instead, there exist twenty schools with teachers,
+who are supposed to be good because they receive a salary of two hundred
+roubles in silver, and the County Council has distributed Ush�nski's
+text-books, and these schools are called one-class schools, because they
+teach in them according to a programme, and the whole year around, that
+is, also in summer, with the exception of July and August.
+
+Leaving aside the question of the quality of the former schools, we
+shall now take a glance at their administrative side, and we will
+compare, from this side, what was before, with what is now. In the
+administrative, external side of the school there are five main
+subjects, which are so closely connected with the school business itself
+that on their good or bad structure depend to a great extent the success
+and dissemination of popular education. These five subjects are: (1) the
+school building, (2) the schedule of instruction, (3) the distribution
+of the schools according to localities, (4) the choice of the teacher,
+and--what is most important--(5) the material means, the remuneration of
+the teachers.
+
+In regard to the school building the masses rarely have any difficulty,
+when they start a school for themselves, and if the Commune is rich and
+there are any communal buildings, such as a storehouse or a deserted
+inn, the Commune fixes it up; if there is none, it buys a building, at
+times even from a landed proprietor, or it builds one of its own. If the
+Commune is not well-to-do and is small, it hires quarters from a
+peasant, or establishes a rotation, and the teacher passes from hut to
+hut. If the Commune, as it most generally does, selects a teacher from
+its own midst, a manorial servant, a soldier, or a church servant, the
+school is located at the house of that person, and the Commune looks
+only after the heating. In any case, I have never heard that the
+question of the location of the school ever troubled a Commune, or that
+half the sum set aside for instruction should be lost, as is done by
+school councils, on the buildings, nay, not even one-sixth or one-tenth
+of the whole sum. The peasant Communes have arranged it one way or
+another, but the question of the school building has never been regarded
+as troublesome. Only under the influence of the higher authorities do
+there occur cases where the Communes build brick buildings with iron
+roofs. The peasants assume that the school is not in the structure, but
+in the teacher, and that the school is not a permanent institution, but
+that as soon as the parents have acquired knowledge, the next generation
+will get the rudiments without a teacher. But the County Council
+department of the ministry always assumes--since for it the whole
+problem consists in inspecting and classifying--that the chief
+foundation of the school is the structure and that the school is a
+permanent establishment, and so, as far as I know, now spends about
+one-half of its money on buildings, and inscribes empty school buildings
+in the list of the schools of the third order. In the Krap�vensk County
+Council seven hundred roubles out of two thousand roubles are spent on
+buildings. The ministerial department cannot admit that the teacher
+(that educated pedagogue who is assumed for the masses) would lower
+himself to such an extent as to be willing to go, like a tailor, from
+hut to hut, or to teach in a smoky house. But the masses assume nothing
+and only know that for their money they can hire whom they please, and
+that, if they, the hiring peasants, live in smoky huts, the hired
+teacher has no reason to turn up his nose at them.
+
+In regard to the second question, about the division of the school time,
+the masses have always and everywhere invariably expressed one demand,
+and that is that the instruction shall be carried on in the winter only.
+
+Everywhere the parents quit sending their children in the spring, and
+those children who are left in the school, from one-fourth to one-fifth
+of the whole number, are the little tots or the children of rich
+parents, and they attend school unwillingly. When the masses hire a
+teacher themselves, they always hire him by the month and only for the
+winter. The ministerial department assumes that, just as in the
+institutions of learning there are two months of vacation, so it ought
+also to be in a one-class country school. From the standpoint of the
+ministerial department that is quite reasonable: the children will not
+forget their instruction, the teacher is provided for during the whole
+year, and the inspectors find it more comfortable to travel in the
+summer; but the masses know nothing about all that, and their common
+sense tells them that in winter the children sleep for ten hours,
+consequently their minds are fresh; that in winter there are no plays
+and no work for the children, and that if they study in winter as long
+as possible, taking in even the evenings, for which a lamp costing one
+rouble fifty kopeks is needed and kerosene costing as much, there will
+be enough instruction. Besides, in the summer every boy is of use to
+the peasant, and in summer proceeds the life instruction, which is more
+important than school learning. The masses say that there is no reason
+why they should pay the teacher during the summer. "Rather will we
+increase his pay for the winter months, and that will please him better.
+We prefer to hire a teacher at twenty-five roubles a month for seven
+months, than at twelve roubles a month for the whole year. For the
+summer the teacher will hire himself out elsewhere."
+
+As to the third question, the distribution of the schools according to
+localities, the arrangements of the masses most markedly differ from
+those of the school council. In the first place, the distribution of the
+schools, that is, whether there shall be more or less of them for a
+certain locality, always depends on the character of the whole
+population (when the masses themselves attend to it). Wherever the
+masses are more industrial and work out, where they are nearer to the
+cities, where they need the rudiments,--there there are more schools;
+where the locality is more removed and agricultural, there there are
+fewer of them. In the second place, when the masses themselves attend to
+the matter, they distribute the schools in such a way as to give all the
+parents a chance to make use of the schools in return for their money,
+that is, to send their children to school. The peasants of small, remote
+villages of from thirty to forty souls, where half the population will
+be found, prefer to have a cheap teacher in their own village, than an
+expensive one in the centre of the township, whither their children
+cannot walk or be driven. By this distribution of the schools, the
+schools themselves, as arranged by the peasants, depart, it is true,
+from the required pattern of the school, but, instead, acquire the most
+diversified forms, everywhere adapting themselves to local conditions.
+Here a clerical person from a neighbouring village teaches eight boys at
+his house, receiving fifty kopeks a month from each. Here a small
+village hires a soldier for eight roubles for the winter, and he goes
+from house to house. Here a rich innkeeper hires a teacher for his
+children for five roubles and board, and the neighbouring peasants join
+him, by adding two roubles for each of their boys. There a large village
+or a compact township levies fifteen kopeks from each of the twelve
+hundred souls and hires a teacher for 180 roubles for the winter. There
+the priest teaches, receiving as a remuneration either money, or labour,
+or both. The chief difference in this respect between the view of the
+peasants and that of the County Council is this: the peasants, according
+to the more or less favourable local conditions, introduce schools of a
+better or worse quality, but always in such a way that there is not a
+single locality where some kind of instruction is not offered; while
+with the arrangement of the County Council a large half of the
+population is left outside every possibility of partaking of that
+education even in the distant future.
+
+In matters of the petty villages, forming one-half of the population,
+the ministerial department acts most decisively. It says: "We provide
+schools where there is a building and where the peasants of the township
+have collected enough money to support a teacher at two hundred roubles.
+We will contribute from the County Council what is wanting, and the
+school is entered on the lists." The villages that are removed from the
+school may send their children there, if they so wish. Of course, the
+peasants do not take their children there, because it is too far, and
+yet they pay. Thus, in the Y�senets township all pay for three schools,
+but only 450 souls in three villages make use of the school, though
+there are in all three thousand souls; thus, only one-seventh of the
+population makes use of the school, though all pay for it. In the
+Cherm�shen township there are nine hundred souls and there is a school
+there, but only thirty pupils attend it, because all the villages of
+that township are scattered. To nine hundred souls there ought to be
+four hundred pupils. And yet, both in the Y�senets and the Cherm�shen
+townships the question of the distribution of schools is regarded as
+satisfactorily solved.
+
+In matters of the choice of a teacher, the masses are again guided by
+quite different views from the County Council. In choosing a teacher,
+the masses look upon him in their own way, and judge him accordingly. If
+the teacher has been in the neighbourhood, and the masses know what the
+results of his teaching are, they value him according to these results
+as a good or as a bad teacher; but, in addition to the scholastic
+qualities, the masses demand that the teacher shall be a man who stands
+in close relations to the peasant, able to understand his life and to
+speak Russian, and so they will always prefer a country to a city
+teacher. In doing so, the masses have no bias and no antipathy toward
+any class in particular: he may be a gentleman, official, burgher,
+soldier, sexton, priest,--that makes no difference so long as he is a
+simple man and a Russian. For this reason the peasants have no cause for
+excluding clerical persons, as the County Councils do. The County
+Councils select their teachers from among strangers, getting them from
+the cities, while the masses look for them among themselves. But the
+chief difference in this respect between the view of the Communes and
+that of the County Council consists in this: the County Council has only
+one type,--the teacher who has attended pedagogical courses, who has
+finished a course in a seminary or school, at two hundred roubles; but
+with the masses, who do not exclude this teacher and appreciate him, if
+he is good, there are gradations of all kinds of teachers. Besides, with
+the majority of school councils there are definite favourite types of
+teachers, for the most part such as are foreign to the masses and
+antagonistic to them, and other types which the school councils
+dislike. Thus, evidently, the favourite type of many counties of the
+Government of T�la are lady teachers; the disliked type are the clerical
+persons, and in the whole of the T�la and Krap�vensk counties there is
+not one school with a teacher from the clergy, which is quite remarkable
+from an administrative point of view. In Krap�vensk County there are
+fifty parishes. The clerical persons are the cheapest of teachers,
+because they are permanently settled and for the most part can teach in
+their own houses with the aid of their wives and daughters,--and these
+are, it seems, purposely avoided, as though they were very harmful
+people.
+
+In matters of the remuneration of the teachers, the difference between
+the view of the masses and that of the County Council has almost all
+been expressed in the preceding pages. It consists in this: (1) the
+masses choose a teacher according to their means, and they admit and
+know from experience that there are teachers at all prices, from two
+puds of flour a month to thirty roubles a month; (2) teachers are to be
+remunerated for the winter months, for those during which there can be
+some instruction; (3) the masses, in the housing of the school as also
+in matters of the remuneration of the teachers, always know how to find
+a cheap way: they give flour, hay, the use of carts, eggs, and all kinds
+of trifles, which are imperceptible to the world at large, but which
+improve the teacher's condition; (4) above all, a teacher is paid, or is
+remunerated in addition to the payment, by the parents of the pupils,
+who pay by the month, or by the whole Commune which enjoys the
+advantages of the school, and not by the administration that has no
+direct interest in the matter.
+
+The ministerial department cannot act differently in this respect. The
+norm of the salary for a model teacher is given, consequently these
+means have to be got together in some way. For example: a Commune
+intends to open a school,--the township gives it a certain number of
+kopeks per soul. The County Council calculates how much to add. If there
+are no demands made by other schools, it gives more, sometimes twice as
+much as the Commune has given; at times, when all the money has been
+distributed, it gives less, or entirely refuses to give any. Thus, there
+is in Krap�vensk County a Commune which gives ninety roubles, and the
+County Council adds to that three hundred roubles for a school with an
+assistant; and there is another Commune which gives 250 roubles, and the
+County Council adds another fifty roubles; and a third Commune which
+offers fifty-six roubles, and the County Council refuses to add anything
+or to open the school, because that money is insufficient for a normal
+school, and all the money has been distributed.
+
+Thus, the chief distinctions between the administrative view of the
+masses and that of the County Council are the following: (1) the County
+Council pays great attention to the housing and spends large sums upon
+it, while the masses obviate this difficulty by domestic, economic
+means, and look upon the primary schools as temporary, passing
+institutions; (2) the ministerial department demands that instruction be
+carried on during the whole year, with the exception of July and August,
+and nowhere introduces evening classes, while the masses demand that
+instruction be carried on only in the winter and are fond of evening
+classes; (3) the ministerial department has a definite type of teachers,
+without which it does not recognize the school, and has a loathing for
+clerical persons and, in general, for local instructors; the masses
+recognize no norm and choose their teachers preferably from local
+inhabitants; (4) the ministerial department distributes the schools by
+accident, that is, it is guided only by the desire of forming a normal
+school, and has no care for that greater half of the population which
+under such a distribution is left outside the school education; the
+masses not only recognize no definite external form of the school, but
+in the greatest variety of ways get teachers with all kinds of means,
+arranging worse and cheaper schools with small means and good and
+expensive schools with greater means, and turn their attention to
+furnishing all localities with instruction in return for their money;
+(5) the ministerial department determines one measure of remuneration,
+which is sufficiently high, and arbitrarily increases the amount from
+the County Council; the masses demand the greatest possible economy and
+distribute the remuneration in such a way that those whose children are
+taught pay directly.
+
+It seems as though it would be superfluous to expatiate on how clearly
+the common sense of the masses is expressed in these demands, in
+contradistinction to that artificial structure, in which, at its very
+birth, they are trying to imprison the business of popular education.
+Even besides this, the feeling of justice is involuntarily provoked
+against such an order of things. See what is taking place. The masses
+have felt the necessity of education, and have begun to work in the
+direction of attaining their end. In addition to all the taxes which
+they pay, they have voluntarily imposed upon themselves the tax for
+education, that is, they have begun to hire teachers. What have we done?
+"Oh, you are able to pay," we said, "wait, then, for you are stupid and
+rude. Let us have the money, and we will arrange it for you in the best
+manner possible."
+
+The masses have given up their money (as I have said, in many County
+Councils the levy for the schools has been turned directly into a tax).
+The money was taken, and the education was arranged for them.
+
+I am not going to repeat about the artificiality of the education, but
+how the whole matter has been arranged. In Krap�vensk County there are
+forty thousand souls, including girls, according to the last census.
+According to Bunyak�vski's table of the distribution of ten thousand of
+the Orthodox population for the year 1862, there ought to be, of the
+male sex between six and fourteen years, 1,834, and of the female sex,
+1,989,--in all 3,823 to each ten thousand. According to my own
+observations, there ought to be more, no doubt on account of the
+increase of the population, so that the average school population may
+boldly be put at four thousand. In a school there are, on an average, in
+the large centres, about sixty pupils, and in the smaller, from ten to
+twenty-five. In order that all may receive instruction, the smaller
+centres, forming the greater half of the population, need schools for
+ten, fifteen, and twenty pupils, so that the average of a school, in my
+opinion, would be not more than thirty pupils. How many schools are,
+then, needed for sixteen thousand pupils? Divide sixteen thousand by
+thirty, and we get 530 schools. Let us assume that, although at the
+opening of the schools all pupils from seven to fifteen years of age
+will enter, not all will attend regularly for the period of eight years;
+let us reject one-fourth, that is 130 schools and, consequently, 4,200
+pupils. Let us say that there are four hundred schools. Only twenty have
+been opened. The County Council gives two thousand roubles and has added
+one thousand roubles, making in all three thousand roubles. From some of
+the peasants, not from all, fifteen kopeks are levied from each soul, in
+all about four thousand roubles. On the building of schools seven
+hundred roubles are spent, and on the pedagogical courses twelve hundred
+roubles have been used in one year. But let us suppose that the County
+Council will act quite simply and sensibly, and will not waste money on
+pedagogical courses and other trifles; let us suppose that all peasants
+will pay the new school tax of fifteen kopeks, what will the future of
+this matter be? From the peasants six thousand, from the County Council
+three thousand, in all nine thousand. Let us assume that ten more
+schools will be added. Nine thousand roubles will barely suffice for the
+support of these schools, and that only in case the school council will
+act most prudently and economically. Consequently, with the County
+Council administration, thirty schools to forty thousand of the
+population are the highest limit of what the dissemination of the
+schools in the county may reach. And this limit of the school business
+can be attained only if the peasants will levy fifteen kopeks on each
+soul, which is extremely doubtful, and if the disbursement of this money
+will be in the hands of the peasants, and not of the County Council. I
+do not speak of the possible increase of three thousand roubles, because
+this increase of three thousand roubles partly falls back on those same
+peasants, and on the other hand is not secured by anything, forming only
+an accidental means. Thus, in order to bring the business of popular
+education to the state in which it ought to be, that is, in order that
+there shall be four hundred schools to the forty thousand of the
+population, and in order that the schools shall not be a toy, but may
+answer a real want of the masses, there is no other issue than that the
+peasants be taxed, not fifteen kopeks, but three roubles a soul, in
+order that the necessary three hundred roubles to each school be
+obtained. Even then I do not see any reason for thinking that as many
+schools as are needed would be built.
+
+Do we not see that now, when the simplest arithmetical calculation shows
+that the only means for the success of the schools is the simplification
+of methods, the simplicity and cheapness of the arrangement of the
+school,--the pedagogues are busy, as though having made a wager to
+concoct a most difficult, most complicated, and expensive (and, I must
+add, most bad) instruction? In the manuals of Messrs. Bun�kov and
+Evtush�vski I have figured up three hundred roubles' worth of aids to
+instruction which, in their opinion, are absolutely necessary for the
+establishment of a primary school. All they talk about in pedagogical
+circles is how to prepare improved teachers in the seminaries, so that a
+village might not be able to get them even for four hundred roubles. On
+that road of perfection, on which pedagogy stands, it is quite apparent
+to me that if 120,000 roubles were collected in a county, the pedagogues
+would find use for them all in twenty schools, with adjustable tables,
+seminaries for teachers, and so forth. Have we not seen that forty
+schools were closed in Krap�vensk County, and that those who closed them
+were fully convinced that they thus advanced the cause of education, for
+now they have twenty "good" schools? But what is most remarkable is that
+those who express these demands are not in the least interested in
+knowing whether the masses for whom they are preparing all these things
+want them, and still less, who is going to pay for it all. But the
+County Councils are so befogged by these demands that they do not see
+the simple calculation and the simple justice. It is as though a man
+asked me to buy him two puds of flour for a month, and I bought him for
+that rouble a box of perfumed confectionery and reproached him for his
+ignorance, because he was dissatisfied.
+
+As I wish to remain true to my rule that criticism should point out how
+that which is not good ought to be, I shall try to show how the whole
+school business ought to be arranged, if it is not to be a plaything,
+and is to have a future. The answer is the same as to the first two
+questions,--freedom. The masses must be given the freedom to arrange
+their schools as they wish, and as little as possible should any one
+interfere in their arrangement. Only with such a view of the matter will
+all the obstacles to the dissemination of the schools be obviated,
+though they have seemed insuperable. The chief obstacles are the
+insufficiency of the means and the impossibility of increasing them. To
+the first the masses reply that they are using all the measures at
+their command to make the schools cost little; to the second they reply
+that the means will always be found so long as they themselves are the
+masters, and that they are not willing to increase the means for the
+support of that which they do not need.
+
+The essential difference between the view of the people and of the
+ministerial department consists in the following: (1) In the opinion of
+the masses there is no one definite norm and form of the school, outside
+and below which the school is not recognized, as is assumed by the
+ministerial department; a school may be of any kind, either a very good
+and expensive one, or a very poor and cheap one, but even in a very poor
+one reading and writing may be learned, and, as in a richer parish a
+better pope is appointed and a better church built, so also may a better
+school be built in a wealthy village, and a poorer school in a less
+well-to-do village; but just as one can pray equally well in a poor or
+in a rich parish, even so it is with learning. (2) The masses regard as
+the first condition of their education an even, equal distribution of
+this education, though it be in its lowest stage, and then only they
+propose a further, again an even, raising of the level of education,
+while the ministerial department considers it necessary to give to a
+certain chosen few, to one-twentieth of the whole number, a specimen of
+education, to show them how nice it is. (3) The ministerial department,
+either unable or purposely unwilling to calculate, has raised the
+educational business to such a high, expensive level, and one which is
+so foreign to the masses, that considering the high price at which the
+education is acquired, no issue from that situation can be foreseen, and
+the number of learners can never be increased; but the masses, who know
+how to calculate, and who are interested in that calculation, have no
+doubt long ago figured out what I have pointed out above, and see as
+clear as daylight that those expensive schools, which cost as much as
+four hundred roubles each, may be good indeed, but are not what they
+need, and try in every way possible to diminish the expenses for their
+schools.
+
+What, then, is to be done? How are the County Councils to act in order
+that this business may not be a plaything and a pastime, but shall have
+a future? Let them conform with the needs of the masses, and, so far as
+possible, cheapen and free the forms of the school, and afford the
+Communes the greatest possible power in the establishment of the
+schools.
+
+For this it is necessary that the County Councils shall entirely abandon
+the distribution of the taxes to the schools and the distribution of the
+schools according to localities, but shall leave this distribution to
+the peasants themselves. The determination of the pay to the teacher,
+the hiring, purchase, or building of the house, the choice of place and
+of the teacher himself,--all that ought to be left to the peasants. The
+County Council, that is, the school council, should only demand that the
+Communes inform it where and on what foundations schools have been
+established, not in order that, upon learning the facts, it shall
+prohibit them, as is done now, but in order that, learning about the
+conditions under which the school exists, it may add (if the conditions
+are in conformity with the demands of the council) from its County
+Council's sums, for the support of the school newly founded, a certain,
+definite part of what the school costs the Commune: a half, a third, a
+fourth, according to the quality of the school and the means and wishes
+of the County Council. Thus, for example, a village of twenty souls
+hires a transient man at two roubles a month to teach the children. The
+school council, that is, a person authorized by it, of whom I shall
+speak later, upon receiving that information, invites the transient to
+come to him, asks him what he knows and how he teaches, and, if the
+transient is the least bit educated and does not represent anything
+harmful, apportions to him the amount determined upon by the County
+Council, one-half, one-third, or one-fourth, in precisely the same way
+the school council proceeds in reference to a clerical person hired by
+the Commune at five roubles per month, or in reference to a teacher
+hired at fifteen roubles per month. Of course, that is the way the
+school council acts in reference to the teachers hired by the Communes
+themselves; but if the Communes turn to the school council, the latter
+recommends to them teachers under the same conditions. But in doing so
+the County Council must not forget that there should not be merely
+teachers at two hundred roubles; the school council should be an
+employment agency for teachers of every description and of every price,
+from one rouble to thirty roubles a month. On buildings the school
+council ought not to spend or add anything, because they are one of the
+most unproductive items of expense. But the County Council ought not to
+disdain, as it now does, teachers at two, three, four, five roubles per
+month and locations in smoky huts or by rotation from farm to farm.
+
+The County Council ought to remember that the prototype of the school,
+that ideal toward which it ought to tend, is not a stone building with
+an iron roof, with blackboards and desks, such as we see in model
+schools, but the very hut in which the peasant lives, with those benches
+and tables on which he eats, and not a teacher in a Prince Albert or a
+lady teacher in a chignon, but a male teacher in a caftan and shirt, or
+a female teacher in a peasant skirt and with a kerchief on her head, and
+not with one hundred pupils, but with five, six, or ten.
+
+The County Council must have no bias or antipathy for certain types of
+teachers, as is the case at present. Thus, for example, the T�la County
+Council just now has a special bias for the type of school-teachers from
+the gymnasia and clerical schools, and the greater part of the schools
+in T�la County are in their charge. In Krap�vensk County there exists a
+strange antipathy for teachers from the clerical profession, so that in
+this county, where there are as many as fifty parishes, there is not one
+clerical person employed as a teacher. The County Council, in proposing
+a teacher, ought to be guided by two chief considerations: in the first
+place, that the teacher should be as cheap as possible; in the second,
+that by his education he should stand as near to the masses as possible.
+Only thanks to the opposite view on the matter can be explained such an
+inexplicable phenomenon as that in Krap�vensk County (almost the same is
+true of the whole Government and of the majority of Governments) there
+are fifty parishes and twenty schools, and that for these twenty schools
+there is not a single clerical teacher, although there is not a parish
+where a priest, or a deacon, or a sexton, or their daughters and wives
+could not be found, who would not be glad to do the teaching for
+one-fourth the pay that the teachers coming from the city would be
+willing to take.
+
+But I shall be told: What kind of schools will those be with bigots,
+drunken soldiers, expelled scribes, and sextons? And what control can
+there be over those formless schools? To this I will reply that, in the
+first place, these teachers, bigots, soldiers, and sextons are not so
+bad as they are imagined to be. In my school practice I often had to do
+with pupils from these schools, and some of them could read fluently and
+write beautifully, and soon abandoned the bad habits which they brought
+with them from those schools. All of us know peasants who have learned
+the rudiments in such schools, and it cannot be said that this learning
+was useless or injurious. In the second place, I will say that teachers
+of that calibre are especially bad because they are quite abandoned in
+the backwoods and teach without any aid or instruction, and that now
+there is not to be found a single one of the old teachers who would not
+tell you with regret that he does not know the new methods and has
+himself learned for copper pence, and that many of them, especially the
+younger church servants, are quite willing to learn the new methods.
+These teachers ought not to be rejected without further ado as
+absolutely worthless. There are among them better and worse teachers
+(and I have seen some very capable ones). They ought to be compared; the
+better of them ought to be selected, encouraged, brought together with
+other better teachers, and instructed,--which is quite feasible and
+precisely the thing in which the duty of the school council is to
+consist.
+
+But how are they to be controlled, watched, and taught, if they breed by
+the hundred in each county? In my opinion the work of the County Council
+and school council ought to consist in nothing but watching the
+pedagogical side of the business, and that is feasible, if these means
+will be taken: in every County Council, which has taken upon itself the
+duty of the dissemination of popular education, or the co�peration with
+it, there ought to be one person--whether it be an unpaid member of the
+school council, or a man at a salary of not less than one thousand
+roubles, hired by the County Council--who is to attend to the
+pedagogical side of the business in the county. That person ought to
+have a general, fresh education within the limits of a gymnasium course,
+that is, he must know Russian thoroughly and Church-Slavic partly,
+arithmetic and algebra thoroughly, and be a teacher, that is, know the
+practice of pedagogy. This person must be freshly educated, because I
+have observed that frequently the information of a man who has long ago
+finished his course even in a university, and who has not refreshed his
+education, is insufficient, not only for the guidance of teachers, but
+even for the examination of a village school. This person must by all
+means be a teacher himself in the same locality, in order that in his
+demands and instructions he may always have in view that pedagogical
+material with which the other teachers have to deal, and that he may
+sustain in himself that live relation to reality which is the chief
+preservative against error and delusion. If a County Council does not
+possess such a man and does not wish to employ one, it has, in my
+opinion, absolutely nothing to do with the popular education, except to
+give money, because every interference with the administrative side of
+the matter, in the way it is done now, can only be injurious.
+
+This member of the County Council, or the educated person hired by it,
+must have the best model school, with an assistant, in the county. In
+addition to conducting this school and applying to it all the newest
+methods of instruction, this head teacher ought to keep an eye on all
+the other schools. This school is not to be a model in the sense of
+introducing into it all kinds of cubes and pictures and all kinds of
+nonsense invented by the Germans, but the teacher in this school should
+experiment on just such peasant children as the other schools consist
+of, in order to determine the simplest methods which may be adopted by
+the majority of the teachers, sextons, and soldiers, who form the bulk
+of all the schools. Since with the arrangement which I propose there
+will certainly be formed large complete schools in the larger centres
+(as I think, in the proportion of one to twenty of all the other
+schools), and in these large schools the teachers will be of a grade of
+education equal to that of the seminarists who have finished a course in
+a theological school, the head teacher will visit all these larger
+schools, bring together these teachers on Sundays, point out to them the
+defects, propose new methods, give counsel and books for their own
+education, and invite them to his school on Sundays. The library of the
+head teacher ought to consist of several copies of the Bible, of
+Church-Slavic and Russian grammars, arithmetic, and algebra. The head
+teacher, whenever he has time, will visit also the small schools and
+invite their teachers to come to see him; but the duty of watching the
+minor teachers is imposed on the older teachers, who just in the same
+way visit their district and invite those teachers to come to see them
+on Sundays and on week-days. The County Council either pays the teachers
+for travelling, or, in adding its portion to what the Communes levy,
+makes it a condition that the Communes furnish transportation. The
+meetings of the teachers and the visits in similar or better schools are
+one of the chief conditions for the successful conduct of the business
+of education, and so the County Council ought to direct its main
+attention to the organization of these meetings, and not spare any money
+for them.
+
+Besides, in the large schools, where there will be more than fifty
+pupils, there ought to be chosen, instead of the assistants which they
+now have, such of the pupils, of either sex, as show marked ability for
+a teacher's calling, and they should be made assistants, two or three in
+each school. These assistants should receive a salary of fifty kopeks to
+one rouble per month, and the teacher should work with them separately
+in the evenings, so that they may not fall behind the others. These
+assistants, chosen from among the best, are to form the future teachers,
+to take the place of the lowest in the minor schools.
+
+Naturally the organization of these teachers' meetings, both for the
+smaller and the larger schools, and the head teacher's visits of
+inspection, and the formation of teachers from pupils acting as
+assistants may take place in a large variety of ways; the main point is
+that the surveillance of any number of schools (even though it may reach
+the norm of one school to every one hundred souls) is possible in this
+manner. With such an arrangement the teachers of both the large and the
+small schools will feel that their labours are appreciated, that they
+have not buried themselves in the backwoods without hope of salvation,
+that they have companions and guides, and that in the matter of
+instruction, both for their own further education and for the
+improvement of their situation, they have means for advancement. With
+such an arrangement, the devotee and the sexton who are able to learn
+will learn; while those who are unable or unwilling to do so will be
+replaced by some one else.
+
+The time of instruction ought to be, as is the wish of all peasants,
+during the seven winter months, and so the salary is to be determined by
+the month. With such an arrangement, leaving out the rapidity and the
+equal distribution of education, the advantage will be this, that the
+schools will be established in those centres where the necessity for
+them is felt by the masses, where they are established spontaneously
+and, therefore, firmly. Where the character of the population demands
+education it will be permanent. Just look: in the towns, the children of
+the innkeepers and well-to-do peasants learn to read in one way or
+another and never forget what they have learned; but in the backwoods,
+where a landed proprietor founds a school, the children learn well, but
+in ten years all is forgotten, and the population is as illiterate as
+ever. For this reason the centres, large or small, where the schools are
+established spontaneously, are particularly precious. Where such a
+school has germinated, no matter how poor it be, it will throw out
+roots, and sooner or later the population will be able to read and
+write. Consequently, these sprouts ought to be deemed precious, and not
+be treated, as they are everywhere,--they ought not to be forbidden,
+because the schools are not according to our taste, that is, the sprouts
+ought not to be killed, and branches stuck in the ground where they will
+not take root.
+
+With merely such an arrangement, without the establishment of costly and
+artificial seminaries, the chosen ones--those selected from the best of
+the pupils themselves, and those who are educated in the schools--will
+form that contingent of cheap popular teachers who will take the place
+of the soldiers and sextons and will fully satisfy all the demands of
+the masses and of the educated classes. The chief advantage of such an
+arrangement is that it alone gives the development of popular education
+a future, that is, takes us out from that blind alley into which the
+County Councils have gone, thanks to the expensive schools and to the
+absence of new sources for the increase of their numbers. Only when the
+masses themselves choose the centres for the schools, themselves choose
+teachers, determine the amount of the remuneration, and directly enjoy
+the advantages of the schools, will they be ready to add means for the
+schools if such should become necessary. I know Communes that paid fifty
+kopeks a soul for a school in each of their villages; but it is
+difficult to compel the peasants to pay fifteen kopeks for a school in
+the township, if not all of them can make use of it. For the whole
+county, for the County Council, the peasants will not add a single
+kopek, because they feel that they will not enjoy the advantages of
+their money. Only with such an arrangement will be found soon the means
+for the proper maintenance of all schools, of one to each one hundred
+souls, which seems so impossible in the present state of affairs.
+
+In addition to this, with the arrangement which I propose, the interests
+of the peasant Communes and of the County Council, as the representative
+of the intelligence of the locality, will indissolubly be connected. Let
+us say that the County Council gives one-third of what the peasants
+give. In furnishing this amount, it will evidently, in one way or
+another, see to it that the money is not wasted, and, consequently, will
+also keep an eye on the two-thirds given by the peasant Communes. The
+peasant Commune sees that the County Council gives its part, and so
+admits the right of the Council to follow the progress of the
+instruction. At the same time, it has an object-lesson in the difference
+which exists between a school maintained at a smaller and that
+maintained at a greater expense, and chooses the one which it needs or
+which is more accessible to it in accordance with its means.
+
+I will again take Krap�vensk County, with which I am familiar, to show
+what difference the proposed arrangement would make. I cannot have the
+slightest doubt that the moment permission is granted to open schools,
+wherever wanted and of any description desired, there will at once
+appear very many schools. I am convinced that in Krap�vensk County, in
+which there are fifty parishes, there will always be a school in each
+parish, because the parishes are always centres of population, and
+because among the church servants there will always be found one who is
+capable of teaching, likes to teach, and will find his advantage in it.
+In addition to the schools maintained by the church servants there will
+be opened those forty schools that have been closed (more correctly
+thirty, because ten of them were church schools), and there will be
+opened very many new schools, so that in a very short time there will be
+not far from four hundred instead of the twenty at present.
+
+I may be believed or not, but I will assume that in Krap�vensk County
+380 additional schools will be opened, the moment they are given over to
+the masses, so that there will be four hundred in all, and I will try to
+determine whether the existence of these four hundred schools, that is,
+of twenty times as many as at present, is possible under the conditions
+which I have assumed in discussing the existing order.
+
+Assuming that all peasants pay fifteen kopeks per soul, and the County
+Council gives three thousand roubles, there will be nine thousand
+roubles, which will suffice only for thirty schools with the former
+arrangement. But with the new arrangement:
+
+I assume that ten of the old schools are left intact; in these schools
+the teachers get twenty roubles per month, which, for the seven winter
+months, amounts to fourteen hundred roubles.
+
+I assume that in every parish there will be established a school with
+the teacher's salary at five roubles per month, which, for fifty
+schools, amounts to 1,750 roubles.
+
+I assume the remaining 340 schools are of the cheap character, at two
+roubles per month; fifteen roubles for each of the 340 schools makes
+5,100 roubles.
+
+Thus the four hundred schools will demand an expenditure in salaries
+amounting to 8,250 roubles. There are still left 750 roubles for school
+appliances and transportation.
+
+The figures for the teachers' wages are not chosen arbitrarily by me: on
+the other hand, the expensive teachers are given a larger salary than
+they now get by the month for the whole year. Even so, the amount
+apportioned to the church servants is what they now receive in the
+majority of cases. But the cheap schools at two roubles per month are
+assumed by me at a higher rate than what the peasants in reality pay, so
+that the calculation may boldly be accepted. In this calculation is
+included the kernel of ten chief teachers and ten or more church servant
+teachers. It is evident that only with such a calculation will the
+school business be placed on a serious and possible basis and have a
+clear and definite future.
+
+If what I have pointed out does not convince anybody that will mean that
+I did not express clearly what I wanted to say, and do not wish to enter
+into any disputes with anybody. I know that no deaf people are so
+hopeless as those who do not want to hear. I know how it is with
+farmers. A new threshing-machine has been bought at a great expense, and
+it is put up and started threshing. It threshes miserably, no matter how
+you set the screw; it threshes badly, and the grain falls into the
+straw. There is a loss, and it is as clear as can be that the machine
+ought to be abandoned and another means be employed for threshing, but
+the money has been spent and the threshing-machine is put up. "Let her
+thresh," says the master. Precisely the same thing will happen with this
+matter. I know that for a long time to come there will flourish the
+object instruction, and cubes, and buttons instead of arithmetic, and
+hissing and sputtering, in teaching the letters, and twenty expensive
+schools of the German pattern, instead of the needed four hundred
+popular, cheap schools. But I know just as surely that the common sense
+of the Russian nation will not permit this false, artificial system of
+instruction to be foisted upon it.
+
+The masses are the chief interested person and the judge, and now do not
+pay a particle of attention to our more or less ingenious discussions
+about the manner in which the spiritual food of education is best to be
+prepared for them. They do not care, because they are firmly convinced
+that in the great business of their mental development they will not
+make a false step and will not accept what is bad,--and it would be like
+making pease stick to the wall to attempt to educate, direct, and teach
+them in the German fashion.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT MEN LIVE BY
+
+1881
+
+
+
+
+WHAT MEN LIVE BY
+
+     We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love
+     the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.
+     (First Ep. of John, iii. 14.)
+
+     But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need,
+     and shutteth, up his heart from him, how dwelleth the love of God
+     in him? (_Ib._ iii. 17.)
+
+     My children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in
+     deed and in truth. (_Ib._ iii. 18.)
+
+     Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and
+     knoweth God. (_Ib._ iv. 7.)
+
+     He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (_Ib._ iv. 8.)
+
+     No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God
+     dwelleth in us. (_Ib._ iv. 12.)
+
+     God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God
+     in him. (_Ib._ iv. 16.)
+
+     If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for
+     he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love
+     God whom he hath not seen. (_Ib._ iv. 20.)
+
+
+I.
+
+A shoemaker was lodging with his wife and children at the house of a
+peasant. He had no house, no land of his own, and supported his family
+by his shoemaker's trade. Bread was dear, but work was cheap, and he
+spent everything he made. The shoemaker and his wife had one fur coat
+between them, and even that was all worn to tatters; this was the second
+year that the shoemaker had been meaning to buy a sheepskin for a new
+fur coat.
+
+Toward fall the shoemaker had saved some money: three roubles in paper
+lay in his wife's coffer, and five roubles and twenty kopeks were
+outstanding in the village.
+
+In the morning the shoemaker went to the village to get him that fur
+coat. He put on his wife's wadded nankeen jacket over his shirt, and
+over it his cloth caftan; he put the three-rouble bill into his pocket,
+broke off a stick, and started after breakfast. He thought:
+
+"I shall get the five roubles from the peasant, will add my own three,
+and with that will buy me a sheepskin for the fur coat."
+
+The shoemaker came to the village, and called on the peasant: he was not
+at home, and his wife promised to send her husband with the money, but
+gave him none herself. He went to another peasant, but the peasant swore
+that he had no money, and gave him only twenty kopeks for mending a pair
+of boots. The shoemaker made up his mind to take the sheepskin on
+credit, but the furrier would not give it to him.
+
+"Bring me the money," he said, "and then you can choose any you please;
+we know what it means to collect debts."
+
+Thus the shoemaker accomplished nothing. All he got was the twenty
+kopeks for the boots he had mended, and a peasant gave him a pair of
+felt boots to patch with leather.
+
+The shoemaker was grieved, spent all the twenty kopeks on v�dka, and
+started home without the fur coat. In the morning it had seemed frosty
+to him, but now that he had drunk a little he felt warm even without the
+fur coat. The shoemaker walked along, with one hand striking the stick
+against the frozen mud clumps, and swinging the felt boots in the other,
+and talking to himself.
+
+"I am warm even without a fur coat," he said. "I have drunk a cup, and
+the v�dka is coursing through all my veins. I do not need a sheepskin.
+I have forgotten my woe. That's the kind of a man I am! What do I care!
+I can get along without a fur coat: I do not need it all the time. The
+only trouble is the old woman will be sorry. It is a shame indeed: I
+work for him, and he leads me by the nose. Just wait! If you do not
+bring the money, I'll take away your cap, upon my word, I will! How is
+this? He pays me back two dimes at a time! What can you do with two
+dimes? Take a drink, that is all. He says he suffers want. You suffer
+want, and am I not suffering? You have a house, and cattle, and
+everything, and here is all I possess; you have your own grain, and I
+have to buy it. I may do as I please, but I have to spend three roubles
+a week on bread. I come home, and the bread is gone: again lay out a
+rouble and a half! So give me what is mine!"
+
+Thus the shoemaker came up to a chapel at the turn of the road, and
+there he saw something that looked white, right near the chapel. It was
+growing dusk, and the shoemaker strained his eyes, but could not make
+out what it was.
+
+"There was no stone here," he thought. "A cow? It does not look like a
+cow. It looks like the head of a man, and there is something white
+besides. And what should a man be doing there?"
+
+He came nearer, and he could see plainly. What marvel was that? It was
+really a man, either alive or dead, sitting there all naked, leaning
+against the chapel, and not stirring in the least. The shoemaker was
+frightened, and thought to himself:
+
+"Somebody must have killed a man, and stripped him of his clothes, and
+thrown him away there. If I go up to him, I shall never clear myself."
+
+And the shoemaker went past. He walked around the chapel, and the man
+was no longer to be seen. He went past the chapel, and looked back, and
+saw the man leaning away from the building and moving, as though
+watching him. The shoemaker was frightened even more than before, and he
+thought to himself:
+
+"Shall I go up to him, or not? If I go up, something bad may happen. Who
+knows what kind of a man he is? He did not get there for anything good.
+If I go up, he will spring at me and choke me, and I shall not get away
+from him; and if he does not choke me, I may have trouble with him all
+the same. What can I do with him, since he is naked? Certainly I cannot
+take off the last from me and give it to him! May God save me!"
+
+And the shoemaker increased his steps. He was already a distance away
+from the chapel, when his conscience began to smite him.
+
+And the shoemaker stopped on the road.
+
+"What are you doing, Sem�n?" he said to himself. "A man is dying in
+misery, and you go past him and lose your courage. Have you suddenly
+grown so rich? Are you afraid that they will rob you of your wealth? Oh,
+Sem�n, it is not right!"
+
+Sem�n turned back, and went up to the man.
+
+
+II.
+
+Sem�n walked over to the man, and looked at him; and saw that it was a
+young man, in the prime of his strength, with no bruises on his body,
+but evidently frozen and frightened: he was leaning back and did not
+look at Sem�n, as though he were weakened and could not raise his eyes.
+Sem�n went up close to him, and the man suddenly seemed to wake up. He
+turned his head, opened his eyes, and looked at Sem�n. And this one
+glance made Sem�n think well of the man. He threw down the felt boots,
+ungirt himself, put his belt on the boots, and took off his caftan.
+
+"What is the use of talking?" he said. "Put it on! Come now!"
+
+Sem�n took the man by his elbows and began to raise him. The man got up.
+And Sem�n saw that his body was soft and clean, his hands and feet not
+calloused, and his face gentle. Sem�n threw his caftan over the man's
+shoulders. He could not find his way into the sleeves. So Sem�n put them
+in, pulled the caftan on him, wrapped him in it, and girded it with the
+belt.
+
+Sem�n took off his torn cap, intending to put it on the naked man, but
+his head grew cold, and so he thought: "My whole head is bald, while he
+has long, curly hair." He put it on again. "I had better put the boots
+on him."
+
+He seated himself and put the felt boots on him.
+
+The shoemaker addressed him and said:
+
+"That's the way, my friend! Now move about and get warmed up. This
+business will be looked into without us. Can you walk?"
+
+The man stood, looking meekly at Sem�n, but could not say a word.
+
+"Why don't you speak? You can't stay here through the winter. We must
+make for a living place. Here, take my stick, lean on it, if you are
+weak. Tramp along!"
+
+And the man went. And he walked lightly, and did not fall behind.
+
+As they were walking along, Sem�n said to him:
+
+"Who are you, please?"
+
+"I am a stranger."
+
+"I know all the people here about. How did you get near that chapel?"
+
+"I cannot tell."
+
+"Have people insulted you?"
+
+"No one has. God has punished me."
+
+"Of course, God does everything, but still you must be making for some
+place. Whither are you bound?"
+
+"It makes no difference to me."
+
+Sem�n was surprised. He did not resemble an evil-doer, and was gentle of
+speech, and yet did not say anything about himself. And Sem�n thought
+that all kinds of things happen, and so he said to the man:
+
+"Well, come to my house and warm yourself a little."
+
+Sem�n walked up to the farm, and the stranger did not fall behind, but
+walked beside him. A wind rose and blew into Sem�n's shirt, and his
+intoxication went away, and he began to feel cold. He walked along,
+sniffling, and wrapping himself in his wife's jacket, and he thought:
+
+"There is your fur coat: I went to get myself a fur coat, and I am
+coming back without a caftan, and am even bringing a naked man with me.
+Matr�na will not praise me for it!"
+
+And as Sem�n thought of Matr�na, he felt sorry; and as he looked at the
+stranger and recalled how he had looked at him at the chapel, his blood
+began to play in his heart.
+
+[Illustration: "'Whither are you bound?'"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivsh�nko_]
+
+
+III.
+
+Sem�n's wife got things done early. She chopped the wood, brought the
+water, fed the children, herself took a bite of something, and fell to
+musing. She was thinking about when to set the bread, whether to-day or
+to-morrow. There was a big slice of it left.
+
+"If Sem�n has his dinner there," she thought, "and does not eat much for
+supper, the bread will last until to-morrow."
+
+Matr�na turned the slice around and a second time, and thought:
+
+"I will not set any bread to-day. I have enough meal for just one
+setting. We shall somehow hold out until Friday."
+
+Matr�na put the bread away, and seated herself at the table to put a
+patch in her husband's shirt. She was sewing and thinking of how he
+would buy a sheepskin for a fur coat.
+
+"If only the furrier does not cheat him, for my man is too simple for
+anything. He himself will not cheat a soul, but a little child can
+deceive him. Eight roubles is no small sum. One can pickup a good fur
+coat for it. It will not be tanned, still it will be a fur coat. How we
+suffered last winter without a fur coat! We could not get down to the
+river, or anywhere. And there he has gone out, putting everything on
+him, and I have nothing to dress in. He went away early; it is time for
+him to be back. If only my dear one has not gone on a spree!"
+
+Just as Matr�na was thinking this, the steps creaked on the porch, and
+somebody entered. Matr�na stuck the needle in the cloth, and went out
+into the vestibule. She saw two coming in: Sem�n, and with him a man
+without a cap and in felt boots.
+
+Matr�na at once smelt the liquor in her husband's breath. "Well," she
+thought, "so it is: he has been on a spree." And when she saw that he
+was without his caftan, in nothing but the jacket, and that he was not
+bringing anything, but only keeping silent and crouching, something
+broke in Matr�na's heart. "He has spent all the money in drinks," she
+thought, "and has been on a spree with some tramp, and has even brought
+him along."
+
+Matr�na let them pass into the hut, and then stepped in herself. She saw
+the lean young man, and he had on him their caftan. No shirt was to be
+seen under the caftan, and he had no hat on his head. When he entered,
+he stood still, and did not stir, and did not raise his eyes. And
+Matr�na thought: "He is not a good man,--he is afraid."
+
+Matr�na scowled and went to the oven, waiting to see what would happen.
+
+Sem�n took off his cap and sat down on the bench like a good man.
+
+"Well, Matr�na, will you let us have something for supper, will you?" he
+said.
+
+Matr�na growled something under her breath. She stood at the oven, and
+did not stir: she looked now at the one, and now at the other, and shook
+her head. Sem�n saw that his wife was not in a good humour, but there
+was nothing to be done, and he acted as though he did not see it. He
+took the stranger by the arm:
+
+"Sit down, my friend," he said, "we shall have our supper."
+
+The stranger sat down on the bench.
+
+"Well, have you not cooked anything?"
+
+That simply roiled Matr�na.
+
+"I have cooked, but not for you. You seem to have drunk away your
+senses, I see. You went to get a fur coat, and come back without your
+caftan, and have even brought some kind of a naked tramp with you. I
+have no supper for you drunkards."
+
+"Stop, Matr�na! What is the use of wagging your tongue without any
+sense? First ask what kind of a man it is--"
+
+"Tell me what you did with the money."
+
+Sem�n stuck his hand into the caftan, took out the bill, and opened it
+before her.
+
+"Here is the money. Trif�nov has not paid me,--he promised to give it to
+me to-morrow."
+
+That enraged Matr�na even more: he had bought no fur coat, and the only
+caftan they had he had put on a naked fellow, and had even brought him
+along.
+
+She grabbed the bill from the table, and ran to put it away, and said:
+
+"I have no supper. One cannot feed all the drunkards."
+
+"Oh, Matr�na, hold your tongue. First hear what I have to say--"
+
+"Much sense shall I hear from a drunken fool. With good reason did I
+object to marrying you, a drunkard. My mother gave me some linen, and
+you spent it on drinks; you went to buy a fur coat, and spent that,
+too."
+
+Sem�n wanted to explain to his wife that he had spent twenty kopeks
+only, and wanted to tell her that he had found the man; but Matr�na
+began to break in with anything she could think of, and to speak two
+words at once. Even what had happened ten years before, she brought up
+to him now.
+
+Matr�na talked and talked, and jumped at Sem�n, and grabbed him by the
+sleeve.
+
+"Give me my jacket. That is all I have left, and you have taken it from
+me and put it on yourself. Give it to me, you freckled dog,--may the
+apoplexy strike you!"
+
+Sem�n began to take off the bodice; as he turned back his arm, his wife
+gave the bodice a jerk, and it ripped at the seam. Matr�na grabbed the
+jacket, threw it over her head, and made for the door. She wanted to go
+out, but stopped: her heart was doubled, for she wanted to have her
+revenge, and also to find out what kind of a man he was.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Matr�na stopped and said:
+
+"If he were a good man, he would not be naked; but, as it is, he has not
+even a shirt on him. If he meant anything good, you would tell me where
+you found that dandy."
+
+"I am telling you: as I was walking along, I saw him sitting at the
+chapel, without any clothes, and almost frozen. It is not summer, and he
+was all naked. God sent me to him, or he would have perished. Well, what
+had I to do? All kinds of things happen! I picked him up and dressed
+him, and brought him here. Calm yourself! It is a sin, Matr�na. We shall
+all die."
+
+Matr�na wanted to go on scolding, but she looked at the stranger and
+kept silence. The stranger sat without moving, just as he had seated
+himself on the edge of the bench. His hands were folded on his knees,
+his head drooped on his breast, his eyes were not opened, and he frowned
+as though something were choking him. Matr�na grew silent. And Sem�n
+said:
+
+"Matr�na, have you no God?"
+
+When Matr�na heard these words, she glanced at the stranger, and
+suddenly her heart became softened. She went away from the door, walked
+over to the oven corner, and got the supper ready. She placed a bowl on
+the table, filled it with kvas, and put down the last slice of bread.
+She handed them a knife and spoons.
+
+"Eat, if you please," she said.
+
+Sem�n touched the stranger.
+
+"Creep through here, good fellow!" he said.
+
+Sem�n cut up the bread and crumbled it into the kvas, and they began to
+eat. And Matr�na sat down at the corner of the table, and leaned on her
+arm, and kept looking at the stranger.
+
+And Matr�na pitied the stranger, and took a liking for him. And suddenly
+the stranger grew merry, stopped frowning, raised his eyes on Matr�na,
+and smiled.
+
+They got through with their supper. The woman cleared the table, and
+began to ask the stranger:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"I am a stranger."
+
+"How did you get on the road?"
+
+"I cannot tell."
+
+"Has somebody robbed you?"
+
+"God has punished me."
+
+"And you were lying there naked?"
+
+"Yes, I was lying naked, and freezing. Sem�n saw me, took pity on me,
+pulled off his caftan, put it on me, and told me to come here. And you
+have given me to eat and to drink, and have pitied me. The Lord will
+save you!"
+
+Matr�na got up, took from the window Sem�n's old shirt, the same that
+she had been patching, and gave it to the stranger; and she found a pair
+of trousers, and gave them to him.
+
+"Here, take it! I see that you have no shirt. Put it on, and lie down
+wherever it pleases you,--on the hanging bed or on the oven."
+
+The stranger took off the caftan, put on the shirt, and lay down on the
+hanging bed. Matr�na put out the light, took the caftan, and climbed to
+where her husband was.
+
+Matr�na covered herself with the corner of the caftan, and she lay and
+could not sleep: the stranger would not leave her mind.
+
+As she thought how he had eaten the last slice of bread and how there
+would be no bread for the morrow; as she thought how she had given him a
+shirt and a pair of trousers, she felt pretty bad; but when she thought
+of how he smiled, her heart was gladdened.
+
+Matr�na could not sleep for a long time, and she heard that Sem�n, too,
+was not sleeping; he kept pulling the caftan on himself.
+
+"Sem�n!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"We have eaten up the last bread, and I have not set any. I do not know
+what to do for to-morrow. Maybe I had better ask Gossip Mal�nya for
+some."
+
+"If we are alive we shall find something to eat."
+
+The woman lay awhile and kept silence.
+
+"He must be a good man. But why does he not tell about himself?"
+
+"I suppose he cannot."
+
+"Sem�n!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"We give, but why does nobody give to us?"
+
+Sem�n did not know what to say. He only said, "Stop talking!" and turned
+over, and fell asleep.
+
+
+V.
+
+In the morning Sem�n awoke. The children were asleep; his wife had gone
+to the neighbours to borrow some bread. The stranger of last night, in
+the old trousers and shirt, was alone, sitting on the bench and looking
+upward. And his face was brighter than on the day before.
+
+And Sem�n said:
+
+"Well, dear man, the belly begs for bread, and the naked body for
+clothes. We must earn our living. Can you work?"
+
+"I do not know anything."
+
+Sem�n wondered at him, and said:
+
+"If only you are willing: people can learn anything."
+
+"People work, and I, too, will work."
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Michael."
+
+"Well, Mikh�yla, you do not want to talk about yourself,--that is your
+business; but a man has to live. If you work as I order you, I will feed
+you."
+
+"God save you, and I will learn. Show me what to do!"
+
+Sem�n took the flax, put it on his fingers and began to make an end.
+
+"It is not a hard thing to do, you see."
+
+Mikh�yla watched him, himself put the flax on his fingers, and made a
+thread end, as Sem�n had taught him.
+
+Sem�n showed him how to wax it. Mikh�yla again learned the way at once.
+The master showed him how to weld the bristle, and how to whet, and
+Mikh�yla learned it all at once.
+
+No matter what work Sem�n showed to him, he grasped it at once, and on
+the third day he began to sew as though he had done nothing else in all
+his life. He worked without unbending himself, ate little, between the
+periods of work kept silence, and all the time looked toward the sky. He
+did not go into the street, spoke no superfluous word, and did not jest
+or laugh.
+
+Only once was he seen to smile, and that was the first evening, when the
+woman gave him a supper.
+
+
+VI.
+
+Day was added to day, week to week, and the circle of a year went by.
+Mikh�yla was living as before with Sem�n, and working. And the report
+spread about Sem�n's workman that nobody sewed a boot so neatly and so
+strongly as he. And people from all the surrounding country began to
+come to Sem�n for boots, and Sem�n's income began to grow.
+
+One time, in the winter, Sem�n was sitting with Mikh�yla and working,
+when a tr�yka with bells stopped at the door. They looked through the
+window: the carriage had stopped opposite the hut, and a fine lad jumped
+down from the box and opened the carriage door. Out of the carriage
+stepped a gentleman in a fur coat. He came out of the carriage, walked
+toward Sem�n's house, and went on the porch. Up jumped Matr�na and
+opened the door wide. The gentleman bent his head and entered the hut;
+he straightened himself up, almost struck the ceiling with his head, and
+took up a whole corner.
+
+Sem�n got up, bowed to the gentleman, and wondered what he wanted. He
+had not seen such men. Sem�n himself was spare-ribbed, and Mikh�yla was
+lean, and Matr�na was as dry as a chip, while this one was like a man
+from another world: his face was red and blood-filled, his neck like a
+bull's, and altogether he looked as though cast in iron.
+
+The gentleman puffed, took off his fur coat, seated himself on a bench,
+and said:
+
+"Who is the master shoemaker?"
+
+Sem�n stepped forward, and said:
+
+"I, your Excellency."
+
+The gentleman shouted to his lad:
+
+"Oh, F�dka, let me have the material!"
+
+The lad came running in and brought a bundle. The gentleman took it and
+put it on the table.
+
+"Open it!" he said.
+
+The lad opened it. The gentleman pointed to the material, and said to
+Sem�n:
+
+"Listen now, shoemaker! Do you see the material?"
+
+"I do," he said, "your Honour."
+
+"Do you understand what kind of material this is?"
+
+Sem�n felt of it, and said:
+
+"It is good material."
+
+"I should say it is! You, fool, have never seen such before. It is
+German material: it costs twenty roubles."
+
+Sem�n was frightened, and he said:
+
+"How could we have seen such?"
+
+"That's it. Can you make me boots to fit my feet from this material?"
+
+"I can, your Honour."
+
+The gentleman shouted at him:
+
+"That's it: you can. You must understand for whom you are working, and
+what material you have to work on. Make me a pair of boots that will
+wear a year without running down or ripping. If you can, undertake it
+and cut the material; if you cannot, do not undertake it and do not cut
+the material. I tell you in advance: if the boots wear off or rip before
+the year is over, I will put you into jail; if they do not wear off or
+rip for a year, I will give you ten roubles for the work."
+
+Sem�n was frightened and did not know what to say. He looked at
+Mikh�yla. He nudged him with his elbow, and said:
+
+"Friend, what do you say?"
+
+Mikh�yla nodded to him: "Take the work!"
+
+Sem�n took Mikh�yla's advice and undertook to make a pair of boots that
+would not wear down or rip.
+
+The gentleman shouted at his lad, told him to pull off the boot from his
+left foot, and stretched out his leg.
+
+"Take the measure!"
+
+Sem�n sewed together a piece of paper, ten inches in length, smoothed it
+out, knelt down, carefully wiped his hand on his apron so as not to soil
+the gentleman's stocking, and began to measure. He measured the sole,
+then the instep, and then the calf, but there the paper was not long
+enough. His leg at the calf was as thick as a log.
+
+"Be sure and do not make them too tight in the boot-leg!"
+
+Sem�n sewed up another piece to the strip. The gentleman sat and moved
+his toes in his stocking, and watched the people in the room. He caught
+sight of Mikh�yla.
+
+"Who is that man there?" he asked.
+
+"That is my master workman,--he will make those boots."
+
+"Remember," said the gentleman to Mikh�yla, "remember! Make them so that
+they will wear a year."
+
+Sem�n, too, looked at Mikh�yla, and he saw that Mikh�yla was not looking
+at the gentleman, but gazed at the corner, as though he saw some one
+there. Mikh�yla looked and looked, suddenly smiled and shone bright.
+
+"What makes you show your teeth, fool? You had better be sure and get
+the boots in time."
+
+And Mikh�yla said:
+
+"They will be done in time."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+The gentleman put on his boot and his fur coat, and wrapped himself up,
+and went to the door. He forgot to bow down, and hit his head against
+the lintel.
+
+The gentleman cursed awhile, and rubbed his head, and seated himself in
+the carriage, and drove away.
+
+When the gentleman was gone, Sem�n said:
+
+"He is mighty flinty! You can't kill him with a club. He has knocked out
+the lintel, but he himself took little harm."
+
+And Matr�na said:
+
+"How can he help being smooth, with the life he leads? Even death will
+not touch such a sledge-hammer!"
+
+
+VII.
+
+And Sem�n said to Mikh�yla:
+
+"To be sure, we have undertaken to do the work, if only we do not get
+into trouble! The material is costly, and the gentleman is cross. I hope
+we shall not make a blunder. Your eyes are sharper, and your hands are
+nimbler than mine, so take this measure! Cut the material, and I will
+put on the last stitches."
+
+Mikh�yla did not disobey him, but took the gentleman's material, spread
+it out on the table, doubled it, took the scissors, and began to cut.
+
+Matr�na came up and saw Mikh�yla cutting, and was wondering at what he
+was doing. Matr�na had become used to the shoemaker's trade, and she
+looked, and saw that Mikh�yla was not cutting the material in shoemaker
+fashion, but in a round shape.
+
+Matr�na wanted to say something, but thought: "Perhaps I do not
+understand how boots have to be made for a gentleman; no doubt Mikh�yla
+knows better, and I will not interfere."
+
+Mikh�yla cut the pair, and picked up the end, and began to sew, not in
+shoemaker fashion, with the two ends meeting, but with one end, like
+soft shoes.
+
+Again Matr�na marvelled, but did not interfere. And Mikh�yla kept sewing
+and sewing. They began to eat their dinner, and Sem�n saw that Mikh�yla
+had made a pair of soft shoes from the gentleman's material.
+
+Sem�n heaved a sigh. "How is this?" he thought. "Mikh�yla has lived with
+me a whole year, and has never made a mistake, and now he has made such
+trouble for me. The gentleman ordered boots with long boot-legs, and he
+has made soft shoes, without soles, and has spoiled the material. How
+shall I now straighten it out with the master? No such material can be
+found."
+
+And he said to Mikh�yla:
+
+"What is this, dear man, that you have done? You have ruined me. The
+master has ordered boots, and see what you have made!"
+
+He had just begun to scold Mikh�yla, when there was a rattle at the door
+ring,--some one was knocking. They looked through the window: there was
+there a man on horseback, and he was tying up his horse. They opened the
+door: in came the same lad of that gentleman.
+
+"Good day!"
+
+"Good day, what do you wish?"
+
+"The lady has sent me about the boots."
+
+"What about the boots?"
+
+"What about the boots? Our master does not need them. Our master has bid
+us live long."
+
+"You don't say!"
+
+"He had not yet reached home, when he died in his carriage. The carriage
+drove up to the house, and the servants came to help him out, but he lay
+as heavy as a bag, and was stiff and dead, and they had a hard time
+taking him out from the carriage. So the lady has sent me, saying: 'Tell
+the shoemaker that a gentleman came to see him, and ordered a pair of
+boots, and left the material for them; well, tell him that the boots are
+not wanted, but that he should use the leather at once for a pair of
+soft shoes. Wait until they make them, and bring them with you.' And so
+that is why I have come."
+
+Mikh�yla took the remnants of the material from the table, rolled them
+up, and took the soft shoes which he had made, and clapped them against
+each other, and wiped them off with his apron, and gave them to the lad.
+The lad took the soft shoes.
+
+"Good-bye, masters, good luck to you!"
+
+
+VIII.
+
+There passed another year, and a third, and Mikh�yla was now living the
+sixth year with Sem�n. He was living as before. He went nowhere, did not
+speak an unnecessary word, and all that time had smiled but twice: once,
+when they gave him the supper, and the second time when the gentleman
+came. Sem�n did not get tired admiring his workman. He no longer asked
+him where he came from; he was only afraid that Mikh�yla might leave
+him.
+
+One day they were sitting at home. The housewife was putting the iron
+pots into the oven, and the children were running on the benches, and
+looking out of the window. Sem�n was sharpening his knives at one
+window, and Mikh�yla was heeling a shoe at the other.
+
+One of the little boys ran up to Mikh�yla on the bench, leaned against
+his shoulder, and looked out of the window.
+
+"Uncle Mikh�yla, look there: a merchant woman is coming to us with some
+little girls. One of the girls is lame."
+
+When the boy said that, Mikh�yla threw down his work, turned to the
+window, and looked out into the street.
+
+And Sem�n marvelled. Mikh�yla had never before looked into the street,
+and now he had rushed to the window, and was gazing at something. Sem�n,
+too, looked out of the window: he saw, indeed, a woman who was walking
+over to his yard. She was well dressed, and led two little girls in fur
+coats and shawls. The girls looked one like the other, so that it was
+hard to tell them apart, only one had a maimed left leg,--she walked
+with a limp.
+
+The woman walked up the porch to the vestibule, felt for the entrance,
+pulled at the latch, and opened the door. First she let the two girls
+in, and then entered herself.
+
+"Good day, people!"
+
+"You are welcome! What do you wish?"
+
+The woman seated herself at the table. The girls pressed close to her
+knees: they were timid before the people.
+
+"I want you to make some leather boots for the girls for the spring."
+
+"Well, that can be done. We have not made such small shoes, but we can
+do it. We can make sharp-edged shoes, or turnover shoes on linen.
+Mikh�yla is my master."
+
+Sem�n looked around at Mikh�yla, and he saw that Mikh�yla had put away
+his work and was sitting and gazing at the girls.
+
+And Sem�n marvelled at Mikh�yla. Indeed, the girls were pretty:
+black-eyed, chubby, ruddy-faced, and the fur coats and shawls which they
+had on were fine; but still Sem�n could not make out why he was gazing
+at them as though they were friends of his.
+
+Sem�n marvelled, and began to talk with the woman and to bargain. They
+came to an agreement, and he took the measures. The woman took the lame
+girl on her knees, and said:
+
+"For this girl take two measures: make one shoe for the lame foot, and
+three for the sound foot. They have the same size of feet, exactly
+alike. They are twins."
+
+Sem�n took the measure, and he said about the lame girl:
+
+"What has made her lame? She is such a pretty girl. Was she born this
+way?"
+
+"No, her mother crushed her."
+
+Matr�na broke in,--she wanted to know who the woman was, and whose the
+children were, and so she said:
+
+"Are you not their mother?"
+
+"I am not their mother, nor their kin, housewife! I am a stranger to
+them: I have adopted them."
+
+"Not your children! How you care for them!"
+
+"Why should I not care for them? I nursed them with my own breast. I had
+a child of my own, but God took him away. I did not care for him so much
+as I have cared for them."
+
+"Whose are they, then?"
+
+
+IX.
+
+The woman began to talk, and said:
+
+"It was six years ago that these orphans lost their parents in one week:
+their father was buried on a Tuesday, and their mother died on Friday.
+These orphans were born three days after their father's death, and their
+mother did not live a day. At that time I was living with my husband in
+the village. We were their neighbours, our yard joining theirs. Their
+father was a lonely man; he worked in the forest. They dropped a tree on
+him, and it fell across his body and squeezed out his entrails. They had
+barely brought him home, when he gave up his soul to God, and that same
+week his wife bore twins,--these girls. The woman was poor and alone;
+she had neither old woman nor girl with her.
+
+"Alone she bore them, and alone she died.
+
+"I went in the morning to see my neighbour, but she, the dear woman, was
+already cold. As she died she fell on the girl, and wrenched her leg.
+The people came, and they washed and dressed her, and made a coffin, and
+buried her. All of them were good people. The girls were left alone.
+What was to be done with them? Of all the women I alone had a baby. I
+had been nursing my first-born boy for eight weeks. I took them for the
+time being to my house. The peasants gathered and thought and thought
+what to do with them, and they said to me: 'M�rya, keep the girls
+awhile, and we will try and think what to do with them.' And I nursed
+the straight girl once, but the lame girl I would not nurse. I did not
+want her to live. But, I thought, why should the angelic soul go out,
+and so I pitied her, too. I began to nurse her, and so I raised my own
+and the two girls, all three of them with my own breasts. I was young
+and strong, and I had good food. And God gave me so much milk in my
+breasts that at times they overflowed. I would feed two of them, while
+the third would be waiting. When one rolled away, I took the third. And
+God granted that I should raise the three, but my own child I lost in
+the second year. And God has given me no other children. We began to
+earn more and more, and now we are living here with the merchant at the
+mill. The wages are big, and our living is good. I have no children, and
+how should I live if it were not for these girls? How can I help loving
+them? They are all the wax of my tapers that I have."
+
+With one hand the woman pressed the lame girl to her side, and with the
+other she began to wipe off her tears.
+
+And Matr�na sighed, and said:
+
+"Not in vain is the proverb: 'You can live without parents, but not
+without God.'"
+
+And so they were talking among themselves, when suddenly the room was
+lighted as though by sheet lightning from the corner where sat Mikh�yla.
+All looked at him, and they saw Mikh�yla sitting with folded hands on
+his knees, and looking up, and smiling.
+
+
+X.
+
+The woman went away with the girls, and Mikh�yla got up from his bench.
+He lay down his work, took off his apron, bowed to the master and to the
+housewife, and said:
+
+"Forgive me, people! God has forgiven me. You, too, should forgive me."
+
+And the master and his wife saw a light coming from Mikh�yla. And Sem�n
+got up, and bowed to Mikh�yla, and said:
+
+"I see, Mikh�yla, you are not a simple man, and I cannot keep you, and
+must not beg you to remain. But tell me this: Why, when I found you and
+brought you home, were you gloomy, and when my wife gave you a supper,
+why did you smile at her and after that grow brighter? Later, when the
+gentleman ordered the boots, you smiled for the second time, and after
+that grew brighter, and now, when the woman brought her girls, you
+smiled for the third time, and grew entirely bright. Tell me, Mikh�yla,
+why does such light come from you, and why did you smile three times?"
+
+And Mikh�yla said:
+
+"The light comes from me, because I had been punished, and now God has
+forgiven me. And I smiled three times because I had to learn three words
+of God. And I have learned the three words: one word I learned when your
+wife took pity on me, and so I smiled for the first time. The second
+word I learned when the rich man ordered the boots, and then I smiled
+for the second time. And now, when I saw the girls, I learned the last,
+the third word, and I smiled for the third time."
+
+And Sem�n said:
+
+"Tell me, Mikh�yla, for what did God punish you, and what are those
+words of God, that I may know them."
+
+And Mikh�yla said:
+
+"God punished me for having disobeyed him. I was an angel in heaven, and
+I disobeyed God. I was an angel in heaven, and God sent me down to take
+the soul out of a woman. I flew down to the earth, and I saw the woman
+lying sick, and she had borne twins,--two girls. The girls were
+squirming near their mother, and she could not take them to her breasts.
+The woman saw me, and she knew that God had sent me for her soul. She
+wept, and said: 'Angel of God! My husband has just been buried,--he was
+killed by a tree in the forest. I have neither sister, nor aunt, nor
+granny,--there is no one to bring up my orphans, so do not take my soul!
+Let me raise my own children, and put them on their feet. Children
+cannot live without a father, without a mother.' And I listened to the
+mother, and placed one girl to her breast, and gave the other one into
+her hands, and rose up to the Lord in heaven. And I came before the
+Lord, and said: 'I cannot take the soul out of the mother in childbirth.
+The father was killed by a tree, the mother bore twins, and she begged
+me not to take the soul out of her, saying, Let me rear and bring up my
+children, and put them on their feet. Children cannot live without a
+father or mother. I did not take the soul out of the woman in
+childbirth.' And the Lord said: 'Go and take the soul out of the woman
+in childbirth! And you will learn three words: you will learn what there
+is in men, and what is not given to men, and what men live by. When you
+learn them, you will return to heaven.' I flew back to earth and took
+the soul out of the woman.
+
+"The little ones fell away from the breasts. The dead body rolled over
+on the bed and crushed one of the girls, and wrenched her leg. I rose
+above the village and wanted to take the soul to God; but the wind
+caught me, and my wings fell flat; and dropped off, and the soul went by
+itself before God, and I fell near the road on the earth."
+
+
+XI.
+
+And Sem�n and Matr�na understood whom they had clothed and fed, and who
+had lived with them, and they wept for terror and for joy, and said the
+angel:
+
+"I was left all alone in the field, and naked. I had not known before of
+human wants, neither of cold, nor of hunger, and I became a man. I was
+starved and chilled and did not know what to do. I saw in the field a
+chapel made for the Lord, and I went to God's chapel and wanted to hide
+myself in it. The chapel was locked, and I could not get in. And I
+seated myself behind the chapel, to protect myself against the wind. The
+evening came, I was hungry and chilled, and I ached all over. Suddenly I
+heard a man walking on the road; he was carrying a pair of boots and
+talking to himself. And I saw a mortal face, for the first time since I
+had become a man, and that face was terrible to me, and I turned away
+from it. And I heard the man talking to himself about how he might cover
+his body in the winter from the cold, and how he might feed his wife and
+children. And I thought: 'I am dying from hunger and cold, and here
+comes a man, who is thinking only of how to cover himself and his wife
+with a fur coat, and of how to feed his family. He cannot help me.' The
+man saw me; he frowned, and looked gloomier still, and passed by me. And
+I was in despair. Suddenly I heard the man coming back. I looked at him
+and did not recognize him: before that death had been in his face, and
+now he was revived, and in his face I saw God. He came up to me, and
+clothed me, and took me with him, and led me to his house. I came to
+his house, and a woman came out of the house and began to talk. The
+woman was more terrible yet than the man; the dead spirit was coming out
+of her mouth, and I could not breathe from the stench of death. She
+wanted to send me out into the cold, and I knew that she would die if
+she drove me out. And suddenly her husband reminded her of God. And the
+woman suddenly changed. And when she gave us to eat, and looked at us, I
+glanced at her: there was no longer death in her,--she was alive, and I
+recognized God in her.
+
+"And I recalled God's first word: 'You will know what there is in men.'
+And I learned that there was love in men. And I rejoiced at it, because
+God had begun to reveal to me what He had promised, and I smiled for the
+first time. But I could not yet learn everything. I could not understand
+what was not given to men, and what men lived by.
+
+"I began to live with you, and lived a year, and there came a man, to
+order a pair of boots, such as would wear a year, without ripping or
+turning. I looked at him, and suddenly I saw behind his shoulder my
+companion, the angel of death. None but me saw that angel; but I knew
+him, and I knew that the sun would not go down before the rich man's
+soul would be taken away. And I thought: 'The man is providing for a
+year, and does not know that he will not live until evening.' And I
+thought of God's second word: 'You will learn what is not given to men.'
+
+"I knew already what there was in men. Now I learned what was not given
+to men. It is not given men to know what they need for their bodies. And
+I smiled for the second time. I was glad because I had seen my comrade
+the angel, and because God had revealed the second word to me.
+
+"But I could not understand everything. I could not understand what men
+lived by. And I lived and waited for God to reveal to me the last word.
+And in the sixth year came the twin girls with the woman, and I
+recognized the girls and knew how they were kept alive. I recognized
+them, and I thought: 'The mother begged me for the sake of the children,
+and I believed the mother and thought that the children could not live
+without father and mother, and yet a strange woman has fed them and
+reared them.' And when the woman was touched as she looked at the
+children and wept, I saw in her the living God, and I understood what
+men lived by. And I learned that God had revealed the third word to me
+and forgave me. And I smiled for the third time."
+
+
+XII.
+
+And the angel's body was bared and clothed in light, so that the eye
+could not behold him, and he spoke louder, as though the voice were
+coming not from him but from heaven. And the angel said:
+
+"I have learned that every man lives not by the care for himself, but by
+love.
+
+"It was not given to the mother to know what her children needed for
+life. It was not given to the rich man to know what he needed for
+himself. And it is not given to any man to know whether before evening
+he will need boots for his life, or soft shoes for his death.
+
+"I was kept alive when I was a man not by what I did for myself, but
+because there was love in a passer-by and in his wife, and because they
+pitied and loved me. The orphans were left alive not by what was done
+for them, but because there was love in the heart of a strange woman,
+and she pitied and loved them. And all men live not by what they do for
+themselves, but because there is love in men.
+
+"I knew before that God gave life to men and that He wanted them to
+live; now I understand even something else.
+
+"I understand that God does not want men to live apart, and so He has
+not revealed to them what each needs for himself, but wants them to live
+together, and so He has revealed to them what they all need for
+themselves and for all.
+
+"I understand now that it only seems to men that they live by the care
+for themselves, and that they live only by love. He who has love, is in
+God, and God is in him, because God is love."
+
+And the angel began to sing the praise of God, and from his voice the
+whole hut shook. And the ceiling expanded, and a fiery column rose from
+earth to heaven. And Sem�n and his wife and children fell to the ground.
+And the wings were unfolded on the angel's shoulders, and he rose to
+heaven.
+
+And when Sem�n awoke, the hut was as before, and in the room were only
+his family.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE HERMITS
+
+1884
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE HERMITS
+
+     But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for
+     they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not
+     ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye
+     have need of, before ye ask him. (Matt. vi. 7-8.)
+
+
+A bishop was sailing in a ship from Arkh�ngelsk to Sol�vki. On this ship
+there were pilgrims on their way to visit the saints. The wind was
+favourable, the weather clear, and the vessel did not roll. Of the
+pilgrims some were lying down, some eating, some sitting in groups, and
+some talking with each other. The bishop, too, came out on deck, and
+began to walk up and down on the bridge. He walked up to the prow and
+saw there several men sitting together. A peasant was pointing to
+something in the sea and talking, while the people listened to him. The
+bishop stopped to see what the peasant was pointing at: he could see
+nothing except that the sun was glistening on the water. The bishop came
+nearer and began to listen. When the peasant saw the bishop, he took off
+his cap and grew silent. And the people, too, when they saw the bishop,
+took off their caps and saluted him.
+
+"Do not trouble yourselves, friends," said the bishop. "I have just come
+to hear what you, good man, are telling about."
+
+"The fisherman is telling us about the hermits," said a merchant, who
+was a little bolder than the rest.
+
+"What about those hermits?" asked the bishop. He walked over to the
+gunwale and sat down on a box. "Tell me, too, and I will listen. What
+were you pointing at?"
+
+"There is an island glinting there," said the peasant, pointing forward
+and to the right. "On that island the hermits are living and saving
+their souls."
+
+"Where is that island?" asked the bishop.
+
+"Please to follow my hand! There is a small cloud; below it and a little
+to the left of it the island appears like a streak."
+
+The bishop looked and looked, but only the water was rippling in the
+sun, and he could not make out anything with his unaccustomed eye.
+
+"I do not see it," he said. "What kind of hermits are living on that
+island?"
+
+"God's people," replied the peasant. "I had heard about them for a long
+time, and never had any chance to see them; but two summers ago I saw
+them myself."
+
+The fisherman went on to tell how he went out to catch fish and was
+driven to that island, and did not know where he was. In the morning he
+walked out and came to an earth hut, and there he saw one hermit, and
+then two more came out. They fed him and dried him and helped him to
+mend his boat.
+
+"What kind of people are they?" asked the bishop.
+
+"One is small and stooping, a very old man, in an old cassock; he must
+be more than a hundred years old, the gray of his beard is turning
+green, and he smiles all the time, and is as bright as an angel of
+heaven. The second is taller; he, too, is old, and wears a ragged
+caftan; his broad gray beard is streaked yellow, and he is a powerful
+man: he turned my boat around as though it were a vat, before I had a
+chance to help him; he also is a cheerful man. The third man is tall;
+his beard falls down to his knees and is as white as snow; he is a
+gloomy man, and his brows hang over his eyes; he is all naked, and
+girded only with a piece of matting."
+
+"What did they tell you?" asked the bishop.
+
+"They did everything mostly in silence, and spoke little to one another.
+When one looked up, the others understood him. I asked the tall man how
+long they had been living there. He frowned and muttered something, as
+though he were angry, but the little hermit took his arm and smiled, and
+the tall one grew silent. All the little hermit said was: 'Have mercy on
+us,' and smiled."
+
+While the peasant spoke, the ship came nearer to the island.
+
+"Now you can see it plainly," said the merchant. "Please to look there,
+your Reverence!" he said, pointing to the island.
+
+The bishop looked up and really saw a black strip, which was the island.
+The bishop looked at it for quite awhile, then he went away from the
+prow to the stern, and walked over to the helmsman.
+
+"What island is this that we see there?"
+
+"That is a nameless island. There are so many of them here."
+
+"Is it true what they say, that some hermits are saving their souls
+there?"
+
+"They say so, your Reverence, but I do not know whether it is so.
+Fishermen say that they have seen them. But they frequently speak to no
+purpose."
+
+"I should like to land on that island and see the hermits," said the
+bishop. "How can I do it?"
+
+"The ship cannot land there," said the helmsman. "You can get there by a
+boat, but you must ask the captain."
+
+The captain was called out.
+
+"I should like to see those hermits," said the bishop. "Can I not be
+taken there?"
+
+The captain began to dissuade him.
+
+"It can be done, but it will take much time, and, I take the liberty of
+informing your Reverence, it is not worth while to look at them. I have
+heard people say that they were foolish old men: they understand nothing
+and cannot speak, just like the fishes of the sea."
+
+"I wish it," said the bishop. "I will pay you for the trouble, so take
+me there."
+
+It could not be helped. The sailors shifted the sails and the helmsman
+turned the ship, and they sailed toward the island. A chair was brought
+out for the bishop and put at the prow. He sat down and looked. All the
+people gathered at the prow, and all kept looking at the island. Those
+who had sharper eyes saw the rocks on the island, and they pointed to
+the earth hut. And one man could make out the three hermits. The captain
+brought out his spy-glass and looked through it and gave it to the
+bishop.
+
+"That's so," he said, "there, on the shore, a little to the right from
+that big rock, stand three men."
+
+The bishop looked through the glass and turned it to the right spot.
+There were three men there: one tall, a second smaller, and a third a
+very small man. They were standing on the shore and holding each other's
+hands.
+
+The captain walked over to the bishop, and said:
+
+"Here, your Reverence, the ship has to stop. If you wish to go there by
+all means, you will please go from here in a boat, and we will wait here
+at anchor."
+
+The hawsers were let out, the anchor dropped, the sails furled, and the
+vessel jerked and shook. A boat was lowered, the oarsmen jumped into it,
+and the bishop went down a ladder. He sat down on a bench in the boat,
+and the oarsmen pulled at the oars and rowed toward the island. They
+came near to the shore and could see clearly three men standing there: a
+tall man, all naked, with a mat about his loins; the next in size, in a
+tattered caftan; and the stooping old man, in an old cassock. There they
+stood holding each other's hands.
+
+The oarsmen rowed up to the shore and caught their hook in it. The
+bishop stepped ashore.
+
+The old men bowed to him. He blessed them, and they bowed lower still.
+Then the bishop began to talk to them:
+
+"I have heard," he said, "that you are here, hermits of God, saving your
+souls and praying to Christ our God for men. I, an unworthy servant of
+Christ, have been called here by the mercy of God to tend His flock, and
+so I wanted to see you, the servants of God, and to give you some
+instruction, if I can do so."
+
+The hermits kept silence, and smiled, and looked at one another.
+
+"Tell me, how do you save yourselves and serve God?" asked the bishop.
+
+The middle-sized hermit heaved a sigh and looked at the older, the
+stooping hermit. And the stooping hermit smiled, and said:
+
+"We do not know, O servant of God, how to serve God. We only support
+ourselves."
+
+"How, then, do you pray to God?"
+
+And the stooping hermit said:
+
+"We pray as follows: There are three of you and three of us,--have mercy
+on us!"
+
+And the moment the stooping hermit had said that, all three of them
+raised their eyes to heaven, and all three said:
+
+"There are three of you and three of us,--have mercy on us!"
+
+The bishop smiled, and said:
+
+"You have heard that about the Holy Trinity, but you do not pray the
+proper way. I like you, hermits of God, and I see that you want to
+please God, but do not know how to serve Him. I will teach you, not
+according to my way, but from the Gospel will I teach you as God has
+commanded all men to pray to Him."
+
+And the bishop began to explain to the hermits how God had revealed
+Himself to men: he explained to them about God the Father, and God the
+Son, and God the Holy Ghost, and said:
+
+"God the Son came down upon earth to save men and taught them to pray as
+follows. Listen, and repeat after me."
+
+And the bishop began to say, "Our Father." And one of the hermits
+repeated, "Our Father," and the second repeated, "Our Father," and the
+third repeated, "Our Father."
+
+"Which art in heaven." The hermit repeated, "Which art in heaven." But
+the middle hermit got mixed in his words, and did not say it right; and
+the tall, naked hermit did not say it right: his moustache was all over
+his mouth, and he could not speak clearly; and the stooping, toothless
+hermit, too, lisped it indistinctly.
+
+The bishop repeated it a second time, and the hermits repeated it after
+him. And the bishop sat down on a stone, and the hermits stood around
+him and looked into his mouth and repeated after him so long as he
+spoke. And the bishop worked with them all day; he repeated one word
+ten, and twenty, and a hundred times, and the hermits repeated after
+him. They blundered, and he corrected them, and made them repeat from
+the beginning.
+
+The bishop did not leave the hermits until he taught them the whole
+Lord's prayer. They said it with him and by themselves. The middle-sized
+hermit was the first to learn it, and he repeated it all by himself. The
+bishop made him say it over and over again, and both the others said the
+prayer, too.
+
+It was beginning to grow dark, and the moon rose from the sea, when the
+bishop got up to go back to the ship. The bishop bade the hermits
+good-bye, and they bowed to the ground before him. He raised each of
+them, and kissed them, and told them to pray as he had taught them, and
+entered the boat, and was rowed back to the ship.
+
+And as the boat was rowed toward the ship, the bishop heard the hermits
+loudly repeating the Lord's prayer in three voices. The boat came nearer
+to the ship, and the voices of the hermits could no longer be heard, but
+in the moonlight they could be seen standing on the shore, in the spot
+where they had been left: the smallest of them was in the middle, the
+tallest on the right, and the middle-sized man on the left. The bishop
+reached the ship and climbed up to the deck. The anchors were weighed,
+the sails unfurled, and the wind blew and drove the ship, and on they
+sailed. The bishop went to the prow and sat down there and looked at the
+island. At first the hermits could be seen, then they disappeared from
+view, and only the island could be seen; then the island, too,
+disappeared, and only the sea glittered in the moonlight.
+
+The pilgrims lay down to sleep, and everything grew quiet on the deck.
+But the bishop did not feel like sleeping. He sat by himself at the prow
+and looked out to sea to where the island had disappeared, and thought
+of the good hermits. He thought of how glad they had been to learn the
+prayer, and thanked God for having taken him there to help the God's
+people,--to teach them the word of God.
+
+The bishop was sitting and thinking and looking out to sea to where the
+island had disappeared. There was something unsteady in his eyes: now a
+light quivered in one place on the waves, and now in another. Suddenly
+he saw something white and shining in the moonlight,--either a bird, a
+gull, or a white sail on a boat. The bishop watched it closely.
+
+"A sailboat is following after us," he thought. "It will soon overtake
+us. It was far, far away, but now it is very near. It is evidently not a
+boat, for there seems to be no sail. Still it is flying behind us and
+coming up close to us."
+
+The bishop could not make out what it was: a boat, no, it was not a
+boat; a bird, no, not a bird; a fish, no, not a fish! It was like a man,
+but too large for that, and then, how was a man to be in the middle of
+the ocean? The bishop got up and walked over to the helmsman.
+
+"See there, what is it?"
+
+"What is it, my friend? What is it?" asked the bishop, but he saw
+himself that those were the hermits running over the sea. Their beards
+shone white, and, as though the ship were standing still, they came up
+to it.
+
+The helmsman looked around and was frightened. He dropped the helm, and
+called out in a loud voice:
+
+"O Lord! The hermits are running after us on the sea as though it were
+dry land!"
+
+The people heard him, and rushed to the helm. All saw the hermits
+running and holding each other's hands. Those at the ends waved their
+hands, asking the ship to be stopped. All three were running over the
+water as though it were dry land, without moving their feet.
+
+Before the ship could be stopped, the hermits came abreast with the
+ship. They came up to the gunwale, raised their heads, and spoke in one
+voice:
+
+"O servant of God, we have forgotten your lesson. So long as we repeated
+it, we remembered it; but when we stopped for an hour, one word leaped
+out, and then the rest scattered. We do not remember a thing, so teach
+us again."
+
+The bishop made the sign of the cross, bent down to the hermits, and
+said:
+
+"Even your prayer, hermits of God, reaches the Lord. It is not for me to
+teach you. Pray for us sinful men!"
+
+And the bishop made a low obeisance to the hermits. And the hermits
+stopped, turned around, and walked back over the sea. And up to morning
+a light could be seen on the side where the hermits had departed.
+
+
+
+
+NEGLECT THE FIRE
+
+And You Cannot Put It Out
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+NEGLECT THE FIRE
+
+And You Cannot Put It Out
+
+     Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother
+     sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?
+
+     Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but,
+     Until seventy times seven.
+
+     Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king,
+     which would take account of his servants.
+
+     And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which
+     owed him ten thousand talents.
+
+     But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be
+     sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment
+     to be made.
+
+     The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord,
+     have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.
+
+     Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed
+     him, and forgave him the debt.
+
+     But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants,
+     which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took
+     him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest.
+
+     And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought him,
+     saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.
+
+     And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should
+     pay the debt.
+
+     So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they were very sorry,
+     and came and told unto their lord all that was done.
+
+     Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou
+     wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou
+     desiredst me:
+
+     Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant,
+     even as I had pity on thee?
+
+     And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till
+     he should pay all that was due unto him.
+
+     So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from
+     your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.
+     (Matt. xviii. 21-35.)
+
+
+There lived in a village a peasant, by the name of Iv�n Shcherbak�v. He
+lived well; he was himself in full strength, the first worker in the
+village, and he had three sons,--all of them on their legs: one was
+married, the second about to marry, and the third a grown-up lad who
+drove horses and was beginning to plough. Iv�n's wife was a clever woman
+and a good housekeeper, and his daughter-in-law turned out to be a quiet
+person and a good worker. There was no reason why Iv�n should not have
+led a good life with his family. The only idle mouth on the farm was his
+old, ailing father (he had been lying on the oven for seven years, sick
+with the asthma).
+
+Iv�n had plenty of everything, three horses and a colt, a cow and a
+yearling calf, and fifteen sheep. The women made the shoes and the
+clothes for the men and worked in the field; the men worked on their
+farms.
+
+They had enough grain until the next crop. From the oats they paid their
+taxes and met all their obligations. An easy life, indeed, might Iv�n
+have led with his children. But next door to him he had a neighbour,
+Gavr�lo the Lame, Gordy�y Iv�nov's son. And there was an enmity between
+him and Iv�n.
+
+So long as old man Gordy�y was alive, and Iv�n's father ran the farm,
+the peasants lived in neighbourly fashion. If the women needed a sieve
+or a vat, or the men had to get another axle or wheel for a time, they
+sent from one farm to another, and helped each other out in a
+neighbourly way. If a calf ran into the yard of the threshing-floor,
+they drove it out and only said: "Don't let it out, for the heap has not
+yet been put away." And it was not their custom to put it away and lock
+it up in the threshing-floor or in a shed, or to revile each other.
+
+Thus they lived so long as the old men were alive. But when the young
+people began to farm, things went quite differently.
+
+The whole thing began from a mere nothing. A hen of Iv�n's
+daughter-in-law started laying early. The young woman gathered the eggs
+for Passion week. Every day she went to the shed to pick up an egg from
+the wagon-box. But, it seems, the boys scared away the hen, and she flew
+across the wicker fence to the neighbour's yard, and laid an egg there.
+The young woman heard the hen cackle, so she thought:
+
+"I have no time now, I must get the hut in order for the holiday; I will
+go there later to get it."
+
+In the evening she went to the wagon-box under the shed, to fetch the
+egg, but it was not there. The young woman asked her mother-in-law and
+her brother-in-law if they had taken it; but Tar�ska, her youngest
+brother-in-law, said:
+
+"Your hen laid an egg in the neighbour's yard, for she cackled there and
+flew out from that yard."
+
+The young woman went to look at her hen, and found her sitting with the
+cock on the perch; she had closed her eyes and was getting ready to
+sleep. The woman would have liked to ask her where she laid the egg, but
+she would not have given her any answer. Then the young woman went to
+her neighbour. The old woman met her.
+
+"What do you want, young woman?"
+
+"Granny, my hen has been in your yard to-day,--did she not lay an egg
+there?"
+
+"I have not set eyes on her. We have hens of our own, thank God, and
+they have been laying for quite awhile. We have gathered our own eggs,
+and we do not need other people's eggs. Young woman, we do not go to
+other people's yards to gather eggs."
+
+The young woman was offended. She said a word too much, the neighbour
+answered with two, and the women began to scold. Iv�n's wife was
+carrying water, and she, too, took a hand in it. Gavr�lo's wife jumped
+out, and began to rebuke her neighbour. She reminded her of things that
+had happened, and mentioned things that had not happened at all. And the
+tongue-lashing began. All yelled together, trying to say two words at
+the same time. And they used bad words.
+
+"You are such and such a one; you are a thief, a sneak; you are simply
+starving your father-in-law; you are a tramp."
+
+"And you are a beggar: you have torn my sieve; and you have our
+shoulder-yoke. Give me back the yoke!"
+
+They grabbed the yoke, spilled the water, tore off their kerchiefs, and
+began to fight. Gavr�lo drove up from the field, and he took his wife's
+part. Iv�n jumped out with his son, and they all fell in a heap. Iv�n
+was a sturdy peasant, and he scattered them all. He yanked out a piece
+of Gavr�lo's beard. People ran up to them, and they were with difficulty
+pulled apart.
+
+That's the way it began.
+
+Gavr�lo wrapped the piece of his beard in a petition and went to the
+township court to enter a complaint.
+
+"I did not raise a beard for freckled Iv�n to pull it out."
+
+In the meantime his wife bragged to the neighbours that they would now
+get Iv�n sentenced and would have him sent to Siberia, and the feud
+began.
+
+The old man on the oven tried to persuade them to stop the first day
+they started to quarrel, but the young people paid no attention to him.
+He said to them:
+
+"Children, you are doing a foolish thing, and for a foolish thing have
+you started a feud. Think of it,--the whole affair began from an egg.
+The children picked up the egg,--well, God be with them! There is no
+profit in one egg. With God's aid there will be enough for everybody.
+Well, you have said a bad word, so correct it, show her how to use
+better words! Well, you have had a fight,--you are sinful people. That,
+too, happens. Well, go and make peace, and let there be an end to it! If
+you keep it up, it will only be worse."
+
+The young people did not obey the old man; they thought that he was not
+using sense, but just babbling in old man's fashion.
+
+Iv�n did not give in to his neighbour.
+
+"I did not pull his beard," he said. "He jerked it out himself; but his
+son has yanked off my shirt-button and has torn my whole shirt. Here it
+is."
+
+And Iv�n, too, took the matter to court. The case was heard before a
+justice of the peace, and in the township court. While they were suing
+each other, Gavr�lo lost a coupling-pin out of his cart. The women in
+Gavr�lo's house accused Iv�n's son of having taken it.
+
+"We saw him in the night," they said, "making his way under the window
+to the cart, and the gossip says that he went to the dram-shop and asked
+the dram-shopkeeper to take the pin from him."
+
+Again they started a suit. But at home not a day passed but that they
+quarrelled, nay, even fought. The children cursed one another,--they
+learned this from their elders,--and when the women met at the brook,
+they did not so much strike the beetles as let loose their tongues, and
+to no good.
+
+At first the men just accused each other, but later they began to snatch
+up things that lay about loose. And they taught the women and children
+to do the same. Their life grew worse and worse. Iv�n Shcherbak�v and
+Gavr�lo the Lame kept suing one another at the meetings of the Commune,
+and in the township court, and before the justices of the peace, and all
+the judges were tired of them. Now Gavr�lo got Iv�n to pay a fine, or he
+sent him to the lockup, and now Iv�n did the same to Gavr�lo. And the
+more they did each other harm, the more furious they grew. When dogs
+make for each other, they get more enraged the more they fight. You
+strike a dog from behind, and he thinks that the other dog is biting
+him, and gets only madder than ever. Just so it was with these peasants:
+when they went to court, one or the other was punished, either by being
+made to pay a fine, or by being thrown into prison, and that only made
+their rage flame up more and more toward one another.
+
+"Just wait, I will pay you back for it!"
+
+And thus it went on for six years. The old man on the oven kept
+repeating the same advice. He would say to them:
+
+"What are you doing, my children? Drop all your accounts, stick to your
+work, don't show such malice toward others, and it will be better. The
+more you rage, the worse will it be."
+
+They paid no attention to the old man.
+
+In the seventh year the matter went so far that Iv�n's daughter-in-law
+at a wedding accused Gavr�lo before people of having been caught with
+horses. Gavr�lo was drunk, and he did not hold back his anger, but
+struck the woman and hurt her so that she lay sick for a week, for she
+was heavy with child. Iv�n rejoiced, and went with a petition to the
+prosecuting magistrate.
+
+"Now," he thought, "I will get even with my neighbour: he shall not
+escape the penitentiary or Siberia."
+
+Again Iv�n was not successful. The magistrate did not accept the
+petition: they examined the woman, but she was up and there were no
+marks upon her. Iv�n went to the justice of the peace; but the justice
+sent the case to the township court. Iv�n bestirred himself in the
+township office, filled the elder and the scribe with half a bucket of
+sweet liquor, and got them to sentence Gavr�lo to having his back
+flogged. The sentence was read to Gavr�lo in the court.
+
+The scribe read:
+
+"The court has decreed that the peasant Gavr�lo Gordy�y receive twenty
+blows with rods in the township office."
+
+Iv�n listened to the decree and looked at Gavr�lo, wondering what he
+would do. Gavr�lo, too, heard the decree, and he became as pale as a
+sheet, and turned away and walked out into the vestibule. Iv�n followed
+him out and wanted to go to his horse, when he heard Gavr�lo say:
+
+"Very well, he will beat my back, and it will burn, but something of his
+may burn worse than that."
+
+When Iv�n heard these words, he returned to the judges.
+
+"Righteous judges! He threatens to set fire to my house. Listen, he said
+it in the presence of witnesses."
+
+Gavr�lo was called in.
+
+"Is it true that you said so?"
+
+"I said nothing. Flog me, if you please. Evidently I must suffer for my
+truth, while he may do anything he wishes."
+
+Gavr�lo wanted to say something more, but his lips and cheeks trembled.
+He turned away toward the wall. Even the judges were frightened as they
+looked at him.
+
+"It would not be surprising," they thought, "if he actually did some
+harm to his neighbour or to himself."
+
+And an old judge said to them:
+
+"Listen, friends! You had better make peace with each other. Did you do
+right, brother Gavr�lo, to strike a pregnant woman? Luckily God was
+merciful to you, but think what crime you might have committed! Is that
+good? Confess your guilt and beg his pardon! And he will pardon you.
+Then we shall change the decree."
+
+The scribe heard that, and said:
+
+"That is impossible, because on the basis of Article 117 there has taken
+place no reconciliation, but the decree of the court has been handed
+down, and the decree has to be executed."
+
+But the judge paid no attention to the scribe.
+
+"Stop currycombing your tongue. The first article, my friend, is to
+remember God, and God has commanded me to make peace."
+
+And the judge began once more to talk to the peasants, but he could not
+persuade them. Gavr�lo would not listen to him.
+
+"I am fifty years old less one," he said, "and I have a married son. I
+have not been beaten in all my life, and now freckled Iv�n has brought
+me to being beaten with rods, and am I to beg his forgiveness? Well, he
+will--Iv�n will remember me!"
+
+Gavr�lo's voice trembled again. He could not talk. He turned around and
+went out.
+
+From the township office to the village was a distance of ten versts,
+and Iv�n returned home late. The women had already gone out to meet the
+cattle. He unhitched his horse, put it away, and entered the hut. The
+room was empty. The children had not yet returned from the field, and
+the women were out to meet the cattle. Iv�n went in, sat down on a
+bench, and began to think. He recalled how the decision was announced to
+Gavr�lo, and how he grew pale, and turned to the wall. And his heart was
+pinched. He thought of how he should feel if he were condemned to be
+flogged. He felt sorry for Gavr�lo. He heard the old man coughing on the
+oven. The old man turned around, let down his legs, and sat up. He
+pulled himself with difficulty up to the bench, and coughed and coughed,
+until he cleared his throat, and leaned against the table, and said:
+
+"Well, have they condemned him?"
+
+Iv�n said:
+
+"He has been sentenced to twenty strokes with the rods."
+
+The old man shook his head.
+
+"Iv�n, you are not doing right. It's wrong, not wrong to him, but to
+yourself. Well, will it make you feel easier, if they flog him?"
+
+"He will never do it again," said Iv�n.
+
+"Why not? In what way is he doing worse than you?"
+
+"What, he has not harmed me?" exclaimed Iv�n. "He might have killed the
+woman; and he even now threatens to set fire to my house. Well, shall I
+bow to him for it?"
+
+The old man heaved a sigh, and said:
+
+"You, Iv�n, walk and drive wherever you please in the free world, and I
+have passed many years on the oven, and so you think that you see
+everything, while I see nothing. No, my son, you see nothing,--malice
+has dimmed your eyes. Another man's sins are in front of you, but your
+own are behind your back. You say that he has done wrong. If he alone
+had done wrong, there would be no harm. Does evil between people arise
+from one man only? Evil arises between two. You see his badness, but you
+do not see your own. If he himself were bad, and you good, there would
+be no evil. Who pulled out his beard? Who blasted the rick which was at
+halves? Who is dragging him to the courts? And yet you put it always on
+him. You yourself live badly, that's why it is bad. Not thus did I live,
+and no such thing, my dear, did I teach you. Did I and the old man, his
+father, live this way? How did we live? In neighbourly fashion. If his
+flour gave out, and the woman came: 'Uncle Frol, I need some
+flour.'--'Go, young woman, into the granary, and take as much as you
+need.' If he had nobody to send out with the horses,--'Go, Iv�n, and
+look after his horses!' And if I was short of anything, I used to go to
+him. 'Uncle Gordy�y, I need this and that.' And how is it now? The other
+day a soldier was talking about Pl�vna. Why, your war is worse than what
+they did at Pl�vna. Do you call this living? It is a sin! You are a
+peasant, a head of a house. You will be responsible. What are you
+teaching your women and your children? To curse. The other day Tar�ska,
+that dirty nose, cursed Aunt Ar�na, and his mother only laughed at him.
+Is that good? You will be responsible for it. Think of your soul. Is
+that right? You say a word to me, and I answer with two; you box my
+ears, and I box you twice. No, my son, Christ walked over the earth and
+taught us fools something quite different. If a word is said to
+you,--keep quiet, and let conscience smite him. That's what he, my son,
+has taught us. If they box your ears, you turn the other cheek to them:
+'Here, strike it if I deserve it.' His own conscience will prick him. He
+will be pacified and will do as you wish. That's what he has commanded
+us to do, and not to crow. Why are you silent? Do I tell you right?"
+
+Iv�n was silent, and he listened.
+
+The old man coughed again, and with difficulty coughed up the phlegm,
+and began to speak again:
+
+"Do you think Christ has taught us anything bad? He has taught us for
+our own good. Think of your earthly life: are you better off, or worse,
+since that Pl�vna of yours was started? Figure out how much you have
+spent on these courts, how much you have spent in travelling and in
+feeding yourself on the way? See what eagles of sons you have! You ought
+to live, and live well, and go up, but your property is growing less.
+Why? For the same reason. From your pride. You ought to be ploughing
+with the boys in the field and attend to your sowing, but the fiend
+carries you to court or to some pettifogger. You do not plough in time
+and do not sow in time, and mother earth does not bring forth anything.
+Why did the oats not do well this year? When did you sow them? When you
+came back from the city. And what did you gain from the court? Only
+trouble for yourself. Oh, son, stick to your business, and attend to
+your field and your house, and if any one has offended you, forgive him
+in godly fashion, and things will go better with you, and you will feel
+easier at heart."
+
+Iv�n kept silence.
+
+"Listen, Iv�n! Pay attention to me, an old man. Go and hitch the gray
+horse, and drive straight back to the office: squash there the whole
+business, and in the morning go to Gavr�lo, make peace with him in godly
+fashion, and invite him to the holiday" (it was before Lady-day), "have
+the samov�r prepared, get a half bottle, and make an end to all sins, so
+that may never happen again, and command the women and children to live
+in peace."
+
+Iv�n heaved a sigh, and thought: "The old man is speaking the truth,"
+and his heart melted. The only thing he did not know was how to manage
+things so as to make peace with his neighbour.
+
+And the old man, as though guessing what he had in mind, began once
+more:
+
+"Go, Iv�n, do not put it off! Put out the fire at the start, for when it
+burns up, you can't control it."
+
+The old man wanted to say something else, but did not finish, for the
+women entered the room and began to prattle like magpies. The news had
+already reached them about how Gavr�lo had been sentenced to be flogged,
+and how he had threatened to set fire to the house. They had found out
+everything, and had had time in the pasture to exchange words with the
+women of Gavr�lo's house. They said that Gavr�lo's daughter-in-law had
+threatened them with the examining magistrate. The magistrate, they
+said, was receiving gifts from Gavr�lo. He would now upset the whole
+case, and the teacher had already written another petition to the Tsar
+about Iv�n, and that petition mentioned all the affairs, about the
+coupling-pin, and about the garden,--and half of the estate would go
+back to him. Iv�n listened to their talk, and his heart was chilled
+again, and he changed his mind about making peace with Gavr�lo.
+
+In a farmer's yard there is always much to do. Iv�n did not stop to talk
+with the women, but got up and went out of the house, and walked over to
+the threshing-floor and the shed. Before he fixed everything and started
+back again, the sun went down, and the boys returned from the field.
+They had been ploughing up the field for the winter crop. Iv�n met them,
+and asked them about their work and helped them to put up the horses. He
+laid aside the torn collar and was about to put some poles under the
+shed, when it grew quite dark. Iv�n left the poles until the morrow;
+instead he threw some fodder down to the cattle, opened the gate, let
+Tar�ska out with the horses into the street, to go to the night pasture,
+and again closed the gate and put down the gate board.
+
+"Now to supper and to bed," thought Iv�n. He took the torn collar and
+went into the house. He had entirely forgotten about Gavr�lo, and about
+what his father had told him. As he took hold of the ring and was about
+to enter the vestibule, he heard his neighbour on the other side of the
+wicker fence scolding some one in a hoarse voice.
+
+"The devil take him!" Gavr�lo was crying to some one. "He ought to be
+killed."
+
+These words made all the old anger toward his neighbour burst forth in
+Iv�n. He stood awhile and listened to Gavr�lo's scolding. Then Gavr�lo
+grew quiet, and Iv�n went into the house.
+
+He entered the room. Fire was burning within. The young woman was
+sitting in the corner behind the spinning-wheel; the old woman was
+getting supper ready; the eldest son was making laces for the bast
+shoes, the second was at the table with a book, and Tar�ska was getting
+ready to go to the night pasture.
+
+In the house everything was good and merry, if it were not for that
+curse,--a bad neighbour.
+
+Iv�n was angry when he entered the room. He knocked the cat down from
+the bench and scolded the women because the vat was not in the right
+place. Iv�n felt out of humour. He sat down, frowning, and began to mend
+the collar. He could not forget Gavr�lo's words, with which he had
+threatened him in court, and how he had said about somebody, speaking in
+a hoarse voice: "He ought to be killed."
+
+The old woman got Tar�ska something to eat. When he was through with his
+supper, he put on a fur coat and a caftan, girded himself, took a piece
+of bread, and went out to the horses. The eldest brother wanted to see
+him off, but Iv�n himself got up and went out on the porch. It was
+pitch-dark outside, the sky was clouded, and a wind had risen. Iv�n
+stepped down from the porch, helped his little son to get on a horse,
+frightened a colt behind him, and stood looking and listening while
+Tar�ska rode down the village, where he met other children, and until
+they all rode out of hearing. Iv�n stood and stood at the gate, and
+could not get Gavr�lo's words out of his head, "Something of yours may
+burn worse."
+
+"He will not consider himself," thought Iv�n. "It is dry, and a wind is
+blowing. He will enter somewhere from behind, the scoundrel, and will
+set the house on fire, and he will go free. If I could catch him, he
+would not get away from me."
+
+This thought troubled Iv�n so much that he did not go back to the porch,
+but walked straight into the street and through the gate, around the
+corner of the house.
+
+"I will examine the yard,--who knows?"
+
+And Iv�n walked softly down along the gate. He had just turned around
+the corner and looked up the fence, when it seemed to him that something
+stirred at the other end, as though it got up and sat down again. Iv�n
+stopped and stood still,--he listened and looked: everything was quiet,
+only the wind rustled the leaves in the willow-tree and crackled through
+the straw. It was pitch-dark, but his eyes got used to the darkness:
+Iv�n could see the whole corner and the plough and the penthouse. He
+stood and looked, but there was no one there.
+
+"It must have only seemed so to me," thought Iv�n, "but I will,
+nevertheless, go and see," and he stole up along the shed. Iv�n stepped
+softly in his bast shoes, so that he did not hear his own steps. He came
+to the corner, when, behold, something flashed by near the plough, and
+disappeared again. Iv�n felt as though something hit him in the heart,
+and he stopped. As he stopped he could see something flashing up, and he
+could see clearly some one in a cap squatting down with his back toward
+him, and setting fire to a bunch of straw in his hands. He stood
+stock-still.
+
+"Now," he thought, "he will not get away from me. I will catch him on
+the spot."
+
+Before Iv�n had walked two lengths of the fence it grew quite bright,
+and no longer in the former place, nor was it a small fire, but the
+flame licked up in the straw of the penthouse and was going toward the
+roof, and there stood Gavr�lo so that the whole of him could be seen.
+
+As a hawk swoops down on a lark, so Iv�n rushed up against Gavr�lo the
+Lame.
+
+"I will twist him up," he thought, "and he will not get away from me."
+
+But Gavr�lo the Lame evidently heard his steps and ran along the shed
+with as much speed as a hare.
+
+"You will not get away," shouted Iv�n, swooping down on him.
+
+He wanted to grab him by the collar, but Gavr�lo got away from him, and
+Iv�n caught him by the skirt of his coat. The skirt tore off, and Iv�n
+fell down.
+
+Iv�n jumped up.
+
+"Help! Hold him!" and again he ran.
+
+As he was getting up, Gavr�lo was already near his yard, but Iv�n caught
+up with him. He was just going to take hold of him, when something
+stunned him, as though a stone had come down on his head. Gavr�lo had
+picked up an oak post near his house and hit Iv�n with all his might on
+the head, when he ran up to him.
+
+Iv�n staggered, sparks flew from his eyes, then all grew dark, and he
+fell down. When he came to his senses, Gavr�lo was gone. It was as light
+as day, and from his yard came a sound as though an engine were working,
+and it roared and crackled there. Iv�n turned around and saw that his
+back shed was all on fire and the side shed was beginning to burn; the
+fire, and the smoke, and the burning straw were being carried toward the
+house.
+
+"What is this? Friend!" cried Iv�n. He raised his hands and brought them
+down on his calves. "If I could only pull it out from the penthouse, and
+put it out! What is this? Friends!" he repeated. He wanted to shout, but
+he nearly strangled,--he had no voice. He wanted to run, but his feet
+would not move,--they tripped each other up. He tried to walk slowly,
+but he staggered, and he nearly strangled. He stood still again and drew
+breath, and started to walk. Before he came to the shed and reached the
+fire, the side shed was all on fire, and he could not get into the yard.
+People came running up, but nothing could be done. The neighbours
+dragged their own things out of their houses, and drove the cattle out.
+After Iv�n's house, Gavr�lo's caught fire; a wind rose and carried the
+fire across the street. Half the village burned down.
+
+All they saved from Iv�n's house was the old man, who was pulled out,
+and everybody jumped out in just what they had on. Everything else was
+burned, except the horses in the pasture: the cattle were burned, the
+chickens on their roosts, the carts, the ploughs, the harrows, the
+women's chests, the grain in the granary,--everything was burned.
+
+Gavr�lo's cattle were saved, and they dragged a few things out of his
+house.
+
+It burned for a long time, all night long. Iv�n stood near his yard, and
+kept looking at it, and saying:
+
+"What is this? Friends! If I could just pull it out and put it out!"
+
+But when the ceiling in the hut fell down, he jumped into the hottest
+place, took hold of a brand, and wanted to pull it out. The women saw
+him and began to call him back, but he pulled out one log and started
+for another: he staggered and fell on the fire. Then his son rushed
+after him and dragged him out. Iv�n had his hair and beard singed and
+his garments burnt and his hands blistered, but he did not feel
+anything.
+
+"His sorrow has bereft him of his senses," people said.
+
+The fire died down, but Iv�n was still standing there, and saying:
+
+"Friends, what is this? If I could only pull it out."
+
+In the morning the elder sent his son to Iv�n.
+
+"Uncle Iv�n, your father is dying: he has sent for you, to bid you
+good-bye."
+
+Iv�n had forgotten about his father, and did not understand what they
+were saying to him.
+
+"What father?" he said. "Send for whom?"
+
+"He has sent for you, to bid you good-bye. He is dying in our house.
+Come, Uncle Iv�n!" said the elder's son, pulling him by his arm.
+
+Iv�n followed the elder's son.
+
+When the old man, was carried out, burning straw fell on him and
+scorched him. He was taken to the elder's house in a distant part of the
+village. This part did not burn.
+
+When Iv�n came to his father, only the elder's wife was there, and the
+children on the oven. The rest were all at the fire. The old man was
+lying on a bench, with a taper in his hand, and looking toward the door.
+When his son entered, he stirred a little. The old woman went up to him
+and said that his son had come. He told her to have him come closer to
+him. Iv�n went up, and then the old man said:
+
+"What have I told you, Iv�n? Who has burned the village?"
+
+"He, father," said Iv�n, "he,--I caught him at it. He put the fire to
+the roof while I was standing near. If I could only have caught the
+burning bunch of straw and put it out, there would not have been
+anything."
+
+"Iv�n," said the old man, "my death has come, and you, too, will die.
+Whose sin is it?"
+
+Iv�n stared at his father and kept silence; he could not say a word.
+
+"Speak before God: whose sin is it? What have I told you?"
+
+It was only then that Iv�n came to his senses, and understood
+everything. And he snuffled, and said:
+
+"Mine, father." And he knelt before his father, and wept, and said:
+"Forgive me, father! I am guilty toward you and toward God."
+
+The old man moved his hands, took the taper in his left hand, and was
+moving his right hand toward his brow, to make the sign of the cross,
+but he did not get it so far, and he stopped.
+
+"Glory be to thee, O Lord! Glory be to thee, O Lord!" he said, and his
+eyes were again turned toward his son.
+
+"Iv�n! Oh, Iv�n!"
+
+"What is it, father?"
+
+"What is to be done now?"
+
+Iv�n was weeping.
+
+"I do not know, father," he said. "How am I to live now, father?"
+
+The old man closed his eyes and lisped something, as though gathering
+all his strength, and he once more opened his eyes and said:
+
+"You will get along. With God's aid will you get along." The old man was
+silent awhile, and he smiled and said:
+
+"Remember, Iv�n, you must not tell who started the fire. Cover up
+another man's sin! God will forgive two sins."
+
+And the old man took the taper into both hands, folded them over his
+heart, heaved a sigh, stretched himself, and died.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Iv�n did not tell on Gavr�lo, and nobody found out how the fire had been
+started.
+
+And Iv�n's heart was softened toward Gavr�lo, and Gavr�lo marvelled at
+Iv�n, because he did not tell anybody. At first Gavr�lo was afraid of
+him, but later he got used to him. The peasants stopped quarrelling, and
+so did their families. While they rebuilt their homes, the two families
+lived in one house, and when the village was built again, and the
+farmhouses were built farther apart, Iv�n and Gavr�lo again were
+neighbours, living in the same block.
+
+And Iv�n and Gavr�lo lived neighbourly together, just as their fathers
+had lived. Iv�n Shcherbak�v remembered his father's injunction and God's
+command to put out the fire in the beginning. And if a person did him
+some harm, he did not try to have his revenge on the man, but to mend
+matters; and if a person called him a bad name, he did not try to answer
+with worse words still, but to teach him not to speak badly. And thus he
+taught, also the women folk and the children. And Iv�n Shcherbak�v
+improved and began to live better than ever.
+
+
+
+
+THE CANDLE
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+THE CANDLE
+
+     Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a
+     tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.
+     (Matt. v. 38, 39.)
+
+
+This happened in the days of slavery. There were then all kinds of
+masters. There were such as remembered their hour of death and God, and
+took pity on their people, and there were dogs,--not by that may their
+memory live! But there were no meaner masters than those who from
+serfdom rose, as though out of the mud, to be lords! With them life was
+hardest of all.
+
+There happened to be such a clerk in a manorial estate. The peasants
+were doing manorial labour. There was much land, and the land was good,
+and there was water, and meadows, and forests. There would have been
+enough for everybody, both for the master and for the peasants, but the
+master had placed over them a clerk, a manorial servant of his from
+another estate.
+
+The clerk took the power into his own hand, and sat down on the
+peasants' necks. He was a married man,--he had a wife and two married
+daughters,--and had saved some money: he might have lived gloriously
+without sin, but he was envious, and stuck fast in sin. He began by
+driving the peasants to manorial labour more than the usual number of
+days. He started a brick-kiln, and he drove all the men and women to
+work in it above their strength, and sold the brick. The peasants went
+to the proprietor in Moscow to complain against him, but they were not
+successful. When the clerk learned that the peasants had entered a
+complaint against him, he took his revenge out of them. The peasants led
+a harder life still. There were found faithless people among the
+peasants: they began to denounce their own brothers to the clerk, and to
+slander one another. And all the people became involved, and the clerk
+was furious.
+
+The further it went, the worse it got, and the clerk carried on so
+terribly that the people became afraid of him as of a wolf. When he
+drove through the village, everybody ran away from him as from a wolf,
+so as not to be seen by him. The clerk saw that and raved more than ever
+because people were afraid of him. He tortured the peasants with beating
+and with work, and they suffered very much from him.
+
+It used to happen that such evil-doers were put out of the way, and the
+peasants began to talk that way about him. They would meet somewhere
+secretly, and such as were bolder would say:
+
+"How long are we going to endure this evil-doer? We are perishing
+anyway,--and it is no sin to kill a man like him."
+
+One day the peasants met in the forest, before Easter week: the clerk
+had sent them to clean up the manorial woods. They came together at
+dinner-time, and began to talk:
+
+"How can we live now?" they said. "He will root us up. He has worn us
+out with work: neither in the daytime nor at night does he give any rest
+to us or to the women. And the moment a thing does not go the way he
+wants it to, he nags at us and has us flogged. Sem�n died from that
+flogging; An�sim he wore out in the stocks. What are we waiting for? He
+will come here in the evening and will again start to torment us. We
+ought just to pull him down from his horse, whack him with an axe, and
+that will be the end of it. We will bury him somewhere like a dog, and
+mum is the word. Let us agree to stand by each other and not give
+ourselves away."
+
+Thus spoke Vas�li Min�ev. He was more furious at the clerk than anybody
+else. The clerk had him flogged every week, and had taken his wife from
+him and made her a cook at his house.
+
+Thus the peasants talked, and in the evening the clerk came. He came on
+horseback, and immediately began to nag them because they were not
+cutting right. He found a linden-tree in the heap.
+
+"I have commanded you not to cut any lindens down," he said. "Who cut it
+down? Tell me, or I will have every one of you flogged!"
+
+He tried to find out in whose row the linden was. They pointed to S�dor.
+The clerk beat S�dor's face until the blood came, and struck Vas�li with
+a whip because his pile was small. He rode home.
+
+In the evening the peasants met again, and Vas�li began to speak.
+
+"Oh, people, you are not men, but sparrows! 'We will stand up, we will
+stand up!' but when the time for action came, they all flew under the
+roof. Even thus the sparrows made a stand against the hawk: 'We will not
+give away, we will not give away! We will make a stand, we will make a
+stand!' But when he swooped down on them, they made for the nettles. And
+the hawk seized one of the sparrows, the one he wanted, and flew away
+with him. Out leaped the sparrows: 'Chivik, chivik!' one of them was
+lacking. 'Who is gone? V�nka. Well, served him right!' Just so you did.
+'We will not give each other away, we will not give each other away!'
+When he took hold of S�dor, you ought to have come together and made an
+end of him. But there you say, We will not give away, we will not give
+away! We will make a stand, we will make a stand!' and when he swooped
+down on you, you made for the bushes."
+
+The peasants began to talk that way oftener and oftener, and they
+decided fully to make away with the clerk. During Passion week the clerk
+told the peasants to get ready to plough the manorial land for oats
+during Easter week. That seemed offensive to the peasants, and they
+gathered during Passion week in Vas�li's back yard, and began to talk.
+
+"If he has forgotten God," they said, "and wants to do such things, we
+must certainly kill him. We shall be ruined anyway."
+
+Peter Mikhy�ev came to them. He was a peaceable man, and did not take
+counsel with the peasants. He came, and listened to their speeches, and
+said:
+
+"Brothers, you are planning a great crime. It is a serious matter to
+ruin a soul. It is easy to ruin somebody else's soul, but how about our
+own souls? He is doing wrong, and the wrong is at his door. We must
+suffer, brothers."
+
+Vas�li grew angry at these words.
+
+"He has got it into his head that it is a sin to kill a man. Of course
+it is, but what kind of a man is he? It is a sin to kill a good man, but
+such a dog even God has commanded us to kill. A mad dog has to be
+killed, if we are to pity men. If we do not kill him, there will be a
+greater sin. What a lot of people he will ruin! Though we shall suffer,
+it will at least be for other people. Men will thank us for it. If we
+stand gaping he will ruin us all. You are speaking nonsense, Mikhy�ev.
+Will it be a lesser sin if we go to work on Christ's holiday? You
+yourself will not go."
+
+And Mikhy�ev said:
+
+"Why should I not go? If they send me, I will go to plough. It is not
+for me. God will find out whose sin it is, so long as we do not forget
+him. Brothers, I am not speaking for myself. If we were enjoined to
+repay evil with evil, there would be a commandment of that kind, but we
+are taught just the opposite. You start to do away with evil, and it
+will only pass into you. It is not a hard thing to kill a man. But the
+blood sticks to your soul. To kill a man means to soil your soul with
+blood. You imagine that when you kill a bad man you have got rid of the
+evil, but, behold, you have reared a worse evil within you. Submit to
+misfortune, and misfortune will be vanquished."
+
+The peasants could not come to any agreement: their thoughts were
+scattered. Some of them believed with Vas�li, and others agreed with
+Peter's speech that they ought not commit a crime, but endure.
+
+The peasants celebrated the first day, the Sunday. In the evening the
+elder came with the deputies from the manor, and said:
+
+"Mikha�l Sem�novich, the clerk, has commanded me to get all the peasants
+ready for the morrow, to plough the field for the oats." The elder made
+the round of the village with the deputies and ordered all to go out on
+the morrow to plough, some beyond the river, and some from the highway.
+The peasants wept, but did not dare to disobey, and on the morrow went
+out with their ploughs and began to plough.
+
+Mikha�l Sem�novich, the clerk, awoke late, and went out to look after
+the farm. His home folk--his wife and his widowed daughter (she had come
+for the holidays)--were all dressed up. A labourer hitched a cart for
+them, and they went to mass, and returned home again. A servant made the
+samov�r, and when Mikha�l Sem�novich came, they sat down to drink tea.
+Mikha�l Sem�novich drank his tea, lighted a pipe, and sent for the
+elder.
+
+"Well," he said, "have you sent out the peasants to plough?"
+
+"Yes, Mikha�l Sem�novich."
+
+"Well, did all of them go?"
+
+"All. I placed them myself."
+
+"Of course, you have placed them,--but are they ploughing? Go and see,
+and tell them that I will be there in the afternoon, and by that time
+they are to plough a desyat�na to each two ploughs, and plough it well.
+If I find any unploughed strips, I will pay no attention to the
+holiday."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The elder started to go out, but Mikha�l Sem�novich called him back. He
+called him back, but he hesitated, for he wanted to say something and
+did not know how to say it. He hesitated awhile, and then he said:
+
+"Listen to what those robbers are saying about me. Tell me
+everything,--who is scolding me, or whatever they may be saying. I know
+those robbers: they do not like to work; all they want to do is to lie
+on their sides and loaf. To eat and be idle, that is what they like;
+they do not consider that if the time of ploughing is missed it will be
+too late. So listen to what they have to say, and let me know everything
+you may hear! Go, but be sure you tell me everything and keep nothing
+from me!"
+
+The elder turned around and left the room. He mounted his horse and rode
+into the field to the peasants.
+
+The clerk's wife had heard her husband's talk with the elder, and she
+came in and began to implore him. The wife of the clerk was a peaceable
+woman, and she had a good heart. Whenever she could, she calmed her
+husband and took the peasants' part.
+
+She came to her husband, and began to beg him: "My dear M�shenka, do not
+sin, for the Lord's holiday! For Christ's sake, send the peasants home!"
+
+Mikha�l Sem�novich did not accept his wife's words, but only laughed at
+her:
+
+"Is it too long a time since the whip danced over you that you have
+become so bold, and meddle in what is not your concern?"
+
+"M�shenka, my dear, I have had a bad dream about you. Listen to my words
+and send the peasants home!"
+
+"Precisely, that's what I say. Evidently you have gathered so much fat
+that you think the whip will not hurt you. Look out!"
+
+Sem�novich grew angry, knocked the burning pipe into her teeth, sent her
+away, and told her to get the dinner ready.
+
+Mikha�l Sem�novich ate cold gelatine, dumplings, beet soup with pork,
+roast pig, and milk noodles, and drank cherry cordial, and ate pastry
+for dessert; he called in the cook and made her sit down and sing songs
+to him, while he himself took the guitar and accompanied her.
+
+Mikha�l Sem�novich was sitting in a happy mood and belching, and
+strumming the guitar, and laughing with the cook. The elder came in,
+made a bow, and began to report what he had seen in the field.
+
+"Well, are they ploughing? Will they finish the task?"
+
+"They have already ploughed more than half."
+
+"No strips left?"
+
+"I have not seen any. They are afraid, and are working well."
+
+"And are they breaking up the dirt well?"
+
+"The earth is soft and falls to pieces like a poppy."
+
+The clerk was silent for awhile.
+
+"What do they say about me? Are they cursing me?"
+
+The elder hesitated, but Mikha�l Sem�novich commanded him to tell the
+whole truth.
+
+"Tell everything! You are not going to tell me your words, but theirs.
+If you tell me the truth, I will reward you; and if you shield them,
+look out, I will have you flogged. O K�tyusha, give him a glass of v�dka
+to brace him up!"
+
+The cook went and brought the elder the v�dka. The elder saluted, drank
+the v�dka, wiped his mouth, and began to speak. "I cannot help it," he
+thought, "it is not my fault if they do not praise him; I will tell him
+the truth, if he wants it." And the elder took courage and said:
+
+"They murmur, Mikha�l Sem�novich, they murmur."
+
+"What do they say? Speak!"
+
+"They keep saying that you do not believe in God."
+
+The clerk laughed.
+
+"Who said that?"
+
+"All say so. They say that you are submitting to the devil."
+
+The clerk laughed.
+
+"That is all very well," he said, "but tell me in particular what each
+says. What does Vas�li say?"
+
+The elder did not wish to tell on his people, but with Vas�li he had
+long been in a feud.
+
+"Vas�li," he said, "curses more than the rest."
+
+"What does he say? Tell me!"
+
+"It is too terrible to tell. He says that you will die an unrepenting
+death."
+
+"What a brave fellow!" he said. "Why, then, is he gaping? Why does he
+not kill me? Evidently his arms are too short. All right," he said,
+"Vas�li, we will square up accounts. And T�shka, that dog, I suppose he
+says so, too?"
+
+"All speak ill of you."
+
+"But what do they say?"
+
+"I loathe to tell."
+
+"Never mind! Take courage and speak!"
+
+"They say: 'May his belly burst, and his guts run out!'"
+
+Mikha�l Sem�novich was delighted, and he even laughed.
+
+"We will see whose will run out first. Who said that? T�shka?"
+
+[Illustration: "But the candle was still burning"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivsh�nko_]
+
+"Nobody said a good word. All of them curse you and threaten you."
+
+"Well, and Peter Mikhy�ev? What does he say? He, too, I suppose, is
+cursing me?"
+
+"No, Mikha�l Sem�novich, Peter is not cursing."
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"He is the only one of all the peasants who is not saying anything. He
+is a wise peasant. I wondered at him, Mikha�l Sem�novich."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"All the peasants were wondering at what he was doing."
+
+"What was he doing?"
+
+"It is wonderful. I rode up to him. He is ploughing the slanting
+desyat�na at T�rkin Height. As I rode up to him, I heard some one
+singing such nice, high tones, and on the plough-staff something was
+shining."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It was shining like a light. I rode up to him, and there I saw a
+five-kopek wax candle was stuck on the cross-bar and burning, and the
+wind did not blow it out. He had on a clean shirt, and was ploughing and
+singing Sunday hymns. And he would turn over and shake off the dirt, but
+the candle did not go out. He shook the plough in my presence, changed
+the peg, and started the plough, but the candle was still burning and
+did not go out."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He said nothing. When he saw me, he greeted me and at once began to
+sing again."
+
+"What did you say to him?"
+
+"I did not say anything to him, but the peasants came up and laughed at
+him: 'Mikhy�ev will not get rid of his sin of ploughing during Easter
+week even if he should pray all his life.'"
+
+"What did he say to that?"
+
+"All he said was: 'Peace on earth and good-will to men.' He took his
+plough, started his horses, and sang out in a thin voice, but the candle
+kept burning and did not go out."
+
+The clerk stopped laughing. He put down the guitar, lowered his head,
+and fell to musing.
+
+He sat awhile; then he sent away the cook and the elder, went behind the
+curtain, lay down on the bed, and began to sigh and to sob, just as
+though a cart were driving past with sheaves. His wife came and began to
+speak to him; he gave her no answer. All he said was:
+
+"He has vanquished me. My turn has come."
+
+His wife tried to calm him.
+
+"Go and send them home! Maybe it will be all right. See what deeds you
+have done, and now you lose your courage."
+
+"I am lost," he said. "He has vanquished me."
+
+His wife cried to him:
+
+"You just have it on your brain, 'He has vanquished me, he has
+vanquished me.' Go and send the peasants home, and all will be well. Go,
+and I will have your horse saddled."
+
+The horse was brought up, and the clerk's wife persuaded him to ride
+into the field to send the peasants home.
+
+Mikha�l Sem�novich mounted his horse and rode into the field. He drove
+through the yard, and a woman opened the gate for him, and he passed
+into the village. The moment the people saw the clerk, they hid
+themselves from him, one in the yard, another around a corner, a third
+in the garden.
+
+The clerk rode through the whole village and reached the outer gate. The
+gate was shut, and he could not open it while sitting on his horse. He
+called and called for somebody to open the gate, but no one would come.
+He got down from his horse, opened the gate, and in the gateway started
+to mount again. He put his foot into the stirrup, rose in it, and was on
+the point of vaulting over the saddle, when his horse shied at a pig and
+backed up toward the picket fence; he was a heavy man and did not get
+into his saddle, but fell over, with his belly on picket. There was but
+one sharp post in the picket fence, and it was higher than the rest. It
+was this post that he struck with his belly. He was ripped open and fell
+to the ground.
+
+When the peasants drove home from their work, the horses snorted and
+would not go through the gate. The peasants went to look, and saw
+Mikha�l lying on his back. His arms were stretched out, his eyes stood
+open, and all his inside had run out and the blood stood in a pool,--the
+earth had not sucked it in.
+
+The peasants were frightened. They took their horses in by back roads,
+but Mikhy�ev alone got down and walked over to the clerk. He saw that he
+was dead, so he closed his eyes, hitched his cart, with the aid of his
+son put the dead man in the bed of the cart, and took him to the manor.
+
+The master heard about all these things, and to save himself from sin
+substituted tenant pay for the manorial labour.
+
+And the peasants saw that the power of God was not in sin, but in
+goodness.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO OLD MEN
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO OLD MEN
+
+
+     Therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well:
+     and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to
+     draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For his
+     disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Then saith the
+     woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest
+     drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no
+     dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, If
+     thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee,
+     Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, for the Father
+     seeketh such to worship him. (John iv. 19-23.)
+
+
+I.
+
+Two old men got ready to go to old Jerusalem to pray to God. One of them
+was a rich peasant; his name was Ef�m Tar�sych Shevel�v. The other was
+not a well-to-do man, and his name was Elis�y Bodr�v.
+
+Ef�m was a steady man: he did not drink liquor, nor smoke tobacco, nor
+take snuff, had never cursed in his life, and was a stern, firm old man.
+He had served two terms as an elder, and had gone out of his office
+without a deficit. He had a large family,--two sons and a married
+grandson,--and all lived together. As to looks he was a sound, bearded,
+erect man, and only in his seventh decade did a gray streak appear in
+his beard.
+
+Elis�y was neither wealthy nor poor; in former days he used to work out
+as a carpenter, but in his old age he stayed at home and kept bees. One
+son was away earning money, and another was living at home. Elis�y was a
+good-natured and merry man. He liked to drink liquor and take snuff, and
+sing songs; but he was a peaceable man, and lived in friendship with his
+home folk and with the neighbours. In appearance he was an undersized,
+swarthy man, with a curly beard and, like his saint, Prophet Elisha, his
+whole head was bald.
+
+The old men had long ago made the vow and agreed to go together, but
+Tar�sych had had no time before: he had so much business on hand. The
+moment one thing came to an end, another began; now he had to get his
+grandson married, now he was expecting his younger son back from the
+army, and now he had to build him a new hut.
+
+On a holiday the two old men once met, and they sat down on logs.
+
+"Well," said Elis�y, "when are we going to carry out our vow?"
+
+Ef�m frowned.
+
+"We shall have to wait," he said, "for this is a hard year for me. I
+have started to build a house,--I thought I could do it with one
+hundred, but it is going on now in the third. And still it is not done.
+We shall have to let it go till summer. In the summer, God willing, we
+shall go by all means."
+
+"According to my understanding," said Elis�y, "there is no sense in
+delaying. We ought to go at once. Spring is the best time."
+
+"The time is all right, but the work is begun, so how can I drop it?"
+
+"Have you nobody to attend to it? Your son will do it."
+
+"Do it? My eldest is not reliable,--he drinks."
+
+"When we die, friend, they will get along without us. Let your son learn
+it!"
+
+"That is so, but still I want to see things done under my eyes."
+
+"Oh, dear man! You can never attend to everything. The other day the
+women in my house were washing and cleaning up for the holidays. This
+and that had to be done, and everything could not be looked after. My
+eldest daughter-in-law, a clever woman, said: 'It is a lucky thing the
+holidays come without waiting for us, for else, no matter how much we
+might work, we should never get done.'"
+
+Tar�sych fell to musing.
+
+"I have spent a great deal of money on this building," he said, "and I
+can't start out on the pilgrimage with empty hands. One hundred roubles
+are not a trifling matter."
+
+Elis�y laughed.
+
+"Don't sin, friend!" he said. "You have ten times as much as I, and yet
+you talk about money. Only say when we shall start. I have no money, but
+that will be all right."
+
+Tar�sych smiled.
+
+"What a rich man you are!" he said. "Where shall you get the money
+from?"
+
+"I will scratch around in the house and will get together some there;
+and if that is not enough, I will let my neighbour have ten hives. He
+has been asking me for them."
+
+"You will have a fine swarm! You will be worrying about it."
+
+"Worrying? No, my friend! I have never worried about anything in life
+but sins. There is nothing more precious than the soul."
+
+"That is so; but still, it is not good if things do not run right at
+home."
+
+"If things do not run right in our soul, it is worse. We have made a
+vow, so let us go! Truly, let us go!"
+
+
+II.
+
+Elis�y persuaded his friend to go. Ef�m thought and thought about it,
+and on the following morning he came to Elis�y.
+
+"Well, let us go," he said, "you have spoken rightly. God controls life
+and death. We must go while we are alive and have strength."
+
+A week later the old men started.
+
+Tar�sych had money at home. He took one hundred roubles with him and
+left two hundred with his wife.
+
+Elis�y, too, got ready. He sold his neighbour ten hives and the increase
+of ten other hives. For the whole he received seventy roubles. The
+remaining thirty roubles he swept up from everybody in the house. His
+wife gave him the last she had,--she had put it away for her funeral;
+his daughter-in-law gave him what she had.
+
+Ef�m Tar�sych left all his affairs in the hands of his eldest son: he
+told him where to mow, and how many fields to mow, and where to haul the
+manure, and how to finish the hut and thatch it. He considered
+everything, and gave his orders. But all the order that Elis�y gave was
+that his wife should set out the young brood separately from the hives
+sold and give the neighbour what belonged to him without cheating him,
+but about domestic affairs he did not even speak: "The needs
+themselves," he thought, "will show you what to do and how to do it. You
+have been farming yourselves, so you will do as seems best to you."
+
+The old men got ready. The home folk baked a lot of flat cakes for them,
+and they made wallets for themselves, cut out new leg-rags, put on new
+short boots, took reserve bast shoes, and started. The home folk saw
+them off beyond the enclosure and bade them good-bye, and the old men
+were off for their pilgrimage.
+
+Elis�y left in a happy mood, and as soon as he left his village he
+forgot all his affairs. All the care he had was how to please his
+companion, how to keep from saying an unseemly word to anybody, how to
+reach the goal in peace and love, and how to get home again. As Elis�y
+walked along the road he either muttered some prayer or repeated such of
+the lives of the saints as he knew. Whenever he met a person on the
+road, or when he came to a hostelry, he tried to be as kind to everybody
+as he could, and to say to them God-fearing words. He walked along and
+was happy. There was only one thing Elis�y could not do: he wanted to
+stop taking snuff and had left his snuff-box at home, but he hankered
+for it. On the road a man offered him some. He wrangled with himself and
+stepped away from his companion so as not to lead him into sin, and took
+a pinch.
+
+Ef�m Tar�sych walked firmly and well; he did no wrong and spoke no vain
+words, but there was no lightness in his heart. The cares about his home
+did not leave his mind. He was thinking all the time about what was
+going on at home,--whether he had not forgotten to give his son some
+order, and whether his son was doing things in the right way. When he
+saw along the road that they were setting out potatoes or hauling
+manure, he wondered whether his son was doing as he had been ordered. He
+just felt like returning, and showing him what to do, and doing it
+himself.
+
+
+III.
+
+The old men walked for live weeks. They wore out their home-made bast
+shoes and began to buy new ones. They reached the country of the
+Little-Russians. Heretofore they had been paying for their night's
+lodging and for their dinner, but when they came to the Little-Russians,
+people vied with each other in inviting them to their houses. They let
+them come in, and fed them, and took no money from them, but even filled
+their wallets with bread, and now and then with flat cakes. Thus the old
+men walked without expense some seven hundred versts. They crossed
+another Government and came to a place where there had been a failure of
+crops. There they let them into the houses and did not take any money
+for their night's lodging, but would not feed them. And they did not
+give them bread everywhere,--not even for money could the old men get
+any in some places. The previous year, so the people said, nothing had
+grown. Those who had been rich were ruined,--they sold everything; those
+who had lived in comfort came down to nothing; and the poor people
+either entirely left the country, or turned beggars, or just managed to
+exist at home. In the winter they lived on chaff and orach.
+
+One night the two old men stayed in a borough. There they bought about
+fifteen pounds of bread. In the morning they left before daybreak, so
+that they might walk a good distance before the heat. They marched some
+ten versts and reached a brook. They sat down, filled their cups with
+water, softened the bread with it and ate it, and changed their
+leg-rags. They sat awhile and rested themselves. Elis�y took out his
+snuff-horn. Ef�m Tar�sych shook his head at him.
+
+"Why don't you throw away that nasty thing?" he asked.
+
+Elis�y waved his hand.
+
+"Sin has overpowered me," he said. "What shall I do?"
+
+They got up and marched on. They walked another ten versts. They came to
+a large village, and passed through it. It was quite warm then. Elis�y
+was tired, and wanted to stop and get a drink, but Tar�sych would not
+stop. Tar�sych was a better walker, and Elis�y had a hard time keeping
+up with him.
+
+"I should like to get a drink," he said.
+
+"Well, drink! I do not want any."
+
+Elis�y stopped.
+
+"Do not wait for me," he said. "I will just run into a hut and get a
+drink of water. I will catch up with you at once."
+
+"All right," he said. And Ef�m Tar�sych proceeded by himself along the
+road, while Elis�y turned to go into a hut.
+
+Elis�y came up to the hut. It was a small clay cabin; the lower part was
+black, the upper white, and the clay had long ago crumbled
+off,--evidently it had not been plastered for a long time,--and the roof
+was open at one end. The entrance was from the yard. Elis�y stepped into
+the yard, and there saw that a lean, beardless man with his shirt stuck
+in his trousers in Little-Russian fashion was lying near the earth
+mound. The man had evidently lain down in a cool spot, but now the sun
+was burning down upon him. He was lying there awake. Elis�y called out
+to him, asking him to give him a drink, but the man made no reply. "He
+is either sick, or an unkind man," thought Elis�y, going up to the door.
+Inside he heard a child crying. He knocked with the door-ring. "Good
+people!" No answer. He struck with his staff against the door.
+"Christian people!" No stir. "Servants of the Lord!" No reply. Elis�y
+was on the point of going away, when he heard somebody groaning within.
+"I wonder whether some misfortune has happened there to the people. I
+must see." And Elis�y went into the hut.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Elis�y turned the ring,--the door was not locked. He pushed the door
+open and walked through the vestibule. The door into the living-room was
+open. On the left there was an oven; straight ahead was the front
+corner; in the corner stood a shrine and a table; beyond the table was a
+bench, and on it sat a bareheaded old woman, in nothing but a shirt; her
+head was leaning on the table, and near her stood a lean little boy, his
+face as yellow as wax and his belly swollen, and he was pulling the old
+woman's sleeve, and crying at the top of his voice and begging for
+something.
+
+Elis�y entered the room. There was a stifling air in the house. He saw a
+woman lying behind the oven, on the floor. She was lying on her face
+without looking at anything, and snoring, and now stretching out a leg
+and again drawing it up. And she tossed from side to side,--and from her
+came that oppressive smell: evidently she was very sick, and there was
+nobody to take her away. The old woman raised her head, when she saw the
+man.
+
+"What do you want?" she said, in Little-Russian. "What do you want? We
+have nothing, my dear man."
+
+Elis�y understood what she was saying: he walked over to her.
+
+"Servant of the Lord," he said, "I have come in to get a drink of
+water."
+
+"There is none, I say, there is none. There is nothing here for you to
+take. Go!"
+
+Elis�y asked her:
+
+"Is there no well man here to take this woman away?"
+
+"There is nobody here: the man is dying in the yard, and we here."
+
+The boy grew quiet when he saw the stranger, but when the old woman
+began to speak, he again took hold of her sleeve.
+
+"Bread, granny, bread!" and he burst out weeping.
+
+Just as Elis�y was going to ask the old woman another question, the man
+tumbled into the hut; he walked along the wall and wanted to sit down on
+the bench, but before reaching it he fell down in the corner, near the
+threshold. He did not try to get up, but began to speak. He would say
+one word at a time, then draw his breath, then say something again.
+
+"We are sick," he said, "and--hungry. The boy is starving." He indicated
+the boy with his head and began to weep.
+
+Elis�y shifted his wallet on his back, freed his arms, let the wallet
+down on the ground, lifted it on the bench, and untied it. When it was
+open, he took out the bread and the knife, out off a slice, and gave it
+to the man. The man did not take it, but pointed to the boy and the
+girl, to have it given to them. Elis�y gave it to the boy. When the boy
+saw the bread, he made for it, grabbed the slice with both his hands,
+and stuck his nose into the bread. A girl crawled out from behind the
+oven and gazed at the bread. Elis�y gave her, too, a piece. He cut off
+another slice and gave it to the old woman. She took it and began to
+chew at it.
+
+"If you would just bring us some water," she said. "Their lips are
+parched. I wanted to bring some yesterday or to-day,--I do not remember
+when,--but I fell down and left the pail there, if nobody took it away."
+
+Elis�y asked where their well was. The old woman told him where. Elis�y
+went out. He found the pail, brought some water, and gave the people to
+drink. The children ate some more bread with water, and the old woman
+ate some, but the man would not eat.
+
+"My stomach will not hold it," he said.
+
+The woman did not get up or come to: she was just tossing on the bed
+place. Elis�y went to the shop, and bought millet, salt, flour, and
+butter. He found an axe, chopped some wood, and made a fire in the oven.
+The girl helped him. Elis�y cooked a soup and porridge, and fed the
+people.
+
+
+V.
+
+The man ate a little, and so did the old woman, and the girl and the
+little boy licked the bowl clean and embraced each other and fell
+asleep.
+
+The man and the old woman told Elis�y how it had all happened.
+
+"We lived heretofore poorly," they said, "but when the crop failed us,
+we ate up in the fall everything we had. When we had nothing left, we
+began to beg from our neighbours and from good people. At first they
+gave us some, but later they refused. Some of them would have been
+willing to give us to eat, but they had nothing themselves. Besides we
+felt ashamed to beg: we owed everybody money and flour and bread. I
+looked for work," said the man, "but could find none. People were
+everywhere looking for work to get something to eat. One day I would
+work, and two I would go around looking for more work. The old woman and
+the girl went a distance away to beg, but the alms were poor,--nobody
+had any bread. Still, we managed to get something to eat: we thought we
+might squeeze through until the new crop; but in the spring they quit
+giving us alms altogether, and sickness fell upon us. It grew pretty
+bad: one day we would have something to eat, and two we went without it.
+We began to eat grass. And from the grass, or from some other reason,
+the woman grew sick. She lay down, and I had no strength, and we had
+nothing with which to improve matters."
+
+"I was the only one," the old woman said, "who worked: but I gave out
+and grew weak, as I had nothing to eat. The girl, too, grew weak and
+lost her courage. I sent her to the neighbours, but she did not go. She
+hid herself in a corner and would not go. A neighbour came in two days
+ago, but when she saw that we were hungry and sick, she turned around
+and went out. Her husband has left, and she has nothing with which to
+feed her young children. So we were lying here and waiting for death."
+
+When Elis�y heard what they said, he changed his mind about catching up
+with his companion, and remained there overnight. In the morning Elis�y
+got up and began to work about the house as though he were the master.
+He set bread with the old woman and made a fire in the oven. He went
+with the girl to the neighbours to fetch what was necessary. Everything
+he wanted to pick up was gone: there was nothing left for farming, and
+the clothes were used up. Elis�y got everything which was needed: some
+things he made himself, and some he bought. Elis�y stayed with them one
+day, and a second, and a third. The little boy regained his strength,
+and he began to walk on the bench and to make friends with Elis�y. The
+girl, too, became quite cheerful and helped him in everything. She kept
+running after Elis�y: "Grandfather, grandfather!"
+
+The old woman got up and went to her neighbour. The man began to walk by
+holding on to the wall. Only the woman was lying down. On the third day
+she came to and asked for something to eat.
+
+"Well," thought Elis�y, "I had not expected to lose so much time. Now I
+must go."
+
+
+VI.
+
+The fourth day was the last of a fast, and Elis�y said to himself:
+
+"I will break fast with them. I will buy something for them for the
+holidays, and in the evening I must leave."
+
+Elis�y went once more to the village and bought milk, white flour, and
+lard. He and the old woman cooked and baked a lot of things, and in the
+morning Elis�y went to mass and came back and broke fast with the
+people. On that day the woman got up and began to move about. The man
+shaved himself, put on a clean shirt,--the old woman had washed it for
+him,--and went to a rich peasant to ask a favour of him. His mowing and
+field were mortgaged to the rich man, so he went to ask him to let him
+have the mowing and the field until the new crop. He came back gloomy in
+the evening, and burst out weeping. The rich man would not show him the
+favour; he had asked him to bring the money.
+
+Elis�y fell to musing.
+
+"How are they going to live now? People will be going out to mow, but
+they cannot go, for it is all mortgaged. The rye will ripen and people
+will begin to harvest it (and there is such a fine stand of it!), but
+they have nothing to look forward to,--their desyat�na is sold to the
+rich peasant. If I go away, they will fall back into poverty."
+
+And Elis�y was in doubt, and did not go away in the evening, but put it
+off until morning. He went into the yard to sleep. He said his prayers
+and lay down, but could not fall asleep.
+
+"I ought to go,--as it is I have spent much time and money; but I am
+sorry for the people. You can't help everybody. I meant to bring them
+some water and give each a slice of bread, but see how far I have gone.
+Now I shall have to buy out his mowing and field. And if I buy out the
+field, I might as well buy a cow for the children, and a horse for the
+man to haul his sheaves with. Brother Elis�y Kuzm�ch, you are in for it!
+You have let yourself loose, and now you will not straighten out
+things."
+
+Elis�y got up, took the caftan from under his head, and unrolled it; he
+drew out his snuff-horn and took a pinch, thinking that he would clear
+his thoughts, but no,--he thought and thought and could not come to any
+conclusion. He ought to get up and go, but he was sorry for the people.
+He did not know what to do. He rolled the caftan up under his head and
+lay down to sleep. He lay there for a long time, and the cocks crowed,
+and then only did he fall asleep. Suddenly he felt as though some one
+had wakened him. He saw himself all dressed, with his wallet and staff,
+and he had to pass through a gate, but it was just open enough to let a
+man squeeze through. He went to the gate and his wallet caught on one
+side, and as he was about to free it, one of his leg-rags got caught on
+the other side and came open. He tried to free the leg-rag, but it was
+not caught in the wicker fence: it was the girl who was holding on to
+it, and crying, "Grandfather, grandfather, bread!" He looked at his
+foot, and there was the little boy holding on to it, and the old woman
+and the man were looking out of the window. Elis�y awoke, and he began
+to speak to himself in an audible voice:
+
+"I will buy out the field and the mowing to-morrow, and will buy a
+horse, and flour to last until harvest-time, and a cow for the children.
+For how would it be to go beyond the sea to seek Christ and lose him
+within me? I must get the people started."
+
+And Elis�y fell asleep until morning. He awoke early. He went to the
+rich merchant, bought out the rye and gave him money for the mowing. He
+bought a scythe,--for that had been sold, too,--and brought it home. He
+sent the man out to mow, and himself went to see the peasants: he found
+a horse and a cart for sale at the innkeeper's. He bargained with him
+for it, and bought it; then he bought a bag of flour, which he put in
+the cart, and went out to buy a cow. As he was walking, he came across
+two Little-Russian women, and they were talking to one another. Though
+they were talking in their dialect, he could make out what they were
+saying about him:
+
+"You see, at first they did not recognize him; they thought that he was
+just a simple kind of a man. They say, he went in to get a drink, and he
+has just stopped there. What a lot of things he has bought them! I
+myself saw him buy a horse and cart to-day of the innkeeper. Evidently
+there are such people in the world. I must go and take a look at him."
+
+When Elis�y heard that, he understood that they were praising him, and
+so he did not go to buy the cow. He returned to the innkeeper and gave
+him the money for the horse. He hitched it up and drove with the flour
+to the house. When he drove up to the gate, he stopped and climbed down
+from the cart. When the people of the house saw the horse, they were
+surprised. They thought that he had bought the horse for them, but did
+not dare say so. The master came out to open the gates.
+
+"Grandfather, where did you get that horse?"
+
+"I bought it," he said. "I got it cheap. Mow some grass and put it in
+the cart, so that the horse may have some for the night. And take off
+the bag!"
+
+The master unhitched the horse, carried the bag to the granary, mowed a
+lot of grass, and put it into the cart. They lay down to sleep. Elis�y
+slept in the street, and thither he had carried his wallet in the
+evening. All the people fell asleep. Elis�y got up, tied his wallet, put
+on his shoes and his caftan, and started down the road to catch up with
+Ef�m.
+
+
+VII.
+
+Elis�y had walked about five versts, when day began to break. He sat
+down under a tree, untied his wallet, and began to count his money. He
+found that he had seventeen roubles twenty kopeks left.
+
+"Well," he thought, "with this sum I cannot travel beyond the sea, but
+if I beg in Christ's name, I shall only increase my sin. Friend Ef�m
+will reach the place by himself, and will put up a candle for me. But I
+shall evidently never fulfil my vow. The master is merciful, and he will
+forgive me."
+
+Elis�y got up, slung his wallet over his shoulders, and turned back. He
+made a circle around the village so that people might not see him. And
+soon he reached home. On his way out he had found it hard: it was hard
+keeping up with Ef�m; but on his way home God made it easy for him, for
+he did not know what weariness was. Walking was just play to him, and he
+swayed his staff, and made as much as seventy versts a day.
+
+Elis�y came back home. The harvest was all in. The home folk were glad
+to see the old man. They asked all about him, why he had left his
+companion and why he had not gone to Jerusalem, but had returned home.
+Elis�y did not tell them anything.
+
+"God did not grant me that I should," he said. "I spent my money on the
+way, and got separated from my companion. And so I did not go. Forgive
+me for Christ's sake."
+
+He gave the old woman what money he had left. He asked all about the
+home matters: everything was right; everything had been attended to and
+nothing missed, and all were living in peace and agreement.
+
+Ef�m's people heard that very day that Elis�y had come back, and so they
+came to inquire about their old man. And Elis�y told them the same
+story.
+
+"You see," he said, "the old man started to walk briskly, and three days
+before St. Peter's day we lost each other. I wanted to catch up with
+him, but it happened that I spent all my money and could not go on, so I
+returned home."
+
+The people marvelled how it was that such a clever man had acted so
+foolishly as to start and not reach the place and merely spend his
+money. They wondered awhile, and forgot about it. Elis�y, too, forgot
+about it. He began to work about the house: he got the wood ready for
+the winter with his son, threshed the grain with the women, thatched the
+sheds, gathered in the bees, and gave ten hives with the young brood to
+his neighbour. When he got all the work done, he sent his son out to
+earn money, and himself sat down in the winter to plait bast shoes and
+hollow out blocks for the hives.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+All that day that Elis�y passed with the sick people, Ef�m waited for
+his companion. He walked but a short distance and sat down. He waited
+and waited, and fell asleep; when he awoke, he sat awhile,--but his
+companion did not turn up. He kept a sharp lookout for him, but the sun
+was going down behind a tree, and still Elis�y was not there.
+
+"I wonder whether he has not passed by me," he thought. "Maybe somebody
+drove him past, and he did not see me while I was asleep. But how could
+he help seeing me? In the steppe you can see a long distance off. If I
+go back, he may be marching on, and we shall only get farther separated
+from each other. I will walk on,--we shall meet at the resting-place for
+the night."
+
+When he came to a village, he asked the village officer to look out for
+an old man and bring him to the house where he stayed. Elis�y did not
+come there for the night. Ef�m marched on, and asked everybody whether
+they had seen a bald-headed old man. No one had seen him. Ef�m was
+surprised and walked on.
+
+"We shall meet somewhere in Odessa," he thought, "or on the boat," and
+then he stopped thinking about it.
+
+On the road he fell in with a pilgrim. The pilgrim, in calotte, cassock,
+and long hair, had been to Mount Athos, and was now going for the second
+time to Jerusalem. They met at a hostelry, and they had a chat and
+started off together.
+
+They reached Odessa without any accident. They waited for three days for
+a ship. There were many pilgrims there, and they had come together from
+all directions. Again Ef�m asked about Elis�y, but nobody had seen him.
+
+Ef�m provided himself with a passport,--that cost five roubles. He had
+forty roubles left for his round trip, and he bought bread and herring
+for the voyage. The ship was loaded, then the pilgrims were admitted,
+and Tar�sych sat down beside the pilgrim he had met. The anchors were
+weighed, they pushed off from the shore, and the ship sailed across the
+sea.
+
+During the day they had good sailing; in the evening a wind arose, rain
+fell, and the ship began to rock and to be washed by the waves. The
+people grew excited; the women began to shriek, and such men as were
+weak ran up and down the ship, trying to find a safe place. Ef�m, too,
+was frightened, but he did not show it: where he had sat down on the
+floor on boarding the ship by the side of Tamb�v peasants, he sat
+through the night and the following day; all of them held on to their
+wallets and did not speak. On the third day it grew calmer. On the fifth
+day they landed at Constantinople.
+
+Some of the pilgrims went ashore there, to visit the Cathedral of St.
+Sophia, which now the Turks hold; Tar�sych did not go, but remained on
+board the ship. All he did was to buy some white bread. They remained
+there a day, and then again sailed through the sea. They stopped at
+Smyrna town, and at another city by the name of Alexandria, and safely
+reached the city of Jaffa. In Jaffa all pilgrims go ashore: from there
+it is seventy versts on foot to Jerusalem. At the landing the people had
+quite a scare: the ship was high, and the people were let down into
+boats below; but the boats were rocking all the time, and two people
+were let down past the boat and got a ducking, but otherwise all went
+safely.
+
+When all were ashore, they went on afoot; on the third day they reached
+Jerusalem at dinner-time. They stopped in a suburb, in a Russian
+hostelry; there they had their passports stamped and ate their dinner,
+and then they followed a pilgrim to the holy places. It was too early
+yet to be admitted to the Sepulchre of the Lord, so they went to the
+Monastery of the Patriarch. There all the worshippers were gathered, and
+the female sex was put apart from the male. They were all ordered to
+take off their shoes and sit in a circle. A monk came out with a towel,
+and began to wash everybody's feet. He would wash, and rub them clean,
+and kiss them, and thus he went around the whole circle. He washed
+Ef�m's feet and kissed them. They celebrated vigils and matins, and
+placed a candle, and served a mass for the parents. There they were fed,
+and received wine to drink.
+
+On the following morning they went to the cell of Mary of Egypt, where
+she took refuge. There they placed candles, and a mass was celebrated.
+From there they went to Abraham's Monastery. They saw the Sebak garden,
+the place where Abraham wanted to sacrifice his son to God. Then they
+went to the place where Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene, and to the
+Church of Jacob, the brother of the Lord. The pilgrim showed them all
+the places, and in every place he told how much money they ought to
+give. At dinner they returned to the hostelry. They ate, and were just
+getting ready to lie down to sleep, when the pilgrim, who was rummaging
+through his clothes, began to sigh.
+
+"They have pulled out my pocketbook with money in it," he said. "I had
+twenty-three roubles,--two ten-rouble bills, and three in change."
+
+The pilgrim felt badly about it, but nothing could be done, and all went
+to sleep.
+
+
+IX.
+
+As Ef�m went to sleep, a temptation came over him.
+
+"They have not taken the pilgrim's money," he thought, "he did not have
+any. Nowhere did he offer anything. He told me to give, but he himself
+did not offer any. He took a rouble from me."
+
+As Ef�m was thinking so, he began to rebuke himself:
+
+"How dare I judge the man, and commit a sin. I will not sin." The moment
+he forgot himself, he again thought that the pilgrim had a sharp eye on
+money, and that it was unlikely that they had taken the money from him.
+"He never had any money," he thought. "It's only an excuse."
+
+They got up before evening and went to an early mass at the Church of
+the Resurrection,--to the Sepulchre of the Lord. The pilgrim did not
+leave Ef�m's side, but walked with him all the time.
+
+They came to the church. There was there collected a large crowd of
+worshippers, Greeks, and Armenians, and Turks, and Syrians. Ef�m came
+with the people to the Holy Gate. A monk led them. He took them past the
+Turkish guard to the place where the Saviour was taken from the cross
+and anointed, and where candles were burning in nine large candlesticks.
+He showed and explained everything to them. Ef�m placed a candle there.
+Then the monks led Ef�m to the right over steps to Golgotha, where the
+cross stood; there Ef�m prayed; then Ef�m was shown the cleft where the
+earth was rent to the lowermost regions; then he was shown the place
+where Christ's hands and feet had been nailed to the cross, and then he
+was shown Adam's grave, where Christ's blood dropped on his bones. Then
+they came to the rock on which Christ sat when they put the wreath of
+thorns on his head; then to the post to which Christ was tied when he
+was beaten. Then Ef�m saw the stone with the two holes, for Christ's
+feet. They wanted to show him other things, but the people hastened
+away: all hurried to the grotto of the Lord's Sepulchre. Some foreign
+mass was just ended, and the Russian began. Ef�m followed the people to
+the grotto.
+
+He wanted to get away from the pilgrim, for in thought he still sinned
+against him, but the pilgrim stuck to him, and went with him to mass at
+the Sepulchre of the Lord. They wanted to stand close to it, but were
+too late. There was such a crowd there that it was not possible to move
+forward or back. Ef�m stood there and looked straight ahead and prayed,
+but every once in awhile he felt his purse, to see whether it was in his
+pocket. His thoughts were divided; now he thought that the pilgrim had
+deceived him; and then he thought, if he had not deceived him, and the
+pocketbook had really been stolen, the same might happen to him.
+
+
+X.
+
+Ef�m stood there and prayed and looked ahead into the chapel where the
+Sepulchre itself was, and where over the Sepulchre thirty-six lamps were
+burning. Ef�m looked over the heads to see the marvellous thing: under
+the very lamps, where the blessed fire was burning, in front of all, he
+saw an old man in a coarse caftan, with a bald spot shining on his whole
+head, and he looked very much like Elis�y Bodr�v.
+
+"He resembles Elis�y," he thought. "But how can it be he? He could not
+have got here before me. The previous ship started a week ahead of us.
+He could not have been on that ship. On our ship he was not, for I saw
+all the pilgrims."
+
+Just as Ef�m was thinking this, the old man began to pray, and made
+three bows: once in front of him, to God, and twice to either side, to
+all the Orthodox people. And as the old man turned his head to the
+right, Ef�m recognized him. Sure enough, it was Bodr�v: it was his
+blackish, curly beard, and the gray streak on his cheeks, and his brows,
+his eyes, his nose, and full face,--all his. Certainly it was he, Elis�y
+Bodr�v.
+
+Ef�m was glad that he had found his companion, and he marvelled how
+Elis�y could have got there ahead of him.
+
+"How in the world did Bodr�v get to that place in front?" he thought.
+"No doubt he met a man who knew how to get him there. When all go out, I
+will hunt him up, and I will drop the pilgrim in the colette, and will
+walk with him. Maybe he will take me to the front place."
+
+Ef�m kept an eye on Elis�y, so as not to lose him. When the masses were
+over, the people began to stir. As they went up to kiss the Sepulchre,
+they crowded and pushed Ef�m to one side. He was frightened lest his
+purse should be stolen. He put his hand to his purse and tried to make
+his way out into the open. When he got out, he walked and walked, trying
+to find Elis�y, both on the outside and in the church. In the church he
+saw many people in the cells: some ate, and drank wine, and slept there,
+and read their prayers. But Elis�y was not to be found. Ef�m returned to
+the hostelry, but he did not find his companion there either. On that
+evening the pilgrim, too, did not come back. He was gone, and had not
+returned the rouble to Ef�m. So Ef�m was left alone.
+
+On the following day Ef�m went again to the Sepulchre of the Lord with a
+Tamb�v peasant, with whom he had journeyed on the ship. He wanted to
+make his way to the front, but he was again pushed back, and so he stood
+at a column and prayed. He looked ahead of him, and there in front,
+under the lamps, at the very Sepulchre of the Lord, stood Elis�y. He had
+extended his hands, like a priest at the altar, and his bald spot shone
+over his whole head.
+
+"Now," thought Ef�m, "I will not miss him."
+
+He made his way to the front, but Elis�y was not there. Evidently he had
+left. On the third day he again went to the Sepulchre of the Lord, and
+there he saw Elis�y standing in the holiest place, in sight of
+everybody, and his hands were stretched out, and he looked up, as though
+he saw something above him. And his bald spot shone over his whole head.
+
+"Now," thought Ef�m, "I will certainly not miss him; I will go and stand
+at the entrance, and then he cannot escape me."
+
+Ef�m went out and stood there for a long time. He stood until after
+noon: all the people had passed out, but Elis�y was not among them.
+
+Ef�m passed six weeks in Jerusalem, and visited all the places,
+Bethlehem, and Bethany, and the Jordan, and had a stamp put on a new
+shirt at the Lord's Sepulchre, to be buried in it, and filled a bottle
+of Jordan water, and got some earth, and candles with blessed fire, and
+in eight places inscribed names for the mass of the dead. He spent all
+his money and had just enough left to get home on, and so he started for
+home. He reached Jaffa, boarded a ship, landed at Odessa, and walked
+toward his home.
+
+
+XI.
+
+Ef�m walked by himself the same way he had come out. As he was getting
+close to his village, he began to worry again about how things were
+going at his house without him. In a year, he thought, much water runs
+by. It takes a lifetime to get together a home, but it does not take
+long to ruin it. He wondered how his son had done without him, how the
+spring had opened, how the cattle had wintered, and whether the hut was
+well built. Ef�m reached the spot where the year before he had parted
+from Elis�y. It was not possible to recognize the people. Where the year
+before they had suffered want, now there was plenty. Everything grew
+well in the field. The people picked up again and forgot their former
+misery. In the evening Ef�m reached the very village where the year
+before Elis�y had fallen behind. He had just entered the village, when a
+little girl in a white shirt came running out of a hut.
+
+"Grandfather, grandfather! Come to our house!"
+
+Ef�m wanted to go on, but the girl would not let him. She took hold of
+his coat and laughed and pulled him to the hut. A woman with a boy came
+out on the porch, and she, too, beckoned to him:
+
+"Come in, grandfather, and eat supper with us and stay overnight!"
+
+Ef�m stepped in.
+
+"I can, at least, ask about Elis�y," he thought. "This is the very hut
+into which he went to get a drink."
+
+Ef�m went inside. The woman took off his wallet, gave him water to wash
+himself, and seated him at the table. She fetched milk, cheese, cakes,
+and porridge, and placed it all on the table. Tar�sych thanked her and
+praised the people for being hospitable to pilgrims. The woman shook her
+head.
+
+"We cannot help receiving pilgrims," she said. "We received life from a
+pilgrim. We lived forgetting God, and God punished us in such a way that
+all of us were waiting for death. Last summer we came to such a point
+that we were all lying down sick and starved. We should certainly have
+died, but God sent us an old man like you. He stepped in during the
+daytime to get a drink; when he saw us, he took pity on us and remained
+at our house. He gave us to eat and to drink, and put us on our feet
+again. He cleared our land from debt, and bought a horse and cart and
+left it with us."
+
+The old woman entered the room, and interrupted her speech:
+
+"We do not know," she said, "whether he was a man or an angel of the
+Lord. He was good to us all, and pitied us, and then went away without
+giving his name, so that we do not know for whom to pray to God. I see
+it as though it happened just now: I was lying down and waiting for
+death to come; I looked up and saw a man come in,--just a simple,
+bald-headed man,--and ask for a drink. I, sinful woman, thought that he
+was a tramp, but see what he did! When he saw us he put down his wallet,
+right in this spot, and opened it."
+
+The girl broke in.
+
+"No, granny," she said, "first he put his wallet in the middle of the
+room, and only later did he put it on the bench."
+
+And they began to dispute and to recall his words and deeds: where he
+had sat down, and where he had slept, and what he had done, and what he
+had said to each.
+
+Toward evening the master of the house came home on a horse, and he,
+too, began to tell about Elis�y, and how he had stayed at their house.
+
+"If he had not come to us," he said, "we should all of us have died in
+sin. We were dying in despair, and we murmured against God and men. But
+he put us on our feet, and through him we found out God, and began to
+believe in good people. May Christ save him! Before that we lived like
+beasts, and he has made men of us."
+
+They gave Ef�m to eat and to drink, and gave him a place to sleep, and
+themselves went to bed.
+
+As Ef�m lay down, he could not sleep, and Elis�y did not leave his mind,
+but he thought of how he had seen him three times in Jerusalem in the
+foremost place.
+
+"So this is the way he got ahead of me," he thought. "My work may be
+accepted or not, but his the Lord has accepted."
+
+In the morning Ef�m bade the people good-bye: they filled his wallet
+with cakes and went to work, while Ef�m started out on the road.
+
+
+XII.
+
+Ef�m was away precisely a year. In the spring he returned home.
+
+He reached his house in the evening. His son was not at home,--he was in
+the dram-shop. He returned intoxicated, and Ef�m began to ask him about
+the house. He saw by everything that the lad had got into bad ways
+without him. He had spent all the money, and the business he had
+neglected. His father scolded him, and he answered his father with rude
+words.
+
+"You ought to have come back yourself," he said. "Instead, you went away
+and took all the money with you, and now you make me responsible."
+
+The old man became angry and beat his son.
+
+The next morning Ef�m Tar�sych went to the elder to talk to him about
+his son. As he passed Elis�y's farm, Elis�y's wife was standing on the
+porch and greeting him:
+
+"Welcome, friend!" she said. "Did you, dear man, have a successful
+journey?"
+
+Ef�m Tar�sych stopped.
+
+"Thank God," he said, "I have been at Jerusalem, but I lost your husband
+on the way. I hear that he is back."
+
+And the old woman started to talk to him, for she was fond of babbling.
+
+"He is back, my dear; he has been back for quite awhile. He returned
+soon after Assumption day. We were so glad to see him back. It was
+lonely without him. Not that we mean his work,--for he is getting old.
+But he is the head, and it is jollier for us. How happy our lad was!
+Without him, he said, it was as without light for the eyes. It was
+lonely without him, my dear. We love him so much!"
+
+"Well, is he at home now?"
+
+"At home he is, neighbour, in the apiary, brushing in the swarms. He
+says it was a fine swarming season. The old man does not remember when
+there has been such a lot of bees. God gives us not according to our
+sins, he says. Come in, dear one! He will be so glad to see you."
+
+Ef�m walked through the vestibule and through the yard to the apiary, to
+see Elis�y. When he came inside the apiary, he saw Elis�y standing
+without a net, without gloves, in a gray caftan, under a birch-tree,
+extending his arms and looking up, and his bald spot shone over his
+whole head, just as he had stood in Jerusalem at the Lord's Sepulchre,
+and above him, through the birch-tree, the sun glowed, and above his
+head the golden bees circled in the form of a wreath, and did not sting
+him. Ef�m stopped.
+
+Elis�y's wife called out to her husband:
+
+"Your friend is here."
+
+Elis�y looked around. He was happy, and walked over toward his friend,
+softly brushing the bees out of his beard.
+
+"Welcome, friend, welcome, dear man! Did you have a successful journey?"
+
+"My feet took me there, and I have brought you some water from the river
+Jordan. Come and get it! But whether the Lord has received my work--"
+
+"Thank God! Christ save you!"
+
+Ef�m was silent.
+
+"I was there with my feet, but in spirit you were there, or somebody
+else--"
+
+"It is God's work, my friend, God's work."
+
+"On my way home I stopped at the hut where I lost you."
+
+Elis�y was frightened, and he hastened to say:
+
+"It is God's work, my friend, God's work. Well, won't you step in? I
+will bring some honey."
+
+And Elis�y changed the subject, and began to speak of home matters.
+
+Ef�m heaved a sigh. He did not mention the people of the hut to Elis�y,
+nor what he had seen in Jerusalem. And he understood that God has
+enjoined that each man shall before his death carry out his vow--with
+love and good deeds.
+
+
+
+
+WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO
+
+
+Shoemaker Mart�n Avdy�ich lived in the city. He lived in a basement, in
+a room with one window. The window looked out on the street. Through it
+the people could be seen as they passed by: though only the feet were
+visible, Mart�n Avdy�ich could tell the men by their boots. He had lived
+for a long time in one place and had many acquaintances. It was a rare
+pair of boots in the neighbourhood that had not gone once or twice
+through his hands. Some he had resoled; on others he had put patches, or
+fixed the seams, or even put on new uppers. Frequently he saw his own
+work through the window. He had much to do, for he did honest work, put
+in strong material, took no more than was fair, and kept his word. If he
+could get a piece of work done by a certain time he undertook to do it,
+and if not, he would not cheat, but said so in advance. Everybody knew
+Avdy�ich, and his work never stopped.
+
+Avdy�ich had always been a good man, but in his old age he thought more
+of his soul and came near unto God. Even while Mart�n had been living
+with a master, his wife had died, and he had been left with a boy three
+years of age. Their children did not live long. All the elder children
+had died before. At first Mart�n had intended sending his son to his
+sister in a village, but then he felt sorry for the little lad, and
+thought: "It will be hard for my Kapit�shka to grow up in somebody
+else's family, and so I will keep him."
+
+Avdy�ich left his master, and took up quarters with his son. But God did
+not grant Avdy�ich any luck with his children. No sooner had the boy
+grown up so as to be a help to his father and a joy to him, than a
+disease fell upon him and he lay down and had a fever for a week and
+died. Mart�n buried his son, and was in despair. He despaired so much
+that he began to murmur against God. He was so downhearted that more
+than once he asked God to let him die, and rebuked God for having taken
+his beloved only son, and not him. He even stopped going to church.
+
+One day an old man, a countryman of Avdy�ich's, returning from
+Tr�itsa,--he had been a pilgrim for eight years,--came to see him.
+Avdy�ich talked with him and began to complain of his sorrow:
+
+"I have even no desire to live any longer, godly man. If I could only
+die. That is all I am praying God for. I am a man without any hope."
+
+And the old man said to him:
+
+"You do not say well, Mart�n. We cannot judge God's works. Not by our
+reason, but by God's judgment do we live. God has determined that your
+son should die, and you live. Evidently it is better so. The reason you
+are in despair is that you want to live for your own enjoyment."
+
+"What else shall we live for?" asked Mart�n.
+
+And the old man said:
+
+"We must live for God, Mart�n. He gives us life, and for Him must we
+live. When you shall live for Him and shall not worry about anything,
+life will be lighter for you."
+
+Mart�n was silent, and he said:
+
+"How shall we live for God?"
+
+And the old man said:
+
+"Christ has shown us how to live for God. Do you know how to read? If
+so, buy yourself a Gospel and read it, and you will learn from it how to
+live for God. It tells all about it."
+
+These words fell deep into Avdy�ich's heart. And he went that very day
+and bought himself a New Testament in large letters, and began to read.
+
+Avdy�ich had meant to read it on holidays only, but when he began to
+read it, his heart was so rejoiced that he read it every day. Many a
+time he buried himself so much in reading that all the kerosene would be
+spent in the lamp, but he could not tear himself away from the book. And
+Avdy�ich read in it every evening, and the more he read, the clearer it
+became to him what God wanted of him, and how he should live for God;
+and his heart grew lighter and lighter. Formerly, when he lay down to
+sleep, he used to groan and sob and think of his Kapit�shka, but now he
+only muttered:
+
+"Glory be to Thee, glory to Thee, O Lord! Thy will be done!"
+
+Since then Avdy�ich's life had been changed. Formerly, he used on a
+holiday to frequent the tavern, to drink tea, and would not decline a
+drink of v�dka. He would drink a glass with an acquaintance and, though
+he would not be drunk, he would come out of the tavern in a happier
+mood, and then he would speak foolish things, and would scold, or
+slander a man. Now all that passed away from him. His life came to be
+calm and happy. In the morning he sat down to work, and when he got
+through, he took the lamp from the hook, put it down on the table,
+fetched the book from the shelf, opened it, and began to read it. And
+the more he read, the better he understood it, and his mind was clearer
+and his heart lighter.
+
+One evening Mart�n read late into the night. He had before him the
+Gospel of St. Luke. He read the sixth chapter and the verses: "And unto
+him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him
+that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to
+every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask
+them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to
+them likewise."
+
+And he read also the other verses, where the Lord says: "And why call ye
+me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Whosoever cometh to
+me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he
+is like: he is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and
+laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat
+vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded
+upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that
+without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the
+stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of
+that house was great."
+
+When Avdy�ich read these words, there was joy in his heart. He took off
+his glasses, put them on the book, leaned his arms on the table, and
+fell to musing. And he began to apply these words to his life, and he
+thought:
+
+"Is my house on a rock, or on the sand? It is well if it is founded on a
+rock: it is so easy to sit alone,--it seems to me that I am doing
+everything which God has commanded; but if I dissipate, I shall sin
+again. I will just proceed as at present. It is so nice! Help me, God!"
+
+This he thought, and he wanted to go to sleep, but he was loath to tear
+himself away from the book. And he began to read the seventh chapter. He
+read about the centurion, about the widow's son, about the answer to
+John's disciples, and he reached the passage where the rich Pharisee
+invited the Lord to be his guest, and where the sinning woman anointed
+His feet and washed them with her tears, and he justified her. And he
+reached the 44th verse, and read: "And he turned to the woman, and said
+unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou
+gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears,
+and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but
+this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My
+head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my
+feet with ointment."
+
+When he had read these verses, he thought:
+
+"He gave no water for His feet; he gave no kiss; he did not anoint His
+head with oil."
+
+And again Avdy�ich took off his glasses and placed them on the book, and
+fell to musing.
+
+"Evidently he was just such a Pharisee as I am. He, no doubt, thought
+only of himself: how to drink tea, and be warm, and in comfort, but he
+did not think of the guest. About himself he thought, but no care did he
+have for the guest. And who was the guest?--The Lord Himself. Would I
+have done so, if He had come to me?"
+
+And Avdy�ich leaned his head on both his arms and did not notice how he
+fell asleep.
+
+"Mart�n!" suddenly something seemed to breathe over his very ear.
+
+Mart�n shuddered in his sleep: "Who is that?"
+
+He turned around and looked at the door, but there was nobody there. He
+bent down again, to go to sleep. Suddenly he heard distinctly:
+
+"Mart�n, oh, Mart�n, remember, to-morrow I will come to the street."
+
+Mart�n awoke, rose from his chair, and began to rub his eyes. He did
+not know himself whether he had heard these words in his dream or in
+waking. He put out the light and went to sleep.
+
+Avdy�ich got up in the morning before daybreak, said his prayers, made a
+fire, put the beet soup and porridge on the stove, started the samov�r,
+tied on his apron, and sat down at the window to work. And, as he sat
+there at work, he kept thinking of what had happened the night before.
+His thoughts were divided: now he thought that it had only seemed so to
+him, and now again he thought he had actually heard the voice.
+
+"Well," he thought, "such things happen."
+
+Mart�n was sitting at the window and not so much working as looking out
+into the street, and if somebody passed in unfamiliar boots, he bent
+over to look out of the window, in order to see not merely the boots,
+but also the face. A janitor passed by in new felt boots; then a
+water-carrier went past; then an old soldier of the days of Nicholas, in
+patched old felt boots, holding a shovel in his hands, came in a line
+with the window. Avdy�ich recognized him by his felt boots. The old
+man's name was Step�nych, and he was living with a neighbouring merchant
+for charity's sake. It was his duty to help the janitor. Step�nych began
+to clear away the snow opposite Avdy�ich's window. Avdy�ich cast a
+glance at him and went back to his work.
+
+"Evidently I am losing my senses in my old age," Avdy�ich laughed to
+himself. "Step�nych is clearing away the snow, and I thought that Christ
+was coming to see me. I, old fool, am losing my senses." But before he
+had made a dozen stitches, something drew him again toward the window.
+He looked out, and there he saw Step�nych leaning his shovel against the
+wall and either warming or resting himself.
+
+He was an old, broken-down man, and evidently shovelling snow was above
+his strength. Avdy�ich thought: "I ought to give him some tea;
+fortunately the samov�r is just boiling." He stuck the awl into the
+wood, got up, placed the samov�r on the table, put some tea in the
+teapot, and tapped with his finger at the window. Step�nych turned
+around and walked over to the window. Avdy�ich beckoned to him and went
+to open the door.
+
+"Come in and get warmed up!" he said. "I suppose you are feeling cold."
+
+"Christ save you! I have a breaking in my bones," said Step�nych.
+
+He came in, shook off the snow and wiped his boots so as not to track
+the floor, but he was tottering all the time.
+
+"Don't take the trouble to rub your boots. I will clean up,--that is my
+business. Come and sit down!" said Avdy�ich. "Here, drink a glass of
+tea!"
+
+Avdy�ich filled two glasses and moved one of them up to his guest, and
+himself poured his glass into the saucer and began to blow at it.
+
+Step�nych drank his glass; then he turned it upside down, put the lump
+of sugar on top of it, and began to express his thanks; but it was
+evident that he wanted another glass.
+
+"Have some more," said Avdy�ich; and he poured out a glass for his guest
+and one for himself. Avdy�ich drank his tea, but something kept drawing
+his attention to the window.
+
+"Are you waiting for anybody?" asked the guest.
+
+"Am I waiting for anybody? It is really a shame to say for whom I am
+waiting: no, I am not exactly waiting, but a certain word has fallen
+deep into my heart: I do not know myself whether it is a vision, or
+what. You see, my friend, I read the Gospel yesterday about Father
+Christ and how He suffered and walked the earth. I suppose you have
+heard of it?"
+
+"Yes, I have," replied Step�nych, "but we are ignorant people,--we do
+not know how to read."
+
+"Well, so I read about how He walked the earth. I read, you know, about
+how He came to the Pharisee, and the Pharisee did not give Him a good
+reception. Well, my friend, as I was reading last night about that very
+thing, I wondered how he could have failed to honour Father Christ. If
+He should have happened to come to me, for example, I should have done
+everything to receive Him. But he did not receive Him well. As I was
+thinking of it, I fell asleep. And as I dozed off I heard some one
+calling me by name: I got up and it was as though somebody were
+whispering to me: 'Wait,' he said: 'I will come to-morrow.' This he
+repeated twice. Would you believe it,--it has been running through my
+head,--I blame myself for it,--and I am, as it were, waiting for Father
+Christ."
+
+Step�nych shook his head and said nothing. He finished his glass and put
+it sidewise, but Avdy�ich took it again and filled it with tea.
+
+"Drink, and may it do you good! I suppose when He, the Father, walked
+the earth, He did not neglect anybody, and kept the company mostly of
+simple folk. He visited mostly simple folk, and chose His disciples
+mostly from people of our class, labouring men, like ourselves the
+sinners. He who raises himself up, He said, shall be humbled, and he who
+humbles himself shall be raised. You call me Lord, He said, but I will
+wash your feet. He who wants to be the first, He said, let him be
+everybody's servant; because, He said, blessed are the poor, the meek
+the humble, and the merciful."
+
+Step�nych forgot his tea. He was an old man and easily moved to tears.
+He sat there and listened, and tears flowed down his cheeks.
+
+"Take another glass!" said Avdy�ich.
+
+But Step�nych made the sign of the cross, thanked him for the tea,
+pushed the glass away from him, and got up.
+
+"Thank you, Mart�n Avdy�ich," he said. "You were hospitable to me, and
+have given food to my body and my soul."
+
+"You are welcome. Come in again,--I shall be glad to see you," said
+Avdy�ich.
+
+Step�nych went away. Mart�n poured out the last tea, finished another
+glass, put away the dishes, and again sat down at the window to
+work,--to tap a boot. And as he worked, he kept looking out of the
+window,--waiting for Christ and thinking of Him and His works. And all
+kinds of Christ's speeches ran through his head.
+
+There passed by two soldiers, one in Crown boots, the other in boots of
+his own; then the proprietor of a neighbouring house came by in clean
+galoshes, and then a baker with a basket. All of these went past the
+window, and then a woman in woollen stockings and peasant shoes came in
+line with the window. She went by the window and stopped near a wall.
+Avdy�ich looked at her through the window, and saw that she was a
+strange, poorly dressed woman, with a child: she had stopped with her
+back to the wind and was trying to wrap the child, though she did not
+have anything to wrap it in. The woman's clothes were for the summer,
+and scanty at that. Avdy�ich could hear the child cry in the street, and
+her vain attempt to quiet it. Avdy�ich got up and went out of his room
+and up to the staircase, and called out:
+
+"Clever Woman! Clever woman!"
+
+The woman heard him and turned around.
+
+"Why are you standing there in the cold with the child? Come in here! It
+will be easier for you to wrap the child in a warm room. Here, this
+way!"
+
+The woman was surprised. She saw an old man in an apron, with glasses
+over his nose, calling to her. She followed him in.
+
+They went down the stairs and entered the room, and Mart�n took the
+woman up to the bed.
+
+"Sit down here, clever woman, nearer to the stove, and get warm and feed
+the child."
+
+"There is no milk in my breasts,--I have not had anything to eat since
+morning," said the woman, but still she took the child to her breast.
+
+Avdy�ich shook his head, went to the table, fetched some bread and a
+bowl, opened a door in the stove, filled the bowl with beet soup, and
+took out the pot of porridge, but it was not done yet. He put the soup
+on the table, put down the bread, and took off a rag from a hook and put
+it down on the table.
+
+"Sit down, clever woman, and eat, and I will sit with the babe,--I used
+to have children of my own, and so I know how to take care of them."
+
+The woman made the sign of the cross, sat down at the table, and began
+to eat, while Avdy�ich seated himself on the bed with the child. He
+smacked his lips at it, but could not smack well, for he had no teeth.
+The babe kept crying all the time. Avdy�ich tried to frighten it with
+his finger: he quickly carried his finger down toward the babe's mouth
+and pulled it away again. He did not put his finger into the child's
+mouth, because it was black,--all smeared with pitch. But the child took
+a fancy for his finger and grew quiet, and then began even to smile.
+Avdy�ich, too, was happy. The woman was eating in the meantime and
+telling him who she was and whither she was going.
+
+"I am a soldier's wife," she said. "My husband was driven somewhere far
+away eight months ago, and I do not know where he is. I had been working
+as a cook when the baby was born; they would not keep me with the child.
+This is the third month that I have been without a place. I have spent
+all I had saved. I wanted to hire out as a wet-nurse, but they will not
+take me: they say that I am too thin. I went to a merchant woman, where
+our granny lives, and she promised she would take me. I thought she
+wanted me to come at once, but she told me she wanted me next week. She
+lives a distance away. I am all worn out and have worn out the dear
+child, too. Luckily our landlady pities us for the sake of Christ, or
+else I do not know how we should have lived until now."
+
+Avdy�ich heaved a sigh, and said:
+
+"And have you no warm clothes?"
+
+"Indeed, it is time now to have warm clothing, dear man! But yesterday I
+pawned my last kerchief for twenty kopeks."
+
+The woman went up to the bed and took her child, but Avdy�ich got up,
+went to the wall, rummaged there awhile, and brought her an old
+sleeveless cloak.
+
+"Take this!" he said. "It is an old piece, but you may use it to wrap
+yourself in."
+
+The woman looked at the cloak and at the old man, and took the cloak,
+and burst out weeping. Avdy�ich turned his face away; he crawled under
+the bed, pulled out a box, rummaged through it, and again sat down
+opposite the woman.
+
+And the woman said:
+
+"May Christ save you, grandfather! Evidently He sent me to your window.
+My child would have frozen to death. When I went out it was warm, but
+now it has turned dreadfully cold. It was He, our Father, who taught you
+to look through the window and have pity on me, sorrowful woman."
+
+Avdy�ich smiled, and said:
+
+"It is He who has instructed me: clever woman, there was good reason why
+I looked through the window."
+
+Mart�n told the soldier woman about his dream, and how he had heard a
+voice promising him that the Lord would come to see him on that day.
+
+"Everything is possible," said the woman. She got up, threw the cloak
+over her, wrapped the child in it, and began to bow to Avdy�ich and to
+thank him.
+
+"Accept this, for the sake of Christ," said Avdy�ich, giving her twenty
+kopeks, with which to redeem her kerchief.
+
+The woman made the sign of the cross, and so did Avdy�ich, and he saw
+the woman out.
+
+She went away. Avdy�ich ate some soup, put the things away, and sat down
+once more to work. He was working, but at the same time thinking of the
+window: whenever it grew dark there, he looked up to see who was
+passing. There went by acquaintances and strangers, and there was
+nothing peculiar.
+
+Suddenly Avdy�ich saw an old woman, a huckstress, stop opposite the very
+window. She was carrying a basket with apples. There were but few of
+them left,--evidently she had sold all, and over her shoulder she
+carried a bag with chips. No doubt, she had picked them up at some new
+building, and was on her way home. The bag was evidently pulling hard on
+her shoulder; she wanted to shift it to her other shoulder, so she let
+the bag down on the flagstones, set the apple-basket on a post, and
+began to shake down the chips. While she was doing that, a boy in a torn
+cap leaped out from somewhere, grasped any apple from the basket, and
+wanted to skip out, but the old woman saw him in time and turned around
+and grabbed the boy by the sleeve. The boy yanked and tried to get away,
+but the old woman held on to him with both her hands, knocked down his
+cap, and took hold of his hair. The boy cried, and the old woman
+scolded. Avdy�ich did not have time to put away the awl. He threw it on
+the floor, jumped out of the room, stumbled on the staircase, and
+dropped his glasses. He ran out into the street. The old woman was
+pulling the boy's hair and scolding him. She wanted to take him to a
+policeman; the little fellow struggled and tried to deny what he had
+done:
+
+"I did not take any, so why do you beat me? Let me go!"
+
+Avdy�ich tried to separate them. He took the boy's arm, and said:
+
+"Let him go, granny, forgive him for Christ's sake!"
+
+"I will forgive him in such a way that he will not forget until the new
+bath brooms are ripe. I will take the rascal to the police station!"
+
+Avdy�ich began to beg the old woman:
+
+"Let him go, granny, he will not do it again. Let him go, for Christ's
+sake!"
+
+The woman let go of him. The boy wanted to run, but Avdy�ich held on to
+him.
+
+"Beg the grandmother's forgiveness," he said. "Don't do that again,--I
+saw you take the apple."
+
+The boy began to cry, and he asked her forgiveness.
+
+"That's right. And now, take this apple!" Avdy�ich took an apple from
+the basket and gave it to the boy. "I will pay for it, granny," he said
+to the old woman.
+
+"You are spoiling these ragamuffins," said the old woman. "He ought to
+be rewarded in such a way that he should remember it for a week."
+
+"Oh, granny, granny!" said Avdy�ich. "That is according to our ways, but
+how is that according to God's ways? If he is to be whipped for an
+apple, what ought to be done with us for our sins?"
+
+The old woman grew silent.
+
+And Avdy�ich told the old woman the parable of the lord who forgave his
+servant his whole large debt, after which the servant went and took his
+fellow servant who was his debtor by the throat. The old woman listened
+to him, and the boy stood and listened, too.
+
+"God has commanded that we should forgive," said Avdy�ich, "or else we,
+too, shall not be forgiven. All are to be forgiven, but most of all an
+unthinking person."
+
+The old woman shook her head and sighed.
+
+"That is so," said the old woman, "but they are very much spoiled
+nowadays."
+
+"Then we old people ought to teach them," said Avdy�ich.
+
+"That is what I say," said the old woman. "I myself had seven of
+them,--but only one daughter is left now." And the old woman began to
+tell where and how she was living with her daughter, and how many
+grandchildren she had. "My strength is waning," she said, "but still I
+work. I am sorry for my grandchildren, and they are such nice
+children,--nobody else meets me the way they do. Aksy�tka will not go to
+anybody from me. 'Granny, granny dear, darling!'" And the old woman
+melted with tenderness.
+
+"Of course, he is but a child,--God be with him!" the old woman said
+about the boy.
+
+She wanted to lift the bag on her shoulders, when the boy jumped up to
+her, and said:
+
+"Let me carry it, granny! I am going that way."
+
+The old woman shook her head and threw the bag on the boy's shoulders.
+They walked together down the street. The old woman had forgotten to ask
+Avdy�ich to pay her for the apple. Avdy�ich stood awhile, looking at
+them and hearing them talk as they walked along.
+
+When they disappeared from sight, he returned to his room. He found his
+glasses on the staircase,--they were not broken,--and he picked up his
+awl and again sat down to work. He worked for awhile; he could not find
+the holes with the bristle, when he looked up and saw the lampman
+lighting the lamps.
+
+"It is evidently time to strike a light," he thought, and he got up and
+fixed the lamp and hung it on the hook, and sat down again to work. He
+finished a boot: he turned it around and looked at it, and he saw that
+it was well done. He put down his tool, swept up the clippings, put away
+the bristles and the remnants and the awls, took the lamp and put it on
+the table, and fetched the Gospel from the shelf. He wanted to open the
+book where he had marked it the day before with a morocco clipping, but
+he opened it in another place. And just as he went to open the Gospel,
+he thought of his dream of the night before. And just as he thought of
+it, it appeared to him as though something were moving and stepping
+behind him. He looked around, and, indeed, it looked as though people
+were standing in the dark corner, but he could not make out who they
+were. And a voice whispered to him:
+
+"Mart�n, oh, Mart�n, have you not recognized me?"
+
+"Whom?" asked Avdy�ich.
+
+"Me," said the voice. "It is I."
+
+And out of the dark corner came Step�nych, and he smiled and vanished
+like a cloud and was no more.
+
+"And it is I," said a voice.
+
+And out of the dark corner came the woman with the babe, and the woman
+smiled and the child laughed, and they, too, disappeared.
+
+"And it is I," said a voice.
+
+And out came the old woman and the boy with the apple, and both smiled
+and vanished.
+
+And joy fell on Avdy�ich's heart, and he made the sign of the cross, put
+on his glasses, and began to read the Gospel, there where he had opened
+it. And at the top of the page he read:
+
+"I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me
+drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in."
+
+And at the bottom of the page he read:
+
+"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren,
+ye have done it unto me." (Matt. xxv.)
+
+And Avdy�ich understood that his dream had not deceived him, that the
+Saviour had really come to him on that day, and that he had received
+Him.
+
+
+
+
+TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+
+
+THE FIEND PERSISTS, BUT GOD RESISTS
+
+
+In ancient times there lived a good master. He had plenty of everything,
+and many slaves served him. And the slaves prided themselves on their
+master. They said:
+
+"There is not a better master under heaven. He feeds us and dresses us
+well, and gives us work to do according to our strength, and never
+offends us with a word, and bears no grudge against any one; he is not
+like other masters who torture their slaves worse than cattle, and
+punish them with cause and without cause, and never say a good word to
+them. Our master wishes us good, and does us good, and speaks good words
+to us. We do not want any better life."
+
+Thus the slaves boasted of their master. And the devil was annoyed to
+see the slaves living well and in love with their master. And the devil
+took possession of one of the master's slaves, Aleb. He took possession
+of him and commanded him to seduce other slaves. And when all the slaves
+were resting and praising their master, Aleb raised his voice and said:
+
+"Brothers, in vain do you pride yourselves on the goodness of your
+master. Try to do the devil's bidding, and he, too, will be kind to you.
+We serve our master well, and please him in everything. He needs only
+to have a thing in mind, and we do it.--we guess his thoughts. Why,
+then, should he not be good to us? Stop doing his bidding and do him
+some wrong, and he will be like everybody else, and will repay evil with
+evil, much worse than the worst of masters."
+
+And the other slaves began to dispute with Aleb. They disputed and made
+a wager. Aleb undertook to anger the good master. He undertook to do so
+on condition that if he did not succeed in making him angry, he should
+lose his holiday garment, but if he did, each should give him his own
+holiday garment, and, besides, they promised to defend him against the
+master and to free him if the master should put him in irons or throw
+him into prison. They made this wager, and Aleb promised to anger the
+master on the following morning.
+
+Aleb was serving in the master's sheepfold and tended on costly
+thoroughbred rams. And so, when the good master came the next morning
+with his guests to the sheepfold to show them his favourite expensive
+rams, the devil's labourer winked to his companions: "Watch me now! I am
+going to anger the master." All the slaves gathered and looked through
+the door and over the enclosure, and the devil climbed a tree and looked
+from there into the yard, to see how his labourer was going to serve
+him. The master walked through the yard, showing his guests the sheep
+and lambs, and he wanted to show them his best ram.
+
+"The other rams are nice, too, but the one with the twisted horns is
+priceless, and I think more of him than of the pupil of my eye."
+
+The sheep and the lambs were shying from the people in the yard, and the
+guests could not get a good look at the expensive ram. The moment the
+ram stopped, the labourer of the devil, as though by accident,
+frightened the sheep, and they got all mixed. The guests could not make
+out which was the expensive ram. The master got tired of it, so he said:
+
+"Aleb, my dear friend, take the trouble carefully to catch the best ram
+with the twisted horns and to hold him awhile."
+
+The moment the master had said that, Aleb rushed forward, like a lion,
+into the midst of the rams and caught the priceless ram by his fleece.
+He got hold of the wool, and with one hand he seized the left hind leg
+and raised it and in the eyes of the master jerked it in such a way that
+it snapped like a linden post. Aleb had broken the ram's leg beneath the
+knee. The ram began to bleat and fell down on his fore legs. Aleb
+grasped the right leg while the left hung loose like a whip-cord. The
+guests and all the slaves groaned, and the devil rejoiced, when he saw
+how cleverly Aleb had done his work. The master looked blacker than
+night. He frowned, lowered his head, and did not say a word. The guests
+and the slaves were silent. They waited to see what would happen.
+
+The master was silent, then shook himself, as though he wanted to throw
+something off, and raised his head and lifted it to the sky. He looked
+at it for a short time, and the wrinkles on his face disappeared, and he
+smiled and lowered his eyes on Aleb. He looked at Aleb, and smiled, and
+said:
+
+"O Aleb, Aleb! Your master has commanded you to anger me. But my master
+is stronger than yours: you have not angered me, but I will anger your
+master. You were afraid that I would punish you, and you wanted to be
+free, Aleb. Know, then, that you will receive no punishment from me,
+and, since you wanted to be free, I free you in the presence of these my
+guests. Go in all four directions and take your holiday garment with
+you!"
+
+And the good master went with his guests to the house. But the devil
+ground his teeth and fell down from the tree and sank through the
+earth.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE GIRLS WISER THAN OLD PEOPLE
+
+
+It was an early Easter. They had just quit using sleighs. In the yards
+lay snow, and rills ran down the village. A large puddle had run down
+from a manure pile into a lane between two farms. And at this puddle two
+girls, one older than the other, had met. Both of them had been dressed
+by their mothers in new bodices. The little girl had a blue bodice, and
+the elder a yellow one with a design. Both had their heads wrapped in
+red kerchiefs. After mass the two girls went to the puddle, where they
+showed their new garments to each other, and began to play. They wanted
+to plash in the water. The little girl started to go into the puddle
+with her shoes on, but the older girl said to her:
+
+"Don't go, Mal�sha, your mother will scold you. I will take off my
+shoes, and you do the same."
+
+The girls took off their shoes, raised their skirts, and walked through
+the puddle toward each other. Mal�sha stepped in up to her ankles, and
+said:
+
+"It is deep, Ak�lka, I am afraid."
+
+"Never mind," she replied, "it will not be any deeper. Come straight
+toward me!" They came closer to each other. Ak�lka said:
+
+"Mal�sha, look out, and do not splash it up, but walk softly."
+
+She had barely said that when Mal�sha plumped her foot into the water
+and bespattered Ak�lka's bodice, and not only her bodice, but also her
+nose and eyes. When Ak�lka saw the spots on her bodice, she grew angry
+at Mal�sha, and scolded her, and ran after her, and wanted to strike
+her. Mal�sha was frightened and, seeing what trouble she had caused,
+jumped out of the puddle and ran home.
+
+Ak�lka's mother passed by; she saw her daughter's bodice bespattered and
+her shirt soiled.
+
+"Where, accursed one, did you get yourself so dirty?"
+
+"Mal�sha has purposely splashed it on me."
+
+Ak�lka's mother grasped Mal�sha and gave her a knock on the nape of her
+neck. Mal�sha began to howl, and her mother ran out of the house.
+
+"Why do you strike my daughter?" she began to scold her neighbour.
+
+One word brought back another, and the women began to quarrel. The men,
+too, ran out, and a big crowd gathered in the street. All were crying,
+and nobody could hear his neighbour. They scolded and cursed each other;
+one man gave another man a push, and a fight had begun, when Ak�lka's
+grandmother came out. She stepped in the midst of the peasants, and
+began to talk to them:
+
+"What are you doing, dear ones? Consider the holiday. This is a time for
+rejoicing. And see what sin you are doing!"
+
+They paid no attention to the old woman, and almost knocked her off her
+feet. She would never have stopped them, if it had not been for Ak�lka
+and Mal�sha. While the women exchanged words, Ak�lka wiped off her
+bodice, and went back to the puddle in the lane. She picked up a pebble
+and began to scratch the ground so as to let the water off into the
+street. While she was scratching, Mal�sha came up and began to help her:
+she picked up a chip and widened the rill. The peasants had begun to
+fight, just as the water went down the rill toward the place where the
+old woman was trying to separate the men. The girls ran, one from one
+side of the rill, the other from the other side.
+
+"Look out, Mal�sha, look out!" shouted Ak�lka.
+
+Mal�sha wanted to say something herself, but could not speak for
+laughter.
+
+The girls were running and laughing at a chip which was bobbing up and
+down the rill. They ran straight into the crowd of the peasants. The old
+woman saw them and said to the peasants:
+
+"Shame on you before God, men! You have started fighting on account of
+these two girls, and they have long ago forgotten it: the dear children
+have been playing nicely together. They are wiser than you."
+
+The men looked at the girls, and they felt ashamed. Then they laughed at
+themselves, and scattered to their farms.
+
+"Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the
+kingdom of heaven."
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO BROTHERS AND THE GOLD
+
+
+In ancient times there lived not far from Jerusalem two brothers, the
+elder named Athanasius, and the younger John. They lived in a mountain,
+not far from the city, and supported themselves on what people offered
+them. The brothers passed all their days at work. They worked not for
+themselves, but for the poor. Wherever were those who were oppressed by
+labour, or sick people, or orphans, or widows, thither the brothers
+went, and there they worked, and received no pay. Thus the two brothers
+passed the whole week away from each other, and met only on Saturday
+evening in their abode. On Sunday alone did they stay at home, and then
+they prayed and talked with each other. And an angel of the Lord came
+down to them and blessed them. On Monday they separated each in his own
+direction. Thus they lived for many years, and each week the angel of
+the Lord came down to them and blessed them.
+
+One Monday, when the brothers had already gone out to work and had gone
+each in his direction, the elder brother, Athanasius, was loath to part
+from his brother, and he stopped and looked back. John was walking with
+lowered head, in his direction, without looking back. But suddenly John,
+too, stopped and, as though he had suddenly noticed something, gazed at
+something, while shielding his eyes. Then he approached what he was
+gazing at, suddenly jumped to one side, and, without looking back, ran
+down-hill and up-hill again, away from the place, as though a wolf were
+after him. Athanasius was surprised. He went back to that spot, to see
+what it was that had so frightened his brother. He went up to it and
+saw something shining in the sun. He came nearer, and there lay a heap
+of gold on the ground, as though poured out from a measure. And
+Athanasius was still more surprised, both at the gold and at his
+brother's leap.
+
+"Why was he frightened, and why did he run away?" thought Athanasius.
+"There is no sin in gold. The sin is in man. With gold one may do wrong,
+but also some good. How many orphans and widows may be fed, how many
+naked people dressed, and the poor and sick aided with this gold! We now
+serve people, but our service is small, though it is to the best of our
+strength. With this gold, however, we can serve people better."
+
+Thus Athanasius thought, and he wanted to tell it all to his brother;
+but John was out of the range of hearing, and could be seen only as a
+speck the size of a beetle on another mountain.
+
+Athanasius took off his cloak, scooped up as much gold as he was able to
+carry away, threw it on his shoulder, and carried it into the city. He
+came to a hostelry and left the gold with the keeper, and went back for
+the rest. When he had brought all the gold, he went to the merchants,
+bought some land in the city, and stones and timber, and hired
+labourers, and began to build three houses.
+
+Athanasius lived for three months in the city, and built three houses
+there: one--an asylum for widows and orphans, another--a hospital for
+the sick and the lame, and a third--for pilgrims and for the needy. And
+Athanasius found three God-fearing old men, and one of them he placed in
+charge of the asylum, the second--of the hospital, and the third--of the
+hostelry. And Athanasius had still three thousand gold coins left. He
+gave each old man one thousand coins to distribute them to the poor.
+
+The three houses began to fill up with people, and the people began to
+praise Athanasius for everything he had done. And Athanasius was glad of
+that and did not feel like leaving the city. But he loved his brother
+and so he bade the people farewell and, without keeping a single coin,
+went back to his abode, wearing the same old garment in which he had
+come.
+
+As Athanasius was approaching his mountain, he thought:
+
+"My brother did not judge rightly when he jumped from the gold and ran
+away from it. Have I not done better?"
+
+And no sooner had Athanasius thought so than he saw the angel who used
+to bless him standing in the road and looking threateningly at him. And
+Athanasius was frightened and only said:
+
+"For what, O Lord?"
+
+And the angel opened his lips, and said:
+
+"Go hence! You are not worthy of living with your brother. One leap of
+your brother is worth all the deeds which you have done with your gold."
+
+And Athanasius began to speak of how many poor people and pilgrims he
+had fed, and how many orphans he had housed. And the angel said:
+
+"The devil who placed the gold there has also taught you these words."
+
+Then only did his conscience trouble him, and he saw that he had done
+his deeds not for God, and he wept and began to repent.
+
+The angel stepped out of the road and opened the path on which his
+brother, John, was already standing and waiting for him. After that
+Athanasius no longer submitted to the temptation of the devil who had
+scattered the gold, and he understood that not with gold, but only with
+words can we serve God and men.
+
+And the brothers began to live as before.
+
+
+
+
+ILY�S
+
+
+In the Government of Uf� there lived a Bashkir, Ily�s. His father had
+left him no wealth. His father had died a year after he had got his son
+married. At that time Ily�s had seven mares, two cows, and a score of
+sheep; but Ily�s was a good master and began to increase his
+possessions; he worked with his wife from morning until night, got up
+earlier than anybody, and went to bed later, and grew richer from year
+to year. Thus Ily�s passed thirty-five years at work, and came to have a
+vast fortune.
+
+Ily�s finally had two hundred head of horses, 150 head of cattle, and
+twelve hundred sheep. Men herded Ily�s's herds and flocks, and women
+milked the mares and cows, and made kumys, butter, and cheese. Ily�s had
+plenty of everything, and in the district everybody envied him his life.
+People said:
+
+"Ily�s is a lucky fellow. He has plenty of everything,--he does not need
+to die."
+
+Good people made Ily�s's friendship and became his friends. And guests
+came to him from a distance. He received them all, and fed them, and
+gave them to drink. No matter who came, he received kumys, and tea, and
+sherbet, and mutton. If guests came to see him, a sheep or two were
+killed, and if many guests arrived, he had them kill a mare.
+
+Ily�s had two sons and a daughter. He had got all of them married. When
+Ily�s had been poor, his sons had worked with him and had herded the
+horses and the cattle and the sheep; but when they grew rich, the sons
+became spoiled, and one of them even began to drink. One of them, the
+eldest, was killed in a fight, and the other, the younger, had a proud
+wife, and did not obey his father, and his father had to give him a
+separate maintenance.
+
+Ily�s gave him a house and cattle, and his own wealth was diminished.
+Soon after a plague fell on Ily�s's sheep, and many of them died. Then
+there was a famine year, the hay crop was a failure, and in the winter
+many head of cattle died. Then the Kirgizes drove off the best herd of
+horses. And thus Ily�s's estate grew less, and he fell lower and lower,
+and his strength began to wane.
+
+When he was seventy years old, he began to sell off his furs, rugs,
+saddles, and tents, and soon had to sell his last head of cattle, so
+that he was left without anything. Before he knew it, all was gone, and
+in his old age he had to go with his wife to live among strangers. All
+that Ily�s had left of his fortune was what garments he had on his body,
+a fur coat, a cap, and his morocco slippers and shoes, and his wife,
+Sham-shemagi, who was now an old woman. The son to whom he had given the
+property had left for a distant country, and his daughter had died. And
+so there was nobody to help the old people.
+
+Their neighbour, Muhamedshah, took pity on them. Muhamedshah was neither
+rich nor poor, and he lived an even life, and was a good man. He
+remembered Ily�s's hospitality, and so pitied him, and said to Ily�s:
+
+"Come to live with me, Ily�s, and bring your wife with you! In the
+summer work according to your strength in my truck-garden, and in the
+winter feed the cattle, and let Sham-shemagi milk the mares and make
+kumys. I will feed and clothe you and will let you have whatever you may
+need."
+
+Ily�s thanked his neighbour, and went to live with his wife as
+Muhamedshah's labourers. At first it was hard for them, but soon they
+got used to the work, and the old people worked according to their
+strength.
+
+It was profitable for the master to keep these people, for they had been
+masters themselves and knew all the order and were not lazy, but worked
+according to their strength; but it pained Muhamedshah to see the
+well-to-do people brought down so low.
+
+One day distant guests, match-makers, happened to call on Muhamedshah;
+and the mulla, too, came. Muhamedshah ordered his men to catch a sheep
+and kill it. Ily�s flayed the sheep and cooked it and sent it in to the
+guests. They ate the mutton, drank tea, and then started to drink kumys.
+The guests and the master were sitting on down cushions on the rugs,
+drinking kumys out of bowls, and talking; but Ily�s got through with his
+work and walked past the door. When Muhamedshah saw him, he said to a
+guest:
+
+"Did you see the old man who just went past the door?"
+
+"I did," said the guest; "but what is there remarkable about him?"
+
+"What is remarkable is that he used to be our richest man. Ily�s is his
+name; maybe you have heard of him?"
+
+"Of course I have," said the guest. "I have never seen him, but his fame
+has gone far abroad."
+
+"Now he has nothing left, and he lives with me as a labourer, and his
+wife is with him,--she milks the cows."
+
+The guest was surprised. He clicked with his tongue, shook his head, and
+said:
+
+"Evidently fortune flies around like a wheel: one it lifts up, another
+it takes down. Well, does the old man pine?"
+
+"Who knows? He lives quietly and peaceably, and works well."
+
+Then the guest said:
+
+"May I speak with him? I should like to ask him about his life."
+
+"Of course you may," said the master, and he called out of the tent:
+"Babay!" (This means "grandfather" in the Bashkia language.) "Come in
+and drink some kumys, and bring your wife with you!"
+
+Ily�s came in with his wife. He exchanged greetings with the guests and
+with the master, said a prayer, and knelt down at the door; but his wife
+went back of a curtain and sat down with the mistress.
+
+A bowl of kumys was handed to Ily�s. Ily�s saluted the guests and the
+master, made a bow, drank a little, and put down the bowl.
+
+"Grandfather," the guest said to him, "I suppose it makes you feel bad
+to look at us and think of your former life, considering what fortune
+you had and how hard your life is now."
+
+But Ily�s smiled and said:
+
+"If I should tell you about my happiness and unhappiness, you would not
+believe me,--you had better ask my wife. She is a woman, and what is in
+her heart is on her tongue: she will tell you all the truth about this
+matter."
+
+And the guest spoke to her behind the curtain:
+
+"Well, granny, tell us how you judge about your former happiness and
+present sorrow."
+
+And Sham-shemagi spoke from behind the curtain:
+
+"I judge like this: My husband and I lived for fifty years trying to
+find happiness, and we did not find it; but now it is the second year
+that we have nothing left and that we live as labourers, and we have
+found that happiness and need no other."
+
+The guests were surprised and the master marvelled, and he even got up
+to throw aside the curtain and to look at the old woman. But the old
+woman was standing with folded hands, smiling and looking at her
+husband, and the old man was smiling, too. The old woman said once
+more:
+
+"I am telling you the truth, without any jest: for half a century we
+tried to find happiness, and so long as we were rich, we did not find
+it; now nothing is left, and we are working out,--and we have come to
+have such happiness that we wish for no other.".
+
+"Wherein does your happiness lie?"
+
+"In this: when we were rich, my husband and I did not have an hour's
+rest: we had no time to talk together, to think of our souls, or to
+pray. We had so many cares! Now guests called on us,--and there were the
+cares about what to treat them to and what presents to make so that they
+should not misjudge us. When the guests left, we had to look after the
+labourers: they thought only of resting and having something good to
+eat, but we cared only about having our property attended to,--and so
+sinned. Now we were afraid that a wolf would kill a colt or a calf, and
+now that thieves might drive off a herd. When we lay down to sleep, we
+could not fall asleep, fearing lest the sheep might crush the lambs. We
+would get up in the night and walk around; no sooner would we be quieted
+than we would have a new care,--how to get fodder for the winter. And,
+worse than that, there was not much agreement between my husband and me.
+He would say that this had to be done so and so, and I would say
+differently, and so we began to quarrel, and sin. Thus we lived from one
+care to another, from one sin to another, and saw no happy life."
+
+"Well, and now?"
+
+"Now my husband and I get up, speak together peaceably, in agreement,
+for we have nothing to quarrel about, nothing to worry about,--all the
+care we have is to serve our master. We work according to our strength,
+and we work willingly so that our master shall have no loss, but profit.
+When we come back, dinner is ready, and supper, and kumys. If it is
+cold, there are dung chips to make a fire with and a fur coat to warm
+ourselves. For fifty years we looked for happiness, but only now have we
+found it."
+
+The guests laughed.
+
+And Ily�s said:
+
+"Do not laugh, brothers! This is not a joke, but a matter of human life.
+My wife and I were foolish and wept because we had lost our fortune, but
+now God has revealed the truth to us, and we reveal this to you, not for
+our amusement but for your good."
+
+And the mulla said:
+
+"That was a wise speech, and Ily�s has told the precise truth,--it says
+so, too, in Holy Writ."
+
+And the guests stopped laughing and fell to musing.
+
+
+
+
+A FAIRY-TALE
+
+     About Iv�n the Fool and His Two Brothers, Sem�n the Warrior and
+     Tar�s the Paunch, and His Dumb Sister Mal�nya, and About the Old
+     Devil and the Three Young Devils
+
+     1885
+
+
+
+
+A FAIRY-TALE
+
+     About Iv�n the Fool and His Two Brothers, Sem�n the Warrior and
+     Tar�s the Paunch, and His Dumb Sister Mal�nya, and About the Old
+     Devil and the Three Young Devils
+
+
+I.
+
+In a certain kingdom, in a certain realm, there lived a rich peasant. He
+had three sons, Sem�n the Warrior, Tar�s the Paunch, and Iv�n the Fool,
+and a daughter Mal�nya, the dumb old maid.
+
+Sem�n the Warrior went to war, to serve the king; Tar�s the Paunch went
+to a merchant in the city, to sell wares; but Iv�n the Fool and the girl
+remained at home, to work and hump their backs.
+
+Sem�n the Warrior earned a high rank and an estate, and married a lord's
+daughter. His salary was big, and his estate was large, but still he
+could not make both ends meet: whatever he collected, his wife scattered
+as though from a sleeve, and they had no money.
+
+Sem�n the Warrior came to his estate, to collect the revenue. His clerk
+said to him:
+
+"Where shall it come from? We have neither cattle, nor tools: neither
+horses, nor cows, nor plough, nor harrow. Everything has to be
+provided, then there will be an income."
+
+And Sem�n the Warrior went to his father:
+
+"You are rich, father," he said, "and you have not given me anything.
+Cut off a third and I will transfer it to my estate."
+
+And the old man said:
+
+"You have brought nothing to my house, why should I give you a third? It
+will be unfair to Iv�n and to the girl."
+
+But Sem�n said:
+
+"But he is a fool, and she is a dumb old maid. What do they need?"
+
+And the old man said:
+
+"As Iv�n says so it shall be!"
+
+But Iv�n said:
+
+"All right, let him have it!"
+
+So Sem�n the Warrior took his third from the house, transferred it to
+his estate, and again went away to serve the king.
+
+Tar�s the Paunch, too, earned much money,--and married a merchant woman.
+Still he did not have enough, and he came to his father, and said:
+
+"Give me my part!"
+
+The old man did not want to give Tar�s his part:
+
+"You," he said, "have brought nothing to the house, and everything in
+the house has been earned by Iv�n. I cannot be unfair to him and to the
+girl."
+
+But Tar�s said:
+
+"What does he want it for? He is a fool. He cannot marry, for no one
+will have him; and the dumb girl does not need anything, either. Give
+me," he said, "half of the grain, Iv�n! I will not take your tools, and
+of your animals I want only the gray stallion,--you cannot plough with
+him."
+
+Iv�n laughed.
+
+"All right," he said, "I will earn it again."
+
+So Tar�s, too, received his part. Tar�s took the grain to town, and
+drove off the gray stallion, and Iv�n was left with one old mare, and he
+went on farming and supporting his father and his mother.
+
+
+II.
+
+The old devil was vexed because the brothers had not quarrelled in
+dividing up, but had parted in love. And so he called up three young
+devils.
+
+"You see," he said, "there are three brothers, Sem�n the Warrior, Tar�s
+the Paunch, and Iv�n the Fool. They ought to be quarrelling, but,
+instead, they live peacefully; they exchange with each other bread and
+salt. The fool has spoiled all my business. Go all three of you.--get
+hold of them, and mix them up in such a way that they shall tear out one
+another's eyes. Can you do it?"
+
+"We can," they said.
+
+"How are you going to do it?"
+
+"We will do it like this," they said: "First we will ruin them, so that
+they will have nothing to eat; then we will throw them all in a heap, so
+that they will quarrel together."
+
+"Very well," he said. "I see that you know your business. Go, and do not
+return to me before you have muddled all three, or else I will flay all
+three of you."
+
+The three devils all went to a swamp, and considered how to take hold of
+the matter: they quarrelled and quarrelled, for they wanted each of them
+to get the easiest job, and finally they decided to cast lots for each
+man. If one of them got through first, he was to come and help the
+others. The devils cast lots, and set a time when they were to meet
+again in the swamp, in order to find out who was through, and who needed
+help.
+
+When the time came, the devils gathered in the swamp. They began to
+talk about their affairs. The first devil, Sem�n the Warrior's, began to
+speak.
+
+"My affair," he said, "is progressing. To-morrow my Sem�n will go to his
+father."
+
+His comrades asked him how he did it.
+
+"In the first place," he said, "I brought such bravery over Sem�n that
+he promised his king to conquer the whole world, and the king made him a
+commander and sent him out to fight the King of India. They came
+together for a fight. But that very night I wet all his powder, and I
+went over to the King of India and made an endless number of soldiers
+for him out of straw. When Sem�n's soldiers saw the straw soldiers
+walking upon them on all sides, they lost their courage. Sem�n commanded
+them to fire their cannon and their guns, but they could not fire them.
+Sem�n's soldiers were frightened and ran away like sheep. And the King
+of India vanquished them. Sem�n is disgraced,--they have taken his
+estate from him, and to-morrow he is to be beheaded. I have only one
+day's work left to do: to let him out of the prison, so that he can run
+home. To-morrow I shall be through with him, so tell me which of you I
+am to aid!"
+
+Then the other devil, Tar�s's, began to speak:
+
+"I do not need any help," he said, "for my affair is also progressing
+nicely,--Tar�s will not live another week. In the first place, I have
+raised a belly on him, and made him envious. He is so envious of other
+people's property that, no matter what he sees, he wants to buy it. He
+has bought up an endless lot of things and spent all his money on them
+and is still buying. He now buys on other people's money. He has quite a
+lot on his shoulders, and is so entangled that he will never free
+himself. In a week the time will come for him to pay, and I will change
+all his wares into manure,--and he will not be able to pay his debts,
+and will go to his father's."
+
+They began to ask the third devil, Iv�n's.
+
+"How is your business?"
+
+"I must say, my business is not progressing at all. The first thing I
+did was to spit into his kvas jug, so as to give him a belly-ache, and I
+went to his field and made the soil so hard that he should not be able
+to overcome it. I thought that he would never plough it up, but he, the
+fool, came with his plough and began to tear up the soil. His belly-ache
+made him groan, but he stuck to his ploughing. I broke one plough of
+his, but he went home, fixed another plough, wrapped new leg-rags on
+him, and started once more to plough. I crept under the earth, and tried
+to hold the ploughshare, but I could not do it,--he pressed so hard on
+the plough; the ploughshares are sharp, and he has cut up my hands. He
+has ploughed up nearly the whole of it,--only a small strip is left.
+Come and help me, brothers, or else, if we do not overpower him, all our
+labours will be lost. If the fool is left and continues to farm, they
+will have no want, for he will feed them all."
+
+Sem�n's devil promised to come on the morrow to help him, and thereupon
+the devils departed.
+
+
+III.
+
+Iv�n ploughed up all the fallow field, and only one strip was left. His
+belly ached, and yet he had to plough. He straightened out the lines,
+turned over the plough, and went to the field. He had just made one
+furrow, and was coming back, when something pulled at the plough as
+though it had caught in a root. It was the devil that had twined his
+legs about the plough-head and was holding it fast.
+
+"What in the world is that?" thought Iv�n. "There were no roots here
+before, but now there are."
+
+Iv�n stuck his hand down in the furrow, and felt something soft. He
+grabbed it and pulled it out. It was as black as a root, but something
+was moving on it. He took a glance at it, and, behold, it was a live
+devil.
+
+"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing!" And Iv�n swung him and was
+about to strike him against the plough-handle; but the devil began to
+scream.
+
+"Do not beat me," he said, "and I will do for you anything you wish."
+
+"What will you do for me?"
+
+"Say what you want!"
+
+Iv�n scratched himself.
+
+"My belly aches,--can you cure me?"
+
+"I can," he said.
+
+"Very well, cure me!"
+
+The devil bent down to the furrow, scratched awhile in it, pulled out a
+few roots,--three of them in a bunch,--and gave them to Iv�n.
+
+"Here," he said, "is a root, which, if you swallow, will make your ache
+go away at once."
+
+Iv�n took the roots, tore them up, and swallowed one. His belly-ache
+stopped at once.
+
+Then the devil began to beg again:
+
+"Let me go, now, and I will slip through the earth, and will not come up
+again."
+
+"All right," he said, "God be with you!"
+
+And the moment Iv�n mentioned God's name, the devil bolted through the
+earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was left. Iv�n
+put the remaining two roots in his cap, and started to finish his work.
+He ploughed up the strip, turned over the plough, and went home. He
+unhitched the horse, came to the house, and there found his eldest
+brother, Sem�n the Warrior, with his wife, eating supper. His estate had
+been taken from him, and he had with difficulty escaped from prison and
+come to his father's to live.
+
+Sem�n saw Iv�n, and, "I have come to live with you," he said. "Feed me
+and my wife until I find a new place!"
+
+"All right," he said, "stay here!"
+
+Iv�n wanted to sit down on a bench, but the lady did not like the smell
+of Iv�n. So she said to her husband:
+
+"I cannot eat supper with a stinking peasant."
+
+"All right," he said, "I have to go anyway to pasture the mare for the
+night."
+
+Iv�n took some bread and his caftan, and went out to herd his mare.
+
+
+IV.
+
+That night Sem�n's devil got through with his work and by agreement went
+to find Iv�n's devil, to help to make an end of the fool. He came to the
+field and looked for him everywhere, but found only the hole.
+
+"Something has evidently gone wrong with my comrade," he thought,--"I
+must take his place. The ploughing is done,--I shall have to catch him
+in the mowing time."
+
+The devil went to the meadows and sent a flood on the mowing so that it
+was all covered with mud. Iv�n returned in the morning from the night
+watch, whetted his scythe, and went out to mow the meadows. He came, and
+began to mow: he swung the scythe once, and a second time, and it grew
+dull and would not cut,--it was necessary to grind it. Iv�n worked hard
+and in vain.
+
+"No," he said, "I will go home, and will bring the grindstone with me,
+and a round loaf. If I have to stay here for a week, I will not give up
+until I mow it all."
+
+When the devil heard it he thought:
+
+"This fool is stiff-necked,--I cannot get at him. I must try something
+else."
+
+Iv�n came back, ground his scythe, and began to mow. The devil crept
+into the grass and began to catch the scythe by the snath-end and to
+stick the point into the ground. It went hard with Iv�n, but he finished
+the mowing, and there was left only one scrubby place in the swamp. The
+devil crawled into the swamp and thought:
+
+"If I get both my paws cut, I will not let him mow it."
+
+Iv�n went into the swamp; the grass was not dense, but he found it hard
+to move the scythe. Iv�n grew angry and began to swing the scythe with
+all his might. The devil gave in; he had hardly time to get away,--he
+saw that matters were in bad shape, so he hid in a bush. Iv�n swung the
+scythe with all his might and struck the bush, and cut off half of the
+devil's tail. Iv�n finished the mowing, told the girl to rake it up, and
+himself went to cut the rye.
+
+He went out with a round knife, but the bobtailed devil had been there
+before him and had so mixed up the rye that he could not cut it with the
+round knife. Iv�n went back, took the sickle, and began to cut it; he
+cut all the rye.
+
+"Now I must go to the oats," he said.
+
+The bobtailed devil heard it, and thought:
+
+"I could not cope with him on the rye, but I will get the better of him
+in the oats,--just let the morning come."
+
+The devil ran in the morning to the oats-field, but the oats were all
+cut down. Iv�n had cut them in the night, to keep them from dropping the
+seed.
+
+The devil grew angry:
+
+"The fool has cut me all up, and has worn me out. I have not seen such
+trouble even in war-time. The accursed one does not sleep,--I cannot
+keep up with him. I will go now to the ricks, and will rot them all."
+
+And the devil went to the rye-rick, climbed between the sheaves, and
+began to rot them: he warmed them up, and himself grew warm and fell
+asleep.
+
+Iv�n hitched his mare, and went with the girl to haul away the ricks. He
+drove up to one and began to throw the sheaves into the cart. He had
+just put two sheaves in when he stuck his fork straight into the devil's
+back; he raised it, and, behold, on the prongs was a live devil, and a
+bobtailed one at that, and he was writhing and twisting, and trying to
+get off.
+
+"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing! Are you here again?"
+
+"I am a different devil," he said. "My brother was here before. I was
+with your brother Sem�n."
+
+"I do not care who you are," he replied, "you will catch it, too."
+
+He wanted to strike him against the ground, but the devil began to beg
+him:
+
+"Let me go, and I will not do it again, and I will do for you anything
+you please."
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"I can make soldiers for you from anything."
+
+"What good are they?"
+
+"You can turn them to any use you please: they will do anything."
+
+"Can they play music?"
+
+"They can."
+
+"All right, make them for me!"
+
+And the devil said:
+
+"Take a sheaf of rye, strike the lower end against the ground, and say:
+'By my master's command not a sheaf shall you stand, but as many straws
+as there are so many soldiers there be.'"
+
+Iv�n took the sheaf, shook it against the ground, and spoke as the devil
+told him to. And the sheaf fell to pieces, and the straws were changed
+into soldiers, and in front a drummer was drumming, and a trumpeter
+blowing the trumpet. Iv�n laughed.
+
+"I declare," he said, "it is clever. This is nice to amuse the girls
+with."
+
+"Let me go now," said the devil.
+
+"No," he said, "I will do that with threshed straw, and I will not let
+full ears waste for nothing. I will thresh them first."
+
+So the devil said:
+
+"Say, 'As many soldiers, so many straws there be! With my master's
+command again a sheaf it shall stand.'"
+
+Iv�n said this, and the sheaf was as before. And the devil begged him
+again:
+
+"Let me go now!"
+
+"All right!" Iv�n caught him on the cart-hurdle, held him down with his
+hand, and pulled him off the fork. "God be with you!" he said.
+
+The moment he said, "God be with you," the devil bolted through the
+earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was left.
+
+Iv�n went home, and there he found his second brother. Tar�s and his
+wife were sitting and eating supper. Tar�s the Paunch had not calculated
+right, and so he ran away from his debts and came to his father's. When
+he saw Iv�n, he said:
+
+"Iv�n, feed me and my wife until I go back to trading!"
+
+"All right," he said, "stay with us!"
+
+Iv�n took off his caftan, and seated himself at the table.
+
+But the merchant's wife said:
+
+"I cannot eat with a fool. He stinks of sweat."
+
+So Tar�s the Paunch said:
+
+"Iv�n, you do not smell right, so go and eat in the vestibule!"
+
+"All right," he said, and, taking bread, he went out. "It is just
+right," he said, "for it is time for me to go and pasture the mare for
+the night."
+
+
+V.
+
+That night Tar�s's devil got through with his job, and he went by
+agreement to help out his comrades,--to get the best of Iv�n the Fool.
+He came to the field and tried to find his comrades, but all he saw was
+a hole in the ground; he went to the meadows, and found a tail in the
+swamp, and in the rye stubbles he found another hole.
+
+"Well," he thought, "evidently some misfortune has befallen my comrades;
+I must take their place, and go for the fool."
+
+The devil went forth to find Iv�n. But Iv�n was through with the field,
+and was chopping wood in the forest.
+
+The brothers were not comfortable living together, and they had ordered
+the fool to cut timber with which to build them new huts.
+
+The devil ran to the woods, climbed into the branches, and did not let
+Iv�n fell the trees. Iv�n chopped the tree in the right way, so that it
+might fall in a clear place; he tried to make it fall, but it came down
+the wrong way, and fell where it had no business to fall, and got caught
+in the branches. Iv�n made himself a lever with his axe, began to turn
+the tree, and barely brought it down. Iv�n went to chop a second tree,
+and the same thing happened. He worked and worked at it, and brought it
+down. He started on a third tree, and again the same happened.
+
+Iv�n had expected to cut half a hundred trunks, and before he had
+chopped ten it was getting dark. Iv�n was worn out. Vapours rose from
+him as though a mist were going through the woods, but he would not give
+up. He chopped down another tree, and his back began to ache so much
+that he could not work: he stuck the axe in the wood, and sat down to
+rest himself.
+
+The devil saw that Iv�n had stopped, and was glad:
+
+"Well," he thought, "he has worn himself out, and he will stop soon. I
+will myself take a rest," and he sat astride a bough, and was happy.
+
+But Iv�n got up, pulled out his axe, swung with all his might, and hit
+the tree so hard from the other side that it cracked and came down with
+a crash. The devil had not expected it and had no time to straighten out
+his legs. The bough broke and caught the devil's hand. Iv�n began to
+trim, and behold, there was a live devil. Iv�n was surprised.
+
+"I declare," he said, "you are a nasty thing! Are you here again?"
+
+"I am not the same," he said. "I was with your brother Tar�s."
+
+"I do not care who you are,--you will fare the same way." Iv�n swung his
+axe, and wanted to crush him with the back of the axe.
+
+The devil began to beg him:
+
+"Do not kill me,--I will do anything you please for you."
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"I can make as much money for you as you wish."
+
+"All right, make it for me!"
+
+And the devil taught him how to do it.
+
+"Take some oak leaves from this tree," he said, "and rub them in your
+hands. The gold will fall to the ground."
+
+Iv�n took some leaves and rubbed them,--and the gold began to fall.
+
+"This is nice to have," he said, "when you are out celebrating with the
+boys."
+
+"Let me go now!" said the devil.
+
+"All right!" Iv�n took his lever, and freed the devil. "God be with
+you," he said, and the moment he mentioned God's name, the devil bolted
+through the earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was
+left.
+
+
+VI.
+
+The brothers built themselves houses, and began to live each by himself.
+But Iv�n got through with his field work, and brewed some beer and
+invited his brothers to celebrate with him. They would not be Iv�n's
+guests:
+
+"We have never seen a peasant celebration," they said.
+
+Iv�n treated the peasants and their wives, and himself drank until he
+was drunk, and he went out into the street to the khorov�d. He went up
+to the women, and told them to praise him.
+
+"I will give you what you have not seen in all your lives."
+
+The women laughed, and praised him. When they got through, they said:
+
+"Well, let us have it!"
+
+"I will bring it to you at once," he said.
+
+He picked up the seed-basket and ran into the woods. The women laughed:
+"What a fool he is!" And they forgot about him, when, behold, he was
+running toward them, and carrying the basket full of something.
+
+"Shall I let you have it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Iv�n picked up a handful of gold and threw it to the women. O Lord, how
+they darted for the money! The peasants rushed out and began to tear it
+out of the hands of the women. They almost crushed an old woman to
+death. Iv�n laughed.
+
+"Oh, you fools," he said, "why did you crush that old woman? Be more
+gentle, and I will give you some more." He began to scatter more gold.
+People ran up, and Iv�n scattered the whole basketful. They began to ask
+for more. But Iv�n said:
+
+"That is all. I will give you more some other time. Now let us have
+music! Sing songs!"
+
+The women started a song.
+
+"I do not like your kind of songs," he said.
+
+"What kind is better?"
+
+"I will show you in a minute," he said. He went to the threshing-floor,
+pulled out a sheaf, straightened it up, placed it on end, and struck it
+against the ground.
+
+"At your master's command not a sheaf shall you stand, each straw a
+soldier shall be."
+
+The sheaf flew to pieces, and out came the soldiers, and the drums began
+to beat and the trumpets to sound. Iv�n told the soldiers to play songs,
+and went into the street with them. The people were surprised. The
+soldiers played songs, and then Iv�n took them back to the
+threshing-floor, and told nobody to follow him. He changed the soldiers
+back into a sheaf, and threw it on the loft. He went home and went to
+sleep behind the partition.
+
+
+VII.
+
+On the next morning his eldest brother, Sem�n the Warrior, heard of it,
+and he went to see Iv�n.
+
+"Reveal to me," he said, "where did you find those soldiers, and where
+did you take them to?"
+
+"What is that to you?" he said.
+
+"What a question! With soldiers anything may be done. You can get a
+kingdom for yourself."
+
+Iv�n was surprised.
+
+"Indeed? Why did you not tell me so long ago?" he said. "I will make as
+many for you as you please. Luckily the girl and I have threshed a lot
+of straw."
+
+Iv�n took his brother to the threshing-floor, and said:
+
+"Look here! I will make them for you, but you take them away, or else,
+if we have to feed them, they will ruin the village in one day."
+
+Sem�n the Warrior promised that he would take the soldiers away, and
+Iv�n began to make them. He struck a sheaf against the floor, there was
+a company; he struck another, there was a second, and he made such a lot
+of them that they took up the whole field.
+
+"Well, will that do?"
+
+Sem�n was happy, and said:
+
+"It will do. Thank you, Iv�n."
+
+"All right," he said. "If you need more, come to me, and I will make you
+more. There is plenty of straw to-day."
+
+Sem�n the Warrior at once attended to the army, collected it as was
+proper, and went forth to fight.
+
+No sooner had Sem�n the Warrior left, than Tar�s the Paunch came. He,
+too, had heard of the evening's affair, and he began to beg his brother:
+
+"Reveal to me, where do you get the gold money from? If I had such free
+money, I would with it gather in all the money of the whole world."
+
+Iv�n was surprised.
+
+"Indeed? You ought to have told me so long ago," he said. "I will rub up
+for you as much as you want."
+
+His brother was glad:
+
+"Give me at least three seed-baskets full!"
+
+"All right," he said, "let us go to the woods! But hitch up the horse,
+or you will not be able to carry it away."
+
+They went to the woods, and Iv�n began to rub the oak leaves. He rubbed
+up a large heap.
+
+"Will that do, eh?"
+
+Tar�s was happy.
+
+"It will do for awhile," he said. "Thank you, Iv�n."
+
+"You are welcome. If you need more, come to me, and I will rub up some
+more,--there are plenty of leaves left."
+
+Tar�s the Paunch gathered a whole wagon-load of money, and went away to
+trade with it.
+
+Both brothers left the home. And Sem�n went out to fight, and Tar�s to
+trade. And Sem�n the Warrior conquered a whole kingdom for himself,
+while Tar�s the Paunch made a big heap of money by trading.
+
+The brothers met, and they revealed to one another where Sem�n got the
+soldiers, and Tar�s the money.
+
+Sem�n the Warrior said to his brother:
+
+"I have conquered a kingdom for myself, and I lead a good life, only I
+have not enough money to feed my soldiers with."
+
+And Tar�s the Paunch said:
+
+"And I have earned a whole mound of money, but here is the trouble: I
+have nobody to guard the money."
+
+So Sem�n the Warrior said:
+
+"Let us go to our brother! I will tell him to make me more soldiers, and
+I will give them to you to guard your money; and you tell him to rub me
+more money with which to feed the soldiers."
+
+And they went to Iv�n. When they came to him, Sem�n said:
+
+"I have not enough soldiers, brother. Make me some more soldiers,--if
+you have to work over two stacks."
+
+Iv�n shook his head.
+
+"I will not make you any soldiers, for nothing in the world."
+
+"But you promised you would."
+
+"So I did, but I will not make them for you."
+
+"Why, you fool, won't you make them?"
+
+"Because your soldiers have killed a man. The other day I was ploughing
+in the field, when I saw a woman driving with a coffin in the road, and
+weeping all the time. I asked her who had died, and she said, 'Sem�n's
+soldiers have killed my husband in a war.' I thought that the soldiers
+would make music, and there they have killed a man. I will give you no
+more."
+
+And he stuck to it, and made no soldiers for him.
+
+Then Tar�s the Paunch began to beg Iv�n to make him more gold money. But
+Iv�n shook his head.
+
+"I will not rub any, for nothing in the world."
+
+"But you promised you would."
+
+"So I did, but I will not do it."
+
+"Why, you fool, will you not do it?"
+
+"Because your gold coins have taken away Mikh�ylovna's cow."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"They just did. Mikh�ylovna had a cow, whose milk the children sipped,
+but the other day the children came to me to ask for some milk. I said
+to them: 'Where is your cow?' And they answered: 'Tar�s the Paunch's
+clerk came, and he gave mother three gold pieces, and she gave him the
+cow, and now we have no milk to sip.' I thought you wanted to play with
+the gold pieces, and you take the cow away from the children. I will not
+give you any more."
+
+And the fool stuck to it, and did not give him any. So the brothers went
+away.
+
+They went away, and they wondered how they might mend matters. Then
+Sem�n said:
+
+"This is what we shall do. You give me money to feed the soldiers with,
+and I will give you half my kingdom with the soldiers to guard your
+money." Tar�s agreed to it. The brothers divided up, and both became
+kings, and rich men.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+But Iv�n remained at home, supporting father and mother, and working the
+field with the dumb girl.
+
+One day Iv�n's watch-dog grew sick: he had the mange and was dying. Iv�n
+was sorry for him, and he took some bread from the dumb girl, put it in
+his hat, and took it out and threw it to the dog. But the cap was torn,
+and with the bread one of the roots fell out. The old dog swallowed it
+with the bread. And no sooner had he swallowed it than he jumped up,
+began to play and to bark, and wagged his tail,--he was well again.
+
+When his father and his mother saw that, they were surprised.
+
+"With what did you cure the dog?"
+
+And Iv�n said to them:
+
+"I had two roots with which to cure all diseases, and he swallowed one."
+
+It happened that at that time the king's daughter grew ill, and the king
+proclaimed in all the towns and villages that he would reward him who
+should cure her, and that if it should be an unmarried man, he should
+have his daughter for a wife. The same was also proclaimed in Iv�n's
+village.
+
+Father and mother called Iv�n, and said to him:
+
+"Have you heard what the king has proclaimed? You said that you had a
+root, so go and cure the king's daughter. You will get a fortune for the
+rest of your life."
+
+"All right," he said. And he got ready to go. He was dressed up, and
+went out on the porch, and saw a beggar woman with a twisted arm.
+
+"I have heard that you can cure," she said. "Cure my arm, for I cannot
+dress myself."
+
+And Iv�n said:
+
+"All right!" He took the root, gave it to the beggar woman, and told her
+to swallow it.
+
+She swallowed it, and was cured at once and could wave her arm. Iv�n's
+parents came out to see him off on his way to the king, and when they
+heard that he had given away the last root and had nothing left with
+which to cure the king's daughter, they began to upbraid him.
+
+"You have taken pity on the beggar woman, but you have no pity on the
+king's daughter."
+
+But he hitched his horse, threw a little straw into the hamper, and was
+getting ready to drive away.
+
+"Where are you going, fool?"
+
+"To cure the king's daughter."
+
+"But you have nothing to cure her with!"
+
+"All right," he said, and drove away.
+
+He came to the king's palace, and the moment he stepped on the porch,
+the king's daughter was cured.
+
+The king rejoiced, and sent for Iv�n. He had him all dressed up:
+
+"Be my son-in-law!" he said.
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+And Iv�n married the king's daughter. The king died soon after, and Iv�n
+became king. Thus all three brothers were kings.
+
+
+IX.
+
+The three brothers were reigning.
+
+The elder brother, Sem�n the Warrior, lived well. With his straw
+soldiers he got him real soldiers. He commanded his people to furnish a
+soldier to each ten homes, and every such soldier had to be tall of
+stature, and white of body, and clean of face. And he gathered a great
+many such soldiers and taught them all what to do. And if any one acted
+contrary to his will, he at once sent his soldiers against that person,
+and did as he pleased. And all began to be afraid of him.
+
+He had an easy life. Whatever he wished for, or his eyes fell upon, was
+his. He would send out his soldiers, and they would take away and bring
+to him whatever he needed.
+
+Tar�s the Paunch, too, lived well. The money which he had received from
+Iv�n he had not spent, but he had increased it greatly. He, too, had
+good order in his kingdom. The money he kept in coffers, and exacted
+more money from the people. He exacted money from each soul for walking
+past, and driving past, and for bast shoes, and leg-rags, and
+shoe-laces. And no matter what he wished, he had; for money they brought
+him everything, and they went to work for him, because everybody needs
+money.
+
+Nor did Iv�n the Fool live badly. As soon as he had buried his
+father-in-law, he took off his royal garments and gave them to his wife
+to put away in the coffer. He put on his old hempen shirt and trousers,
+and his bast shoes, and began to work.
+
+"I do not feel well," he said. "My belly is growing larger, and I cannot
+eat, nor sleep."
+
+He brought his parents and the dumb girl, and began to work again.
+
+People said to him:
+
+"But you are a king!"
+
+"All right," he said, "but a king, too, has to eat."
+
+The minister came to him, and said:
+
+"We have no money with which to pay salaries."
+
+"All right," he said, "if you have none, pay no salaries!"
+
+"But they will stop serving you."
+
+"All right," he said, "Let them stop serving! They will have more time
+for work. Let them haul manure. They have not hauled any for a long
+time."
+
+People came to Iv�n to have a case tried. One said:
+
+"He stole money from me."
+
+But Iv�n replied:
+
+"All right, evidently he needed it."
+
+All saw that Iv�n was a fool. His wife said to him:
+
+"They say about you that you are a fool."
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+Iv�n's wife, too, was a fool, and she thought and thought.
+
+"Why should I go against my husband?" she said. "The thread belongs
+where the needle is."
+
+She took off her regal garments, put them in a coffer, and went to the
+dumb girl to learn to work. She learned, and began to help her husband.
+
+All the wise men left Iv�n's kingdom, and only the fools were left.
+Nobody had any money. They lived and worked and fed themselves and all
+good people.
+
+
+X.
+
+The old devil waited and waited for some news from the young devils
+about how they had destroyed the three brothers, but none came. He went
+to find out for himself: he looked everywhere for the three, but found
+only three holes.
+
+"Well," he thought, "evidently they did not get the best of them. I
+shall have to try it myself."
+
+He went to find the brothers, but they were no longer in their old
+places. He found them in different kingdoms. All three were living and
+reigning there. That vexed the old devil.
+
+"I shall have to do the work myself," he said.
+
+First of all he went to King Sem�n. He did not go to him in his own
+form, but in the shape of a general. He went to him, and said:
+
+"I have heard that you, King Sem�n, are a great warrior. I have had good
+instruction in this business, and I want to serve you."
+
+King Sem�n began to ask him questions, and he saw that he was a clever
+man, and so received him into his service.
+
+The old general began to teach King Sem�n how to gather a great army.
+
+"In the first place," he said, "you must collect more soldiers, for too
+many people in your kingdom are walking about idly. You must shave the
+heads of all the young men without exception, and then you will have an
+army which will be five times as large as it is now. In the second
+place, you must introduce new guns and cannon. I will get you the kind
+of guns that fire one hundred bullets at once, as though pouring out
+pease. And I will get you cannon that burn with their fire: whether a
+man, or a horse, or a wall,--they burn everything."
+
+King Sem�n listened to his new general, and ordered all the young men
+without exception to be drafted as soldiers, and started new factories.
+He had a lot of new guns and cannon made, and at once started a war
+against a neighbouring king. The moment the enemy's army came out
+against him, he ordered his soldiers to fire at them with bullets and to
+burn them with the cannon fire. He at once maimed and burnt one-half the
+army. The neighbouring king became frightened, and he surrendered and
+gave up his kingdom to him. King Sem�n was happy.
+
+"Now I will vanquish the King of India," he said.
+
+But the King of India heard of King Sem�n, and adopted all his
+inventions and added a few of his own. The King of India drafted not
+only all the young men, but he also made all the unmarried women serve
+as soldiers, and so he had even more soldiers than King Sem�n. He
+adopted all of King Sem�n's guns and cannon, and introduced flying in
+the air and throwing explosive bombs from above.
+
+King Sem�n went out to make war on the King of India. He thought that he
+would conquer him as he had conquered before; but the scythe was cutting
+too fine,--the King of India did not give Sem�n's army a chance to fire
+a single shot, for he sent his women into the air, to throw explosive
+bombs on Sem�n's army. The women began to pour the bombs on Sem�n's
+army, like borax on cockroaches, and the whole army ran away, and King
+Sem�n was left alone. The King of India took possession of the whole of
+Sem�n's kingdom, and Sem�n the Warrior ran whither his eyes took him.
+
+The old devil had done up this brother, and he made for King Tar�s. He
+took the shape of a merchant and settled in Tar�s's kingdom. He started
+an establishment, and began to issue money. The merchant paid high
+prices for everything, and the whole nation rushed to the merchant to
+get his money. And the people had so much money that they paid all their
+back taxes and paid on time all the taxes as they fell due. King Tar�s
+was happy.
+
+"Thanks to the merchant," he thought, "I shall now have more money than
+ever, and my life will improve."
+
+And King Tar�s fell on new plans. He began to build himself a new
+palace: he commanded the people to haul lumber and stone, and to come to
+work, and offered high prices for everything. King Tar�s thought that as
+before the people would rush to work for him. But, behold, all the
+lumber and stone was being hauled to the merchant, and only the
+labourers were rushing to the king.
+
+King Tar�s offered higher prices, but the merchant went higher still.
+King Tar�s had much money, but the merchant had more still, and the
+merchant could offer better pay than the king. The royal palace came to
+a standstill,--it could not be built.
+
+King Tar�s wanted to get a garden laid out. When the fall came, King
+Tar�s proclaimed that he wanted people to come and set out trees for
+him; but nobody came, as they were all digging a pond for the merchant.
+
+Winter came. King Tar�s wanted to buy sable furs for a new coat, and he
+sent out men to buy them. The messenger came back, and said that there
+were no sables,--that all the furs were in the merchant's possession, as
+he had offered a higher price, and that he had made himself a sable rug.
+
+King Tar�s wanted to have some stallions. He sent messengers to buy them
+for him; but they came back, and said that the merchant had all the good
+stallions, and they were hauling water and filling up the pond.
+
+All the business of the king came to a stop. Men would not do anything
+for him, but worked only for the merchant; all he received was the
+merchant's money, for taxes.
+
+And the king collected such a mass of money that he did not know what to
+do with it, and his life grew bad. The king stopped planning things, and
+only thought of how he might pass his life peacefully, but he could not
+do so. He was oppressed in everything. His cooks, and his coachmen, and
+his servants began to leave him for the merchant. And he began to suffer
+for lack of food. He would send the women to market to buy provisions,
+but there was nothing there, for the merchant bought up everything, and
+all he received was money for taxes.
+
+King Tar�s grew angry and sent the merchant abroad; but the merchant
+settled at the border and continued to do his work: as before, people
+dragged for the merchant's money all the things from the king to him.
+The king was in a bad plight: he did not eat for days at a time, and the
+rumour was spread that the merchant was boasting that he was going to
+buy the king himself with his money. King Tar�s lost his courage, and
+did not know what to do.
+
+Sem�n the Warrior came to him, and said:
+
+"Support me, for the King of India has vanquished me."
+
+But Tar�s himself was pinched.
+
+"I have not eaten myself for two days," he said.
+
+
+XI.
+
+The old devil had done up the two brothers, and now went to Iv�n. The
+old devil took the shape of a general, and he came to Iv�n and tried to
+persuade him to provide himself with an army.
+
+"It will not do for a king to live without an army," he said. "Just
+command me, and I will gather soldiers from among your people, and will
+get you up an army."
+
+Iv�n took his advice.
+
+"All right," he said, "get me up an army: teach them to play good
+music,--I like that."
+
+The old devil started to go over the kingdom, to gather volunteers. He
+said that they should go and get their crowns shaved, for which they
+would get a bottle of v�dka each, and a red cap.
+
+The fools laughed at him.
+
+"We have all the liquor we want," they said, "for we distil it
+ourselves, and as for caps, our women will make us any we want, even
+motley ones, with tassels at that."
+
+Not one of them would go. The old devil went to Iv�n and said:
+
+"Your fools will not go of their own will; you will have to force them."
+
+"All right," he said, "drive them by force!"
+
+And so the old devil announced that all the fools were to inscribe
+themselves as soldiers, and that Iv�n would execute those who would not
+go.
+
+The fools came to the general and said:
+
+"You say that the king will have us killed if we do not become soldiers,
+but you do not tell us what we shall have to do as soldiers. They say
+that soldiers, too, are killed."
+
+"Yes, that cannot be helped."
+
+When the fools heard that, they became stubborn.
+
+"We will not go," they said. "If so, let us be killed at home! Death
+cannot be escaped anyway."
+
+"Fools that you are!" said the old devil. "A soldier may be killed or
+not, but if you do not go, King Iv�n will certainly have you killed."
+
+The fools considered the matter, and went to see Iv�n the Fool.
+
+"Your general has come," they said, "and tells us all to turn soldiers.
+'If you become soldiers,' he says, 'you may be killed, or not, but if
+you do not become soldiers King Iv�n will certainly put you to death.'
+Is that true?"
+
+Iv�n began to laugh.
+
+"How can I, one man, have you all put to death? If I were not a fool, I
+should explain that to you, but as it is, I do not understand it
+myself."
+
+"If so," they said, "we shall not become soldiers."
+
+"All right," he said, "don't."
+
+The fools went to the general and refused to become soldiers.
+
+The old devil saw that his business did not work, so he went to the King
+of Cockroachland, and got into his favour.
+
+"Let us go," he said, "and wage war on King Iv�n, and vanquish him. He
+has no money, but he has plenty of grain, and cattle, and all kinds of
+things."
+
+The King of Cockroachland went out to make war: he had gathered a large
+army, and collected guns and cannon, and left his borders, to enter
+Iv�n's kingdom.
+
+People came to Iv�n and said:
+
+"The King of Cockroachland is coming against us."
+
+"All right," he said, "let him come."
+
+The King of Cockroachland crossed the border, and sent the
+advance-guard to find Iv�n's army. They looked and looked for it, and
+could not find it. They thought that they might wait for it to show up.
+But they heard nothing about it,--there was no army to fight.
+
+The King of Cockroachland sent out his men to take possession of the
+villages. The soldiers came to one village,--and there the fools jumped
+out to look at the soldiers and to marvel at them. The soldiers began to
+take away the grain and the cattle: the fools gave it all up, and did
+not resist. The soldiers went to the next village, and the same
+happened. The soldiers walked for a day or two, and everywhere the same
+happened. They gave up all they had, and nobody resisted, and they
+invited the soldiers to come and live with them:
+
+"If you, dear people," they said, "have not enough to live on in your
+country, come and settle among us."
+
+The soldiers walked and walked, but no army was to be found; everywhere
+people were living, and feeding themselves and other people, and they
+did not resist, but invited them to come and live with them.
+
+The soldiers felt bad, and they came back to the King of Cockroachland.
+
+"We cannot fight here," they said, "so take us to some other place: war
+would be a good thing, but this is as though we were to cut soup. We
+cannot fight here."
+
+The King of Cockroachland grew wroth, and commanded his soldiers to
+march through the whole kingdom, and destroy villages and houses, and
+burn the grain and kill the cattle.
+
+"If you do not obey my command," he said, "I shall have you all
+executed."
+
+The soldiers became frightened, and began to carry out the king's
+command. They started to burn the houses and the grain, and to kill the
+cattle. And still the fools did not resist, but only wept. The old men
+wept, and the old women wept, and the children wept.
+
+"Why do you offend us? Why do you destroy the property? If you need it,
+take it along!"
+
+The soldiers felt ashamed. They did not go any farther, and the whole
+army ran away.
+
+
+XII.
+
+The old devil went away,--he could not get at Iv�n by means of the
+soldiers. The old devil changed into a clean-looking gentleman, and went
+to live in Iv�n's kingdom: he wished to get at him by means of money, as
+he had done with Tar�s the Paunch.
+
+"I want to do you good," he said, "and to teach you what is good and
+proper. I will build a house in your country, and will start an
+establishment."
+
+"All right," he said, "stay here!"
+
+The clean-looking gentleman stayed overnight, and the following morning
+he took a large bag of gold to the market-square, and a sheet of paper,
+and said:
+
+"You are all of you living like pigs. I will teach you how to live.
+Build me a house according to this plan! You work, and I will show you
+how, and will pay gold money to you."
+
+And he showed them the gold. The fools were astounded: they had no such
+a thing as money, and only exchanged things among themselves, or paid
+with work. They marvelled at the gold and said:
+
+"They are nice things."
+
+And for these gold things they began to give him what they had and to
+work for him. The old devil rejoiced and thought:
+
+"My affair is proceeding favourably. I will now ruin Iv�n completely, as
+I have ruined Tar�s, and will buy him up, guts and all."
+
+As soon as the fools had any gold, they gave it all away to their women
+for necklaces, and their girls wove it into their braids, and the
+children began to play in the streets with those pretty things. When all
+had enough of it, they refused to get any more. The clean-looking
+gentleman's palace was not half done, and the grain and the cattle were
+not yet attended to for the year. And the gentleman demanded that they
+should go and work for him, and haul his grain, and drive his cattle; he
+promised them much gold for everything and for all work.
+
+But no one came to work, and they brought nothing to him. Only now and
+then a boy or girl would run in to exchange an egg for a gold coin;
+otherwise nobody came, and he had nothing to eat. The clean-looking
+gentleman was starved, and he went to the village to buy something to
+eat: he went into one yard, and offered a gold coin for a chicken, but
+the woman would not take it.
+
+"I have too many of them as it is," she said.
+
+He went to a homeless woman, to buy a herring of her, and offered her a
+gold coin.
+
+"I do not want it, dear man," she said. "I have no children, and so
+there is nobody to play with it; I myself have three of these for show."
+
+He went to a peasant to buy bread of him, but the peasant, too, would
+not take the money.
+
+"I do not want it," he said. "If you want bread, for Christ's sake,
+wait, and I will have my wife cut you off a piece."
+
+The devil just spit out and ran away from the peasant. Not only would he
+not take anything for Christ's sake, but it was worse than cutting him
+even to hear that word.
+
+And so he did not get any bread. Everywhere it was the same; no matter
+where the devil went, they gave him nothing for money, but said:
+
+"Bring us something else, or come and work for it, or take it for
+Christ's sake!"
+
+But the devil had nothing but money. He did not like to work, and for
+Christ's sake he could not take anything. The old devil grew angry.
+
+"What else do you want, if I give you money? You can buy anything for
+money, or hire a labourer."
+
+The fools paid no attention to him.
+
+"No," they said, "we do not want it. We have no taxes and no wages to
+pay, so what do we want with the money?"
+
+The old devil went to bed without eating supper.
+
+This affair reached the ears of Iv�n the Fool. They went to ask him:
+
+"What shall we do? A clean-looking gentleman has appeared among us: he
+is fond of eating and drinking, and does not like to work, and does not
+beg for Christ's sake, but only offers us gold pieces. So long as we did
+not have enough of them, we gave him everything, but now we do not give
+him any more. What shall we do with him? We are afraid that he will
+starve."
+
+Iv�n listened to what they had to say.
+
+"All right," he said, "we shall have to feed him. Let him go from farm
+to farm as a shepherd!"
+
+The old devil could not help himself, and he began to go from farm to
+farm. The turn came to Iv�n's farm. The old devil came to dinner, and
+the dumb girl was just fixing it. Those who were lazy used to deceive
+her. Without having worked they came to dinner earlier and ate up all
+the porridge. And so the dumb girl contrived to tell the
+good-for-nothing by their hands: if one had calluses, she seated him at
+the table, but if not, she gave him what was left of the dinner. The old
+devil climbed behind the table; but the dumb girl took hold of his
+hands, and there were no calluses; the hands were clean and smooth, and
+the nails long.
+
+The dumb girl bawled, and pulled the devil out from behind the table.
+
+Iv�n's wife said to him:
+
+"Don't take it amiss, clean gentleman! My sister-in-law will not let a
+man without calluses sit down at the table. Wait awhile! Let the people
+eat first, and then you will get what is left."
+
+The old devil was insulted, because at the king's house they would feed
+him with the swine. He said to Iv�n:
+
+"What a fool's law you have in your country to let all men work with
+their hands! You have invented that in your stupidity. Do men work with
+their hands only? How do you suppose clever people work?"
+
+But Iv�n said:
+
+"How can we fools know? We labour mostly with our hands and with our
+backs."
+
+"That is so, because you are fools. I will teach you," he said, "how to
+work with your heads. You will see that with your heads you can work
+faster than with your hands."
+
+Iv�n marvelled.
+
+"Indeed," he said, "we are called fools for good reason."
+
+And the old devil said:
+
+"But it is not easy to work with the head. You do not give me anything
+to eat because I have no calluses on my hands, and you do not know that
+it is a hundred times harder to work with the head. At times it just
+makes the head burst."
+
+Iv�n fell to musing.
+
+"But why do you torture yourself so much, my dear? It is no small matter
+to have your head burst. You had better do some easy work,--with your
+hands and back."
+
+And the devil said:
+
+"The reason I torture myself is because I pity you fools. If I did not
+torture myself, you would remain fools to the end of your days. I have
+worked with my head, and now I will teach you, too."
+
+Iv�n marvelled.
+
+"Teach us," he said, "for now and then the hands get tired, and it would
+be nice to use the head instead."
+
+The devil promised to teach him.
+
+And Iv�n proclaimed throughout his kingdom that a clean-looking man had
+appeared who would teach people how to work with their heads, that they
+could work more with their heads than with their hands, and that they
+should come and learn.
+
+In Iv�n's kingdom there was a high tower, and a straight staircase led
+up to it, and at the top there was a spy-room. Iv�n took the gentleman
+there so that he might see better.
+
+The gentleman stood up on the tower and began to speak from it. The
+fools gathered around to look at him. The fools thought that he would
+show them in fact how to work with the head instead of the hands. But
+the old devil taught them only in words how to live without working.
+
+The fools did not understand a word. They looked and looked and went
+away, each to his work.
+
+The old devil stood on the tower a day, and a second day, and kept
+talking. He wanted to eat; but the fools did not have enough sense to
+send some bread up to the tower. They thought that if he could work
+better with his head than with his hands, he would somehow earn bread
+for himself with his head. The old devil stood another day in the
+tower-room, and kept talking all the time. And the people came up and
+looked, and looked and went away.
+
+Then Iv�n asked:
+
+"Well, has the gentleman begun to work with his head?"
+
+"Not yet," people said, "he is still babbling."
+
+The old devil stood another day on the tower and began to weaken; he
+tottered and struck his head against a post. One of the fools saw that,
+and told Iv�n's wife about it, and she ran to her husband in the field.
+
+"Come, let us go and see," she said. "The gentleman is beginning to work
+with his head."
+
+Iv�n was surprised.
+
+"Indeed?" he said. He turned in the horse, and went to the tower. When
+he came up to it, the old devil was weakened from hunger and tottering
+from side to side and knocking his head against the posts. Just as Iv�n
+came up, the devil stumbled and fell and rattled down the stairs, head
+foremost: he counted all the steps.
+
+"Well," said Iv�n, "the clean-looking gentleman told the truth when he
+said that at times the head bursts. This is worse than calluses: such
+works will leave bumps on the head."
+
+The old devil came down the whole staircase and struck his head against
+the ground. Iv�n wanted to go and see how much work he had done, but
+suddenly the earth gave way, and the old devil went through the earth,
+and nothing but a hole was left.
+
+Iv�n scratched himself.
+
+"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing! It is again he. He must be
+the father of those others. What a big fellow he is!"
+
+Iv�n is still living, and people are all the time rushing to his
+kingdom, and his brothers, too, came to him, and he is feeding them all.
+If any one comes and says: "Feed me!" he replies:
+
+"All right, stay here, we have plenty of everything."
+
+They have but one custom in his country, and that is, if one has
+calluses on his hands, he may sit down at the table, and if he has not,
+he gets the remnants.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+  On page 133, the original read: "The Tartars after him. He into the
+  river."
+
+  This has been changed to "The Tartars after him. He threw himself into
+  the river."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FABLES FOR CHILDREN, STORIES FOR
+CHILDREN, NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES, POPULAR EDUCATION, DECEMBRISTS, MORAL
+TALES***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 38025-8.txt or 38025-8.zip *******
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diff --git a/old/38025-8.zip b/old/38025-8.zip
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+++ b/old/38025-8.zip
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@@ -0,0 +1,16764 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Fables for Children, Stories for Children,
+Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales, by
+Leo Tolstoy, Edited by Leo Wiener, Translated by Leo Wiener
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales
+
+
+Author: Leo Tolstoy
+
+Editor: Leo Wiener
+
+Release Date: November 15, 2011  [eBook #38025]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FABLES FOR CHILDREN, STORIES FOR
+CHILDREN, NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES, POPULAR EDUCATION, DECEMBRISTS, MORAL
+TALES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Anna Hall, Albert L�szl�, and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
+available by Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 38025-h.htm or 38025-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38025/38025-h/38025-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38025/38025-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/completeworksofc12tols
+
+
+Tanscriber's note:
+
+      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+      A letter with a breve is indicated by [)<letter>].
+
+
+
+
+
+The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy
+Volume XII.
+
+
+[Illustration: "The clerk beat Sidor's face until the blood came"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshenko_]
+
+
+FABLES FOR CHILDREN
+STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES
+POPULAR EDUCATION
+DECEMBRISTS
+MORAL TALES
+
+by
+
+COUNT LEV N. TOLSTOY
+
+Translated from the Original Russian and Edited by
+
+LEO WIENER
+
+Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Boston
+Dana Estes & Company
+Publishers
+
+Edition De Luxe
+Limited to One Thousand Copies,
+of which this is
+No. 411
+
+_Copyright, 1904_
+By Dana Estes & Company
+
+_Entered at Stationers' Hall_
+
+Colonial Press: Electrotyped and Printed by
+C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                PAGE
+  FABLES FOR CHILDREN
+  Aesop's Fables                                   3
+  Adaptations and Imitations of Hindoo Fables     19
+
+  STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+  The Foundling                                   39
+  The Peasant and the Cucumbers                   40
+  The Fire                                        41
+  The Old Horse                                   43
+  How I Learned to Ride                           46
+  The Willow                                      49
+  Bulka                                           51
+  Bulka and the Wild Boar                         53
+  Pheasants                                       56
+  Milton and Bulka                                58
+  The Turtle                                      60
+  Bulka and the Wolf                              62
+  What Happened to Bulka in Pyatigorsk            65
+  Bulka's and Milton's End                        68
+  The Gray Hare                                   70
+  God Sees the Truth, but Does Not Tell at Once   72
+  Hunting Worse than Slavery                      82
+  A Prisoner of the Caucasus                      92
+  Ermak                                          124
+
+  NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES
+  Stories From Physics:
+    The Magnet                                   137
+    Moisture                                     140
+    The Different Connection of Particles        142
+    Crystals                                     143
+    Injurious Air                                146
+    How Balloons Are Made                        150
+    Galvanism                                    152
+    The Sun's Heat                               156
+  Stories From Zoology:
+    The Owl and the Hare                         159
+    How the Wolves Teach Their Whelps            160
+    Hares and Wolves                             161
+    The Scent                                    162
+    Touch and Sight                              164
+    The Silkworm                                 165
+  Stories From Botany:
+    The Apple-Tree                               170
+    The Old Poplar                               172
+    The Bird-Cherry                              174
+    How Trees Walk                               176
+
+  The Decembrists                                181
+  On Popular Education                           251
+  What Men Live By                               327
+  The Three Hermits                              363
+  Neglect the Fire                               375
+  The Candle                                     395
+  The Two Old Men                                409
+  Where Love Is, There God Is Also               445
+
+  TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK ILLUSTRATIONS
+  The Fiend Persists, but God Resists            463
+  Little Girls Wiser than Old People             466
+  The Two Brothers and the Gold                  469
+  Ilyas                                          472
+
+  A Fairy-Tale about Ivan the Fool               481
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                PAGE
+  "The clerk beat Sidor's face until the blood
+  came" (_The Candle, see page 397_)           _Frontispiece_
+  "'Whose knife is this?'"                        73
+  "'God will forgive you'"                        81
+  "They rode off to the mountains"                96
+  "'Whither are you bound?'"                     332
+  "But the candle was still burning"             403
+
+
+
+
+FABLES FOR CHILDREN
+
+1869-1872
+
+
+
+
+FABLES FOR CHILDREN
+
+
+
+
+I. AESOP'S FABLES
+
+
+THE ANT AND THE DOVE
+
+An Ant came down to the brook: he wanted to drink. A wave washed him
+down and almost drowned him. A Dove was carrying a branch; she saw the
+Ant was drowning, so she cast the branch down to him in the brook. The
+Ant got up on the branch and was saved. Then a hunter placed a snare for
+the Dove, and was on the point of drawing it in. The Ant crawled up to
+the hunter and bit him on the leg; the hunter groaned and dropped the
+snare. The Dove fluttered upwards and flew away.
+
+
+THE TURTLE AND THE EAGLE
+
+A Turtle asked an Eagle to teach her how to fly. The Eagle advised her
+not to try, as she was not fit for it; but she insisted. The Eagle took
+her in his claws, raised her up, and dropped her: she fell on stones and
+broke to pieces.
+
+
+THE POLECAT
+
+A Polecat entered a smithy and began to lick the filings. Blood began to
+flow from the Polecat's mouth, but he was glad and continued to lick; he
+thought that the blood was coming from the iron, and lost his whole
+tongue.
+
+
+THE LION AND THE MOUSE
+
+A Lion was sleeping. A Mouse ran over his body. He awoke and caught her.
+The Mouse besought him; she said:
+
+"Let me go, and I will do you a favour!"
+
+The Lion laughed at the Mouse for promising him a favour, and let her
+go.
+
+Then the hunters caught the Lion and tied him with a rope to a tree. The
+Mouse heard the Lion's roar, ran up, gnawed the rope through, and said:
+
+"Do you remember? You laughed, not thinking that I could repay, but now
+you see that a favour may come also from a Mouse."
+
+
+THE LIAR
+
+A Boy was watching the sheep and, pretending that he saw a wolf, he
+began to cry:
+
+"Help! A wolf! A wolf!"
+
+The peasants came running up and saw that it was not so. After doing
+this for a second and a third time, it happened that a wolf came indeed.
+The Boy began to cry:
+
+"Come, come, quickly, a wolf!"
+
+The peasants thought that he was deceiving them as usual, and paid no
+attention to him. The wolf saw there was no reason to be afraid: he
+leisurely killed the whole flock.
+
+
+THE ASS AND THE HORSE
+
+A man had an Ass and a Horse. They were walking on the road; the Ass
+said to the Horse:
+
+"It is heavy for me.--I shall not be able to carry it all; take at least
+a part of my load."
+
+The Horse paid no attention to him. The Ass fell down from overstraining
+himself, and died. When the master transferred the Ass's load on the
+Horse, and added the Ass's hide, the Horse began to complain:
+
+"Oh, woe to me, poor one, woe to me, unfortunate Horse! I did not want
+to help him even a little, and now I have to carry everything, and his
+hide, too."
+
+
+THE JACKDAW AND THE DOVES
+
+A Jackdaw saw that the Doves were well fed,--so she painted herself
+white and flew into the dove-cot. The Doves thought at first that she
+was a dove like them, and let her in. But the Jackdaw forgot herself and
+croaked in jackdaw fashion. Then the Doves began to pick at her and
+drove her away. The Jackdaw flew back to her friends, but the jackdaws
+were frightened at her, seeing her white, and themselves drove her away.
+
+
+THE WOMAN AND THE HEN
+
+A Hen laid an egg each day. The Mistress thought that if she gave her
+more to eat, she would lay twice as much. So she did. The Hen grew fat
+and stopped laying.
+
+
+THE LION, THE BEAR, AND THE FOX
+
+A Lion and a Bear procured some meat and began to fight for it. The Bear
+did not want to give in, nor did the Lion yield. They fought for so long
+a time that they both grew feeble and lay down. A Fox saw the meat
+between them; she grabbed it and ran away with it.
+
+
+THE DOG, THE COCK, AND THE FOX
+
+A Dog and a Cock went to travel together. At night the Cock fell asleep
+in a tree, and the Dog fixed a place for himself between the roots of
+that tree. When the time came, the Cock began to crow. A Fox heard the
+Cock, ran up to the tree, and began to beg the Cock to come down, as she
+wanted to give him her respects for such a fine voice.
+
+The Cock said:
+
+"You must first wake up the janitor,--he is sleeping between the roots.
+Let him open up, and I will come down."
+
+The Fox began to look for the janitor, and started yelping. The Dog
+sprang out at once and killed the Fox.
+
+
+THE HORSE AND THE GROOM
+
+A Groom stole the Horse's oats, and sold them, but he cleaned the Horse
+each day. Said the Horse:
+
+"If you really wish me to be in good condition, do not sell my oats."
+
+
+THE FROG AND THE LION
+
+A Lion heard a Frog croaking, and thought it was a large beast that was
+calling so loud. He walked up, and saw a Frog coming out of the swamp.
+The Lion crushed her with his paw and said:
+
+"There is nothing to look at, and yet I was frightened."
+
+
+THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE ANTS
+
+In the fall the wheat of the Ants got wet; they were drying it. A hungry
+Grasshopper asked them for something to eat. The Ants said:
+
+"Why did you not gather food during the summer?"
+
+She said:
+
+"I had no time: I sang songs."
+
+They laughed, and said:
+
+"If you sang in the summer, dance in the winter!"
+
+
+THE HEN AND THE GOLDEN EGGS
+
+A master had a Hen which laid golden eggs. He wanted more gold at once,
+and so killed the Hen (he thought that inside of her there was a large
+lump of gold), but she was just like any other hen.
+
+
+THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN
+
+An Ass put on a lion's skin, and all thought it was a lion. Men and
+animals ran away from him. A wind sprang up, and the skin was blown
+aside, and the Ass could be seen. People ran up and beat the Ass.
+
+
+THE HEN AND THE SWALLOW
+
+A Hen found some snake's eggs and began to sit on them. A Swallow saw it
+and said:
+
+"Stupid one! You will hatch them out, and, when they grow up, you will
+be the first one to suffer from them."
+
+
+THE STAG AND THE FAWN
+
+A Fawn once said to a Stag:
+
+"Father, you are larger and fleeter than the dogs, and, besides, you
+have huge antlers for defence; why, then, are you so afraid of the
+dogs?"
+
+The Stag laughed, and said:
+
+"You speak the truth, my child. The trouble is,--the moment I hear the
+dogs bark, I run before I have time to think."
+
+
+THE FOX AND THE GRAPES
+
+A Fox saw some ripe bunches of grapes hanging high, and tried to get at
+them, in order to eat them.
+
+She tried hard, but could not get them. To drown her annoyance she said:
+
+"They are still sour."
+
+
+THE MAIDS AND THE COCK
+
+A mistress used to wake the Maids at night and, as soon as the cocks
+crowed, put them to work. The Maids found that hard, and decided to kill
+the Cock, so that the mistress should not be wakened. They killed him,
+but now they suffered more than ever: the mistress was afraid that she
+would sleep past the time and so began to wake the Maids earlier.
+
+
+THE FISHERMAN AND THE FISH
+
+A Fisherman caught a Fish. Said the Fish:
+
+"Fisherman, let me go into the water; you see I am small: you will have
+little profit of me. If you let me go, I shall grow up, and then you
+will catch me when it will be worth while."
+
+But the Fisherman said:
+
+"A fool would be he who should wait for greater profit, and let the
+lesser slip out of his hands."
+
+
+THE FOX AND THE GOAT
+
+A Goat wanted to drink. He went down the incline to the well, drank his
+fill, and gained in weight. He started to get out, but could not do so.
+He began to bleat. A Fox saw him and said:
+
+"That's it, stupid one! If you had as much sense in your head as there
+are hairs in your beard, you would have thought of how to get out before
+you climbed down."
+
+
+THE DOG AND HER SHADOW
+
+A Dog was crossing the river over a plank, carrying a piece of meat in
+her teeth. She saw herself in the water and thought that another dog
+was carrying a piece of meat. She dropped her piece and dashed forward
+to take away what the other dog had: the other meat was gone, and her
+own was carried away by the stream.
+
+And thus the Dog was left without anything.
+
+
+THE CRANE AND THE STORK
+
+A peasant put out his nets to catch the Cranes for tramping down his
+field. In the nets were caught the Cranes, and with them one Stork.
+
+The Stork said to the peasant:
+
+"Let me go! I am not a Crane, but a Stork; we are most honoured birds; I
+live on your father's house. You can see by my feathers that I am not a
+Crane."
+
+The peasant said:
+
+"With the Cranes I have caught you, and with them will I kill you."
+
+
+THE GARDENER AND HIS SONS
+
+A Gardener wanted his Sons to get used to gardening. As he was dying, he
+called them up and said to them:
+
+"Children, when I am dead, look for what is hidden in the vineyard."
+
+The Sons thought that it was a treasure, and when their father died,
+they began to dig there, and dug up the whole ground. They did not find
+the treasure, but they ploughed the vineyard up so well that it brought
+forth more fruit than ever.
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE CRANE
+
+A Wolf had a bone stuck in his throat, and could not cough it up. He
+called the Crane, and said to him:
+
+"Crane, you have a long neck. Thrust your head into my throat and draw
+out the bone! I will reward you."
+
+The Crane stuck his head in, pulled out the bone, and said:
+
+"Give me my reward!"
+
+The Wolf gnashed his teeth and said:
+
+"Is it not enough reward for you that I did not bite off your head when
+it was between my teeth?"
+
+
+THE HARES AND THE FROGS
+
+The Hares once got together, and began to complain about their life:
+
+"We perish from men, and from dogs, and from eagles, and from all the
+other beasts. It would be better to die at once than to live in fright
+and suffer. Come, let us drown ourselves!"
+
+And the Hares raced away to drown themselves in a lake. The Frogs heard
+the Hares and plumped into the water. So one of the Hares said:
+
+"Wait, boys! Let us put off the drowning! Evidently the Frogs are having
+a harder life than we: they are afraid even of us."
+
+
+THE FATHER AND HIS SONS
+
+A Father told his Sons to live in peace: they paid no attention to him.
+So he told them to bring the bath broom, and said:
+
+"Break it!"
+
+No matter how much they tried, they could not break it. Then the Father
+unclosed the broom, and told them to break the rods singly. They broke
+it.
+
+The Father said:
+
+"So it is with you: if you live in peace, no one will overcome you; but
+if you quarrel, and are divided, any one will easily ruin you."
+
+
+THE FOX
+
+A Fox got caught in a trap. She tore off her tail, and got away. She
+began to contrive how to cover up her shame. She called together the
+Foxes, and begged them to cut off their tails.
+
+"A tail," she said, "is a useless thing. In vain do we drag along a dead
+weight."
+
+One of the Foxes said:
+
+"You would not be speaking thus, if you were not tailless!"
+
+The tailless Fox grew silent and went away.
+
+
+THE WILD ASS AND THE TAME ASS
+
+A Wild Ass saw a Tame Ass. The Wild Ass went up to him and began to
+praise his life, saying how smooth his body was, and what sweet feed he
+received. Later, when the Tame Ass was loaded down, and a driver began
+to goad him with a stick, the Wild Ass said:
+
+"No, brother, I do not envy you: I see that your life is going hard with
+you."
+
+
+THE STAG
+
+A Stag went to the brook to quench his thirst. He saw himself in the
+water, and began to admire his horns, seeing how large and branching
+they were; and he looked at his feet, and said: "But my feet are
+unseemly and thin."
+
+Suddenly a Lion sprang out and made for the Stag. The Stag started to
+run over the open plain. He was getting away, but there came a forest,
+and his horns caught in the branches, and the lion caught him. As the
+Stag was dying, he said:
+
+"How foolish I am! That which I thought to be unseemly and thin was
+saving me, and what I gloried in has been my ruin."
+
+
+THE DOG AND THE WOLF
+
+A Dog fell asleep back of the yard. A Wolf ran up and wanted to eat him.
+
+Said the Dog:
+
+"Wolf, don't eat me yet: now I am lean and bony. Wait a little,--my
+master is going to celebrate a wedding; then I shall have plenty to eat;
+I shall grow fat. It will be better to eat me then."
+
+The Wolf believed her, and went away. Then he came a second time, and
+saw the Dog lying on the roof. The Wolf said to her:
+
+"Well, have they had the wedding?"
+
+The Dog replied:
+
+"Listen, Wolf! If you catch me again asleep in front of the yard, do not
+wait for the wedding."
+
+
+THE GNAT AND THE LION
+
+A Gnat came to a Lion, and said:
+
+"Do you think that you have more strength than I? You are mistaken! What
+does your strength consist in? Is it that you scratch with your claws,
+and gnaw with your teeth? That is the way the women quarrel with their
+husbands. I am stronger than you: if you wish let us fight!"
+
+And the Gnat sounded his horn, and began to bite the Lion on his bare
+cheeks and his nose. The Lion struck his face with his paws and
+scratched it with his claws. He tore his face until the blood came, and
+gave up.
+
+The Gnat trumpeted for joy, and flew away. Then he became entangled in a
+spider's web, and the spider began to suck him up. The Gnat said:
+
+"I have vanquished the strong beast, the Lion, and now I perish from
+this nasty spider."
+
+
+THE HORSE AND HIS MASTERS
+
+A gardener had a Horse. She had much to do, but little to eat; so she
+began to pray to God to get another master. And so it happened. The
+gardener sold the Horse to a potter. The Horse was glad, but the potter
+had even more work for her to do. And again the Horse complained of her
+lot, and began to pray that she might get a better master. And this
+prayer, too, was fulfilled. The potter sold the Horse to a tanner. When
+the Horse saw the skins of horses in the tanner's yard, she began to
+cry:
+
+"Woe to me, wretched one! It would be better if I could stay with my old
+masters. It is evident they have sold me now not for work, but for my
+skin's sake."
+
+
+THE OLD MAN AND DEATH
+
+An Old Man cut some wood, which he carried away. He had to carry it far.
+He grew tired, so he put down his bundle, and said:
+
+"Oh, if Death would only come!"
+
+Death came, and said:
+
+"Here I am, what do you want?"
+
+The Old Man was frightened, and said:
+
+"Lift up my bundle!"
+
+
+THE LION AND THE FOX
+
+A Lion, growing old, was unable to catch the animals, and so intended to
+live by cunning. He went into a den, lay down there, and pretended that
+he was sick. The animals came to see him, and he ate up those that went
+into his den. The Fox guessed the trick. She stood at the entrance of
+the den, and said:
+
+"Well, Lion, how are you feeling?"
+
+The Lion answered:
+
+"Poorly. Why don't you come in?"
+
+The Fox replied:
+
+"I do not come in because I see by the tracks that many have entered,
+but none have come out."
+
+
+THE STAG AND THE VINEYARD
+
+A Stag hid himself from the hunters in a vineyard. When the hunters
+missed him, the Stag began to nibble at the grape-vine leaves.
+
+The hunters noticed that the leaves were moving, and so they thought,
+"There must be an animal under those leaves," and fired their guns, and
+wounded the Stag.
+
+The Stag said, dying:
+
+"It serves me right for wanting to eat the leaves that saved me."
+
+
+THE CAT AND THE MICE
+
+A house was overrun with Mice. A Cat found his way into the house, and
+began to catch them. The Mice saw that matters were bad, and said:
+
+"Mice, let us not come down from the ceiling! The Cat cannot get up
+there."
+
+When the Mice stopped coming down, the Cat decided that he must catch
+them by a trick. He grasped the ceiling with one leg, hung down from it,
+and made believe that he was dead.
+
+A Mouse looked out at him, but said:
+
+"No, my friend! Even if you should turn into a bag, I would not go up to
+you."
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE GOAT
+
+A Wolf saw a Goat browsing on a rocky mountain, and he could not get at
+her; so he said to her:
+
+"Come down lower! The place is more even, and the grass is much sweeter
+to feed on."
+
+But the Goat answered:
+
+"You are not calling me down for that, Wolf: you are troubling yourself
+not about my food, but about yours."
+
+
+THE REEDS AND THE OLIVE-TREE
+
+The Olive-tree and the Reeds quarrelled about who was stronger and
+sounder. The Olive-tree laughed at the Reeds because they bent in every
+wind. The Reeds kept silence. A storm came: the Reeds swayed, tossed,
+bowed to the ground,--and remained unharmed. The Olive-tree strained her
+branches against the wind,--and broke.
+
+
+THE TWO COMPANIONS
+
+Two Companions were walking through the forest when a Bear jumped out on
+them. One started to run, climbed a tree, and hid himself, but the other
+remained in the road. He had nothing to do, so he fell down on the
+ground and pretended that he was dead.
+
+The Bear went up to him, and sniffed at him; but he had stopped
+breathing.
+
+The Bear sniffed at his face; he thought that he was dead, and so went
+away.
+
+When the Bear was gone, the Companion climbed down from the tree and
+laughing, said: "What did the Bear whisper in your ear?"
+
+"He told me that those who in danger run away from their companions are
+bad people."
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
+
+A Wolf saw a Lamb drinking at a river. The Wolf wanted to eat the Lamb,
+and so he began to annoy him. He said:
+
+"You are muddling my water and do not let me drink."
+
+The Lamb said:
+
+"How can I muddle your water? I am standing downstream from you;
+besides, I drink with the tips of my lips."
+
+And the Wolf said:
+
+"Well, why did you call my father names last summer?"
+
+The Lamb said:
+
+"But, Wolf, I was not yet born last summer."
+
+The Wolf got angry, and said:
+
+"It is hard to get the best of you. Besides, my stomach is empty, so I
+will devour you."
+
+
+THE LION, THE WOLF, AND THE FOX
+
+An old, sick Lion was lying in his den. All the animals came to see the
+king, but the Fox kept away. So the Wolf was glad of the chance, and
+began to slander the Fox before the Lion.
+
+"She does not esteem you in the least," he said, "she has not come once
+to see the king."
+
+The Fox happened to run by as he was saying these words. She heard what
+the Wolf had said, and thought:
+
+"Wait, Wolf, I will get my revenge on you."
+
+So the Lion began to roar at the Fox, but she said:
+
+"Do not have me killed, but let me say a word! I did not come to see you
+because I had no time. And I had no time because I ran over the whole
+world to ask the doctors for a remedy for you. I have just got it, and
+so I have come to see you."
+
+The Lion said:
+
+"What is the remedy?"
+
+"It is this: if you flay a live Wolf, and put his warm hide on you--"
+
+When the Lion stretched out the Wolf, the Fox laughed, and said:
+
+"That's it, my friend: masters ought to be led to do good, not evil."
+
+
+THE LION, THE ASS, AND THE FOX
+
+The Lion, the Ass, and the Fox went out to hunt. They caught a large
+number of animals, and the Lion told the Ass to divide them up. The Ass
+divided them into three equal parts and said: "Now, take them!"
+
+The Lion grew angry, ate up the Ass, and told the Fox to divide them up
+anew. The Fox collected them all into one heap, and left a small bit for
+herself. The Lion looked at it and said:
+
+"Clever Fox! Who taught you to divide so well?"
+
+She said:
+
+"What about that Ass?"
+
+
+THE PEASANT AND THE WATER-SPRITE
+
+A Peasant lost his axe in the river; he sat down on the bank in grief,
+and began to weep.
+
+The Water-sprite heard the Peasant and took pity on him. He brought a
+gold axe out of the river, and said: "Is this your axe?"
+
+The Peasant said: "No, it is not mine."
+
+The Water-sprite brought another, a silver axe.
+
+Again the Peasant said: "It is not my axe."
+
+Then the Water-sprite brought out the real axe.
+
+The Peasant said: "Now this is my axe."
+
+The Water-sprite made the Peasant a present of all three axes, for
+having told the truth.
+
+At home the Peasant showed his axes to his friends, and told them what
+had happened to him.
+
+One of the peasants made up his mind to do the same: he went to the
+river, purposely threw his axe into the water, sat down on the bank, and
+began to weep.
+
+The Water-sprite brought out a gold axe, and asked: "Is this your axe?"
+
+The Peasant was glad, and called out: "It is mine, mine!"
+
+The Water-sprite did not give him the gold axe, and did not bring him
+back his own either, because he had told an untruth.
+
+
+THE RAVEN AND THE FOX
+
+A Raven got himself a piece of meat, and sat down on a tree. The Fox
+wanted to get it from him. She went up to him, and said:
+
+"Oh, Raven, as I look at you,--from your size and beauty,--you ought to
+be a king! And you would certainly be a king, if you had a good voice."
+
+The Raven opened his mouth wide, and began to croak with all his might
+and main. The meat fell down. The Fox caught it and said:
+
+"Oh, Raven! If you had also sense, you would certainly be a king."
+
+
+
+
+II. ADAPTATIONS AND IMITATIONS OF HINDOO FABLES
+
+
+THE SNAKE'S HEAD AND TAIL
+
+The Snake's Tail had a quarrel with the Snake's Head about who was to
+walk in front. The Head said:
+
+"You cannot walk in front, because you have no eyes and no ears."
+
+The Tail said:
+
+"Yes, but I have strength, I move you; if I want to, I can wind myself
+around a tree, and you cannot get off the spot."
+
+The Head said:
+
+"Let us separate!"
+
+And the Tail tore himself loose from the Head, and crept on; but the
+moment he got away from the Head, he fell into a hole and was lost.
+
+
+FINE THREAD
+
+A Man ordered some fine thread from a Spinner. The Spinner spun it for
+him, but the Man said that the thread was not good, and that he wanted
+the finest thread he could get. The Spinner said:
+
+"If this is not fine enough, take this!" and she pointed to an empty
+space.
+
+He said that he did not see any. The Spinner said:
+
+"You do not see it, because it is so fine. I do not see it myself."
+
+The Fool was glad, and ordered some more thread of this kind, and paid
+her for what he got.
+
+
+THE PARTITION OF THE INHERITANCE
+
+A Father had two Sons. He said to them: "When I die, divide everything
+into two equal parts."
+
+When the Father died, the Sons could not divide without quarrelling.
+They went to a Neighbour to have him settle the matter. The Neighbour
+asked them how their Father had told them to divide. They said:
+
+"He ordered us to divide everything into two equal parts."
+
+The Neighbour said:
+
+"If so, tear all your garments into two halves, break your dishes into
+two halves, and cut all your cattle into two halves!"
+
+The Brothers obeyed their Neighbour, and lost everything.
+
+
+THE MONKEY
+
+A Man went into the woods, cut down a tree, and began to saw it. He
+raised the end of the tree on a stump, sat astride over it, and began to
+saw. Then he drove a wedge into the split that he had sawed, and went on
+sawing; then he took out the wedge and drove it in farther down.
+
+A Monkey was sitting on a tree and watching him. When the Man lay down
+to sleep, the Monkey seated herself astride the tree, and wanted to do
+the same; but when she took out the wedge, the tree sprang back and
+caught her tail. She began to tug and to cry. The Man woke up, beat the
+Monkey, and tied a rope to her.
+
+
+THE MONKEY AND THE PEASE
+
+A Monkey was carrying both her hands full of pease. A pea dropped on the
+ground; the Monkey wanted to pick it up, and dropped twenty peas. She
+rushed to pick them up and lost all the rest. Then she flew into a
+rage, swept away all the pease and ran off.
+
+
+THE MILCH COW
+
+A Man had a Cow; she gave each day a pot full of milk. The Man invited a
+number of guests. To have as much milk as possible, he did not milk the
+Cow for ten days. He thought that on the tenth day the Cow would give
+him ten pitchers of milk.
+
+But the Cow's milk went back, and she gave less milk than before.
+
+
+THE DUCK AND THE MOON
+
+A Duck was swimming in the pond, trying to find some fish, but she did
+not find one in a whole day. When night came, she saw the Moon in the
+water; she thought that it was a fish, and plunged in to catch the Moon.
+The other ducks saw her do it and laughed at her.
+
+That made the Duck feel so ashamed and bashful that when she saw a fish
+under the Water, she did not try to catch it, and so died of hunger.
+
+
+THE WOLF IN THE DUST
+
+A Wolf wanted to pick a sheep out of a flock, and stepped into the wind,
+so that the dust of the flock might blow on him.
+
+The Sheep Dog saw him, and said:
+
+"There is no sense, Wolf, in your walking in the dust: it will make your
+eyes ache."
+
+But the Wolf said:
+
+"The trouble is, Doggy, that my eyes have been aching for quite awhile,
+and I have been told that the dust from a flock of sheep will cure the
+eyes."
+
+
+THE MOUSE UNDER THE GRANARY
+
+A Mouse was living under the granary. In the floor of the granary there
+was a little hole, and the grain fell down through it. The Mouse had an
+easy life of it, but she wanted to brag of her ease: she gnawed a larger
+hole in the floor, and invited other mice.
+
+"Come to a feast with me," said she; "there will be plenty to eat for
+everybody."
+
+When she brought the mice, she saw there was no hole. The peasant had
+noticed the big hole in the floor, and had stopped it up.
+
+
+THE BEST PEARS
+
+A master sent his Servant to buy the best-tasting pears. The Servant
+came to the shop and asked for pears. The dealer gave him some; but the
+Servant said:
+
+"No, give me the best!"
+
+The dealer said:
+
+"Try one; you will see that they taste good."
+
+"How shall I know," said the Servant, "that they all taste good, if I
+try one only?"
+
+He bit off a piece from each pear, and brought them to his master. Then
+his master sent him away.
+
+
+THE FALCON AND THE COCK
+
+The Falcon was used to the master, and came to his hand when he was
+called; the Cock ran away from his master and cried when people went up
+to him. So the Falcon said to the Cock:
+
+"In you Cocks there is no gratitude; one can see that you are of a
+common breed. You go to your masters only when you are hungry. It is
+different with us wild birds. We have much strength, and we can fly
+faster than anybody; still we do not fly away from people, but of our
+own accord go to their hands when we are called. We remember that they
+feed us."
+
+Then the Cock said:
+
+"You do not run away from people because you have never seen a roast
+Falcon, but we, you know, see roast Cocks."
+
+
+THE JACKALS AND THE ELEPHANT
+
+The Jackals had eaten up all the carrion in the woods, and had nothing
+to eat. So an old Jackal was thinking how to find something to feed on.
+He went to an Elephant, and said:
+
+"We had a king, but he became overweening: he told us to do things that
+nobody could do; we want to choose another king, and my people have sent
+me to ask you to be our king. You will have an easy life with us.
+Whatever you will order us to do, we will do, and we will honour you in
+everything. Come to our kingdom!"
+
+The Elephant consented, and followed the Jackal. The Jackal brought him
+to a swamp. When the Elephant stuck fast in it, the Jackal said:
+
+"Now command! Whatever you command, we will do."
+
+The Elephant said:
+
+"I command you to pull me out from here."
+
+The Jackal began to laugh, and said:
+
+"Take hold of my tail with your trunk, and I will pull you out at once."
+
+The Elephant said:
+
+"Can I be pulled out by a tail?"
+
+But the Jackal said to him:
+
+"Why, then, do you command us to do what is impossible? Did we not drive
+away our first king for telling us to do what could not be done?"
+
+When the Elephant died in the swamp the Jackals came and ate him up.
+
+
+THE HERON, THE FISHES, AND THE CRAB
+
+A Heron was living near a pond. She grew old, and had no strength left
+with which to catch the fish. She began to contrive how to live by
+cunning. So she said to the Fishes:
+
+"You Fishes do not know that a calamity is in store for you: I have
+heard the people say that they are going to let off the pond, and catch
+every one of you. I know of a nice little pond back of the mountain. I
+should like to help you, but I am old, and it is hard for me to fly."
+
+The Fishes begged the Heron to help them. So the Heron said:
+
+"All right, I will do what I can for you, and will carry you over: only
+I cannot do it at once,--I will take you there one after another."
+
+And the Fishes were happy; they kept begging her: "Carry me over! Carry
+me over!"
+
+And the Heron started carrying them. She would take one up, would carry
+her into the field, and would eat her up. And thus she ate a large
+number of Fishes.
+
+In the pond there lived an old Crab. When the Heron began to take out
+the Fishes, he saw what was up, and said:
+
+"Now, Heron, take me to the new abode!"
+
+The Heron took the Crab and carried him off. When she flew out on the
+field, she wanted to throw the Crab down. But the Crab saw the
+fish-bones on the ground, and so squeezed the Heron's neck with his
+claws, and choked her to death. Then he crawled back to the pond, and
+told the Fishes.
+
+
+THE WATER-SPRITE AND THE PEARL
+
+A Man was rowing in a boat, and dropped a costly pearl into the sea. The
+Man returned to the shore, took a pail, and began to draw up the water
+and to pour it out on the land. He drew the water and poured it out for
+three days without stopping.
+
+On the fourth day the Water-sprite came out of the sea, and asked:
+
+"Why are you drawing the water?"
+
+The Man said:
+
+"I am drawing it because I have dropped a pearl into it."
+
+The Water-sprite asked him:
+
+"Will you stop soon?"
+
+The Man said:
+
+"I will stop when I dry up the sea."
+
+Then the Water-sprite returned to the sea, brought back that pearl, and
+gave it to the Man.
+
+
+THE BLIND MAN AND THE MILK
+
+A Man born blind asked a Seeing Man:
+
+"Of what colour is milk?"
+
+The Seeing Man said: "The colour of milk is the same as that of white
+paper."
+
+The Blind Man asked: "Well, does that colour rustle in your hands like
+paper?"
+
+The Seeing Man said: "No, it is as white as white flour."
+
+The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as soft and as powdery as flour?"
+
+The Seeing Man said: "No, it is simply as white as a white hare."
+
+The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as fluffy and soft as a hare?"
+
+The Seeing Man said: "No, it is as white as snow."
+
+The Blind Man asked: "Well, is it as cold as snow?"
+
+And no matter how many examples the Seeing Man gave, the Blind Man was
+unable to understand what the white colour of milk was like.
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE BOW
+
+A hunter went out to hunt with bow and arrows. He killed a goat. He
+threw her on his shoulders and carried her along. On his way he saw a
+boar. He threw down the goat, and shot at the boar and wounded him. The
+boar rushed against the hunter and butted him to death, and himself died
+on the spot. A Wolf scented the blood, and came to the place where lay
+the goat, the boar, the man, and his bow. The Wolf was glad, and said:
+
+"Now I shall have enough to eat for a long time; only I will not eat
+everything at once, but little by little, so that nothing may be lost:
+first I will eat the tougher things, and then I will lunch on what is
+soft and sweet."
+
+The Wolf sniffed at the goat, the boar, and the man, and said:
+
+"This is all soft food, so I will eat it later; let me first start on
+these sinews of the bow."
+
+And he began to gnaw the sinews of the bow. When he bit through the
+string, the bow sprang back and hit him on his belly. He died on the
+spot, and other wolves ate up the man, the goat, the boar, and the Wolf.
+
+
+THE BIRDS IN THE NET
+
+A Hunter set out a net near a lake and caught a number of birds. The
+birds were large, and they raised the net and flew away with it. The
+Hunter ran after them. A Peasant saw the Hunter running, and said:
+
+"Where are you running? How can you catch up with the birds, while you
+are on foot?"
+
+The Hunter said:
+
+"If it were one bird, I should not catch it, but now I shall."
+
+And so it happened. When evening came, the birds began to pull for the
+night each in a different direction: one to the woods, another to the
+swamp, a third to the field; and all fell with the net to the ground,
+and the Hunter caught them.
+
+
+THE KING AND THE FALCON
+
+A certain King let his favourite Falcon loose on a hare, and galloped
+after him.
+
+The Falcon caught the hare. The King took him away, and began to look
+for some water to drink. The King found it on a knoll, but it came only
+drop by drop. The King fetched his cup from the saddle, and placed it
+under the water. The Water flowed in drops, and when the cup was filled,
+the King raised it to his mouth and wanted to drink it. Suddenly the
+Falcon fluttered on the King's arm and spilled the water. The King
+placed the cup once more under the drops. He waited for a long time for
+the cup to be filled even with the brim, and again, as he carried it to
+his mouth, the Falcon flapped his wings and spilled the water.
+
+When the King filled his cup for the third time and began to carry it to
+his mouth, the Falcon again spilled it. The King flew into a rage and
+killed him by flinging him against a stone with all his force. Just then
+the King's servants rode up, and one of them ran up-hill to the spring,
+to find as much water as possible, and to fill the cup. But the servant
+did not bring the water; he returned with the empty cup, and said:
+
+"You cannot drink that water; there is a snake in the spring, and she
+has let her venom into the water. It is fortunate that the Falcon has
+spilled the water. If you had drunk it, you would have died."
+
+The King said:
+
+"How badly I have repaid the Falcon! He has saved my life, and I killed
+him."
+
+
+THE KING AND THE ELEPHANTS
+
+An Indian King ordered all the Blind People to be assembled, and when
+they came, he ordered that all the Elephants be shown to them. The Blind
+Men went to the stable and began to feel the Elephants. One felt a leg,
+another a tail, a third the stump of a tail, a fourth a belly, a fifth a
+back, a sixth the ears, a seventh the tusks, and an eighth a trunk.
+
+Then the King called the Blind Men, and asked them: "What are my
+Elephants like?"
+
+One Blind Man said: "Your Elephants are like posts." He had felt the
+legs.
+
+Another Blind Man said: "They are like bath brooms." He had felt the end
+of the tail.
+
+A third said: "They are like branches." He had felt the tail stump.
+
+The one who had touched a belly said: "The Elephants are like a clod of
+earth."
+
+The one who had touched the sides said: "They are like a wall."
+
+The one who had touched a back said: "They are like a mound."
+
+The one who had touched the ears said: "They are like a mortar."
+
+The one who had touched the tusks said: "They are like horns."
+
+The one who had touched the trunk said that they were like a stout rope.
+
+And all the Blind Men began to dispute and to quarrel.
+
+
+WHY THERE IS EVIL IN THE WORLD
+
+A Hermit was living in the forest, and the animals were not afraid of
+him. He and the animals talked together and understood each other.
+
+Once the Hermit lay down under a tree, and a Raven a Dove, a Stag, and
+a Snake gathered in the same place, to pass the night. The animals began
+to discuss why there was evil in the world.
+
+The Raven said:
+
+"All the evil in the world comes from hunger. When I eat my fill, I sit
+down on a branch and croak a little, and it is all jolly and good, and
+everything gives me pleasure; but let me just go without eating a day or
+two, and everything palls on me so that I do not feel like looking at
+God's world. And something draws me on, and I fly from place to place,
+and have no rest. When I catch a glimpse of some meat, it makes me only
+feel sicker than ever, and I make for it without much thinking. At times
+they throw sticks and stones at me, and the wolves and dogs grab me, but
+I do not give in. Oh, how many of my brothers are perishing through
+hunger! All evil comes from hunger."
+
+The Dove said:
+
+"According to my opinion, the evil does not come from hunger, but from
+love. If we lived singly, the trouble would not be so bad. One head is
+not poor, and if it is, it is only one. But here we live in pairs. And
+you come to like your mate so much that you have no rest: you keep
+thinking of her all the time, wondering whether she has had enough to
+eat, and whether she is warm. And when your mate flies away from you,
+you feel entirely lost, and you keep thinking that a hawk may have
+carried her off, or men may have caught her; and you start out to find
+her, and fly to your ruin,--either into the hawk's claws, or into a
+snare. And when your mate is lost, nothing gives you any joy. You do not
+eat or drink, and all the time search and weep. Oh, so many of us perish
+in this way! All the evil is not from hunger, but from love."
+
+The Snake said:
+
+"No, the evil is not from hunger, nor from love, but from rage. If we
+lived peacefully, without getting into a rage, everything would be nice
+for us. But, as it is, whenever a thing does not go exactly right, we
+get angry, and then nothing pleases us. All we think about is how to
+revenge ourselves on some one. Then we forget ourselves, and only hiss,
+and creep, and try to find some one to bite. And we do not spare a
+soul,--we even bite our own father and mother. We feel as though we
+could eat ourselves up. And we rage until we perish. All the evil in the
+World comes from rage."
+
+The Stag said:
+
+"No, not from rage, or from love, or from hunger does all the evil in
+the world come, but from terror. If it were possible not to be afraid,
+everything would be well. We have swift feet and much strength: against
+a small animal we defend ourselves with our horns, and from a large one
+we flee. But how can I help becoming frightened? Let a branch crackle in
+the forest, or a leaf rustle, and I am all atremble with fear, and my
+heart flutters as though it wanted to jump out, and I fly as fast as I
+can. Again, let a hare run by, or a bird flap its wings, or a dry twig
+break off, and you think that it is a beast, and you run straight up
+against him. Or you run away from a dog and run into the hands of a man.
+Frequently you get frightened and run, not knowing whither, and at full
+speed rush down a steep hill, and get killed. We have no rest. All the
+evil comes from terror."
+
+Then the Hermit said:
+
+"Not from hunger, not from love, not from rage, not from terror are all
+our sufferings, but from our bodies comes all the evil in the world.
+From them come hunger, and love, and rage, and terror."
+
+
+THE WOLF AND THE HUNTERS
+
+A Wolf devoured a sheep. The Hunters caught the Wolf and began to beat
+him. The Wolf said:
+
+"In vain do you beat me: it is not my fault that I am gray,--God has
+made me so."
+
+But the Hunters said:
+
+"We do not beat the Wolf for being gray, but for eating the sheep."
+
+
+THE TWO PEASANTS
+
+Once upon a time two Peasants drove toward each other and caught in each
+other's sleighs. One cried:
+
+"Get out of my way,--I am hurrying to town."
+
+But the other said:
+
+"Get out of my way, I am hurrying home."
+
+They quarrelled for some time. A third Peasant saw them and said:
+
+"If you are in a hurry, back up!"
+
+
+THE PEASANT AND THE HORSE
+
+A Peasant went to town to fetch some oats for his Horse. He had barely
+left the village, when the Horse began to turn around, toward the house.
+The Peasant struck the Horse with his whip. She went on, and kept
+thinking about the Peasant:
+
+"Whither is that fool driving me? He had better go home."
+
+Before reaching town, the Peasant saw that the Horse trudged along
+through the mud with difficulty, so he turned her on the pavement; but
+the Horse began to turn back from the street. The Peasant gave the Horse
+the whip, and jerked at the reins; she went on the pavement, and
+thought:
+
+"Why has he turned me on the pavement? It will only break my hoofs. It
+is rough underfoot."
+
+The Peasant went to the shop, bought the oats, and drove home. When he
+came home, he gave the Horse some oats. The Horse ate them and thought:
+
+"How stupid men are! They are fond of exercising their wits on us, but
+they have less sense than we. What did he trouble himself about? He
+drove me somewhere. No matter how far we went, we came home in the end.
+So it would have been better if we had remained at home from the start:
+he could have been sitting on the oven, and I eating oats."
+
+
+THE TWO HORSES
+
+Two Horses were drawing their carts. The Front Horse pulled well, but
+the Hind Horse kept stopping all the time. The load of the Hind Horse
+was transferred to the front cart; when all was transferred, the Hind
+Horse went along with ease, and said to the Front Horse:
+
+"Work hard and sweat! The more you try, the harder they will make you
+work."
+
+When they arrived at the tavern, their master said:
+
+"Why should I feed two Horses, and haul with one only? I shall do better
+to give one plenty to eat, and to kill the other: I shall at least have
+her hide."
+
+So he did.
+
+
+THE AXE AND THE SAW
+
+Two Peasants went to the forest to cut wood. One of them had an axe, and
+the other a saw. They picked out a tree, and began to dispute. One said
+that the tree had to be chopped, while the other said that it had to be
+sawed down.
+
+A third Peasant said:
+
+"I will easily make peace between you: if the axe is sharp, you had
+better chop it; but if the saw is sharp you had better saw it."
+
+He took the axe, and began to chop it; but the axe was so dull that it
+was not possible to cut with it. Then he took the saw; the saw was
+worthless, and did not saw. So he said:
+
+"Stop quarrelling awhile; the axe does not chop, and the saw does not
+saw. First grind your axe and file your saw, and then quarrel."
+
+But the Peasants grew angrier still at one another, because one had a
+dull axe, and the other a dull saw. And they came to blows.
+
+
+THE DOGS AND THE COOK
+
+A Cook was preparing a dinner. The Dogs were lying at the kitchen door.
+The Cook killed a calf and threw the guts out into the yard. The Dogs
+picked them up and ate them, and said:
+
+"He is a good Cook: he cooks well."
+
+After awhile the Cook began to clean pease, turnips, and onions, and
+threw out the refuse. The Dogs made for it; but they turned their noses
+up, and said:
+
+"Our Cook has grown worse: he used to cook well, but now he is no longer
+any good."
+
+But the Cook paid no attention to the Dogs, and continued to fix the
+dinner in his own way. The family, and not the Dogs, ate the dinner, and
+praised it.
+
+
+THE HARE AND THE HARRIER
+
+A Hare once said to a Harrier:
+
+"Why do you bark when you run after us? You would catch us easier, if
+you ran after us in silence. With your bark you only drive us against
+the hunter: he hears where we are running; and he rushes out with his
+gun and kills us, and does not give you anything."
+
+The Harrier said:
+
+"That is not the reason why I bark. I bark because, when I scent your
+odour, I am angry, and happy because I am about to catch you; I do not
+know why, but I cannot keep from barking."
+
+
+THE OAK AND THE HAZELBUSH
+
+An old Oak dropped an acorn under a Hazelbush. The Hazelbush said to the
+Oak:
+
+"Have you not enough space under your own branches? Drop your acorns in
+an open space. Here I am myself crowded by my shoots, and I do not drop
+my nuts to the ground, but give them to men."
+
+"I have lived for two hundred years," said the Oak, "and the Oakling
+which will sprout from that acorn will live just as long."
+
+Then the Hazelbush flew into a rage, and said:
+
+"If so, I will choke your Oakling, and he will not live for three days."
+
+The Oak made no reply, but told his son to sprout out of that acorn. The
+acorn got wet and burst, and clung to the ground with his crooked
+rootlet, and sent up a sprout.
+
+The Hazelbush tried to choke him, and gave him no sun. But the Oakling
+spread upwards and grew stronger in the shade of the Hazelbush. A
+hundred years passed. The Hazelbush had long ago dried up, but the Oak
+from that acorn towered to the sky and spread his tent in all
+directions.
+
+
+THE HEN AND THE CHICKS
+
+A Hen hatched some Chicks, but did not know how to take care of them. So
+she said to them:
+
+"Creep back into your shells! When you are inside your shells, I will
+sit on you as before, and will take care of you."
+
+The Chicks did as they were ordered and tried to creep into their
+shells, but were unable to do so, and only crushed their wings. Then one
+of the Chicks said to his mother:
+
+"If we are to stay all the time in our shells, you ought never to have
+hatched us."
+
+
+THE CORN-CRAKE AND HIS MATE
+
+A Corn-crake had made a nest in the meadow late in the year, and at
+mowing time his Mate was still sitting on her eggs. Early in the morning
+the peasants came to the meadow, took off the coats, whetted their
+scythes, and started one after another to mow down the grass and to put
+it down in rows. The Corn-crake flew up to see what the mowers were
+doing. When he saw a peasant swing his scythe and cut a snake in two, he
+rejoiced and flew back to his Mate and said:
+
+"Don't fear the peasants! They have come to cut the snakes to pieces;
+they have given us no rest for quite awhile."
+
+But his Mate said:
+
+"The peasants are cutting the grass, and with the grass they are cutting
+everything which is in their way,--the snakes, and the Corn-crake's
+nest, and the Corn-crake's head. My heart forebodes nothing good: but I
+cannot carry away the eggs, nor fly from the nest, for fear of chilling
+them."
+
+When the mowers came to the nest of the Corn-crake, one of the peasants
+swung his scythe and cut off the head of the Corn-crake's Mate, and put
+the eggs in his bosom and gave them to his children to play with.
+
+
+THE COW AND THE BILLY GOAT
+
+An old woman had a Cow and a Billy Goat. The two pastured together. At
+milking the Cow was restless. The old woman brought out some bread and
+salt, and gave it to the Cow, and said:
+
+"Stand still, motherkin; take it, take it! I will bring you some more,
+only stand still."
+
+On the next evening the Goat came home from the field before the Cow,
+and spread his legs, and stood in front of the old woman. The old woman
+wanted to strike him with the towel, but he stood still, and did not
+stir. He remembered that the woman had promised the Cow some bread if
+she would stand still. When the woman saw that he would not budge, she
+picked up a stick, and beat him with it.
+
+When the Goat went away, the woman began once more to feed the Cow with
+bread, and to talk to her.
+
+"There is no honesty in men," thought the Goat. "I stood still better
+than the Cow, and was beaten for it."
+
+He stepped aside, took a run, hit against the milk-pail, spilled the
+milk, and hurt the old woman.
+
+
+THE FOX'S TAIL
+
+A Man caught a Fox, and asked her:
+
+"Who has taught you Foxes to cheat the dogs with your tails?"
+
+The Fox asked: "How do you mean, to cheat? We do not cheat the dogs, but
+simply run from them as fast as we can."
+
+The Man said:
+
+"Yes, you do cheat them with your tails. When the dogs catch up with you
+and are about to clutch you, you turn your tails to one side; the dogs
+turn sharply after the tail, and then you run in the opposite
+direction."
+
+The Fox laughed, and said:
+
+"We do not do so in order to cheat the dogs, but in order to turn
+around; when a dog is after us, and we see that we cannot get away
+straight ahead, we turn to one side, and in order to do that suddenly,
+we have to swing the tail to the other side, just as you do with your
+arms, when you have to turn around. That is not our invention; God
+himself invented it when He created us, so that the dogs might not be
+able to catch all the Foxes."
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+
+1869-1872
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FOR CHILDREN
+
+
+
+
+THE FOUNDLING
+
+
+A poor woman had a daughter by the name of Masha. Masha went in the
+morning to fetch water, and saw at the door something wrapped in rags.
+When she touched the rags, there came from it the sound of "Ooah, ooah,
+ooah!" Masha bent down and saw that it was a tiny, red-skinned baby. It
+was crying aloud: "Ooah, ooah!"
+
+Masha took it into her arms and carried it into the house, and gave it
+milk with a spoon. Her mother said:
+
+"What have you brought?"
+
+"A baby. I found it at our door."
+
+The mother said:
+
+"We are poor as it is; we have nothing to feed the baby with; I will go
+to the chief and tell him to take the baby."
+
+Masha began to cry, and said:
+
+"Mother, the child will not eat much; leave it here! See what red,
+wrinkled little hands and fingers it has!"
+
+Her mother looked at them, and she felt pity for the child. She did not
+take the baby away. Masha fed and swathed the child, and sang songs to
+it, when it went to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+THE PEASANT AND THE CUCUMBERS
+
+
+A peasant once went to the gardener's, to steal cucumbers. He crept up
+to the cucumbers, and thought:
+
+"I will carry off a bag of cucumbers, which I will sell; with the money
+I will buy a hen. The hen will lay eggs, hatch them, and raise a lot of
+chicks. I will feed the chicks and sell them; then I will buy me a young
+sow, and she will bear a lot of pigs. I will sell the pigs, and buy me a
+mare; the mare will foal me some colts. I will raise the colts, and sell
+them. I will buy me a house, and start a garden. In the garden I will
+sow cucumbers, and will not let them be stolen, but will keep a sharp
+watch on them. I will hire watchmen, and put them in the cucumber patch,
+while I myself will come on them, unawares, and shout: 'Oh, there, keep
+a sharp lookout!'"
+
+And this he shouted as loud as he could. The watchmen heard it, and they
+rushed out and beat the peasant.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRE
+
+
+During harvest-time the men and women went out to work. In the village
+were left only the old and the very young. In one hut there remained a
+grandmother with her three grandchildren.
+
+The grandmother made a fire in the oven, and lay down to rest herself.
+Flies kept alighting on her and biting her. She covered her head with a
+towel and fell asleep. One of the grandchildren, Masha (she was three
+years old), opened the oven, scraped some coals into a potsherd, and
+went into the vestibule. In the vestibule lay sheaves: the women were
+getting them bound.
+
+Masha brought the coals, put them under the sheaves, and began to blow.
+When the straw caught fire, she was glad; she went into the hut and took
+her brother Kiryusha by the arm (he was a year and a half old, and had
+just learned to walk), and brought him out, and said to him:
+
+"See, Kiryusha, what a fire I have kindled."
+
+The sheaves were already burning and crackling. When the vestibule was
+filled with smoke, Masha became frightened and ran back into the house.
+Kiryusha fell over the threshold, hurt his nose, and began to cry; Masha
+pulled him into the house, and both hid under a bench.
+
+The grandmother heard nothing, and did not wake. The elder boy, Vanya
+(he was eight years old), was in the street. When he saw the smoke
+rolling out of the vestibule, he ran to the door, made his way through
+the smoke into the house, and began to waken his grandmother; but she
+was dazed from her sleep, and, forgetting the children, rushed out and
+ran to the farmyards to call the people.
+
+In the meantime Masha was sitting under the bench and keeping quiet; but
+the little boy cried, because he had hurt his nose badly. Vanya heard
+his cry, looked under the bench, and called out to Masha:
+
+"Run, you will burn!"
+
+Masha ran to the vestibule, but could not pass for the smoke and fire.
+She turned back. Then Vanya raised a window and told her to climb
+through it. When she got through, Vanya picked up his brother and
+dragged him along. But the child was heavy and did not let his brother
+take him. He cried and pushed Vanya. Vanya fell down twice, and when he
+dragged him up to the window, the door of the hut was already burning.
+Vanya thrust the child's head through the window and wanted to push him
+through; but the child took hold of him with both his hands (he was very
+much frightened) and would not let them take him out. Then Vanya cried
+to Masha:
+
+"Pull him by the head!" while he himself pushed him behind.
+
+And thus they pulled him through the window and into the street.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD HORSE
+
+
+In our village there was an old, old man, Pimen Timofeich. He was ninety
+years old. He was living at the house of his grandson, doing no work.
+His back was bent: he walked with a cane and moved his feet slowly.
+
+He had no teeth at all, and his face was wrinkled. His nether lip
+trembled; when he walked and when he talked, his lips smacked, and one
+could not understand what he was saying.
+
+We were four brothers, and we were fond of riding. But we had no gentle
+riding-horses. We were allowed to ride only on one horse,--the name of
+that horse was Raven.
+
+One day mamma allowed us to ride, and all of us went with the valet to
+the stable. The coachman saddled Raven for us, and my eldest brother was
+the first to take a ride. He rode for a long time; he rode to the
+threshing-floor and around the garden, and when he came back, we
+shouted:
+
+"Now gallop past us!"
+
+My elder brother began to strike Raven with his feet and with the whip,
+and Raven galloped past us.
+
+After him, my second brother mounted the horse. He, too, rode for quite
+awhile, and he, too, urged Raven on with the whip and galloped up the
+hill. He wanted to ride longer, but my third brother begged him to let
+him ride at once.
+
+My third brother rode to the threshing-floor, and around the garden, and
+down the village, and raced up-hill to the stable. When he rode up to
+us Raven was panting, and his neck and shoulders were dark from sweat.
+
+When my turn came, I wanted to surprise my brothers and to show them how
+well I could ride, so I began to drive Raven with all my might, but he
+did not want to get away from the stable. And no matter how much I beat
+him, he would not run, but only shied and turned back. I grew angry at
+the horse, and struck him as hard as I could with my feet and with the
+whip. I tried to strike him in places where it would hurt most; I broke
+the whip and began to strike his head with what was left of the whip.
+But Raven would not run. Then I turned back, rode up to the valet, and
+asked him for a stout switch. But the valet said to me:
+
+"Don't ride any more, sir! Get down! What use is there in torturing the
+horse?"
+
+I felt offended, and said:
+
+"But I have not had a ride yet. Just watch me gallop! Please, give me a
+good-sized switch! I will heat him up."
+
+Then the valet shook his head, and said:
+
+"Oh, sir, you have no pity; why should you heat him up? He is twenty
+years old. The horse is worn out; he can barely breathe, and is old. He
+is so very old! Just like Pimen Timofeich. You might just as well sit
+down on Timofeich's back and urge him on with a switch. Well, would you
+not pity him?"
+
+I thought of Pimen, and listened to the valet's words. I climbed down
+from the horse and, when I saw how his sweaty sides hung down, how he
+breathed heavily through his nostrils, and how he switched his bald
+tail, I understood that it was hard for the horse. Before that I used to
+think that it was as much fun for him as for me. I felt so sorry for
+Raven that I began to kiss his sweaty neck and to beg his forgiveness
+for having beaten him.
+
+Since then I have grown to be a big man, and I always am careful with
+the horses, and always think of Raven and of Pimen Timofeitch whenever I
+see anybody torture a horse.
+
+
+
+
+HOW I LEARNED TO RIDE
+
+
+When I was a little fellow, we used to study every day, and only on
+Sundays and holidays went out and played with our brothers. Once my
+father said:
+
+"The children must learn to ride. Send them to the riding-school!"
+
+I was the youngest of the brothers, and I asked:
+
+"May I, too, learn to ride?"
+
+My father said:
+
+"You will fall down."
+
+I began to beg him to let me learn, and almost cried. My father said:
+
+"All right, you may go, too. Only look out! Don't cry when you fall off.
+He who does not once fall down from a horse will not learn to ride."
+
+When Wednesday came, all three of us were taken to the riding-school. We
+entered by a large porch, and from the large porch went to a smaller
+one. Beyond the porch was a very large room: instead of a floor it had
+sand. And in this room were gentlemen and ladies and just such boys as
+we. That was the riding-school. The riding-school was not very light,
+and there was a smell of horses, and you could hear them snap whips and
+call to the horses, and the horses strike their hoofs against the wooden
+walls. At first I was frightened and could not see things well. Then our
+valet called the riding-master, and said:
+
+"Give these boys some horses: they are going to learn how to ride."
+
+The master said:
+
+"All right!"
+
+Then he looked at me, and said:
+
+"He is very small, yet."
+
+But the valet said:
+
+"He promised not to cry when he falls down."
+
+The master laughed and went away.
+
+Then they brought three saddled horses, and we took off our cloaks and
+walked down a staircase to the riding-school. The master was holding a
+horse by a cord, and my brothers rode around him. At first they rode at
+a slow pace, and later at a trot. Then they brought a pony. It was a red
+horse, and his tail was cut off. He was called Ruddy. The master
+laughed, and said to me:
+
+"Well, young gentleman, get on your horse!"
+
+I was both happy and afraid, and tried to act in such a manner as not to
+be noticed by anybody. For a long time I tried to get my foot into the
+stirrup, but could not do it because I was too small. Then the master
+raised me up in his hands and put me on the saddle. He said:
+
+"The young master is not heavy,--about two pounds in weight, that is
+all."
+
+At first he held me by my hand, but I saw that my brothers were not
+held, and so I begged him to let go of me. He said:
+
+"Are you not afraid?"
+
+I was very much afraid, but I said that I was not. I was so much afraid
+because Ruddy kept dropping his ears. I thought he was angry at me. The
+master said:
+
+"Look out, don't fall down!" and let go of me. At first Ruddy went at a
+slow pace, and I sat up straight. But the saddle was sleek, and I was
+afraid I would slip off. The master asked me:
+
+"Well, are you fast in the saddle?"
+
+I said:
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"If so, go at a slow trot!" and the master clicked his tongue.
+
+Ruddy started at a slow trot, and began to jog me. But I kept silent,
+and tried not to slip to one side. The master praised me:
+
+"Oh, a fine young gentleman, indeed!"
+
+I was very glad to hear it.
+
+Just then the master's friend went up to him and began to talk with him,
+and the master stopped looking at me.
+
+Suddenly I felt that I had slipped a little to one side on my saddle. I
+wanted to straighten myself up, but was unable to do so. I wanted to
+call out to the master to stop the horse, but I thought it would be a
+disgrace if I did it, and so kept silence. The master was not looking at
+me and Ruddy ran at a trot, and I slipped still more to one side. I
+looked at the master and thought that he would help me, but he was still
+talking with his friend, and without looking at me kept repeating:
+
+"Well done, young gentleman!"
+
+I was now altogether to one side, and was very much frightened. I
+thought that I was lost; but I felt ashamed to cry. Ruddy shook me up
+once more, and I slipped off entirely and fell to the ground. Then Ruddy
+stopped, and the master looked at the horse and saw that I was not on
+him. He said:
+
+"I declare, my young gentleman has dropped off!" and walked over to me.
+
+When I told him that I was not hurt, he laughed and said:
+
+"A child's body is soft."
+
+I felt like crying. I asked him to put me again on the horse, and I was
+lifted on the horse. After that I did not fall down again.
+
+Thus we rode twice a week in the riding-school, and I soon learned to
+ride well, and was not afraid of anything.
+
+
+
+
+THE WILLOW
+
+
+During Easter week a peasant went out to see whether the ground was all
+thawed out.
+
+He went into the garden and touched the soil with a stick. The earth was
+soft. The peasant went into the woods; here the catkins were already
+swelling on the willows. The peasant thought:
+
+"I will fence my garden with willows; they will grow up and will make a
+good hedge!"
+
+He took his axe, cut down a dozen willows, sharpened them at the end,
+and stuck them in the ground.
+
+All the willows sent up sprouts with leaves, and underground let out
+just such sprouts for roots; and some of them took hold of the ground
+and grew, and others did not hold well to the ground with their roots,
+and died and fell down.
+
+In the fall the peasant was glad at the sight of his willows: six of
+them had taken root. The following spring the sheep killed two willows
+by gnawing at them, and only two were left. Next spring the sheep
+nibbled at these also. One of them was completely ruined, and the other
+came to, took root, and grew to be a tree. In the spring the bees just
+buzzed in the willow. In swarming time the swarms were often put out on
+the willow, and the peasants brushed them in. The men and women
+frequently ate and slept under the willow, and the children climbed on
+it and broke off rods from it.
+
+The peasant that had set out the willow was long dead, and still it
+grew. His eldest son twice cut down its branches and used them for
+fire-wood. The willow kept growing. They trimmed it all around, and cut
+it down to a stump, but in the spring it again sent out twigs, thinner
+ones than before, but twice as many as ever, as is the case with a
+colt's forelock.
+
+And the eldest son quit farming, and the village was given up, but the
+willow grew in the open field. Other peasants came there, and chopped
+the willow, but still it grew. The lightning struck it; but it sent
+forth side branches, and it grew and blossomed. A peasant wanted to cut
+it down for a block, but he gave it up, it was too rotten. It leaned
+sidewise, and held on with one side only; and still it grew, and every
+year the bees came there to gather the pollen.
+
+One day, early in the spring, the boys gathered under the willow, to
+watch the horses. They felt cold, so they started a fire. They gathered
+stubbles, wormwood, and sticks. One of them climbed on the willow and
+broke off a lot of twigs. They put it all in the hollow of the willow
+and set fire to it. The tree began to hiss and its sap to boil, and the
+smoke rose and the tree burned; its whole inside was smudged. The young
+shoots dried up, the blossoms withered.
+
+The children drove the horses home. The scorched willow was left all
+alone in the field. A black raven flew by, and he sat down on it, and
+cried:
+
+"So you are dead, old smudge! You ought to have died long ago!"
+
+
+
+
+BULKA
+
+
+I had a small bulldog. He was called Bulka. He was black; only the tips
+of his front feet were white. All bulldogs have their lower jaws longer
+than the upper, and the upper teeth come down behind the nether teeth,
+but Bulka's lower jaw protruded so much that I could put my finger
+between the two rows of teeth. His face was broad, his eyes large,
+black, and sparkling; and his teeth and incisors stood out prominently.
+He was as black as a negro. He was gentle and did not bite, but he was
+strong and stubborn. If he took hold of a thing, he clenched his teeth
+and clung to it like a rag, and it was not possible to tear him off, any
+more than as though he were a lobster.
+
+Once he was let loose on a bear, and he got hold of the bear's ear and
+stuck to him like a leech. The bear struck him with his paws and
+squeezed him, and shook him from side to side, but could not tear
+himself loose from him, and so he fell down on his head, in order to
+crush Bulka; but Bulka held on to him until they poured cold water over
+him.
+
+I got him as a puppy, and raised him myself. When I went to the
+Caucasus, I did not want to take him along, and so went away from him
+quietly, ordering him to be shut up. At the first station I was about to
+change the relay, when suddenly I saw something black and shining coming
+down the road. It was Bulka in his brass collar. He was flying at full
+speed toward the station. He rushed up to me, licked my hand, and
+stretched himself out in the shade under the cart. His tongue stuck out
+a whole hand's length. He now drew it in to swallow the spittle, and
+now stuck it out again a whole hand's length. He tried to breathe fast,
+but could not do so, and his sides just shook. He turned from one side
+to the other, and struck his tail against the ground.
+
+I learned later that after I had left he had broken a pane, jumped out
+of the window, and followed my track along the road, and thus raced
+twenty versts through the greatest heat.
+
+
+
+
+BULKA AND THE WILD BOAR
+
+
+Once we went into the Caucasus to hunt the wild boar, and Bulka went
+with me. The moment the hounds started, Bulka rushed after them,
+following their sound, and disappeared in the forest. That was in the
+month of November; the boars and sows are then very fat.
+
+In the Caucasus there are many edible fruits in the forests where the
+boars live: wild grapes, cones, apples, pears, blackberries, acorns,
+wild plums. And when all these fruits get ripe and are touched by the
+frost, the boars eat them and grow fat.
+
+At that time a boar gets so fat that he cannot run from the dogs. When
+they chase him for about two hours, he makes for the thicket and there
+stops. Then the hunters run up to the place where he stands, and shoot
+him. They can tell by the bark of the hounds whether the boar has
+stopped, or is running. If he is running, the hounds yelp, as though
+they were beaten; but when he stops, they bark as though at a man, with
+a howling sound.
+
+During that chase I ran for a long time through the forest, but not once
+did I cross a boar track. Finally I heard the long-drawn bark and howl
+of the hounds, and ran up to that place. I was already near the boar. I
+could hear the crashing in the thicket. The boar was turning around on
+the dogs, but I could not tell by the bark that they were not catching
+him, but only circling around him. Suddenly I heard something rustle
+behind me, and I saw that it was Bulka. He had evidently strayed from
+the hounds in the forest and had lost his way, and now was hearing their
+barking and making for them, like me, as fast as he could. He ran
+across a clearing through the high grass, and all I could see of him was
+his black head and his tongue clinched between his white teeth. I called
+him back, but he did not look around, and ran past me and disappeared in
+the thicket. I ran after him, but the farther I went, the more and more
+dense did the forest grow. The branches kept knocking off my cap and
+struck me in the face, and the thorns caught in my garments. I was near
+to the barking, but could not see anything.
+
+Suddenly I heard the dogs bark louder, and something crashed loudly, and
+the boar began to puff and snort. I immediately made up my mind that
+Bulka had got up to him and was busy with him. I ran with all my might
+through the thicket to that place. In the densest part of the thicket I
+saw a dappled hound. She was barking and howling in one spot, and within
+three steps from her something black could be seen moving around.
+
+When I came nearer, I could make out the boar, and I heard Bulka whining
+shrilly. The boar grunted and made for the hound; the hound took her
+tail between her legs and leaped away. I could see the boar's side and
+head. I aimed at his side and fired. I saw that I had hit him. The boar
+grunted and crashed through the thicket away from me. The dogs whimpered
+and barked in his track; I tried to follow them through the undergrowth.
+Suddenly I saw and heard something almost under my feet. It was Bulka.
+He was lying on his side and whining. Under him there was a puddle of
+blood. I thought the dog was lost; but I had no time to look after him,
+I continued to make my way through the thicket. Soon I saw the boar. The
+dogs were trying to catch him from behind, and he kept turning, now to
+one side, and now to another. When the boar saw me, he moved toward me.
+I fired a second time, almost resting the barrel against him, so that
+his bristles caught fire, and the boar groaned and tottered, and with
+his whole cadaver dropped heavily on the ground.
+
+When I came up, the boar was dead, and only here and there did his body
+jerk and twitch. Some of the dogs, with bristling hair, were tearing his
+belly and legs, while the others were lapping the blood from his wound.
+
+Then I thought of Bulka, and went back to find him. He was crawling
+toward me and groaning. I went up to him and looked at his wound. His
+belly was ripped open, and a whole piece of his guts was sticking out of
+his body and dragging on the dry leaves. When my companions came up to
+me, we put the guts back and sewed up his belly. While we were sewing
+him up and sticking the needle through his skin, he kept licking my
+hand.
+
+The boar was tied up to the horse's tail, to pull him out of the forest,
+and Bulka was put on the horse, and thus taken home. Bulka was sick for
+about six weeks, and got well again.
+
+
+
+
+PHEASANTS
+
+
+Wild fowls are called pheasants in the Caucasus. There are so many of
+them that they are cheaper there than tame chickens. Pheasants are
+hunted with the "hobby," by scaring up, and from under dogs. This is the
+way they are hunted with the "hobby." They take a piece of canvas and
+stretch it over a frame, and in the middle of the frame they make a
+cross piece. They cut a hole in the canvas. This frame with the canvas
+is called a hobby. With this hobby and with the gun they start out at
+dawn to the forest. The hobby is carried in front, and through the hole
+they look out for the pheasants. The pheasants feed at daybreak in the
+clearings. At times it is a whole brood,--a hen with all her chicks, and
+at others a cock with his hen, or several cocks together.
+
+The pheasants do not see the man, and they are not afraid of the canvas
+and let the hunter come close to them. Then the hunter puts down the
+hobby, sticks his gun through the rent, and shoots at whichever bird he
+pleases.
+
+This is the way they hunt by scaring up. They let a watch-dog into the
+forest and follow him. When the dog finds a pheasant, he rushes for it.
+The pheasant flies on a tree, and then the dog begins to bark at it. The
+hunter follows up the barking and shoots the pheasant in the tree. This
+chase would be easy, if the pheasant alighted on a tree in an open
+place, or if it sat still, so that it might be seen. But they always
+alight on dense trees, in the thicket, and when they see the hunter they
+hide themselves in the branches. And it is hard to make one's way
+through the thicket to the tree on which a pheasant is sitting, and hard
+to see it. So long as the dog alone barks at it, it is not afraid: it
+sits on a branch and preens and flaps its wings at the dog. But the
+moment it sees a man, it immediately stretches itself out along a bough,
+so that only an experienced hunter can tell it, while an inexperienced
+one will stand near by and see nothing.
+
+When the Cossacks steal up to the pheasants, they pull their caps over
+their faces and do not look up, because a pheasant is afraid of a man
+with his gun, but more still of his eyes.
+
+This is the way they hunt from under dogs. They take a setter and follow
+him to the forest. The dog scents the place where the pheasants have
+been feeding at daybreak, and begins to make out their tracks. No matter
+how the pheasants may have mixed them up, a good dog will always find
+the last track, that takes them out from the spot where they have been
+feeding. The farther the dog follows the track, the stronger will the
+scent be, and thus he will reach the place where the pheasant sits or
+walks about in the grass in the daytime. When he comes near to where the
+bird is, he thinks that it is right before him, and starts walking more
+cautiously so as not to frighten it, and will stop now and then, ready
+to jump and catch it. When the dog comes up very near to the pheasant,
+it flies up, and the hunter shoots it.
+
+
+
+
+MILTON AND BULKA
+
+
+I bought me a setter to hunt pheasants with. The name of the dog was
+Milton. He was a big, thin, gray, spotted dog, with long lips and ears,
+and he was very strong and intelligent. He did not fight with Bulka. No
+dog ever tried to get into a fight with Bulka. He needed only to show
+his teeth, and the dogs would take their tails between their legs and
+slink away.
+
+Once I went with Milton to hunt pheasants. Suddenly Bulka ran after me
+to the forest. I wanted to drive him back, but could not do so; and it
+was too far for me to take him home. I thought he would not be in my
+way, and so walked on; but the moment Milton scented a pheasant in the
+grass and began to search for it, Bulka rushed forward and tossed from
+side to side. He tried to scare up the pheasant before Milton. He heard
+something in the grass, and jumped and whirled around; but he had a poor
+scent and could not find the track himself, but watched Milton, to see
+where he was running. The moment Milton started on the trail, Bulka ran
+ahead of him. I called Bulka back and beat him, but could not do a thing
+with him. The moment Milton began to search, he darted forward and
+interfered with him.
+
+I was already on the point of going home, because I thought that the
+chase was spoiled; but Milton found a better way of cheating Bulka. This
+is what he did: the moment Bulka rushed ahead of him, he gave up the
+trail and turned in another direction, pretending that he was searching
+there. Bulka rushed there where Milton was, and Milton looked at me and
+wagged his tail and went back to the right trail. Bulka again ran up to
+Milton and rushed past him, and again Milton took some ten steps to one
+side and cheated Bulka, and again led me straight; and so he cheated
+Bulka all the way and did not let him spoil the chase.
+
+
+
+
+THE TURTLE
+
+
+Once I went with Milton to the chase. Near the forest he began to
+search. He straightened out his tail, pricked his ears, and began to
+sniff. I fixed the gun and followed him. I thought that he was looking
+for a partridge, hare, or pheasant. But Milton did not make for the
+forest, but for the field. I followed him and looked ahead of me.
+Suddenly I saw what he was searching for. In front of him was running a
+small turtle, of the size of a cap. Its bare, dark gray head on a long
+neck was stretched out like a pestle; the turtle in walking stretched
+its bare legs far out, and its back was all covered with bark.
+
+When it saw the dog, it hid its legs and head and let itself down on the
+grass so that only its shell could be seen. Milton grabbed it and began
+to bite at it, but could not bite through it, because the turtle has
+just such a shell on its belly as it has on its back, and has only
+openings in front, at the back, and at the sides, where it puts forth
+its head, its legs, and its tail.
+
+I took the turtle away from Milton, and tried to see how its back was
+painted, and what kind of a shell it had, and how it hid itself. When
+you hold it in your hands and look between the shell, you can see
+something black and alive inside, as though in a cellar. I threw away
+the turtle, and walked on, but Milton would not leave it, and carried it
+in his teeth behind me. Suddenly Milton whimpered and dropped it. The
+turtle had put forth its foot inside of his mouth, and had scratched it.
+That made him so angry that he began to bark; he grasped it once more
+and carried it behind me. I ordered Milton to throw it away, but he
+paid no attention to me. Then I took the turtle from him and threw it
+away. But he did not leave it. He hurriedly dug a hole near it; when the
+hole was dug, he threw the turtle into it and covered it up with dirt.
+
+The turtles live on land and in the water, like snakes and frogs. They
+breed their young from eggs. These eggs they lay on the ground, and they
+do not hatch them, but the eggs burst themselves, like fish spawn, and
+the turtles crawl out of them. There are small turtles, not larger than
+a saucer, and large ones, seven feet in length and weighing seven
+hundredweights. The large turtles live in the sea.
+
+One turtle lays in the spring hundreds of eggs. The turtle's shells are
+its ribs. Men and other animals have each rib separate, while the
+turtle's ribs are all grown together into a shell. But the main thing is
+that with all the animals the ribs are inside the flesh, while the
+turtle has the ribs on the outside, and the flesh beneath them.
+
+
+
+
+BULKA AND THE WOLF
+
+
+When I left the Caucasus, they were still fighting there, and in the
+night it was dangerous to travel without a guard.
+
+I wanted to leave as early as possible, and so did not lie down to
+sleep.
+
+My friend came to see me off, and we sat the whole evening and night in
+the village street, in front of my cabin.
+
+It was a moonlit night with a mist, and so bright that one could read,
+though the moon was not to be seen.
+
+In the middle of the night we suddenly heard a pig squealing in the yard
+across the street. One of us cried: "A wolf is choking the pig!"
+
+I ran into the house, grasped a loaded gun, and ran into the street.
+They were all standing at the gate of the yard where the pig was
+squealing, and cried to me: "Here!" Milton rushed after me,--no doubt he
+thought that I was going out to hunt with the gun; but Bulka pricked his
+short ears, and tossed from side to side, as though to ask me whom he
+was to clutch. When I ran up to the wicker fence, I saw a beast running
+straight toward me from the other side of the yard. That was the wolf.
+He ran up to the fence and jumped on it. I stepped aside and fixed my
+gun. The moment the wolf jumped down from the fence to my side, I aimed,
+almost touching him with the gun, and pulled the trigger; but my gun
+made "Click" and did not go off. The Wolf did not stop, but ran across
+the street.
+
+Milton and Bulka made for him. Milton was near to the wolf, but was
+afraid to take hold of him; and no matter how fast Bulka ran on his
+short legs, he could not keep up with him. We ran as fast as we could
+after the wolf, but both the wolf and the dogs disappeared from sight.
+Only at the ditch, at the end of the village, did we hear a low barking
+and whimpering, and saw the dust rise in the mist of the moon and the
+dogs busy with the wolf. When we ran up to the ditch, the wolf was no
+longer there, and both dogs returned to us with raised tails and angry
+faces. Bulka snarled and pushed me with his head: evidently he wanted to
+tell me something, but did not know how.
+
+We examined the dogs, and found a small wound on Bulka's head. He had
+evidently caught up with the wolf before he got to the ditch, but had
+not had a chance to get hold of him, while the wolf snapped at him and
+ran away. It was a small wound, so there was no danger.
+
+We returned to the cabin, and sat down and talked about what had
+happened. I was angry because the gun had missed fire, and thought of
+how the wolf would have remained on the spot, if the gun had shot. My
+friend wondered how the wolf could have crept into the yard. An old
+Cossack said that there was nothing remarkable about it, because that
+was not a wolf, but a witch who had charmed my gun. Thus we sat and kept
+talking. Suddenly the dogs darted off, and we saw the same wolf in the
+middle of the street; but this time he ran so fast when he heard our
+shout that the dogs could not catch up with him.
+
+After that the old Cossack was fully convinced that it was not a wolf,
+but a witch; but I thought that it was a mad wolf, because I had never
+seen or heard of such a thing as a wolf's coming back toward the people,
+after it had been driven away.
+
+In any case I poured some powder on Bulka's wound, and set it on fire.
+The powder flashed up and burned out the sore spot.
+
+I burned out the sore with powder, in order to burn away the poisonous
+saliva, if it had not yet entered the blood. But if the saliva had
+already entered the blood, I knew that the blood would carry it through
+the whole body, and then it would not be possible to cure him.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT HAPPENED TO BULKA IN PYATIGORSK
+
+
+From the Cossack village I did not travel directly to Russia, but first
+to Pyatigorsk, where I stayed two months. Milton I gave away to a
+Cossack hunter, and Bulka I took along with me to Pyatigorsk.
+
+Pyatigorsk [in English, Five-Mountains] is called so because it is
+situated on Mount Besh-tau. And besh means in Tartar "five," and tau
+"mountain." From this mountain flows a hot sulphur stream. It is as hot
+as boiling water, and over the spot where the water flows from the
+mountain there is always a steam as from a samovar.
+
+The whole place, on which the city stands, is very cheerful. From the
+mountain flow the hot springs, and at the foot of the mountain is the
+river Podkumok. On the slopes of the mountain are forests; all around
+the city are fields, and in the distance are seen the mountains of the
+Caucasus. On these the snow never melts, and they are always as white as
+sugar. One large mountain, Elbrus, is like a white loaf of sugar; it can
+be seen from everywhere when the weather is clear. People come to the
+hot springs to be cured, and over them there are arbours and awnings,
+and all around them are gardens with walks. In the morning the music
+plays, and people drink the water, or bathe, or stroll about.
+
+The city itself is on the mountain, but at the foot of it there is a
+suburb. I lived in that suburb in a small house. The house stood in a
+yard, and before the windows was a small garden, and in the garden stood
+the landlord's beehives, not in hollow stems, as in Russia, but in
+round, plaited baskets. The bees are there so gentle that in the morning
+I used to sit with Bulka in that garden, amongst the beehives.
+
+Bulka walked about between the hives, and sniffed, and listened to the
+bees' buzzing; he walked so softly among them that he did not interfere
+with them, and they did not bother him.
+
+One morning I returned home from the waters, and sat down in the garden
+to drink coffee. Bulka began to scratch himself behind his ears, and
+made a grating noise with his collar. The noise worried the bees, and so
+I took the collar off. A little while later I heard a strange and
+terrible noise coming from the city. The dogs barked, howled, and
+whimpered, people shouted, and the noise descended lower from the
+mountain and came nearer and nearer to our suburb.
+
+Bulka stopped scratching himself, put his broad head with its white
+teeth between his fore legs, stuck out his tongue as he wished, and lay
+quietly by my side. When he heard the noise he seemed to understand what
+it was. He pricked his ears, showed his teeth, jumped up, and began to
+snarl. The noise came nearer. It sounded as though all the dogs of the
+city were howling, whimpering, and barking. I went to the gate to see
+what it was, and my landlady came out, too. I asked her:
+
+"What is this?"
+
+She said:
+
+"The prisoners of the jail are coming down to kill the dogs. The dogs
+have been breeding so much that the city authorities have ordered all
+the dogs in the city to be killed."
+
+"So they would kill Bulka, too, if they caught him?"
+
+"No, they are not allowed to kill dogs with collars."
+
+Just as I was speaking, the prisoners were coming up to our house. In
+front walked the soldiers, and behind them four prisoners in chains. Two
+of the prisoners had in their hands long iron hooks, and two had clubs.
+In front of our house, one of the prisoners caught a watch-dog with his
+hook and pulled it up to the middle of the street, and another began to
+strike it with the club.
+
+The little dog whined dreadfully, but the prisoners shouted and laughed.
+The prisoner with the hook turned over the dog, and when he saw that it
+was dead, he pulled out the hook and looked around for other dogs.
+
+Just then Bulka rushed headlong at that prisoner, as though he were a
+bear. I happened to think that he was without his collar, so I shouted:
+"Bulka, back!" and told the prisoners not to strike the dog. But the
+prisoner laughed when he saw Bulka, and with his hook nimbly struck him
+and caught him by his thigh. Bulka tried to get away; but the prisoner
+pulled him up toward him and told the other prisoner to strike him. The
+other raised his club, and Bulka would have been killed, but he jerked,
+and broke the skin at the thigh and, taking his tail between his legs,
+flew, with the red sore on his body, through the gate and into the
+house, and hid himself under my bed.
+
+He was saved because the skin had broken in the spot where the hook
+was.
+
+
+
+
+BULKA'S AND MILTON'S END
+
+
+Bulka and Milton died at the same time. The old Cossack did not know how
+to get along with Milton. Instead of taking him out only for birds, he
+went with him to hunt wild boars. And that same fall a tusky boar ripped
+him open. Nobody knew how to sew him up, and so he died.
+
+Bulka, too, did not live long after the prisoners had caught him. Soon
+after his salvation from the prisoners he began to feel unhappy, and
+started to lick everything that he saw. He licked my hands, but not as
+formerly when he fawned. He licked for a long time, and pressed his
+tongue against me, and then began to snap. Evidently he felt like biting
+my hand, but did not want to do so. I did not give him my hand. Then he
+licked my boot and the foot of a table, and then he began to snap at
+these things. That lasted about two days, and on the third he
+disappeared, and no one saw him or heard of him.
+
+He could not have been stolen or run away from me. This happened six
+weeks after the wolf had bitten him. Evidently the wolf had been mad.
+Bulka had gone mad, and so went away. He had what hunters call the
+rabies. They say that this madness consists in this, that the mad animal
+gets cramps in its throat. It wants to drink and cannot, because the
+water makes the cramps worse. And so it gets beside itself from pain and
+thirst, and begins to bite. Evidently Bulka was beginning to have these
+cramps when he started to lick and then to bite my hand and the foot of
+the table.
+
+I went everywhere in the neighbourhood and asked about Bulka, but could
+not find out what had become of him, or how he had died. If he had been
+running about and biting, as mad dogs do, I should have heard of him. No
+doubt he ran somewhere into a thicket and there died by himself.
+
+The hunters say that when an intelligent dog gets the rabies, he runs to
+the fields and forests, and there tries to find the herb which he needs,
+and rolls in the dew, and gets cured. Evidently Bulka never got cured.
+He never came back.
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAY HARE
+
+
+A gray hare was living in the winter near the village. When night came,
+he pricked one ear and listened; then he pricked his second ear, moved
+his whiskers, sniffed, and sat down on his hind legs. Then he took a
+leap or two over the deep snow, and again sat down on his hind legs, and
+looked around him. Nothing could be seen but snow. The snow lay in waves
+and glistened like sugar. Over the hare's head hovered a frost vapour,
+and through this vapour could be seen the large, bright stars.
+
+The hare had to cross the highway, in order to come to a threshing-floor
+he knew of. On the highway the runners could be heard squeaking, and the
+horses snorting, and seats creaking in the sleighs.
+
+The hare again stopped near the road. Peasants were walking beside the
+sleighs, and the collars of their caftans were raised. Their faces were
+scarcely visible. Their beards, moustaches, and eyelashes were white.
+Steam rose from their mouths and noses. Their horses were sweaty, and
+the hoarfrost clung to the sweat. The horses jostled under their arches,
+and dived in and out of snow-drifts. The peasants ran behind the horses
+and in front of them, and beat them with their whips. Two peasants
+walked beside each other, and one of them told the other how a horse of
+his had once been stolen.
+
+When the carts passed by, the hare leaped across the road and softly
+made for the threshing-floor. A dog saw the hare from a cart. He began
+to bark and darted after the hare. The hare leaped toward the
+threshing-floor over the snow-drifts, which held him back; but the dog
+stuck fast in the snow after the tenth leap, and stopped. Then the hare,
+too, stopped and sat up on his hind legs, and then softly went on to the
+threshing-floor.
+
+On his way he met two other hares on the sowed winter field. They were
+feeding and playing. The hare played awhile with his companions, dug
+away the frosty snow with them, ate the wintergreen, and went on.
+
+In the village everything was quiet; the fires were out. All one could
+hear was a baby's cry in a hut and the crackling of the frost in the
+logs of the cabins. The hare went to the threshing-floor, and there
+found some companions. He played awhile with them on the cleared floor,
+ate some oats from the open granary, climbed on the kiln over the
+snow-covered roof, and across the wicker fence started back to his
+ravine.
+
+The dawn was glimmering in the east; the stars grew less, and the frost
+vapours rose more densely from the earth. In the near-by village the
+women got up, and went to fetch water; the peasants brought the feed
+from the barn; the children shouted and cried. There were still more
+carts going down the road, and the peasants talked aloud to each other.
+
+The hare leaped across the road, went up to his old lair, picked out a
+high place, dug away the snow, lay with his back in his new lair,
+dropped his ears on his back, and fell asleep with open eyes.
+
+
+
+
+GOD SEES THE TRUTH, BUT DOES NOT TELL AT ONCE
+
+
+In the city of Vladimir there lived a young merchant, Aksenov by name.
+He had two shops and a house.
+
+Aksenov was a light-complexioned, curly-headed, fine-looking man and a
+very jolly fellow and good singer. In his youth Aksenov had drunk much,
+and when he was drunk he used to become riotous, but when he married he
+gave up drinking, and that now happened very rarely with him.
+
+One day in the summer Aksenov went to the Nizhni-Novgorod fair. As he
+bade his family good-bye, his wife said to him:
+
+"Ivan Dmitrievich, do not start to-day! I have had a bad dream about
+you."
+
+Aksenov laughed, and said:
+
+"Are you afraid that I might go on a spree at the fair?"
+
+His wife said:
+
+"I do not know what I am afraid of, but I had a bad dream: I dreamed
+that you came to town, and when you took off your cap I saw that your
+head was all gray."
+
+Aksenov laughed.
+
+"That means that I shall make some profit. If I strike a good bargain,
+you will see me bring you some costly presents."
+
+And he bade his family farewell, and started.
+
+In the middle of his journey he met a merchant whom he knew, and they
+stopped together in a hostelry for the night. They drank their tea
+together, and lay down to sleep in two adjoining rooms. Aksenov did not
+like to sleep long; he awoke in the middle of the night and, as it was
+easier to travel when it was cool, wakened his driver and told him to
+hitch the horses. Then he went to the "black" hut, paid his bill, and
+went away.
+
+[Illustration: "'Whose knife is this?'"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshenko_]
+
+When he had gone about forty versts, he again stopped to feed the horses
+and to rest in the vestibule of a hostelry. At dinner-time he came out
+on the porch, and ordered the samovar to be prepared for him. He took
+out his guitar and began to play. Suddenly a troyka with bells drove up
+to the hostelry, and from the cart leaped an officer with two soldiers,
+and he went up to Aksenov, and asked him who he was and where he came
+from.
+
+Aksenov told him everything as it was, and said:
+
+"Would you not like to drink tea with me?"
+
+But the officer kept asking him questions:
+
+"Where did you stay last night? Were you alone, or with a merchant? Did
+you see the merchant in the morning? Why did you leave so early in the
+morning?"
+
+Aksenov wondered why they asked him about all that; he told them
+everything as it was, and said:
+
+"Why do you ask me this? I am not a thief, nor a robber. I am travelling
+on business of my own, and you have nothing to ask me about."
+
+Then the officer called the soldiers, and said:
+
+"I am the chief of the rural police, and I ask you this, because the
+merchant with whom you passed last night has been found with his throat
+cut. Show me your things, and you look through them!"
+
+They entered the house, took his valise and bag, and opened them and
+began to look through them. Suddenly the chief took a knife out of the
+bag, and cried out:
+
+"Whose knife is this?"
+
+Aksenov looked, and saw that they had taken out a blood-stained knife
+from his bag, and he was frightened "How did the blood get on the
+knife?"
+
+Aksenov wanted to answer, but could not pronounce a word.
+
+"I--I do not know--I--the knife--is not mine!"
+
+Then the chief said:
+
+"In the morning the merchant was found in his bed with his throat cut.
+No one but you could have done it. The house was locked from within, and
+there was no one in the house but you. Here is the bloody knife in your
+bag, and your face shows your guilt. Tell me, how did you kill him, and
+how much money did you rob him of?"
+
+Aksenov swore that he had not done it; that he had not seen the merchant
+after drinking tea with him; that he had with him his own eight
+thousand; that the knife was not his. But his voice faltered, his face
+was pale, and he trembled from fear, as though he were guilty.
+
+The chief called in the soldiers, told them to bind him and to take him
+to the cart. When he was rolled into the cart with his legs tied, he
+made the sign of the cross and began to cry. They took away his money
+and things, and sent him to jail to the nearest town. They sent to
+Vladimir to find out what kind of a man Aksenov was, and all the
+merchants and inhabitants of Vladimir testified to the fact that Aksenov
+had drunk and caroused when he was young, but that he was a good man.
+Then they began to try him. He was tried for having killed the Ryazan
+merchant and having robbed him of twenty thousand roubles.
+
+The wife was grieving for her husband and did not know what to think.
+Her children were still young, and one was still at the breast. She took
+them all and went with them to the town where her husband was kept in
+prison. At first she was not admitted, but later she implored the
+authorities, and she was taken to her husband. When she saw him in
+prison garb and in chains, together with murderers, she fell to the
+ground and could not come to for a long time. Then she placed her
+children about her, sat down beside him, and began to tell him about
+house matters, and to ask him about everything which had happened. He
+told her everything. She said:
+
+"What shall I do?"
+
+He said:
+
+"We must petition the Tsar. An innocent man cannot be allowed to
+perish."
+
+His wife said that she had already petitioned the Tsar, but that the
+petition had not reached him. Aksenov said nothing, and only lowered his
+head. Then his wife said:
+
+"You remember the dream I had about your getting gray. Indeed, you have
+grown gray from sorrow. If you had only not started then!"
+
+And she looked over his hair, and said:
+
+"Ivan, my darling, tell your wife the truth: did you not do it?"
+
+Aksenov said, "And you, too, suspect me!" and covered his face with his
+hands, and began to weep.
+
+Then a soldier came, and told his wife that she must leave with her
+children. And Aksenov for the last time bade his family farewell.
+
+When his wife had left, Aksenov thought about what they had been talking
+of. When he recalled that his wife had also suspected him and had asked
+him whether he had killed the merchant, he said to himself: "Evidently
+none but God can know the truth, and He alone must be asked, and from
+Him alone can I expect mercy." And from that time on Aksenov no longer
+handed in petitions and stopped hoping, but only prayed to God.
+
+Aksenov was sentenced to be beaten with the knout, and to be sent to
+hard labour. And it was done.
+
+He was beaten with the knout, and later, when the knout sores healed
+over, he was driven with other convicts to Siberia.
+
+In Siberia, Aksenov passed twenty-six years at hard labour. His hair
+turned white like snow, and his beard grew long, narrow, and gray. All
+his mirth went away. He stooped, began to walk softly, spoke little,
+never laughed, and frequently prayed to God.
+
+In the prison Aksenov learned to make boots, and with the money which he
+earned he bought himself the "Legends of the Holy Martyrs," and read
+them while it was light in the prison; on holidays he went to the prison
+church and read the Epistles, and sang in the choir,--his voice was
+still good. The authorities were fond of Aksenov for his gentleness, and
+his prison comrades respected him and called him "grandfather" and
+"God's man." When there were any requests to be made of the authorities,
+his comrades always sent him to speak for them, and when the convicts
+had any disputes between themselves, they came to Aksenov to settle
+them.
+
+No one wrote Aksenov letters from his home, and he did not know whether
+his wife and children were alive, or not.
+
+Once they brought some new prisoners to the prison. In the evening the
+old prisoners gathered around the new men, and asked them from what town
+they came, or from what village, and for what acts they had been sent
+up. Aksenov, too, sat down on the bed-boards near the new prisoners and,
+lowering his head, listened to what they were saying. One of the new
+prisoners was a tall, sound-looking old man of about sixty years of age,
+with a gray, clipped beard. He was telling them what he had been sent up
+for:
+
+"Yes, brothers, I have come here for no crime at all. I had unhitched a
+driver's horse from the sleigh. I was caught. They said, 'You stole it.'
+And I said, 'I only wanted to get home quickly, for I let the horse go.
+Besides, the driver is a friend of mine. I am telling you the
+truth.'--'No,' they said, 'you have stolen it.' But they did not know
+what I had been stealing, or where I had been stealing. There were
+crimes for which I ought to have been sent up long ago, but they could
+not convict me, and now I am here contrary to the law. 'You are
+lying,--you have been in Siberia, but you did not make a long visit
+there--'"
+
+"Where do you come from?" asked one of the prisoners.
+
+"I am from the city of Vladimir, a burgher of that place. My name is
+Makar, and by my father Semenovich."
+
+Aksenov raised his head, and asked:
+
+"Semenovich, have you not heard in Vladimir about the family of Merchant
+Aksenov? Are they alive?"
+
+"Yes, I have heard about them! They are rich merchants, even though
+their father is in Siberia. He is as much a sinner as I, I think. And
+you, grandfather, what are you here for?"
+
+Aksenov did not like to talk of his misfortune. He sighed, and said:
+
+"For my sins have I passed twenty-six years at hard labour."
+
+Makar Semenovich said:
+
+"For what sins?"
+
+Aksenov said, "No doubt, I deserved it," and did not wish to tell him
+any more; but the other prison people told the new man how Aksenov had
+come to be in Siberia. They told him how on the road some one had killed
+a merchant and had put the knife into his bag, and he thus was sentenced
+though he was innocent.
+
+When Makar Semenovich heard that, he looked at Aksenov, clapped his
+knees with his hands, and said:
+
+"What a marvel! What a marvel! But you have grown old, grandfather!"
+
+He was asked what he was marvelling at, and where he had seen Aksenov,
+but Makar Semenovich made no reply, and only said:
+
+"It is wonderful, boys, where we were fated to meet!"
+
+And these words made Aksenov think that this man might know something
+about who had killed the merchant. He said:
+
+"Semenovich, have you heard before this about that matter, or have we
+met before?"
+
+"Of course I have heard. The earth is full of rumours. That happened a
+long time ago: I have forgotten what I heard," said Makar Semenovich.
+
+"Maybe you have heard who killed the merchant?" asked Aksenov.
+
+Makar Semenovich laughed and said:
+
+"I suppose he was killed by the man in whose bag the knife was found.
+Even if somebody stuck that knife into that bag, he was not caught, so
+he is no thief. And how could the knife have been put in? Was not the
+bag under your head? You would have heard him."
+
+The moment Aksenov heard these words, he thought that that was the man
+who had killed the merchant. He got up and walked away. All that night
+Aksenov could not fall asleep. He felt sad, and had visions: now he saw
+his wife such as she had been when she bade him farewell for the last
+time, as he went to the fair. He saw her, as though she was alive, and
+he saw her face and eyes, and heard her speak to him and laugh. Then he
+saw his children such as they had been then,--just as little,--one of
+them in a fur coat, the other at the breast. And he thought of himself,
+such as he had been then,--gay and young; he recalled how he had been
+sitting on the porch of the hostelry, where he was arrested, and had
+been playing the guitar, and how light his heart had been then. And he
+recalled the pillory, where he had been whipped, and the executioner,
+and the people all around, and the chains, and the prisoners, and his
+prison life of the last twenty-six years, and his old age. And such
+gloom came over him that he felt like laying hands on himself.
+
+"And all that on account of that evil-doer!" thought Aksenov.
+
+And such a rage fell upon him against Makar Semenovich, that he wanted
+to have his revenge upon him, even if he himself were to be ruined by
+it. He said his prayers all night long, but could not calm himself. In
+the daytime he did not walk over to Makar Semenovich, and did not look
+at him.
+
+Thus two weeks passed. At night Aksenov could not sleep, and he felt so
+sad that he did not know what to do with himself.
+
+Once, in the night, he walked all over the prison, and saw dirt falling
+from underneath one bedplace. He stopped to see what it was. Suddenly
+Makar Semenovich jumped up from under the bed and looked at Aksenov with
+a frightened face. Aksenov wanted to pass on, so as not to see him; but
+Makar took him by his arm, and told him that he had dug a passage way
+under the wall, and that he each day carried the dirt away in his
+boot-legs and poured it out in the open, whenever they took the convicts
+out to work. He said:
+
+"Keep quiet, old man,--I will take you out, too. And if you tell, they
+will whip me, and I will not forgive you,--I will kill you."
+
+When Aksenov saw the one who had done him evil, he trembled in his rage,
+and pulled away his arm, and said:
+
+"I have no reason to get away from here, and there is no sense in
+killing me,--you killed me long ago. And whether I will tell on you or
+not depends on what God will put into my soul."
+
+On the following day, when the convicts were taken out to work, the
+soldiers noticed that Makar Semenovich was pouring out the dirt, and so
+they began to search in the prison, and found the hole. The chief came
+to the prison and began to ask all who had dug the hole. Everybody
+denied it. Those who knew had not seen Makar Semenovich, because they
+knew that for this act he would be whipped half-dead. Then the chief
+turned to Aksenov. He knew that Aksenov was a just man, and said:
+
+"Old man, you are a truthful man, tell me before God who has done that."
+
+Makar Semenovich stood as though nothing had happened and looked at the
+chief, and did not glance at Aksenov. Aksenov's arms and lips trembled,
+and he could not utter a word for long time. He thought: "If I protect
+him, why should I forgive him, since he has ruined me? Let him suffer
+for my torments! And if I tell on him, they will indeed whip him to
+death. And suppose that I have a wrong suspicion against him. Will that
+make it easier for me?"
+
+The chief said once more:
+
+"Well, old man, speak, tell the truth! Who has been digging it?"
+
+Aksenov looked at Makar Semenovich, and said:
+
+"I cannot tell, your Honour. God orders me not to tell. And I will not
+tell. Do with me as you please,--you have the power."
+
+No matter how much the chief tried, Aksenov would not say anything more.
+And so they did not find out who had done the digging.
+
+On the following night, as Aksenov lay down on the bed-boards and was
+just falling asleep, he heard somebody come up to him and sit down at
+his feet. He looked in the darkness and recognized Makar. Aksenov said:
+
+"What more do you want of me? What are you doing here?"
+
+Makar Semenovich was silent. Aksenov raised himself, and said:
+
+"What do you want? Go away, or I will call the soldier."
+
+Makar bent down close to Aksenov, and said to him in a whisper:
+
+[Illustration: "'God will forgive you'"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshenko_]
+
+"Ivan Dmitrievich, forgive me!"
+
+Aksenov said:
+
+"For what shall I forgive you?"
+
+"It was I who killed the merchant and put the knife into your bag. I
+wanted to kill you, too, but they made a noise in the yard, so I put the
+knife into your bag and climbed through the window."
+
+Aksenov was silent and did not know what to say. Makar Semenovich
+slipped down from the bed, made a low obeisance, and said:
+
+"Ivan Dmitrievich, forgive me, forgive me for God's sake! I will declare
+that it was I who killed the merchant,--you will be forgiven. You will
+return home."
+
+Aksenov said:
+
+"It is easy for you to speak so, but see how I have suffered! Where
+shall I go now? My wife has died, my children have forgotten me. I have
+no place to go to--"
+
+Makar Semenovich did not get up from the floor. He struck his head
+against the earth, and said:
+
+"Ivan Dmitrievich, forgive me! When they whipped me with the knout I
+felt better than now that I am looking at you. You pitied me, and did
+not tell on me. Forgive me, for Christ's sake! Forgive me, the accursed
+evil-doer!" And he burst out into tears.
+
+When Aksenov heard Makar Semenovich crying, he began to weep himself,
+and said:
+
+"God will forgive you. Maybe I am a hundred times worse than you!"
+
+And suddenly a load fell off from his soul. And he no longer pined for
+his home, and did not wish to leave the prison, but only thought of his
+last hour.
+
+Makar Semenovich did not listen to Aksenov, but declared his guilt. When
+the decision came for Aksenov to leave,--he was dead.
+
+
+
+
+HUNTING WORSE THAN SLAVERY
+
+
+We were hunting bears. My companion had a chance to shoot at a bear: he
+wounded him, but only in a soft spot. A little blood was left on the
+snow, but the bear got away.
+
+We met in the forest and began to discuss what to do: whether to go and
+find that bear, or to wait two or three days until the bear should lie
+down again.
+
+We asked the peasant bear drivers whether we could now surround the
+bear. An old bear driver said:
+
+"No, we must give the bear a chance to calm himself. In about five days
+it will be possible to surround him, but if we go after him now he will
+only be frightened and will not lie down."
+
+But a young bear driver disputed with the old man, and said that he
+could surround him now.
+
+"Over this snow," he said, "the bear cannot get away far,--he is fat. He
+will lie down to-day again. And if he does not, I will overtake him on
+snow-shoes."
+
+My companion, too, did not want to surround the bear now, and advised
+waiting.
+
+But I said:
+
+"What is the use of discussing the matter? Do as you please, but I will
+go with Demyan along the track. If we overtake him, so much is gained;
+if not,--I have nothing else to do to-day anyway, and it is not yet
+late."
+
+And so we did.
+
+My companions went to the sleigh, and back to the village, but Demyan
+and I took bread with us, and remained in the woods.
+
+When all had left us, Demyan and I examined our guns, tucked our fur
+coats over our belts, and followed the track.
+
+It was fine weather, chilly and calm. But walking on snow-shoes was a
+hard matter: the snow was deep and powdery.
+
+The snow had not settled in the forest, and, besides, fresh snow had
+fallen on the day before, so that the snow-shoes sunk half a foot in the
+snow, and in places even deeper.
+
+The bear track could be seen a distance away. We could see the way the
+bear had walked, for in spots he had fallen in the snow to his belly and
+had swept the snow aside. At first we walked in plain sight of the
+track, through a forest of large trees; then, when the track went into a
+small pine wood, Demyan stopped.
+
+"We must now give up the track," he said. "He will, no doubt, lie down
+here. He has been sitting on his haunches,--you can see it by the snow.
+Let us go away from the track, and make a circle around him. But we must
+walk softly and make no noise, not even cough, or we shall scare him."
+
+We went away from the track, to the left. We walked about five hundred
+steps and there we again saw the track before us. We again followed the
+track, and this took us to the road. We stopped on the road and began to
+look around, to see in what direction the bear had gone. Here and there
+on the road we could see the bear's paws with all the toes printed on
+the snow, while in others we could see the tracks of a peasant's bast
+shoes. He had, evidently, gone to the village.
+
+We walked along the road. Demyan said to me:
+
+"We need not watch the road; somewhere he will turn off the road, to the
+right or to the left,--we shall see in the snow. Somewhere he will turn
+off,--he will not go to the village."
+
+We walked thus about a mile along the road; suddenly we saw the track
+turn off from the road. We looked at it, and see the wonder! It was a
+bear's track, but leading not from the road to the woods, but from the
+woods to the road: the toes were turned to the road. I said:
+
+"That is another bear."
+
+Demyan looked at it, and thought awhile.
+
+"No," he said, "that is the same bear, only he has begun to cheat. He
+left the road backwards."
+
+We followed the track, and so it was. The bear had evidently walked
+about ten steps backwards from the road, until he got beyond a fir-tree,
+and then he had turned and gone on straight ahead. Demyan stopped, and
+said:
+
+"Now we shall certainly fall in with him. He has no place but this swamp
+to lie down in. Let us surround him."
+
+We started to surround him, going through the dense pine forest. I was
+getting tired, and it was now much harder to travel. Now I would strike
+against a juniper-bush, and get caught in it; or a small pine-tree would
+get under my feet; or the snow-shoes would twist, as I was not used to
+them; or I would strike a stump or a block under the snow. I was
+beginning to be worn out. I took off my fur coat, and the sweat was just
+pouring down from me. But Demyan sailed along as in a boat. It looked as
+though the snow-shoes walked under him of their own accord. He neither
+caught in anything, nor did his shoes turn on him.
+
+And he even threw my fur coat over his shoulders, and kept urging me on.
+
+We made about three versts in a circle, and walked past the swamp.
+Demyan suddenly stopped in front of me, and waved his hand. I walked
+over to him. Demyan bent down, and pointed with his hand, and whispered
+to me:
+
+"Do you see, a magpie is chattering on a windfall: the bird is scenting
+the bear from a distance. It is he."
+
+We walked to one side, made another verst, and again hit the old trail.
+Thus we had made a circle around the bear, and he was inside of it. We
+stopped. I took off my hat and loosened my wraps: I felt as hot as in a
+bath, and was as wet as a mouse. Demyan, too, was all red, and he wiped
+his face with his sleeve.
+
+"Well," he said, "we have done our work, sir, so we may take a rest."
+
+The evening glow could be seen through the forest. We sat down on the
+snow-shoes to rest ourselves. We took the bread and salt out of the
+bags; first I ate a little snow, and then the bread. The bread tasted to
+me better than any I had eaten in all my life. We sat awhile; it began
+to grow dark. I asked Demyan how far it was to the village.
+
+"About twelve versts. We shall reach it in the night; but now we must
+rest. Put on your fur coat, sir, or you will catch a cold."
+
+Demyan broke off some pine branches, knocked down the snow, made a bed,
+and we lay down beside each other, with our arms under our heads. I do
+not remember how I fell asleep. I awoke about two hours later. Something
+crashed.
+
+I had been sleeping so soundly that I forgot where I was. I looked
+around me: what marvel was that? Where was I? Above me were some white
+chambers, and white posts, and on everything glistened white tinsel. I
+looked up: there was a white, checkered cloth, and between the checks
+was a black vault in which burned fires of all colours. I looked around,
+and I recalled that we were in the forest, and that the snow-covered
+trees had appeared to me as chambers, and that the fires were nothing
+but the stars that flickered between the branches.
+
+In the night a hoarfrost had fallen, and there was hoarfrost on the
+branches, and on my fur coat, and Demyan was all covered with hoarfrost,
+and hoarfrost fell from above. I awoke Demyan. We got up on our
+snow-shoes and started. The forest was quiet. All that could be heard
+was the sound we made as we slid on our snow-shoes over the soft snow,
+or when a tree would crackle from the frost, and a hollow sound would
+pass through the whole woods. Only once did something living stir close
+to us and run away again. I thought it was the bear. We walked over to
+the place from where the noise had come, and we saw hare tracks. The
+young aspens were nibbled down. The hares had been feeding on them.
+
+We came out to the road, tied the snow-shoes behind us, and walked down
+the road. It was easy to walk. The snow-shoes rattled and rumbled over
+the beaten road; the snow creaked under our boots; the cold hoarfrost
+stuck to our faces like down. And the stars seemed to run toward us
+along the branches: they would flash, and go out again,--just as though
+the sky were walking round and round.
+
+My companion was asleep,--I awoke him. We told him how we had made a
+circle around the bear, and told the landlord to collect the drivers for
+the morning. We ate our supper and lay down to sleep.
+
+I was so tired that I could have slept until dinner, but my companion
+woke me. I jumped up and saw that my companion was all dressed and busy
+with his gun.
+
+"Where is Demyan?"
+
+"He has been in the forest for quite awhile. He has investigated the
+circle, and has been back to take the drivers out."
+
+I washed myself, put on my clothes, and loaded my guns. We seated
+ourselves in the sleigh, and started.
+
+There was a severe frost, the air was calm, and the sun could not be
+seen: there was a mist above, and the hoarfrost was settling.
+
+We travelled about three versts by the road, and reached the forest. We
+saw a blue smoke in a hollow, and peasants, men and women, were there
+with clubs.
+
+We climbed out of the sleigh and went up to the people. The peasants
+were sitting and baking potatoes, and joking with the women.
+
+Demyan was with them. The people got up, and Demyan took them away to
+place them in our last night's circuit. The men and women stretched
+themselves out in single file,--there were thirty of them and they could
+be seen only from the belt up,--and went into the woods; then my
+companion and I followed their tracks.
+
+Though they had made a path, it was hard to walk; still, we could not
+fall, for it was like walking between two walls.
+
+Thus we walked for half a verst. I looked up, and there was Demyan
+running to us from the other side on snow-shoes, and waving his hand for
+us to come to him.
+
+We went up to him, and he showed us where to stand. I took up my
+position and looked around.
+
+To the left of me was a tall pine forest. I could see far through it,
+and beyond the trees I saw the black spot of a peasant driver. Opposite
+me was a young pine growth, as tall as a man's stature. In this pine
+growth the branches were hanging down and stuck together from the snow.
+The path through the middle of the pine grove was covered with snow.
+This path was leading toward me. To the right of me was a dense pine
+forest, and beyond the pine grove there was a clearing. And on this
+clearing I saw Demyan place my companion.
+
+I examined my two guns and cocked them, and began to think where to take
+up a stand. Behind me, about three steps from me, there was a pine-tree.
+"I will stand by that pine, and will lean the other gun against it." I
+made my way to that pine, walking knee-deep in snow. I tramped down a
+space of about four feet each way, and there took my stand. One gun I
+took into my hands, and the other, with hammers raised, I placed against
+the tree. I unsheathed my dagger and put it back in the scabbard, to be
+sure that in case of need it would come out easily.
+
+I had hardly fixed myself, when Demyan shouted from the woods:
+
+"Start it now, start it!"
+
+And as Demyan shouted this, the peasants in the circuit cried, each with
+a different tone of voice: "Come now! OO-oo-oo!" and the women cried, in
+their thin voices: "Ai! Eekh!"
+
+The bear was in the circle. Demyan was driving him. In the circuit the
+people shouted, and only my companion and I stood still, did not speak
+or move, and waited for the bear. I stood, and looked, and listened, and
+my heart went pitapat. I was clutching my gun and trembling. Now, now he
+will jump out, I thought, and I will aim and shoot, and he will fall--
+Suddenly I heard to the left something tumbling through the snow, only
+it was far away. I looked into the tall pine forest: about fifty steps
+from me, behind the trees, stood something large and black. I aimed and
+waited. I thought it might come nearer. I saw it move its ears and turn
+around. Now I could see the whole of him from the side. It was a huge
+beast. I aimed hastily. Bang! I heard the bullet strike the tree.
+Through the smoke I saw the bear make back for the cover and disappear
+in the forest. "Well," I thought, "my business is spoiled: he will not
+run up to me again; either my companion will have a chance to shoot at
+him, or he will go through between the peasants, but never again toward
+me." I reloaded the gun, and stood and listened. The peasants were
+shouting on all sides, but on the right, not far from my companion, I
+heard a woman yell, "Here he is! Here he is! Here he is! This way! This
+way! Oi, oi, oi! Ai, ai, ai!"
+
+There was the bear, in full sight. I was no longer expecting the bear
+to come toward me, and so looked to the right toward my companion. I saw
+Demyan running without the snow-shoes along the path, with a stick in
+his hand, and going up to my companion, sitting down near him, and
+pointing with the stick at something, as though he were aiming. I saw my
+companion raise his gun and aim at where Demyan was pointing. Bang! he
+fired it off.
+
+"Well," I thought, "he has killed him." But I saw that my companion was
+not running toward the bear. "Evidently he missed him, or did not strike
+him right. He will get away," I thought, "but he will not come toward
+me."
+
+What was that? Suddenly I heard something in front of me: somebody was
+flying like a whirlwind, and scattering the snow near by, and panting. I
+looked ahead of me, but he was making headlong toward me along the path
+through the dense pine growth. I could see that he was beside himself
+with fear. When he was within five steps of me I could see the whole of
+him: his chest was black and his head was enormous, and of a reddish
+colour. He was flying straight toward me, and scattering the snow in all
+directions. I could see by the bear's eyes that he did not see me and in
+his fright was rushing headlong. He was making straight for the pine
+where I was standing. I raised my gun, and shot, but he came still
+nearer. I saw that I had not hit him: the bullet was carried past him.
+He heard nothing, plunged onward, and did not see me. I bent down the
+gun, almost rested it against his head. Bang! This time I hit him, but
+did not kill him.
+
+He raised his head, dropped his ears, showed his teeth,--and straight
+toward me. I grasped the other gun; but before I had it in my hand, he
+was already on me, knocked me down, and flew over me. "Well," I thought,
+"that is good, he will not touch me." I was just getting up, when I
+felt something pressing against me and holding me down. In his onrush he
+ran past me, but he turned around and rushed against me with his whole
+breast. I felt something heavy upon me, something warm over my face, and
+I felt him taking my face into his jaws. My nose was already in his
+mouth, and I felt hot, and smelled his blood. He pressed my shoulders
+with his paws, and I could not stir. All I could do was to pull my head
+out of his jaws and press it against my breast, and I turned my nose and
+eyes away. But he was trying to get at my eyes and nose. I felt him
+strike the teeth of his upper jaw into my forehead, right below the
+hair, and the lower jaw into the cheek-bones below the eyes, and he
+began to crush me. It was as though my head were cut with knives. I
+jerked and pulled out my head, but he chawed and chawed and snapped at
+me like a dog. I would turn my head away, and he would catch it again.
+"Well," I thought, "my end has come." Suddenly I felt lighter. I looked
+up, and he was gone: he had jumped away from me, and was running now.
+
+When my companion and Demyan saw that the bear had knocked me into the
+snow, they dashed for me. My companion wanted to get there as fast as
+possible, but lost his way; instead of running on the trodden path, he
+ran straight ahead, and fell down. While he was trying to get out of the
+snow, the bear was gnawing at me. Demyan ran up to me along the path,
+without a gun, just with the stick which he had in his hands, and he
+shouted, "He is eating up the gentleman! He is eating up the gentleman!"
+And he kept running and shouting, "Oh, you wretched beast! What are you
+doing? Stop! Stop!"
+
+The bear listened to him, stopped, and ran away. When I got up, there
+was much blood on the snow, just as though a sheep had been killed, and
+over my eyes the flesh hung in rags. While the wound was fresh I felt no
+pain.
+
+My companion ran up to me, and the peasants gathered around me. They
+looked at my wounds, and washed them with snow. I had entirely forgotten
+about the wounds, and only asked, "Where is the bear? Where has he
+gone?"
+
+Suddenly we heard, "Here he is! Here he is!" We saw the bear running
+once more against us. We grasped our guns, but before we fired he ran
+past us. The bear was mad: he wanted to bite me again, but when he saw
+so many people he became frightened. We saw by the track that the bear
+was bleeding from the head. We wanted to follow him up, but my head hurt
+me, and so we drove to town to see a doctor.
+
+The doctor sewed up my wounds with silk, and they began to heal.
+
+A month later we went out again to hunt that bear; but I did not get the
+chance to kill him. The bear would not leave the cover, and kept walking
+around and around and roaring terribly. Demyan killed him. My shot had
+crushed his lower jaw and knocked out a tooth.
+
+This bear was very large, and he had beautiful black fur. I had the skin
+stuffed, and it is lying now in my room. The wounds on my head have
+healed, so that one can scarcely see where they were.
+
+
+
+
+A PRISONER OF THE CAUCASUS
+
+
+I.
+
+A certain gentleman was serving as an officer in the Caucasus. His name
+was Zhilin.
+
+One day he received a letter from home. His old mother wrote to him:
+
+"I have grown old, and I should like to see my darling son before my
+death. Come to bid me farewell and bury me, and then, with God's aid,
+return to the service. I have also found a bride for you: she is bright
+and pretty and has property. If you take a liking to her, you can marry
+her, and stay here for good."
+
+Zhilin reflected: "Indeed, my old mother has grown feeble; perhaps I
+shall never see her again. I must go; and if the bride is a good girl, I
+may marry her."
+
+He went to the colonel, got a furlough, bade his companions good-bye,
+treated his soldiers to four buckets of vodka, and got himself ready to
+go.
+
+At that time there was a war in the Caucasus. Neither in the daytime,
+nor at night, was it safe to travel on the roads. The moment a Russian
+walked or drove away from a fortress, the Tartars either killed him or
+took him as a prisoner to the mountains. It was a rule that a guard of
+soldiers should go twice a week from fortress to fortress. In front and
+in the rear walked soldiers, and between them were other people.
+
+It was in the summer. The carts gathered at daybreak outside the
+fortress, and the soldiers of the convoy came out, and all started.
+Zhilin rode on horseback, and his cart with his things went with the
+caravan.
+
+They had to travel twenty-five versts. The caravan proceeded slowly; now
+the soldiers stopped, and now a wheel came off a cart, or a horse
+stopped, and all had to stand still and wait.
+
+The sun had already passed midday, but the caravan had made only half
+the distance. It was dusty and hot; the sun just roasted them, and there
+was no shelter: it was a barren plain, with neither tree nor bush along
+the road.
+
+Zhilin rode out ahead. He stopped and waited for the caravan to catch up
+with him. He heard them blow the signal-horn behind: they had stopped
+again.
+
+Zhilin thought: "Why can't I ride on, without the soldiers? I have a
+good horse under me, and if I run against Tartars, I will gallop away.
+Or had I better not go?"
+
+He stopped to think it over. There rode up to him another officer,
+Kostylin, with a gun, and said:
+
+"Let us ride by ourselves, Zhilin! I cannot stand it any longer: I am
+hungry, and it is so hot. My shirt is dripping wet."
+
+Kostylin was a heavy, stout man, with a red face, and the perspiration
+was just rolling down his face. Zhilin thought awhile and said:
+
+"Is your gun loaded?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Well, then, we will go, but on one condition, that we do not separate."
+
+And so they rode ahead on the highway. They rode through the steppe, and
+talked, and looked about them. They could see a long way off.
+
+When the steppe came to an end, the road entered a cleft between two
+mountains. So Zhilin said:
+
+"We ought to ride up the mountain to take a look; for here they may
+leap out on us from the mountain without our seeing them."
+
+But Kostylin said:
+
+"What is the use of looking? Let us ride on!"
+
+Zhilin paid no attention to him.
+
+"No," he said, "you wait here below, and I will take a look up there."
+
+And he turned his horse to the left, up-hill. The horse under Zhilin was
+a thoroughbred (he had paid a hundred roubles for it when it was a colt,
+and had himself trained it), and it carried him up the slope as though
+on wings. The moment he reached the summit, he saw before him a number
+of Tartars on horseback, about eighty fathoms away. There were about
+thirty of them. When he saw them, he began to turn back; and the Tartars
+saw him, and galloped toward him, and on the ride took their guns out of
+the covers. Zhilin urged his horse down-hill as fast as its legs would
+carry him, and he shouted to Kostylin:
+
+"Take out the gun!" and he himself thought about his horse: "Darling,
+take me away from here! Don't stumble! If you do, I am lost. If I get to
+the gun, they shall not catch me."
+
+But Kostylin, instead of waiting, galloped at full speed toward the
+fortress, the moment he saw the Tartars. He urged the horse on with the
+whip, now on one side, and now on the other. One could see through the
+dust only the horse switching her tail.
+
+Zhilin saw that things were bad. The gun had disappeared, and he could
+do nothing with a sword. He turned his horse back to the soldiers,
+thinking that he might get away. He saw six men crossing his path. He
+had a good horse under him, but theirs were better still, and they
+crossed his path. He began to check his horse: he wanted to turn around;
+but the horse was running at full speed and could not be stopped, and he
+flew straight toward them. He saw a red-bearded Tartar on a gray horse,
+who was coming near to him. He howled and showed his teeth, and his gun
+was against his shoulder.
+
+"Well," thought Zhilin, "I know you devils. When you take one alive, you
+put him in a hole and beat him with a whip. I will not fall into your
+hands alive----"
+
+Though Zhilin was not tall, he was brave. He drew his sword, turned his
+horse straight against the Tartar, and thought:
+
+"Either I will knock his horse off its feet, or I will strike the Tartar
+with my sword."
+
+Zhilin got within a horse's length from him, when they shot at him from
+behind and hit the horse. The horse dropped on the ground while going at
+full speed, and fell on Zhilin's leg.
+
+He wanted to get up, but two stinking Tartars were already astride of
+him. He tugged and knocked down the two Tartars, but three more jumped
+down from their horses and began to strike him with the butts of their
+guns. Things grew dim before his eyes, and he tottered. The Tartars took
+hold of him, took from their saddles some reserve straps, twisted his
+arms behind his back, tied them with a Tartar knot, and fastened him to
+the saddle. They knocked down his hat, pulled off his boots, rummaged
+all over him, and took away his money and his watch, and tore all his
+clothes.
+
+Zhilin looked back at his horse. The dear animal was lying just as it
+had fallen down, and only twitched its legs and did not reach the ground
+with them; in its head there was a hole, and from it the black blood
+gushed and wet the dust for an ell around.
+
+A Tartar went up to the horse, to pull off the saddle. The horse was
+struggling still, and so he took out his dagger and cut its throat. A
+whistling sound came from the throat, and the horse twitched, and was
+dead.
+
+The Tartars took off the saddle and the trappings. The red-bearded
+Tartar mounted his horse, and the others seated Zhilin behind him. To
+prevent his falling off, they attached him by a strap to the Tartar's
+belt, and they rode off to the mountains.
+
+Zhilin was sitting back of the Tartar, and shaking and striking with his
+face against the stinking Tartar's back. All he saw before him was the
+mighty back, and the muscular neck, and the livid, shaved nape of his
+head underneath his cap. Zhilin's head was bruised, and the blood was
+clotted under his eyes. And he could not straighten himself on the
+saddle, nor wipe off his blood. His arms were twisted so badly that his
+shoulder bones pained him.
+
+They rode for a long time from one mountain to another, and forded a
+river, and came out on a path, where they rode through a ravine.
+
+Zhilin wanted to take note of the road on which they were travelling,
+but his eyes were smeared with blood, and he could not turn around.
+
+It was getting dark. They crossed another stream and rode up a rocky
+mountain. There was an odour of smoke, and the dogs began to bark. They
+had come to a native village. The Tartars got down from their horses;
+the Tartar children gathered around Zhilin, and screamed, and rejoiced,
+and aimed stones at him.
+
+The Tartar drove the boys away, took Zhilin down from his horse, and
+called a labourer. There came a Nogay, with large cheek-bones; he wore
+nothing but a shirt. The shirt was torn and left his breast bare. The
+Tartar gave him a command. The labourer brought the stocks,--two oak
+planks drawn through iron rings, and one of these rings with a clasp and
+lock.
+
+They untied Zhilin's hands, put the stocks on him, and led him into a
+shed: they pushed him in and locked the door. Zhilin fell on the manure
+pile. He felt around in the darkness for a soft spot, and lay down
+there.
+
+[Illustration: "They rode off to the mountains"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshenko_]
+
+
+II.
+
+Zhilin lay awake nearly the whole night. The nights were short. He saw
+through a chink that it was getting light. He got up, made the chink
+larger, and looked out.
+
+Through the chink Zhilin saw the road: it went down-hill; on the right
+was a Tartar cabin, and near it two trees. A black dog lay on the
+threshold, and a goat strutted about with her kids, which were jerking
+their little tails. He saw a young Tartar woman coming up the hill; she
+wore a loose coloured shirt and pantaloons and boots, and her head was
+covered with a caftan, and on her head there was a large tin pitcher
+with water. She walked along, jerking her back, and bending over, and by
+the hand she led a young shaven Tartar boy in nothing but his shirt. The
+Tartar woman went into the cabin with the water, and out came the Tartar
+of the day before, with the red beard, wearing a silk half-coat, a
+silver dagger on a strap, and shoes on his bare feet. On his head there
+was a tall, black sheepskin hat, tilted backwards. He came out, and he
+stretched himself and smoothed his red beard. He stood awhile, gave the
+labourer an order, and went away.
+
+Then two boys rode by, taking the horses to water. The muzzles of the
+horses were wet. Then there ran out some other shaven boys, in nothing
+but their shirts, with no trousers; they gathered in a crowd, walked
+over to the shed, picked up a stick, and began to poke it through the
+chink. When Zhilin shouted at the children, they screamed and started to
+run back, so that their bare knees glistened in the sun.
+
+Zhilin wanted to drink,--his throat was all dried up. He thought: "If
+they would only come to see me!" He heard them open the shed. The red
+Tartar came in, and with him another, black-looking fellow, of smaller
+stature. His eyes were black and bright, his cheeks ruddy, his small
+beard clipped; his face looked jolly, and he kept laughing all the time.
+This swarthy fellow was dressed even better: he had on a silk half-coat,
+of a blue colour, embroidered with galloons. In his belt there was a
+large silver dagger; his slippers were of red morocco and also
+embroidered with silver. Over his thin slippers he wore heavier shoes.
+His cap was tall, of white astrakhan.
+
+The red Tartar came in. He said something, as though scolding, and
+stopped. He leaned against the door-post, dangled his dagger, and like a
+wolf looked furtively at Zhilin. But the swarthy fellow--swift, lively,
+walking around as though on springs--went up straight to Zhilin,
+squatted down, showed his teeth, slapped him on the shoulder, began to
+rattle off something in his language, winked with his eyes, clicked his
+tongue, and kept repeating: "Goot Uruss! Goot Uruss!"
+
+Zhilin did not understand a thing and said:
+
+"Give me to drink, give me water to drink!"
+
+The swarthy fellow laughed. "Goot Uruss!" he kept rattling off.
+
+Zhilin showed with his lips and hands that he wanted something to drink.
+
+The swarthy fellow understood what he wanted, laughed out, looked
+through the door, and called some one: "Dina!"
+
+In came a thin, slender little girl, of about thirteen years of age, who
+resembled the swarthy man very much. Evidently she was his daughter. Her
+eyes, too, were black and bright, and her face was pretty. She wore a
+long blue shirt, with broad sleeves and without a belt. The skirt, the
+breast, and the sleeves were trimmed with red. On her legs were
+pantaloons, and on her feet slippers, with high-heeled shoes over them;
+on her neck she wore a necklace of Russian half-roubles. Her head was
+uncovered; her braid was black, with a ribbon through it, and from the
+ribbon hung small plates and a Russian rouble.
+
+Her father gave her a command. She ran away, and came back and brought a
+small tin pitcher. She gave him the water, and herself squatted down,
+bending up in such a way that her shoulders were below her knees. She
+sat there, and opened her eyes, and looked at Zhilin drinking, as though
+he were some animal.
+
+Zhilin handed her back the pitcher. She jumped away like a wild goat.
+Even her father laughed. He sent her somewhere else. She took the
+pitcher and ran away; she brought some fresh bread on a round board, and
+again sat down, bent over, riveted her eyes on him, and kept looking.
+
+The Tartars went away and locked the door.
+
+After awhile the Nogay came to Zhilin, and said:
+
+"Ai-da, master, ai-da!"
+
+He did not know any Russian, either. All Zhilin could make out was that
+he should follow him.
+
+Zhilin started with the stocks, and he limped and could not walk, so
+much did the stocks pull his legs aside. Zhilin went out with the Nogay.
+He saw a Tartar village of about ten houses, and a church of theirs,
+with a small tower. Near one house stood three horses, all saddled. Boys
+were holding the reins. From the house sprang the swarthy Tartar, and he
+waved his hand for Zhilin to come up. He laughed all the while, and
+talked in his language, and disappeared through the door.
+
+Zhilin entered the house. It was a good living-room,--the walls were
+plastered smooth with clay. Along the front wall lay coloured cushions,
+and at the sides hung costly rugs; on the rugs were guns, pistols,
+swords,--all in silver. By one wall there was a small stove, on a level
+with the floor. The floor was of dirt and as clean as a threshing-floor,
+and the whole front corner was carpeted with felt; and over the felt lay
+rugs, and on the rugs cushions. On these rugs sat the Tartars, in their
+slippers without their outer shoes: there were the swarthy fellow, the
+red Tartar, and three guests. At their backs were feather cushions, and
+before them, on a round board, were millet cakes and melted butter in a
+bowl, and Tartar beer, "buza," in a small pitcher. They were eating with
+their hands, and their hands were all greasy from the butter.
+
+The swarthy man jumped up and ordered Zhilin to be placed to one side,
+not on a rug, but on the bare floor; he went back to his rug, and
+treated his guests to millet cakes and buza. The labourer placed Zhilin
+where he had been ordered, himself took off his outer shoes, put them at
+the door, where stood the other shoes, and sat down on the felt next to
+the masters. He looked at them as they ate, and wiped off his spittle.
+
+The Tartars ate the cakes. Then there came a Tartar woman, in a shirt
+like the one the girl had on, and in pantaloons, and with a kerchief
+over her head. She carried away the butter and the cakes, and brought a
+small wash-basin of a pretty shape, and a pitcher with a narrow neck.
+The Tartars washed their hands, then folded them, knelt down, blew in
+every direction, and said their prayers. Then one of the Tartar guests
+turned to Zhilin, and began to speak in Russian:
+
+"You," he said, "were taken by Kazi-Muhammed," and he pointed to the red
+Tartar, "and he gave you to Abdul-Murat." He pointed to the swarthy man.
+"Abdul-Murat is now your master."
+
+Zhilin kept silence. Then Abdul-Murat began to speak. He pointed to
+Zhilin, and laughed, and kept repeating:
+
+"Soldier Uruss! Goot Uruss!"
+
+The interpreter said:
+
+"He wants you to write a letter home that they may send a ransom for
+you. When they send it, you will be set free."
+
+Zhilin thought awhile and said:
+
+"How much ransom does he want?"
+
+The Tartars talked together; then the interpreter said:
+
+"Three thousand in silver."
+
+"No," said Zhilin, "I cannot pay that."
+
+Abdul jumped up, began to wave his hands and to talk to Zhilin, thinking
+that he would understand him. The interpreter translated. He said:
+
+"How much will you give?"
+
+Zhilin thought awhile, and said:
+
+"Five hundred roubles."
+
+Then the Tartars began to talk a great deal, all at the same time. Abdul
+shouted at the red Tartar. He was so excited that the spittle just
+spirted from his mouth.
+
+But the red Tartar only scowled and clicked his tongue.
+
+They grew silent, and the interpreter said:
+
+"The master is not satisfied with five hundred roubles. He has himself
+paid two hundred for you. Kazi-Muhammed owed him a debt. He took you for
+that debt. Three thousand roubles, nothing less will do. And if you do
+not write, you will be put in a hole and beaten with a whip."
+
+"Oh," thought Zhilin, "it will not do to show that I am frightened; that
+will only be worse." He leaped to his feet, and said:
+
+"Tell that dog that if he is going to frighten me, I will not give him a
+penny, and I will refuse to write. I have never been afraid of you dogs,
+and I never will be."
+
+The interpreter translated, and all began to speak at the same time.
+
+They babbled for a long time; then the swarthy Tartar jumped up and
+walked over to Zhilin:
+
+"Uruss," he said, "dzhigit, dzhigit Uruss!"
+
+Dzhigit in their language means a "brave." And he laughed; he said
+something to the interpreter, and the interpreter said:
+
+"Give one thousand roubles!"
+
+Zhilin stuck to what he had said:
+
+"I will not give more than five hundred. And if you kill me, you will
+get nothing."
+
+The Tartars talked awhile and sent the labourer somewhere, and
+themselves kept looking now at Zhilin and now at the door. The labourer
+came, and behind him walked a fat man; he was barefoot and tattered; he,
+too, had on the stocks.
+
+Zhilin just shouted, for he recognized Kostylin. He, too, had been
+caught. They were placed beside each other. They began to talk to each
+other, and the Tartars kept silence and looked at them. Zhilin told what
+had happened to him; and Kostylin told him that his horse had stopped
+and his gun had missed fire, and that the same Abdul had overtaken and
+captured him.
+
+Abdul jumped up, and pointed to Kostylin, and said something. The
+interpreter translated it, and said that both of them belonged to the
+same master, and that the one who would first furnish the money would be
+the first to be released.
+
+"Now you," he said, "are a cross fellow, but your friend is meek; he has
+written a letter home, and they will send five thousand roubles. He will
+be fed well, and will not be insulted."
+
+So Zhilin said:
+
+"My friend may do as he pleases; maybe he is rich, but I am not. As I
+have said, so will it be. If you want to, kill me,--you will not gain by
+it,--but more than five hundred will I not give."
+
+They were silent for awhile. Suddenly Abdul jumped up, fetched a small
+box, took out a pen, a piece of paper, and some ink, put it all before
+Zhilin, slapped him on the shoulder, and motioned for him to write. He
+agreed to the five hundred.
+
+"Wait awhile," Zhilin said to the interpreter. "Tell him that he has to
+feed us well, and give us the proper clothes and shoes, and keep us
+together,--it will be jollier for us,--and take off the stocks." He
+looked at the master and laughed. The master himself laughed. He
+listened to the interpreter, and said:
+
+"I will give you the best of clothes,--a Circassian mantle and
+boots,--you will be fit to marry. We will feed you like princes. And if
+you want to stay together, you may live in the shed. But the stocks
+cannot be taken off, for you will run away. For the night we will take
+them off."
+
+He ran up to Zhilin, and tapped him on the shoulder:
+
+"You goot, me goot!"
+
+Zhilin wrote the letter, but he did not address it right. He thought he
+would run away.
+
+Zhilin and Kostylin were taken back to the shed. They brought for them
+maize straw, water in a pitcher, bread, two old mantles, and worn
+soldier boots. They had evidently been pulled off dead soldiers. For the
+night the stocks were taken off, and they were locked in the barn.
+
+
+III.
+
+Zhilin and his companion lived thus for a whole month. Their master kept
+laughing.
+
+"You, Ivan, goot, me, Abdul, goot!"
+
+But he did not feed them well. All he gave them to eat was unsalted
+millet bread, baked like pones, or entirely unbaked dough.
+
+Kostylin wrote home a second letter. He was waiting for the money to
+come, and felt lonesome. He sat for days at a time in the shed counting
+the days before the letter would come, or he slept. But Zhilin knew
+that his letter would not reach any one, and so he did not write
+another.
+
+"Where," he thought, "is my mother to get so much money? As it is, she
+lived mainly by what I sent her. If she should collect five hundred
+roubles, she would be ruined in the end. If God grants it, I will manage
+to get away from here."
+
+And he watched and thought of how to get away.
+
+He walked through the village and whistled, or he sat down somewhere to
+work with his hands, either making a doll from clay, or weaving a fence
+from twigs. Zhilin was a great hand at all kinds of such work.
+
+One day he made a doll, with a nose, and hands, and legs, in a Tartar
+shirt, and put the doll on the roof. The Tartar maidens were going for
+water. His master's daughter, Dina, saw the doll, and she called up the
+Tartar girls. They put down their pitchers, and looked, and laughed.
+Zhilin took down the doll and gave it to them. They laughed, and did not
+dare take it. He left the doll, and went back to the shed to see what
+they would do.
+
+Dina ran up, looked around, grasped the doll, and ran away with it.
+
+In the morning, at daybreak, he saw Dina coming out with the doll in
+front of the house. The doll was all dressed up in red rags, and she was
+rocking the doll and singing to it in her fashion. The old woman came
+out. She scolded her, took the doll away from her and broke it, and sent
+Dina to work.
+
+Zhilin made another doll, a better one than before, and he gave it to
+Dina. One day Dina brought him a small pitcher. She put it down, herself
+sat down and looked at him, and laughed, as she pointed to the pitcher.
+
+"What is she so happy about?" thought Zhilin.
+
+He took the pitcher and began to drink. He thought it was water, but,
+behold, it was milk. He drank the milk, and said:
+
+"It is good!"
+
+Dina was very happy.
+
+"Good, Ivan, good!" and she jumped up, clapped her hands, took away the
+pitcher, and ran off.
+
+From that time she brought him milk every day on the sly. The Tartars
+make cheese-cakes from goat milk, and dry them on the roofs,--and so she
+brought him those cakes also. One day the master killed a sheep, so she
+brought him a piece of mutton in her sleeve. She would throw it down and
+run away.
+
+One day there was a severe storm, and for an hour the rain fell as
+though from a pail. All the streams became turbid. Where there was a
+ford, the water was now eight feet deep, and stones were borne down.
+Torrents were running everywhere, and there was a roar in the mountains.
+When the storm was over, streams were coming down the village in every
+direction. Zhilin asked his master to let him have a penknife, and with
+it he cut out a small axle and little boards, and made a wheel, and to
+each end of the wheel he attached a doll.
+
+The girls brought him pieces of material, and he dressed the dolls: one
+a man, the other a woman. He fixed them firmly, and placed the wheel
+over a brook. The wheel began to turn, and the dolls to jump.
+
+The whole village gathered around it; boys, girls, women, and men came,
+and they clicked with their tongues:
+
+"Ai, Uruss! Ai, Ivan!"
+
+Abdul had a Russian watch, but it was broken. He called Zhilin, showed
+it to him, and clicked his tongue. Zhilin said:
+
+"Let me have it! I will fix it!"
+
+He took it to pieces with a penknife; then he put it together, and gave
+it back to him. The watch was running now.
+
+The master was delighted. He brought his old half-coat,--it was all in
+rags,--and made him a present of it. What could he do but take it? He
+thought it would be good enough to cover himself with in the night.
+
+After that the rumour went abroad that Zhilin was a great master. They
+began to come to him from distant villages: one, to have him fix a
+gun-lock or a pistol, another, to set a clock a-going. His master
+brought him tools,--pinchers, gimlets, and files.
+
+One day a Tartar became sick: they sent to Zhilin, and said, "Go and
+cure him!" Zhilin did not know anything about medicine. He went, took a
+look at him, and thought, "Maybe he will get well by himself." He went
+to the barn, took some water and sand, and mixed it. In the presence of
+the Tartars he said a charm over the water, and gave it to him to drink.
+Luckily for him, the Tartar got well.
+
+Zhilin began to understand their language. Some of the Tartars got used
+to him. When they needed him, they called, "Ivan, Ivan!" but others
+looked at him awry, as at an animal.
+
+The red Tartar did not like Zhilin. Whenever he saw him, he frowned and
+turned away, or called him names. There was also an old man; he did not
+live in the village, but came from farther down the mountain. Zhilin saw
+him only when he came to the mosque, to pray to God. He was a small man;
+his cap was wrapped with a white towel. His beard and moustache were
+clipped, and they were as white as down; his face was wrinkled and as
+red as a brick. His nose was hooked, like a hawk's beak, and his eyes
+were gray and mean-looking; of teeth he had only two tusks. He used to
+walk in his turban, leaning on a crutch, and looking around him like a
+wolf. Whenever he saw Zhilin, he grunted and turned away.
+
+One day Zhilin went down-hill, to see where the old man was living. He
+walked down the road, and saw a little garden, with a stone fence, and
+inside the fence were cherry and apricot trees, and stood a hut with a
+flat roof. He came closer to it, and he saw beehives woven from straw,
+and bees were swarming around and buzzing. The old man was kneeling, and
+doing something to a hive. Zhilin got up higher, to get a good look, and
+made a noise with his stocks. The old man looked around and shrieked; he
+pulled the pistol out from his belt and fired at Zhilin. He had just
+time to hide behind a rock.
+
+The old man went to the master to complain about Zhilin. The master
+called up Zhilin, and laughed, and asked:
+
+"Why did you go to the old man?"
+
+"I have not done him any harm," he said. "I just wanted to see how he
+lives."
+
+The master told the old man that. But the old man was angry, and hissed,
+and rattled something off; he showed his teeth and waved his hand
+threateningly at Zhilin.
+
+Zhilin did not understand it all; but he understood that the old man was
+telling his master to kill all the Russians, and not to keep them in the
+village. The old man went away.
+
+Zhilin asked his master what kind of a man that old Tartar was. The
+master said:
+
+"He is a big man! He used to be the first dzhigit: he killed a lot of
+Russians, and he was rich. He had three wives and eight sons. All of
+them lived in the same village. The Russians came, destroyed the
+village, and killed seven of his sons. One son was left alive, and he
+surrendered himself to the Russians. The old man went and surrendered
+himself, too, to the Russians. He stayed with them three months, found
+his son there, and killed him, and then he ran away. Since then he has
+stopped fighting. He has been to Mecca, to pray to God, and that is why
+he wears the turban. He who has been to Mecca is called a Hadji and puts
+on a turban. He has no use for you fellows. He tells me to kill you;
+but I cannot kill you,--I have paid for you; and then, Ivan, I like you.
+I not only have no intention of killing you, but I would not let you go
+back, if I had not given my word to you." He laughed as he said that,
+and added in Russian: "You, Ivan, good, me, Abdul, good!"
+
+
+IV.
+
+Zhilin lived thus for a month. In the daytime he walked around the
+village and made things with his hands, and when night came, and all was
+quiet in the village, he began to dig in the shed. It was difficult to
+dig on account of the rocks, but he sawed the stones with the file, and
+made a hole through which he meant to crawl later. "First I must find
+out what direction to go in," he thought; "but the Tartars will not tell
+me anything."
+
+So he chose a time when his master was away; he went after dinner back
+of the village, up-hill, where he could see the place. But when his
+master went away, he told his little boy to keep an eye on Zhilin and to
+follow him everywhere. So the boy ran after Zhilin, and said:
+
+"Don't go! Father said that you should not go there. I will call the
+people!"
+
+Zhilin began to persuade him.
+
+"I do not want to go far," he said; "I just want to walk up the
+mountain: I want to find an herb with which to cure you people. Come
+with me; I cannot run away with the stocks. To-morrow I will make you a
+bow and arrows."
+
+He persuaded the boy, and they went together. As he looked up the
+mountain, it looked near, but with the stocks it was hard to walk; he
+walked and walked, and climbed the mountain with difficulty. Zhilin sat
+down and began to look at the place. To the south of the shed there was
+a ravine, and there a herd of horses was grazing, and in a hollow could
+be seen another village. At that village began a steeper mountain, and
+beyond that mountain there was another mountain. Between the mountains
+could be seen a forest, and beyond it again the mountains, rising higher
+and higher. Highest of all, there were white mountains, capped with
+snow, just like sugar loaves. And one snow mountain stood with its cap
+above all the rest. To the east and the west there were just such
+mountains; here and there smoke rose from villages in the clefts.
+
+"Well," he thought, "that is all their side."
+
+He began to look to the Russian side. At his feet was a brook and his
+village, and all around were little gardens. At the brook women were
+sitting,--they looked as small as dolls,--and washing the linen. Beyond
+the village and below it there was a mountain, and beyond that, two
+other mountains, covered with forests; between the two mountains could
+be seen an even spot, and on that plain, far, far away, it looked as
+though smoke were settling. Zhilin recalled where the sun used to rise
+and set when he was at home in the fortress. He looked down there,--sure
+enough, that was the valley where the Russian fortress ought to be.
+There, then, between those two mountains, he had to run.
+
+The sun was beginning to go down. The snow-capped mountains changed from
+white to violet; it grew dark in the black mountains; vapour arose from
+the clefts, and the valley, where our fortress no doubt was, gleamed in
+the sunset as though on fire. Zhilin began to look sharply,--something
+was quivering in the valley, like smoke rising from chimneys. He was
+sure now that it must be the Russian fortress.
+
+It grew late; he could hear the mullah call; the flock was being driven,
+and the cows lowed. The boy said to him, "Come!" but Zhilin did not feel
+like leaving.
+
+They returned home. "Well," thought Zhilin, "now I know the place, and I
+must run." He wanted to run that same night. The nights were dark,--the
+moon was on the wane. Unfortunately the Tartars returned toward evening.
+At other times they returned driving cattle before them, and then they
+were jolly. But this time they did not drive home anything, but brought
+back a dead Tartar, a red-haired companion of theirs. They came back
+angry, and all gathered to bury him. Zhilin, too, went out to see. They
+wrapped the dead man in linen, without putting him in a coffin, and
+carried him under the plane-trees beyond the village, and placed him on
+the grass. The mullah came, and the old men gathered around him, their
+caps wrapped with towels, and took off their shoes and seated themselves
+in a row on their heels, in front of the dead man.
+
+At their head was the mullah, and then three old men in turbans, sitting
+in a row, and behind them other Tartars. They sat, and bent their heads,
+and kept silence. They were silent for quite awhile. Then the mullah
+raised his head, and said:
+
+"Allah!" (That means "God.") He said that one word, and again they
+lowered their heads and kept silence for a long time; they sat without
+stirring. Again the mullah raised his head:
+
+"Allah!" and all repeated, "Allah!" and again they were silent. The dead
+man lay on the grass, and did not stir, and they sat about him like the
+dead. Not one of them stirred. One could hear only the leaves on the
+plane-tree rustling in the breeze. Then the mullah said a prayer, and
+all got up, lifted the dead body, and carried it away. They took it to a
+grave,--not a simple grave, but dug under like a cave. They took the
+dead man under his arms and by his legs, bent him over, let him down
+softly, pushed him under in a sitting posture, and fixed his arms on his
+body.
+
+A Nogay dragged up a lot of green reeds; they bedded the grave with it,
+then quickly filled it with dirt, levelled it up, and put a stone up
+straight at the head of it. They tramped down the earth, and again sat
+down in a row near the grave. They were silent for a long time.
+
+"Allah, Allah, Allah!" They sighed and got up.
+
+A red-haired Tartar distributed money to the old men; then he got up,
+took a whip, struck himself three times on his forehead, and went home.
+
+Next morning Zhilin saw the red Tartar take a mare out of the village,
+and three Tartars followed him. They went outside the village; then the
+red-haired Tartar took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves,--he had
+immense arms,--and took out his dagger and whetted it on a steel. The
+Tartars jerked up the mare's head, and the red-haired man walked over to
+her, cut her throat, threw her down, and began to flay her,--to rip the
+skin open with his fists. Then came women and girls, and they began to
+wash the inside and the entrails. Then they chopped up the mare and
+dragged the flesh to the house. And the whole village gathered at the
+house of the red-haired Tartar to celebrate the dead man's wake.
+
+For three days did they eat the horse-flesh, drink buza, and remember
+the dead man. On the fourth day Zhilin saw them get ready to go
+somewhere for a dinner. They brought horses, dressed themselves up, and
+went away,--about ten men, and the red Tartar with them; Abdul was the
+only one who was left at home. The moon was just beginning to increase,
+and the nights were still dark.
+
+"Well," thought Zhilin, "to-night I must run," and he told Kostylin so.
+But Kostylin was timid.
+
+"How can we run? We do not know the road."
+
+"I know it."
+
+"But we cannot reach it in the night."
+
+"If we do not, we shall stay for the night in the woods. I have a lot of
+cakes with me. You certainly do not mean to stay. It would be all right
+if they sent the money; but suppose they cannot get together so much.
+The Tartars are mean now, because the Russians have killed one of
+theirs. I understand they want to kill us now."
+
+Kostylin thought awhile:
+
+"Well, let us go!"
+
+
+V.
+
+Zhilin crept into the hole and dug it wider, so that Kostylin could get
+through; and then they sat still and waited for everything to quiet down
+in the village.
+
+When all grew quiet, Zhilin crawled through the hole and got out. He
+whispered to Kostylin to crawl out. Kostylin started to come out, but he
+caught a stone with his foot, and it made a noise. Now their master had
+a dappled watch-dog, and he was dreadfully mean; his name was Ulyashin.
+Zhilin had been feeding him before. When Ulyashin heard the voice, he
+began to bark and rushed forward, and with him other dogs. Zhilin gave a
+low whistle and threw a piece of cake to the dog, and the dog recognized
+him and wagged his tail and stopped barking.
+
+The master heard it, and he called out from the hut, "Hait, hait,
+Ulyashin!"
+
+But Zhilin was scratching Ulyashin behind his ears; so the dog was
+silent and rubbed against his legs and wagged his tail.
+
+They sat awhile around the corner. All was silent; nothing could be
+heard but the sheep coughing in the hut corner, and the water rippling
+down the pebbles. It was dark; the stars stood high in the heaven; the
+young moon shone red above the mountain, and its horns were turned
+upward. In the clefts the mist looked as white as milk.
+
+Zhilin got up and said to his companion:
+
+"Now, my friend, let us start!"
+
+They started. They had made but a few steps, when they heard the mullah
+sing out on the roof: "Allah besmillah! Ilrakhman!" That meant that the
+people were going to the mosque. They sat down again, hiding behind a
+wall. They sat for a long time, waiting for the people to pass by. Again
+everything was quiet.
+
+"Well, with God's aid!" They made the sign of the cross, and started.
+They crossed the yard and went down-hill to the brook; they crossed the
+brook and walked down the ravine. The mist was dense and low on the
+ground, and overhead the stars were, oh, so visible. Zhilin saw by the
+stars in what direction they had to go. In the mist it felt fresh, and
+it was easy to walk, only the boots were awkward, they had worn down so
+much. Zhilin took off his boots and threw them away, and marched on
+barefoot. He leaped from stone to stone, and kept watching the stars.
+Kostylin began to fall behind.
+
+"Walk slower," he said. "The accursed boots,--they have chafed my feet."
+
+"Take them off! You will find it easier without them."
+
+Kostylin walked barefoot after that; but it was only worse: he cut his
+feet on the rocks, and kept falling behind. Zhilin said to him:
+
+"If you bruise your feet, they will heal up; but if they catch you; they
+will kill you,--so it will be worse."
+
+Kostylin said nothing, but he groaned as he walked. They walked for a
+long time through a ravine. Suddenly they heard dogs barking. Zhilin
+stopped and looked around; he groped with his hands and climbed a hill.
+
+"Oh," he said, "we have made a mistake,--we have borne too much to the
+right. Here is a village,--I saw it from the mountain; we must go back
+and to the left, and up the mountain. There must be a forest here."
+
+But Kostylin said:
+
+"Wait at least awhile! Let me rest: my feet are all blood-stained."
+
+"Never mind, friend, they will heal up! Jump more lightly,--like this!"
+
+And Zhilin ran back, and to the left, up the mountain into the forest.
+Kostylin kept falling behind and groaning. Zhilin hushed him, and walked
+on.
+
+They got up the mountain, and there, indeed, was a forest. They went
+into the forest, and tore all the clothes they had against the thorns.
+They struck a path in the forest, and followed it.
+
+"Stop!" Hoofs were heard tramping on the path. They stopped to listen.
+It was the sound of a horse's hoofs. They started, and again it began to
+thud. They stopped, and it, too, stopped. Zhilin crawled up to it, and
+saw something standing in the light on the road. It was not exactly a
+horse, and again it was like a horse with something strange above it,
+and certainly not a man. He heard it snort. "What in the world is it?"
+Zhilin gave a light whistle, and it bolted away from the path, so that
+he could hear it crash through the woods: the branches broke off, as
+though a storm went through them.
+
+Kostylin fell down in fright. But Zhilin laughed and said:
+
+"That is a stag. Do you hear him break the branches with his horns? We
+are afraid of him, and he is afraid of us."
+
+They walked on. The Pleiades were beginning to settle,--it was not far
+from morning. They did not know whether they were going right, or not.
+Zhilin thought that that was the path over which they had taken him, and
+that he was about ten versts from his own people; still there were no
+certain signs, and, besides, in the night nothing could be made out.
+They came out on a clearing. Kostylin sat down, and said:
+
+"Do as you please, but I will not go any farther! My feet refuse to
+move."
+
+Zhilin begged him to go on.
+
+"No," he said, "I cannot walk on."
+
+Zhilin got angry, spit out in disgust, and scolded him.
+
+"Then I will go by myself,--good-bye!"
+
+Kostylin got up and walked on. They walked about four versts. The mist
+grew denser in the forest, and nothing could be seen in front of them,
+and the stars were quite dim.
+
+Suddenly they heard a horse tramping in front of them. They could hear
+the horse catch with its hoofs in the stones. Zhilin lay down on his
+belly, and put his ear to the ground to listen.
+
+"So it is, a rider is coming this way!"
+
+They ran off the road, sat down in the bushes, and waited. Zhilin crept
+up to the road, and saw a Tartar on horseback, driving a cow before him,
+and mumbling something to himself. The Tartar passed by them. Zhilin
+went back to Kostylin.
+
+"Well, with God's help, he is gone. Get up, and let us go!"
+
+Kostylin tried to get up, but fell down.
+
+"I cannot, upon my word, I cannot. I have no strength."
+
+The heavy, puffed-up man was in a perspiration, and as the cold mist in
+the forest went through him and his feet were all torn, he went all to
+pieces. Zhilin tried to get him up, but Kostylin cried:
+
+"Oh, it hurts!"
+
+Zhilin was frightened.
+
+"Don't shout so! You know that the Tartar is not far off,--he will hear
+you." But he thought: "He is, indeed, weak, so what shall I do with him?
+It will not do to abandon my companion."
+
+"Well," he said, "get up, get on my back, and I will carry you, if you
+cannot walk."
+
+He took Kostylin on his back, put his hands on Kostylin's legs, walked
+out on the road, and walked on.
+
+"Only be sure," he said, "and do not choke me with your hands, for
+Christ's sake. Hold on to my shoulders!"
+
+It was hard for Zhilin: his feet, too, were blood-stained, and he was
+worn out. He kept bending down, straightening up Kostylin, and throwing
+him up, so that he might sit higher, and dragged him along the road.
+
+Evidently the Tartar had heard Kostylin's shout. Zhilin heard some one
+riding from behind and calling in his language. Zhilin made for the
+brush. The Tartar pulled out his gun and fired; he screeched in his
+fashion, and rode back along the road.
+
+"Well," said Zhilin, "we are lost, my friend! That dog will collect the
+Tartars and they will start after us. If we cannot make another three
+versts, we are lost." But he thought about Kostylin: "The devil has
+tempted me to take this log along. If I had been alone, I should have
+escaped long ago."
+
+Kostylin said:
+
+"Go yourself! Why should you perish for my sake?"
+
+"No, I will not go,--it will not do to leave a comrade."
+
+He took him once more on his shoulders, and held on to him. Thus they
+walked another verst. The woods extended everywhere, and no end was to
+be seen. The mist was beginning to lift, and rose in the air like little
+clouds, and the stars could not be seen. Zhilin was worn out.
+
+They came to a little spring by the road; it was lined with stones.
+Zhilin stopped and put down Kostylin.
+
+"Let me rest," he said, "and get a drink! We will eat our cakes. It
+cannot be far now."
+
+He had just got down to drink, when he heard the tramping of horses
+behind them. Again they rushed to the right, into the bushes, down an
+incline, and lay down.
+
+They could hear Tartar voices. The Tartars stopped at the very spot
+where they had left the road. They talked awhile, then they made a
+sound, as though sicking dogs. Something crashed through the bushes, and
+a strange dog made straight for them. It stopped and began to bark.
+
+Then the Tartars came down,--they, too, were strangers. They took them,
+bound them, put them on their horses, and carried them off.
+
+They travelled about three versts, when they were met by Abdul, the
+prisoners' master, and two more Tartars. They talked with each other,
+and the prisoners were put on the other horses and taken back to the
+village.
+
+Abdul no longer laughed, and did not speak one word with them.
+
+They were brought to the village at daybreak, and were placed in the
+street. The children ran up and beat them with stones and sticks, and
+screamed.
+
+The Tartars gathered in a circle, and the old man from down-hill came,
+too. They talked together. Zhilin saw that they were sitting in judgment
+on them, discussing what to do with them. Some said that they ought to
+be sent farther into the mountains, but the old man said that they
+should be killed. Abdul disputed with them and said:
+
+"I have paid money for them, and I will get a ransom for them."
+
+But the old man said:
+
+"They will not pay us anything; they will only give us trouble. It is a
+sin to feed Russians. Kill them, and that will be the end of it."
+
+They all went their way. The master walked over to Zhilin and said:
+
+"If the ransom does not come in two weeks, I will beat you to death. And
+if you try to run again I will kill you like a dog. Write a letter, and
+write it well!"
+
+Paper was brought to them, and they wrote the letters. The stocks were
+put on them, and they were taken back of the mosque. There was a ditch
+there, about twelve feet in depth,--and into this ditch they were let
+down.
+
+
+VI.
+
+They now led a very hard life. The stocks were not taken off, and they
+were not let out into the wide world. Unbaked dough was thrown down to
+them, as to dogs, and water was let down to them in a pitcher. There was
+a stench in the ditch, and it was close and damp. Kostylin grew very
+ill, and swelled, and had a breaking out on his whole body; and he kept
+groaning all the time, or he slept. Zhilin was discouraged: he saw that
+the situation was desperate. He did not know how to get out of it.
+
+He began to dig, but there was no place to throw the dirt in; the master
+saw it, and threatened to kill him.
+
+One day he was squatting in the ditch, and thinking of the free world,
+and he felt pretty bad. Suddenly a cake fell down on his knees, and a
+second, and some cherries. He looked up,--it was Dina. She looked at
+him, laughed, and ran away. Zhilin thought: "Maybe Dina will help me."
+
+He cleaned up a place in the ditch, scraped up some clay, and began to
+make dolls. He made men, horses, and dogs. He thought: "When Dina comes
+I will throw them to her."
+
+But on the next day Dina did not come. Zhilin heard the tramping of
+horses; somebody rode by, and the Tartars gathered at the mosque; they
+quarrelled and shouted, and talked about the Russians. And he heard the
+old man's voice. He could not make out exactly what it was, but he
+guessed that the Russians had come close to the village, and that the
+Tartars were afraid that they might come to the village, and they did
+not know what to do with the prisoners.
+
+They talked awhile and went away. Suddenly he heard something rustle
+above him. He looked up; Dina was squatting down, and her knees towered
+above her head; she leaned over, and her necklace hung down and dangled
+over the ditch. Her little eyes glistened like stars. She took two
+cheese-cakes out of her sleeve and threw them down to him. Zhilin said
+to her:
+
+"Why have you not been here for so long? I have made you some toys. Here
+they are!"
+
+He began to throw one after the other to her, but she shook her head,
+and did not look at them.
+
+"I do not want them," she said. She sat awhile in silence, and said;
+"Ivan, they want to kill you!" She pointed with her hand to her neck.
+
+"Who wants to kill me?"
+
+"My father,--the old men tell him to. I am sorry for you."
+
+So Zhilin said:
+
+"If you pity me, bring me a long stick!"
+
+She shook her head, to say that she could not. He folded his hands, and
+began to beg her:
+
+"Dina, if you please! Dear Dina, bring it to me!"
+
+"I cannot," she said. "The people are at home, and they would see me."
+
+And she went away.
+
+Zhilin was sitting there in the evening, and thinking what would happen.
+He kept looking up. The stars could be seen, and the moon was not yet
+up. The mullah called, and all grew quiet. Zhilin was beginning to fall
+asleep; he thought the girl would be afraid.
+
+Suddenly some clay fell on his head. He looked up and saw a long pole
+coming down at the end of the ditch. It tumbled, and descended, and came
+down into the ditch. Zhilin was happy; he took hold of it and let it
+down,--it was a stout pole. He had seen it before on his master's roof.
+
+He looked up: the stars were shining high in the heavens, and over the
+very ditch Dina's eyes glistened in the darkness. She bent her face over
+the edge of the ditch, and whispered: "Ivan, Ivan!" and waved her hands
+in front of her face, as much as to say: "Speak softly!"
+
+"What is it?" asked Zhilin.
+
+"They are all gone. There are two only at the house."
+
+So Zhilin said:
+
+"Kostylin, come, let us try for the last time; I will give you a lift."
+
+Kostylin would not even listen.
+
+"No," he said, "I shall never get away from here. Where should I go,
+since I have no strength to turn around?"
+
+"If so, good-bye! Do not think ill of me!"
+
+He kissed Kostylin.
+
+He took hold of the pole, told Dina to hold on to it, and climbed up.
+Two or three times he slipped down: the stocks were in his way. Kostylin
+held him up, and he managed to get on. Dina pulled him by the shirt with
+all her might, and laughed.
+
+Zhilin took the pole, and said:
+
+"Take it to where you found it, for if they see it, they will beat you."
+
+She dragged the pole away, and Zhilin went down-hill. He crawled down an
+incline, took a sharp stone, and tried to break the lock of the stocks.
+But the lock was a strong one, and he could not break it. He heard some
+one running down the hill, leaping lightly. He thought it was Dina. Dina
+ran up, took a stone, and said:
+
+"Let me do it!"
+
+She knelt down and tried to break it; but her arms were as thin as
+rods,--there was no strength in them. She threw away the stone, and
+began to weep. Zhilin again worked on the lock, and Dina squatted near
+him, and held on to his shoulder. Zhilin looked around; on the left,
+beyond the mountain, he saw a red glow,--the moon was rising.
+
+"Well," he thought, "before the moon is up I must cross the ravine and
+get to the forest."
+
+He got up, threw away the stone, and, though in the stocks, started to
+go.
+
+"Good-bye, Dina dear! I will remember you all my life."
+
+Dina took hold of him; she groped all over him, trying to find a place
+to put the cakes. He took them from her.
+
+"Thank you," he said, "you are a clever girl. Who will make dolls for
+you without me?" And he patted her on the head.
+
+Dina began to cry. She covered her eyes with her hands, and ran up-hill
+like a kid. In the darkness he could hear the ornaments in the braid
+striking against her shoulders.
+
+Zhilin made the sign of the cross, took the lock of his fetters in his
+hand, that it might not clank, and started down the road, dragging his
+feet along, and looking at the glow, where the moon was rising. He
+recognized the road. By the straight road it would be about eight
+versts. If he only could get to the woods before the moon was entirely
+out! He crossed a brook,--and it was getting light beyond the mountain.
+He walked through the ravine; he walked and looked, but the moon was not
+yet to be seen. It was getting brighter, and on one side of the ravine
+everything could be seen more and more clearly. The shadow was creeping
+down the mountain, up toward him.
+
+Zhilin walked and kept in the shade. He hurried on, but the moon was
+coming out faster still; the tops of the trees on the right side were
+now in the light. As he came up to the woods, the moon came out entirely
+from behind the mountains, and it grew bright and white as in the
+daytime. All the leaves could be seen on the trees. The mountains were
+calm and bright; it was as though everything were dead. All that could
+be heard was the rippling of a brook below.
+
+He reached the forest,--he came across no men. Zhilin found a dark spot
+in the woods and sat down to rest himself.
+
+He rested, and ate a cake. He found a stone, and began once more to
+break down the lock. He bruised his hands, but did not break the lock.
+He got up, and walked on. He marched about a verst, but his strength
+gave out,--his feet hurt him so. He would make ten steps and then stop.
+"What is to be done?" he thought. "I will drag myself along until my
+strength gives out entirely. If I sit down, I shall not be able to get
+up. I cannot reach the fortress, so, when day breaks, I will lie down in
+the forest for the day, and at night I will move on."
+
+He walked the whole night. He came across two Tartars only, but he heard
+them from afar, and so hid behind a tree.
+
+The moon was beginning to pale, and Zhilin had not yet reached the edge
+of the forest.
+
+"Well," he thought, "I will take another thirty steps, after which I
+will turn into the forest, where I will sit down."
+
+He took the thirty steps, and there he saw that the forest came to an
+end. He went to the edge of it, and there it was quite light. Before him
+lay the steppe and the fortress, as in the palm of the hand, and to the
+left, close by at the foot of the mountain, fires were burning and going
+out, and the smoke was spreading, and men were near the camp-fires.
+
+He took a sharp look at them: the guns were glistening,--those were
+Cossacks and soldiers.
+
+Zhilin was happy. He collected his last strength and walked down-hill.
+And he thought: "God forfend that a Tartar rider should see me in the
+open! Though it is not far off, I should not get away."
+
+No sooner had he thought so, when, behold, on a mound stood three
+Tartars, not more than 150 fathoms away. They saw him, and darted toward
+him. His heart just sank in him. He waved his arms and shouted as loud
+as he could:
+
+"Brothers! Help, brothers!"
+
+Our men heard him, and away flew the mounted Cossacks. They started
+toward him, to cut off the Tartars.
+
+The Cossacks had far to go, but the Tartars were near. And Zhilin
+collected his last strength, took the stocks in his hand, and ran toward
+the Cossacks. He was beside himself, and he made the sign of the cross,
+and shouted:
+
+"Brothers! Brothers! Brothers!"
+
+There were about fifteen Cossacks.
+
+The Tartars were frightened, and they stopped before they reached him.
+And Zhilin ran up to the Cossacks.
+
+The Cossacks surrounded him, and asked:
+
+"Who are you? Where do you come from?"
+
+But Zhilin was beside himself, and he wept, and muttered:
+
+"Brothers! Brothers!"
+
+The soldiers ran out, and surrounded Zhilin: one gave him bread, another
+gruel, a third vodka; one covered him with a cloak, another broke off
+the lock.
+
+The officers heard of it, and took him to the fortress. The soldiers
+were happy, and his companions came to see him.
+
+Zhilin told them what had happened, and said:
+
+"So I have been home, and got married! No, evidently that is not my
+fate."
+
+And he remained in the service in the Caucasus. Not till a month later
+was Kostylin ransomed for five thousand. He was brought back more dead
+than alive.
+
+
+
+
+ERMAK
+
+
+In the reign of Ivan Vasilevich the Terrible there were the rich
+merchants, the Stroganovs, and they lived in Perm, on the river Kama.
+They heard that along the river Kama, in a circle of 140 versts, there
+was good land: the soil had not been ploughed for centuries, the forests
+had not been cut down for centuries. In the forests were many wild
+animals, and along the river fish lakes, and no one was living on that
+land, but only Tartars passed through it.
+
+The Stroganovs wrote a letter to the Tsar:
+
+"Give us this land, and we will ourselves build towns there and gather
+people and settle them there, and will not allow the Tartars to pass
+through it."
+
+The Tsar agreed to it, and gave them the land. The Stroganovs sent out
+clerks to gather people. And there came to them a large number of roving
+people. Whoever came received from the Stroganovs land, forest, and
+cattle, and no tenant pay was collected. All they had to do was to live
+and, in case of need, to go out in mass to fight the Tartars. Thus the
+land was settled by the Russian people.
+
+About twenty years passed. The Stroganovs grew richer yet, and that
+land, 140 versts around, was not enough for them. They wanted to have
+more land still. About one hundred versts from them were high mountains,
+the Ural Mountains, and beyond them, they had heard, there was good
+land, and to that land there was no end. This land was ruled by a small
+Siberian prince, Kuchum by name. In former days Kuchum had sworn
+allegiance to the Russian Tsar, but later he began to rebel, and he
+threatened to destroy Stroganov's towns.
+
+So the Stroganovs wrote to the Tsar:
+
+"You have given us land, and we have conquered it and turned it over to
+you; now the thievish Tsarling Kuchum is rebelling against you, and
+wants to take that land away and ruin us. Command us to take possession
+of the land beyond the Ural Mountains; we will conquer Kuchum, and will
+bring all his land under your rule."
+
+The Tsar assented, and wrote back:
+
+"If you have sufficient force, take the land away from Kuchum. Only do
+not entice many people away from Russia."
+
+When the Stroganovs got that letter from the Tsar, they sent out clerks
+to collect more people. And they ordered them to persuade mostly the
+Cossacks from the Volga and the Don to come. At that time many Cossacks
+were roving along the Volga and the Don. They used to gather in bands of
+two, three, or six hundred men, and to select an ataman, and to row down
+in barges, to capture ships and rob them, and for the winter they stayed
+in little towns on the shore.
+
+The clerks arrived at the Volga, and there they asked who the famous
+Cossacks of that region were. They were told:
+
+"There are many Cossacks. It is impossible to live for them. There is
+Mishka Cherkashenin, and Sary-Azman; but there is no fiercer one than
+Ermak Timofeich, the ataman. He has a thousand men, and not only the
+merchants and the people are afraid of him, but even the Tsarian army
+does not dare to cope with him."
+
+And the clerks went to Ermak the ataman, and began to persuade him to go
+to the Stroganovs. Ermak received the clerks, listened to their
+speeches, and promised to come with his people about the time of the
+Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.
+
+Near the holiday of the Assumption there came to the Stroganovs six
+hundred Cossacks, with their ataman, Ermak Timofeich. At first Stroganov
+sent them against the neighbouring Tartars. The Cossacks annihilated
+them. Then, when nothing was doing, the Cossacks roved in the
+neighbourhood and robbed.
+
+So Stroganov sent for Ermak, and said:
+
+"I will not keep you any longer, if you are going to be so wanton."
+
+But Ermak said:
+
+"I do not like it myself, but I cannot control my people, they are
+spoiled. Give us work to do!"
+
+So Stroganov said:
+
+"Go beyond the Ural and fight Kuchum, and take possession of his land.
+The Tsar will reward you for it."
+
+And he showed the Tsar's letter to Ermak. Ermak rejoiced, and collected
+his men, and said:
+
+"You are shaming me before my master,--you are robbing without reason.
+If you do not stop, he will drive you away, and where will you go then?
+At the Volga there is a large Tsarian army; we shall be caught, and then
+we shall suffer for our old misdeeds. But if you feel lonesome, here is
+work for you."
+
+And he showed them the Tsar's letter, in which it said that Stroganov
+had been permitted to conquer land beyond the Ural. The Cossacks had a
+consultation, and agreed to go. Ermak went to Stroganov, and they began
+to deliberate how they had best go.
+
+They discussed how many barges they needed, how much grain, cattle,
+guns, powder, lead, how many captive Tartar interpreters, and how many
+foreigners as masters of gunnery.
+
+Stroganov thought:
+
+"Though it may cost me much, I must give them everything or else they
+will stay here and will ruin me."
+
+Stroganov agreed to everything, gathered what was needed, and fitted out
+Ermak and the Cossacks.
+
+On the 1st of September the Cossacks rowed with Ermak up the river
+Chusovaya on thirty-two barges, with twelve men in each. For four days
+they rowed up the river, and then they turned into Serebryanaya River.
+Beyond that point it was impossible to navigate. They asked the guides,
+and learned that from there they had to cross the mountains and walk
+overland about two hundred versts, and then the rivers would begin
+again. The Cossacks stopped, built a town, and unloaded all their
+equipment; they abandoned the boats, made carts, put everything upon
+them, and started overland, across the mountains. All those places were
+covered with forest, and nobody was living there. They marched for about
+ten days, and struck the river Zharovnya. Here they stopped again, and
+made themselves boats. They loaded them, and rowed down the river. They
+rowed five days, and then came more cheerful places,--meadows, forests,
+lakes. There was a plenty of fish and of animals, and animals that had
+not been scared by hunters. They rowed another day, and sailed into the
+river Tura. Along the Tura they came on Tartar people and towns.
+
+Ermak sent some Cossacks to take a look at a town, to see what it was
+like, and whether there was any considerable force in it. Twenty
+Cossacks went there, and they frightened all the Tartars, and seized the
+whole town, and captured all the cattle. Some of the Tartars they
+killed, and others they brought back alive.
+
+Ermak asked the Tartars through his interpreters what kind of people
+they were, and under whose rule they were living. The Tartars said that
+they were in the Siberian kingdom, and that their king was Kuchum.
+
+Ermak let the Tartars go, but three of the more intelligent he took with
+him, to show him the road.
+
+They rowed on. The farther they rowed, the larger did the river grow;
+and the farther they went, the better did the places become.
+
+They met more and more people; only they were not strong men. And all
+the towns that were near the river the Cossacks conquered.
+
+In one town they captured a large number of Tartars and one old man who
+was held in respect. They asked him what kind of a man he was. He said:
+
+"I am Tauzik, a servant of my king, Kuchum, who has made me a commander
+in this town."
+
+Ermak asked Tauzik about his king; how far his city of Sibir was;
+whether Kuchum had a large force; whether he had much wealth. Tauzik
+told him everything. He said:
+
+"Kuchum is the first king in the world. His city of Sibir is the largest
+city in the world. In that city," he said, "there are as many people and
+as many cattle as there are stars in the heaven. There is no counting
+his force, and not all the kings of the world can conquer him."
+
+But Ermak said:
+
+"We Russians have come here to conquer your king and to take his city,
+and to put it into the hands of the Russian Tsar. We have a large force.
+Those who have come with me are only the advance-guard; those that are
+rowing down behind us in barges are numberless, and all of them have
+guns. Our guns pierce trees, not like your bows and arrows. Just look!"
+
+And Ermak fired at a tree, and pierced it, and the Cossacks began to
+shoot on all sides. Tauzik in fright fell on his knees. Ermak said to
+him:
+
+"Go to your King Kuchum and tell him what you have seen! Let him
+surrender, and if he does not, we will destroy him."
+
+And he dismissed Tauzik.
+
+The Cossacks rowed on. They sailed into the river Tobol, and were
+getting nearer to the city of Sibir. They sailed up to the small river
+Babasan, and there they saw a small town on its bank, and around the
+town a large number of Tartars.
+
+They sent an interpreter to the Tartars, to find out what kind of people
+they were. The interpreter returned, and said:
+
+"That is Kuchum's army that has gathered there. The leader of that army
+is Kuchum's own son-in-law, Mametkul. He has commanded me to tell you
+that you must return, or else he will destroy you."
+
+Ermak gathered his Cossacks, landed on the bank, and began to shoot at
+the Tartars. The moment the Tartars heard the shooting, they began to
+run. The Cossacks ran after them, and killed some, and captured others.
+Mametkul barely escaped.
+
+The Cossacks sailed on. They sailed into a broad, rapid river, the
+Irtysh. Down Irtysh River they sailed for a day, and came to a fair
+town, and there they stopped. The Cossacks went to the town. As they
+were coming near, the Tartars began to shoot their arrows, and they
+wounded three Cossacks. Then Ermak sent an interpreter to tell the
+Tartars that they must surrender the town, or else they would all be
+killed. The interpreter went, and he returned, and said:
+
+"Here lives Kuchum's servant, Atik Murza Kachara. He has a large force,
+and he says that he will not surrender the town."
+
+Ermak gathered the Cossacks, and said:
+
+"Boys, if we do not take this town, the Tartars will rejoice, and will
+not let us pass on. The more we strike them with terror, the easier will
+it be. Land all, and attack them all at once!"
+
+So they did. There were many Tartars there, and they were brave.
+
+When the Cossacks rushed at them, the Tartars began to shoot their
+arrows. They covered the Cossacks with them. Some were killed, and some
+wounded.
+
+The Cossacks became enraged, and when they got to the Tartars, they
+killed all they could lay their hands on.
+
+In this town the Cossacks found much property,--cattle, rugs, furs, and
+honey. They buried the dead, rested themselves, took away much property,
+and sailed on. They did not sail far, when they saw on the shore, like a
+city, an endless number of troops, and the whole army surrounded by a
+ditch and the ditch protected by timber. The Cossacks stopped. They
+deliberated. Ermak gathered a circle about him.
+
+"Well, boys, what shall we do?"
+
+The Cossacks were frightened. Some said that they ought to sail past,
+while others said that they ought to go back.
+
+And they looked gloomy and began to scold Ermak. They said:
+
+"Why did you bring us here? Already a few of ours have been killed, and
+many have been wounded; and all of us will perish here."
+
+They began to weep.
+
+But Ermak said to his sub-ataman, Ivan Koltso:
+
+"Well, Vanya, what do you think?"
+
+And Koltso said:
+
+"What do I think? If they do not kill us to-day, they will to-morrow;
+and if not to-morrow, we shall die anyway on the oven. In my opinion, we
+ought to go out on the shore and rush in a body against the Tartars.
+Maybe God will give us victory."
+
+Ermak said:
+
+"You are a brave man, Vanya! That is what must be done. Oh, you boys!
+You are not Cossacks, but old women. All you are good for is to catch
+sturgeon and frighten Tartar women. Can't you see for yourselves? If we
+turn back we shall be destroyed; and if we stay here, they will destroy
+us. How can we go back? After a little work, it will come easier.
+Listen, boys! My father had a strong mare. Down-hill she would pull and
+on an even place she would pull. But when it came to going up-hill, she
+became stubborn and turned back, thinking that it would be easier. But
+my father took a club and belaboured her with it. She twisted and tugged
+and broke the whole cart. My father unhitched her from the cart and gave
+her a terrible whacking. If she had pulled the cart, she would have
+suffered no torment. So it is with us, boys. There is only one thing
+left for us to do, and that is to make straight for the Tartars."
+
+The Cossacks laughed, and said:
+
+"Timofeich, you are evidently more clever than we are. You have no
+business to ask us fools. Take us where you please. A man does not die
+twice, and one death cannot be escaped."
+
+And Ermak said:
+
+"Listen, boys! This is what we shall do. They have not yet seen us all.
+Let us divide into three parts. Those in the middle will march straight
+against them, and the other two divisions will surround them on the
+right and on the left. When the middle detachment begins to walk toward
+them, they will think that we are all there, and so they will leap
+forward. Then we will strike them from the sides. That's the way, boys!
+If we beat these, we shall not have to be afraid of anybody. We shall
+ourselves be kings."
+
+And so they did. When the middle detachment with Ermak advanced, the
+Tartars screamed and leaped forward; then they were attacked by Ivan
+Koltso on the right, and by Meshcheryakov the ataman on the left. The
+Tartars were frightened, and ran. The Cossacks killed a great many of
+them. After that nobody dared to oppose Ermak. And thus he entered the
+very city of Sibir. And there Ermak settled down as though he were a
+king.
+
+Then kinglets came to see Ermak, to bow to him. Tartars began to settle
+down in Sibir, and Kuchum and his son-in-law Mametkul were afraid to go
+straight at him, but kept going around in a circle, wondering how they
+might destroy him.
+
+In the spring, during high water, the Tartars came running to Ermak, and
+said:
+
+"Mametkul is again going against you: he has gathered a large army, and
+is making a stand near the river Vagay."
+
+Ermak made his way over rivers, swamps, brooks, and forests, stole up
+with his Cossacks, rushed against Mametkul, killed a large number of
+Tartars, and took Mametkul alive and brought him to Sibir. After that
+there were only a few unruly Tartars left, and Ermak went that summer
+against those that had not yet surrendered; and along the Irtysh and the
+Ob Ermak conquered so much land that one could not march around it in
+two months.
+
+When Ermak had conquered all that land, he sent a messenger to the
+Stroganovs, and a letter:
+
+"I have taken Kuchum's city," he said, "and have captured Mametkul, and
+have brought all the people here under my rule. Only I have lost many
+Cossacks. Send people to us that we may feel more cheerful. There is no
+end to the wealth in this country."
+
+He sent to them many costly furs,--fox, marten, and sable furs.
+
+Two years passed after that. Ermak was still holding Sibir, but no aid
+came from Russia, and few Russians were left with Ermak.
+
+One day the Tartar Karacha sent a messenger to Ermak, saying:
+
+"We have surrendered to you, but now the Nogays are oppressing us. Send
+your brave men to aid us! We shall together conquer the Nogays. And we
+swear to you that we shall not insult your brave men."
+
+Ermak believed their oath, and sent forty men under Ivan Koltso. When
+these forty men came there, the Tartars rushed against them and killed
+them, so there were still fewer Cossacks left.
+
+Another time some Bukhara merchants sent word to Ermak that they were on
+their way to the city of Sibir with goods, but that Kuchum had taken his
+stand with an army and would not let them pass through.
+
+Ermak took with him fifty men and went out to clear the road for the
+Bukhara merchants. He came to the Irtysh River, but did not find the
+Bukharans. He remained there over night. It was a dark night, and it
+rained. The Cossacks had just lain down to sleep, when suddenly the
+Tartars rushed out and threw themselves on the sleepy men and began to
+strike them down. Ermak jumped up and began to fight. He was wounded in
+the hand. He ran toward the river. The Tartars after him. He threw
+himself into the river. That was the last time he was seen. His body was
+not recovered, and no one found out how he died.
+
+The following year came the Tsar's army, and the Tartars were pacified.
+
+
+
+
+
+NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES
+
+1869-1872
+
+
+
+
+NATURAL SCIENCE STORIES
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FROM PHYSICS
+
+
+
+
+THE MAGNET
+
+
+I.
+
+In olden days there was a shepherd whose name was Magnes. Magnes lost a
+sheep. He went to the mountains to find it. He came to a place where
+there were barren rocks. He walked over these rocks, and felt that his
+boots were sticking to them. He touched them with his hand, but they
+were dry and did not stick to his hand. He started to walk again, and
+again his boots stuck to the rocks. He sat down, took off one of his
+boots, took it into his hand, and touched the rocks with it.
+
+Whenever he touched them with his skin, or with the sole of his boot,
+they did not stick; but when he touched them with the nails, they did
+stick.
+
+Magnes had a cane with an iron point.
+
+He touched a rock with the wood; it did not stick; he touched it with
+the iron end, and it stuck so that he could not pull it off.
+
+Magnes looked at the stone, and he saw that it looked like iron, and he
+took pieces of that stone home with him. Since then that rock has been
+known, and has been called Magnet.
+
+
+II.
+
+Magnet is found in the earth with iron ore. Where there is magnet in the
+ore, the iron is of the best quality. The magnet resembles iron.
+
+If you put a piece of iron on a magnet, the iron itself begins to
+attract other iron. And if you put a steel needle on a magnet, and hold
+it thus for awhile, the needle will become a magnet, and will attract
+iron. If two magnets are brought together at their ends, one side will
+turn away from the other, while the other sides will be attracted.
+
+If a magnetic rod is broken in two, each half will attract at one end,
+and will turn away at the other end. Cut it again, and the same will
+happen; cut it again, as often as you please, and still the same will
+happen: equal ends will turn away from each other, while opposite ends
+will be attracted, as though the magnet were pushing away at one end,
+and pulling in at the other. No matter how you may break it, it will be
+as though there were a bump at one end, and a saucer at the other.
+Whichever way you put them together,--a bump and a saucer will meet, but
+a bump and a bump, or a saucer and a saucer will not.
+
+
+III.
+
+If you magnetize a needle (holding it for awhile over a magnet), and
+attach it in the middle to a pivot in such a way that it can move freely
+around, and let it loose, it will turn with one end toward midday
+(south), and with the other toward midnight (north).
+
+When the magnet was not known, people did not sail far out to sea. When
+they went out far into the sea, so that land was not to be seen, they
+could tell only by the stars and the sun where they had to sail. But
+when it was dark, and the sun or stars could not be seen, they did not
+know which way to sail. And a ship was borne by the winds and carried on
+rocks and wrecked.
+
+So long as the magnet was not known, they did not sail far from the
+shore; but when the magnet was discovered, they made a magnetic needle
+on a pivot, so that it should move around freely. By this needle they
+could tell in which direction to sail. With the magnetic needle they
+began to sail farther away from the shores, and since then they have
+discovered many new seas.
+
+On ships there is always a magnetic needle (compass), and there is a
+measuring-rope with knots at the stern of a ship. This rope is fixed in
+such a way that when it unrolls, they can tell how far the ship has
+travelled. And thus, in sailing in a boat, they always know in what spot
+it is, whether far from the shore, and in what direction it is sailing.
+
+
+
+
+MOISTURE
+
+
+I.
+
+Why does a spider sometimes make a close cobweb, and sit in the very
+middle of its nest, and at other times leave its nest and start a new
+spider-web?
+
+The spider makes its cobweb according to the weather, both the present
+and the future weather. Looking at a spider, you can tell what kind of
+weather it is going to be: if it sits tightly in the middle of the
+cobweb and does not come out, it means that it is going to rain. If it
+leaves the nest and makes new cobwebs, it is going to clear off.
+
+How can the spider know in advance what weather it is going to be?
+
+The spider's senses are so fine that as soon as the moisture begins to
+gather in the air,--though we do not yet feel it, and for us the weather
+is clear,--for the spider it is already raining.
+
+Just as a naked man will feel the moisture, when a man in his clothes
+does not, so it is already raining for a spider, while for us it is only
+getting ready to rain.
+
+
+II.
+
+Why do the doors swell in the winter and close badly, while in the
+summer they shrink and close well?
+
+Because in the fall and winter the wood is saturated with water, like a
+sponge, and spreads out, while in the summer the water comes out as a
+vapour, and the wood shrinks.
+
+Why does soft wood, like aspen, swell more, and oak less?
+
+Because in the hard wood, in the oak, the empty places are smaller, and
+the water cannot gather there, while in the soft wood in the aspen,
+there are larger empty places, and the water can gather there. In rotten
+wood these empty places are still larger, and so rotten wood swells most
+and shrinks most.
+
+Beehives are made out of the softest and rottenest wood; the very best
+are made from rotten willow wood. Why? Because the air passes through
+the rotten wood, and in such a hive the bees feel better.
+
+Why do boards warp?
+
+Because they dry unevenly. If you place a damp board with one side
+toward the stove, the water will leave it, and the board will contract
+on that side and will pull the other side along; but the damp side
+cannot contract, because it is full of water, and so the whole board
+will be bent.
+
+To keep the floors from warping, the dry boards are cut into small
+pieces, and these pieces are boiled in water. When all the water is
+boiled out of them, they are glued together, and then they never warp
+(parquetry).
+
+
+
+
+THE DIFFERENT CONNECTION OF PARTICLES
+
+
+Why are cart bolsters cut and wheel naves turned not from oak, but from
+birch? Bolsters and naves have to be strong, and oak is not more
+expensive than birch.
+
+Because oak splits lengthwise, and birch does not split, but ravels out.
+
+Because, though oak is more firmly connected than birch, it is connected
+in such a way that it splits lengthwise, while birch does not.
+
+Why are wheels and runners bent from oak and elm, and not from birch and
+linden?
+
+Because, when oak and elm are steamed in a bath, they bend and do not
+break, while birch and linden ravel in every direction.
+
+This is again for the same reason, that is, that the particles of the
+wood in the oak and in the birch are differently connected.
+
+
+
+
+CRYSTALS
+
+
+If you pour salt into water and stir it, the salt will begin to melt and
+will entirely disappear; but if you pour more and still more salt into
+it, the salt will in the end not dissolve, and no matter how much you
+may stir after that, the salt will remain as a white powder. The water
+is saturated with the salt and cannot receive any more. But heat the
+water and it will receive more; and the salt which did not dissolve in
+the cold water, will melt in hot water. But pour in more salt, even the
+hot water will not receive it. And if you heat the water still more, the
+water will pass away in steam, and more of the salt will be left.
+
+Thus, for everything which dissolves in the water there is a measure
+after which the water will not dissolve any more. Of anything, more will
+be dissolved in hot than in cold water, and in each case, when it is
+saturated, it will not receive any more. The thing will be left, but the
+water will go away in steam.
+
+If the water is saturated with saltpetre powder, and then more saltpetre
+is added, and all is heated and is allowed to cool off without being
+stirred, the superfluous saltpetre will not settle as a powder at the
+bottom of the water, but will all gather in little six-edged columns,
+and will settle at the bottom and at the sides, one column near another.
+If the water is saturated with saltpetre powder and is put in a warm
+place, the water will go away in vapours, and the superfluous saltpetre
+will again gather in six-edged columns.
+
+If water is saturated with simple salt and heated, and is allowed to
+pass away in vapour, the superfluous salt will not settle as powder, but
+as little cubes. If the water is saturated both with salt and saltpetre,
+the superfluous salt and saltpetre will not mix, but will settle each in
+its own way: the saltpetre in columns, and the salt in cubes.
+
+If water is saturated with lime, or with some other salt, and anything
+else, each thing will settle in its own way, when the water passes away
+in vapour: one in three-edged columns, another in eight-edged columns, a
+third in bricks, a fourth in little stars,--each in its own way. These
+figures are different in each solid thing. At times these forms are as
+large as a hand,--such stones are found in the ground. At times these
+forms are so small that they cannot be made out with the naked eye; but
+in each thing there is its own form.
+
+If, when the water is saturated with saltpetre, and little figures are
+forming in it, a corner be broken off one of these little figures with a
+needle, new pieces of saltpetre will come up and will fix the broken end
+as it ought to be,--into a six-edged column. The same will happen to
+salt and to any other thing. All the tiny particles turn around and
+attach themselves with the right side to each other.
+
+When ice freezes, the same takes place.
+
+A snowflake flies, and no figure is seen in it; but the moment it
+settles on anything dark and cold, on cloth, on fur,--you can make out
+its figure; you will see a little star, or a six-cornered little board.
+On the windows the steam does not freeze in any form whatever, but
+always as a star.
+
+What is ice? It is cold, solid water. When liquid water becomes solid,
+it forms itself into figures and the heat leaves it. The same takes
+place with saltpetre: when it changes from a liquid into solid figures,
+the heat leaves it. The same is true of salt, of melted cast-iron, when
+it changes from a liquid into a solid. Whenever a thing changes from a
+liquid into a solid, heat leaves it, and it forms figures. And when it
+changes from a solid to a liquid it takes up heat, and the cold leaves
+it, and its figures are dissolved.
+
+Bring in melted iron and let it cool off; bring in hot dough and let it
+cool off; bring in slacked lime and let it cool off,--and it will be
+warm. Bring in ice and let it melt,--and it will grow cold. Bring in
+saltpetre, salt, or any other thing that dissolves in the water, and
+melt it in the water, and it will grow cold. In order to freeze
+ice-cream, they put salt in the water.
+
+
+
+
+INJURIOUS AIR
+
+
+In the village of Nikolskoe, the people went on a holiday to mass. In
+the manor yard were left the cow-tender, the elder, and the groom. The
+cow-tender went to the well for water. The well was in the yard itself.
+She pulled out the bucket, but could not hold it. The bucket pulled away
+from her, struck the side of the well, and tore the rope. The cow-tender
+returned to the hut and said to the elder:
+
+"Aleksandr! Climb down into the well,--I have dropped the bucket into
+it."
+
+Aleksandr said:
+
+"You have dropped it, so climb down yourself."
+
+The cow-tender said that she did not mind fetching it herself, if he
+would let her down.
+
+The elder laughed at her, and said:
+
+"Well, let us go! You have an empty stomach now, so I shall be able to
+hold you up, for after dinner I could not do it."
+
+The elder tied a stick to a rope, and the woman sat astride it, took
+hold of the rope, and began to climb down into the well, while the elder
+turned the well-wheel. The well was about twenty feet deep, and there
+was less than three feet of water in it. The elder let her down slowly,
+and kept asking:
+
+"A little more?"
+
+And the cow-tender cried from below:
+
+"Just a little more!"
+
+Suddenly the elder felt the rope give way: he called the cow-tender, but
+she did not answer. The elder looked into the well, and saw the
+cow-tender lying with her head in the water, and with her feet in the
+air. The elder called for help, but there was nobody near by; only the
+groom came. The elder told him to hold the wheel, and he himself pulled
+out the rope, sat down on the stick, and went down into the well.
+
+The moment the groom let the elder down to the water, the same thing
+happened to the elder. He let go of the rope and fell head foremost upon
+the woman. The groom began to cry, and ran to church to call the people.
+Mass was over, and people were walking home. All the men and women
+rushed to the well. They gathered around it, and everybody holloaed, but
+nobody knew what to do. The young carpenter Ivan made his way through
+the crowd, took hold of the rope, sat down on the stick, and told them
+to let him down. Ivan tied himself to the rope with his belt. Two men
+let him down, and the rest looked into the well, to see what would
+become of Ivan. Just as he was getting near the water, he dropped his
+hands from the rope, and would have fallen down head foremost, if the
+belt had not held him. All shouted, "Pull him out!" and Ivan was pulled
+out.
+
+He hung like dead down from the belt, and his head was drooping and
+beating against the sides of the well. His face was livid. They took him
+off the rope and put him down on the ground. They thought that he was
+dead; but he suddenly drew a deep breath, began to rattle, and soon
+revived.
+
+Others wanted to climb down, but an old peasant said that they could not
+go down because there was bad air in the well, and that that bad air
+killed people. Then the peasants ran for hooks and began to pull out the
+elder and the woman. The elder's mother and wife cried at the well, and
+others tried to quiet them; in the meantime the peasants put down the
+hooks and tried to get out the dead people. Twice they got the elder
+half-way up by his clothes; but he was heavy, and his clothes tore and
+he fell down. Finally they stuck two hooks into him and pulled him out.
+Then they pulled out the cow-tender. Both were dead and did not revive.
+
+Then, when they examined the well, they found that indeed there was bad
+air down in the well.
+
+This air is so heavy that neither man nor any animal can live in it.
+They let down a cat into the well, and the moment she reached the place
+where the bad air was, she died. Not only can no animal live there, even
+no candle will burn in it. They let down a candle, and the moment it
+reached that spot, it went out.
+
+There are places underground where that air gathers, and when a person
+gets into one of those places, he dies at once. For this purpose they
+have lamps in the mines, and before a man goes down to such a place,
+they let down the lamp. If it goes out, no man can go there; then they
+let down fresh air until the lamp will burn.
+
+Near the city of Naples there is one such cave. There is always about
+three feet of bad air in it on the ground, but above it the air is good.
+A man can walk through the cave, and nothing will happen to him, but a
+dog will die the moment it enters.
+
+Where does this bad air come from? It is made of the same good air that
+we breathe. If you gather a lot of people in one place, and close all
+the doors and windows, so that no fresh air can get in, you will get the
+same kind of an air as in the well, and people will die.
+
+One hundred years ago, during a war, the Hindoos captured 146 Englishmen
+and shut them up in a cave underground, where the air could not get in.
+
+After the captured Englishmen had been there a few hours they began to
+die, and toward the end of the night 123 had died, and the rest came out
+more dead than alive, and ailing. At first the air had been good in the
+cave; but when the captives had inhaled all the good air, and no fresh
+air came in, it became bad, just like what was in the well, and they
+died.
+
+Why does the good air become bad when many people come together?
+
+Because, when people breathe, they take in good air and breathe out bad
+air.
+
+
+
+
+HOW BALLOONS ARE MADE
+
+
+If you take a blown-up bladder under water and let go of it, it will fly
+up to the surface of the water and will swim on it. Just so, when water
+is boiled in a pot, it becomes light at the bottom, over the fire,--it
+is turned into a gas; and when a little of that water-gas is collected
+it goes up as a bubble. First comes up one bubble, then another, and
+when the whole water is heated, the bubbles come up without stopping.
+Then the water boils.
+
+Just as the bubbles leap to the surface, full of vapoury water, because
+they are lighter than water, just so will a bladder which is filled with
+hydrogen, or with hot air, rise, because hot air is lighter than cold
+air, and hydrogen is lighter than any other gases.
+
+Balloons are made with hydrogen or with hot air. With hydrogen they are
+made as follows: They make a large bladder, attach it by ropes to posts,
+and fill it with hydrogen. The moment the ropes are untied, the balloon
+flies up in the air, and keeps flying up until it gets beyond the air
+which is heavier than hydrogen. When it gets up into the light air, it
+begins to swim in it like a bladder on the surface of the water.
+
+With hot air balloons are made like this: They make a large empty ball,
+with a neck below, like an upturned pitcher, and to the mouth of it they
+attach a bunch of cotton, and that cotton is soaked with spirits, and
+lighted. The fire heats the air in the balloon, and makes it lighter
+than the cold air, and the balloon is drawn upward, like the bladder in
+the water. And the balloon will fly up until it comes to the air which
+is lighter than the hot air in the balloon.
+
+Nearly one hundred years ago two Frenchmen, the brothers Montgolfier,
+invented the air balloons. They made a balloon of canvas and paper and
+filled it with hot air,--the balloon flew. Then they made another, a
+larger balloon, and tied under the balloon a sheep, a cock, and a duck,
+and let it off. The balloon rose and came down safely. Then they
+attached a little basket under the balloon, and a man seated himself in
+it. The balloon flew so high that it disappeared from view; it flew
+away, and came down safely. Then they thought of filling a balloon with
+hydrogen, and began to fly higher and faster.
+
+In order to fly with a balloon, they attach a basket under the balloon,
+and in this basket two, three, and even eight persons are seated, and
+they take with them food and drink.
+
+In order to rise and come down as one pleases, there is a valve in the
+balloon, and the man who is flying with it can pull a rope and open or
+close the valve. If the balloon rises too high, and the man who is
+flying wants to come down, he opens the valve,--the gas escapes, the
+balloon is compressed, and begins to come down. Then there are always
+bags with sand in the balloon. When a bag with sand is thrown out, the
+balloon gets lighter, and it flies up. If the one who is flying wants to
+get down, but sees that it is not what he wants below him,--either a
+river or a forest,--he throws out the sand from the bags, and the
+balloon grows lighter and rises again.
+
+
+
+
+GALVANISM
+
+
+There was once a learned Italian, Galvani. He had an electric machine,
+and he showed his students what electricity was. He rubbed the glass
+hard with silk with something smeared over it, and then he approached to
+the glass a brass knob which was attached to the glass, and a spark flew
+across from the glass to the brass knob. He explained to them that the
+same kind of a spark came from sealing-wax and amber. He showed them
+that feathers and bits of paper were now attracted, and now repelled, by
+electricity, and explained to them the reason of it. He did all kinds of
+experiments with electricity, and showed them all to his students.
+
+Once his wife grew ill. He called a doctor and asked him how to cure
+her. The doctor told him to prepare a frog soup for her. Galvani gave
+order to have edible frogs caught. They caught them for him, killed
+them, and left them on his table.
+
+Before the cook came after the frogs, Galvani kept on showing the
+electric machine to his students, and sending sparks through it.
+
+Suddenly he saw the dead frogs jerk their legs on the table. He watched
+them, and saw that every time when he sent a spark through the machine,
+the frogs jerked their legs. Galvani collected more frogs, and began to
+experiment with them. And every time he sent a spark through the
+machine, the dead frogs moved their legs as though they were alive.
+
+It occurred to Galvani that live frogs moved their legs because
+electricity passed through them. Galvani knew that there was
+electricity in the air; that it was more noticeable in the amber and
+glass, but that it was also in the air, and that thunder and lightning
+came from the electricity in the air.
+
+So he tried to discover whether the dead frogs would not move their legs
+from the electricity in the air. For this purpose he took the frogs,
+skinned them, chopped off their heads, and hung them on brass hooks on
+the roof, beneath an iron gutter. He thought that as soon as there
+should be a storm, and the air should be filled with electricity, it
+would pass by the brass rod to the frogs, and they would begin to move.
+
+But the storm passed several times, and the frogs did not move. Galvani
+was just taking them down, and as he did so a frog's leg touched the
+iron gutter, and it jerked. Galvani took down the frogs and made the
+following experiment: he tied to the brass hook an iron wire, and
+touched the leg with the wire, and it jerked.
+
+So Galvani decided that the animals lived because there was electricity
+in them, and that the electricity jumped from the brain to the flesh,
+and that made the animals move. Nobody had at that time tried this
+matter and they did not know any better, and so they all believed
+Galvani. But at that time another learned man, Volta, experimented in
+his own way, and proved to everybody that Galvani was mistaken. He tried
+touching the frog differently from what Galvani had done, not with a
+copper hook with an iron wire, but either with a copper hook and a
+copper wire, or an iron hook and an iron wire,--and the frogs did not
+move. The frogs moved only when Volta touched them with an iron wire
+that was connected with a copper wire.
+
+Volta thought that the electricity was not in the dead frog but in the
+iron and copper. He experimented and found it to be so: whenever he
+brought together the iron and the copper, there was electricity; and
+this electricity made the dead frogs jerk their legs. Volta tried to
+produce electricity differently from what it had been produced before.
+Before that they used to get electricity by rubbing glass or
+sealing-wax. But Volta got electricity by uniting iron and copper. He
+tried to connect iron and copper and other metals, and by the mere
+combination of metals, silver, platinum, zinc, lead, iron, he produced
+electric sparks.
+
+After Volta they tried to increase electricity by pouring all kinds of
+liquids--water and acids--between the metals. These liquids made the
+electricity more powerful, so that it was no longer necessary, as
+before, to rub in order to produce it; it is enough to put pieces of
+several metals in a bowl and fill it with a liquid, and there will be
+electricity in that bowl, and the sparks will come from the wires.
+
+When this kind of electricity was discovered, people began to apply it:
+they invented a way of gold and silver plating by means of electricity,
+and electric light, and a way to transmit signs from place to place over
+a long distance by means of electricity.
+
+For this purpose pieces of different metals are placed in jars, and
+liquids are poured into them. Electricity is collected in these jars,
+and is transferred by means of wires to the place where it is wanted,
+and from that place the wire is put into the ground. The electricity
+runs through the ground back to the jars, and rises from the earth by
+means of the other wire; thus the electricity keeps going around and
+around, as in a ring,--from the wire into the ground, and along the
+ground, and up the wire, and again through the earth. Electricity can
+travel in either direction, just as one wants to send it: it can first
+go along the wire and return through the earth, or first go through the
+earth, and then return through the wire. Above the wire, in the place
+where the signs are given, there is attached a magnetic hand, and that
+hand turns in one direction, when the electricity is allowed to pass
+through the wire and back through the earth, and in another direction,
+when the electricity is sent through the earth and back through the
+wire. Along this hand there are certain signs, and by means of these
+signs they write from one place to another on the telegraph.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUN'S HEAT
+
+
+Go out in the winter on a calm, frosty day into the field, or into the
+woods, and look about you and listen: all around you is snow, the rivers
+are frozen, dry grass blades stick out of the grass, the trees are
+bare,--nothing is moving.
+
+Look in the summer: the rivers are running and rippling, in every puddle
+the frogs croak and plunge in; the birds fly from place to place, and
+whistle, and sing; the flies and the gnats whirl around and buzz; the
+trees and the grass grow and wave to and fro.
+
+Freeze a pot with water, and it will become as hard as a rock. Put the
+frozen pot on the fire: the ice will begin to break, and melt, and move;
+the water will begin to stir, and bubbles will rise; then, when it
+begins to boil, it whirls about and makes a noise. The same happens in
+the world from the heat. Without heat everything is dead; with the heat
+everything moves and lives. If there is little heat, there is little
+motion; with more heat, there is more motion; with much heat, there is
+much motion; with very much heat, there is also very much motion.
+
+Where does the heat in the world come from? The heat comes from the sun.
+
+In winter the sun travels low, to one side, and its beams do not fall
+straight upon the earth, and nothing moves. The sun begins to travel
+higher above our heads, and begins to shine straight down upon the
+earth, and everything is warmed up in the world, and begins to stir.
+
+The snow settles down; the ice begins to melt on the rivers; the water
+comes down from the mountains; the vapours rise from the water to the
+clouds, and rain begins to fall. Who does it all?--The sun. The seeds
+swell, and let out rootlets; the rootlets take hold of the ground; old
+roots send up new shoots, and the trees and the grass begin to grow. Who
+has done that?--The sun.
+
+The bears and moles get up; the flies and bees awaken; the gnats are
+hatched, and the fish come out from their eggs, when it is warm. Who has
+done it all?--The sun.
+
+The air gets warmed up in one place, and rises, and in its place comes
+colder air,--and there is a wind. Who has done that?--The sun.
+
+The clouds rise and begin to gather and to scatter,--and the lightning
+flashes. Who has made that fire?--The sun.
+
+The grass, the grain, the fruits, the trees grow up; animals find their
+food, men eat their fill, and gather food and fuel for the winter; they
+build themselves houses, railways, cities. Who has prepared it all?--The
+sun.
+
+A man has built himself a house. What has he made it of? Of timbers. The
+timbers were cut out of trees, but the trees are made to grow by the
+sun.
+
+The stove is heated with wood. Who has made the wood to grow?--The sun.
+
+Man eats bread, or potatoes. Who has made them grow?--The sun. Man eats
+meat. Who has made the animals, the birds to grow?--The grass. But the
+grass is made to grow by the sun.
+
+A man builds himself a house from brick and lime. The bricks and the
+lime are burnt by wood. The wood has been prepared by the sun.
+
+Everything that men need, that is for their use,--all that is prepared
+by the sun, and on all that goes much sun's heat. The reason that men
+need bread is because the sun has produced it, and because there is much
+sun's heat in it. Bread warms him who eats it.
+
+The reason that wood and logs are needed is because there is much heat
+in them. He who buys wood for the winter, buys sun's heat; and in the
+winter he burns the wood whenever he wants it, and lets the sun's heat
+into his room.
+
+When there is heat, there is motion. No matter what motion it may
+be,--it all comes from heat, either directly from the sun's heat, or
+from the heat which the sun has prepared in the coal, the wood, the
+bread, and the grass.
+
+Horses and oxen pull, men work,--who moves them?--Heat. Where does the
+heat come from?--From the food. And the food has been prepared by the
+sun.
+
+Watermills and windmills turn around and grind. Who moves them?--Wind
+and water. And who drives the wind?--Heat. And who drives the
+water?--Again heat. Heat raises the water in the shape of vapour, and
+without this the water would not be falling down. A machine works,--it
+is moved by steam. And who makes steam?--Wood. And in the wood is the
+sun's heat.
+
+Heat makes motion, and motion makes heat. And both heat and motion are
+from the sun.
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FROM ZOOLOGY
+
+
+
+
+THE OWL AND THE HARE
+
+
+It was dusk. The owls began to fly through the forest to find some prey.
+
+A large hare leaped out on a clearing and began to smooth out his fur.
+An old owl looked at the hare, and seated himself on a branch; but a
+young owl said to him:
+
+"Why do you not catch the hare?"
+
+The old owl said:
+
+"He is too much for me: if I get caught in him, he will drag me into the
+woods."
+
+But the young owl said:
+
+"I will stick one claw into his body, and with the other I will clutch a
+tree."
+
+The young owl made for the hare, and stuck one claw into his back so
+that all his talons entered the flesh, and the other claw it got ready
+to push into the tree. The hare yanked the owl, while the owl held on to
+the tree, and thought, "He will not get away." The hare darted forward
+and tore the owl. One claw was left in the tree, and the other in the
+hare's back.
+
+The next year a hunter killed that hare, and wondered how the owl's
+talons had grown into the hare's back.
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE WOLVES TEACH THEIR WHELPS
+
+
+I was walking along the road, and heard a shout behind me. It was the
+shepherd boy who was shouting. He was running through the field, and
+pointing to something.
+
+I looked, and saw two wolves running through the field: one was
+full-grown, and the other a whelp. The whelp was carrying a dead lamb on
+his shoulders, and holding on to one of its legs with its teeth. The old
+wolf was running behind. When I saw the wolves, I ran after them with
+the shepherd, and we began to shout. In response to our cries came
+peasants with dogs.
+
+The moment the old wolf saw the dogs and the people, he ran up to the
+whelp, took the lamb away from him, threw it over his back, and both
+wolves ran as fast as they could, and disappeared from view.
+
+Then the boy told what had happened: the large wolf had leaped out from
+the ravine, had seized the lamb, killed it, and carried it off.
+
+The whelp ran up to him and grasped the lamb. The old wolf let the whelp
+carry the lamb, while he himself ran slowly beside him.
+
+Only when there was danger, did the old wolf stop his teaching and
+himself take the lamb.
+
+
+
+
+HARES AND WOLVES
+
+
+The hares feed at night on tree bark; the field hares eat the winter rye
+and the grass, and the threshing-floor hares eat the grain in the
+granary. Through the night the hares make a deep, visible track through
+the snow. The hares are hunted by men, and dogs, and wolves, and foxes,
+and ravens, and eagles. If a hare walked straight ahead, he would be
+easily caught in the morning by his tracks; but God has made a hare
+timid, and his timidity saves him.
+
+A hare goes at night fearlessly through the forests and fields, making
+straight tracks; but as soon as morning comes and his enemies wake up,
+and he hears the bark of dogs, or the squeak of sleighs, or the voice of
+peasants, or the crashing of a wolf through the forest, he begins to
+toss from side to side in his fear. He jumps forward, gets frightened at
+something, and runs back on his track. He hears something again, and he
+leaps at full speed to one side and runs away from his old track. Again
+something makes a noise, and the hare turns back, and again leaps to one
+side. When it is daylight, he lies down.
+
+In the morning the hunters try to follow the hare tracks, and they get
+mixed up on the double tracks and long leaps, and marvel at the hare's
+cunning. But the hare did not mean to be cunning. He is merely afraid of
+everything.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCENT
+
+
+Man sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, smells with his nose,
+tastes with his mouth, and feels with his fingers. One man's eyes see
+better, another man's see worse. One hears from a distance, and another
+is deaf. One has keen senses and smells a thing from a distance, while
+another smells at a rotten egg and does not perceive it. One can tell a
+thing by the touch, and another cannot tell by touch what is wood and
+what paper. One will take a substance in his mouth and will find it
+sweet, while another will swallow it without making out whether it is
+bitter or sweet.
+
+Just so the different senses differ in strength in the animals. But with
+all the animals the sense of smell is stronger than in man.
+
+When a man wants to recognize a thing, he looks at it, listens to the
+noise that it makes, now and then smells at it, or tastes it; but, above
+all, a man has to feel a thing, to recognize it.
+
+But nearly all animals more than anything else need to smell a thing. A
+horse, a wolf, a dog, a cow, a bear do not know a thing until they smell
+it.
+
+When a horse is afraid of anything, it snorts,--it clears its nose so as
+to scent better, and does not stop being afraid until it has smelled the
+object well.
+
+A dog frequently follows its master's track, but when it sees him, it
+does not recognize him and begins to bark, until it smells him and finds
+out that that which has looked so terrible is its master.
+
+Oxen see other oxen stricken down, and hear them roar in the
+slaughter-house, but still do not understand what is going on. But an ox
+or a cow need only find a spot where there is ox blood, and smell it,
+and it will understand and will roar and strike with its feet, and
+cannot be driven off the spot.
+
+An old man's wife had fallen ill; he went himself to milk the cow. The
+cow snorted,--she discovered that it was not her mistress, and would not
+give him any milk. The mistress told her husband to put on her fur coat
+and kerchief,--and the cow gave milk; but the old man threw open the
+coat, and the cow scented him, and stopped giving milk.
+
+When hounds follow an animal's trail, they never run on the track
+itself, but to one side, about twenty paces from it. When an
+inexperienced hunter wants to show the dog the scent, and sticks its
+nose on the track, it will always jump to one side. The track itself
+smells so strong to the dog that it cannot make out on the track whether
+the animal has run ahead or backward. It runs to one side, and then only
+discovers in what direction the scent grows stronger, and so follows the
+animal. The dog does precisely what we do when somebody speaks very loud
+in our ears; we step a distance away, and only then do we make out what
+is being said. Or, if anything we are looking at is too close, we step
+back and only then make it out.
+
+Dogs recognize each other and make signs to each other by means of their
+scent.
+
+The scent is more delicate still in insects. A bee flies directly to the
+flower that it wants to reach; a worm crawls to its leaf; a bedbug, a
+flea, a mosquito scents a man a hundred thousand of its steps away.
+
+If the particles which separate from a substance and enter our noses are
+small, how small must be those particles that reach the organ of smell
+of the insects!
+
+
+
+
+TOUCH AND SIGHT
+
+
+Twist the forefinger over the middle finger and touch a small ball with
+them, so that it may roll between the two fingers, and shut your eyes.
+You will think that there are two balls. Open your eyes,--and you will
+see that it is one ball. The fingers have deceived you, but the eyes
+correct you.
+
+Look (best of all sidewise) at a good, clean mirror,--you will think
+that it is a window or a door, and that there is something behind it.
+Touch it with a finger,--and you will see that it is a mirror. The eyes
+have deceived you, but the fingers correct you.
+
+
+
+
+THE SILKWORM
+
+
+I had some old mulberry-trees in my garden. My grandfather had planted
+them. In the fall I was given a dram of silkworm eggs, and was advised
+to hatch them and raise silkworms. These eggs are dark gray and so small
+that in that dram I counted 5,835 of them. They are smaller than the
+tiniest pin-head. They are quite dead; only when you crush them do they
+crack.
+
+The eggs had been lying around on my table, and I had almost forgotten
+about them.
+
+One day, in the spring, I went into the orchard and noticed the buds
+swelling on the mulberry-trees, and where the sun beat down, the leaves
+were out. I thought of the silkworm eggs, and took them apart at home
+and gave them more room. The majority of the eggs were no longer dark
+gray, as before, but some were light gray, while others were lighter
+still, with a milky shade.
+
+The next morning, I looked at the eggs, and saw that some of the worms
+had hatched out, while other eggs were quite swollen. Evidently they
+felt in their shells that their food was ripening.
+
+The worms were black and shaggy, and so small that it was hard to see
+them. I looked at them through a magnifying-glass, and saw that in the
+eggs they lay curled up in rings, and when they came out they
+straightened themselves out. I went to the garden for some mulberry
+leaves; I got about three handfuls of leaves, which I put on my table,
+and began to fix a place for the worms, as I had been taught to do.
+
+While I was fixing the paper, the worms smelled their food and started
+to crawl toward it. I pushed it away, and began to entice the worms to a
+leaf, and they made for it, as dogs make for a piece of meat, crawling
+after the leaf over the cloth of the table and across pencils, scissors,
+and papers. Then I cut off a piece of paper, stuck holes through it with
+a penknife, placed the leaf on top of it, and with the leaf put it down
+on the worms. The worms crawled through the holes, climbed on the leaf,
+and started to eat.
+
+When the other worms hatched out, I again put a piece of paper with a
+leaf on them, and all crawled through the holes and began to eat. The
+worms gathered on each leaf and nibbled at it from its edges. Then, when
+they had eaten everything, they crawled on the paper and looked for more
+food. Then I put on them new sheets of perforated paper with mulberry
+leaves upon them, and they crawled over to the new food.
+
+They were lying on my shelf, and when there was no leaf, they climbed
+about the shelf, and came to its very edge, but they never fell down,
+though they are blind. The moment a worm comes to an edge, it lets out a
+web from its mouth before descending, and then it attaches itself to it
+and lets itself down; it hangs awhile in the air, and watches, and if it
+wants to get down farther, it does so, and if not, it pulls itself up by
+its web.
+
+For days at a time the worms did nothing but eat. I had to give them
+more and more leaves. When a new leaf was brought, and they transferred
+themselves to it, they made a noise as though a rain were falling on
+leaves,--that was when they began to eat the new leaf.
+
+Thus the older worms lived for five days. They had grown very large and
+began to eat ten times as much as ever. On the fifth day, I knew, they
+would fall asleep, and waited for that to happen. Toward evening, on the
+fifth day, one of the older worms stuck to the paper and stopped eating
+and stirring.
+
+The whole next day I watched it for a long time. I knew that worms
+moulted several times, because they grew up and found it close in their
+old hide, and so put on a new one.
+
+My friend and I watched it by turns. In the evening my friend called
+out:
+
+"It has begun to undress itself,--come!"
+
+I went up to him, and saw that the worm had stuck with its old hide to
+the paper, had torn a hole at the mouth, thrust forth its head, and was
+writhing and working to get out, but the old shirt held it fast. I
+watched it for a long time as it writhed and could not get out, and I
+wanted to help it. I barely touched it with my nail, but soon saw that I
+had done something foolish. Under my nail there was something liquid,
+and the worm died. At first I thought that it was blood, but later I
+learned that the worm has a liquid mass under its skin, so that the
+shirt may come off easier. With my nail I no doubt disturbed the new
+shirt, for, though the worm crawled out, it soon died.
+
+The other worms I did not touch. All of them came out of their shirts in
+the same manner; only a few died, and nearly all came out safely, though
+they struggled hard for a long time.
+
+After shedding their skins, the worms began to eat more voraciously, and
+more leaves were devoured. Four days later they again fell asleep, and
+again crawled out of their skins. A still larger quantity of leaves was
+now consumed by them, and they were now a quarter of an inch in length.
+Six days later they fell asleep once more, and once more came out in new
+skins, and now were very large and fat, and we had barely time to get
+leaves ready for them.
+
+On the ninth day the oldest worms quit eating entirely and climbed up
+the shelves and rods. I gathered them in and gave them fresh leaves, but
+they turned their heads away from them, and continued climbing. Then I
+remembered that when the worms get ready to roll up into larvae, they
+stop eating and climb upward.
+
+I left them alone, and began to watch what they would do.
+
+The eldest worms climbed to the ceiling, scattered about, crawled in all
+directions, and began to draw out single threads in various directions.
+I watched one of them. It went into a corner, put forth about six
+threads each two inches long, hung down from them, bent over in a
+horseshoe, and began to turn its head and let out a silk web which began
+to cover it all over. Toward evening it was covered by it as though in a
+mist; the worm could scarcely be seen. On the following morning the worm
+could no longer be seen; it was all wrapped in silk, and still it spun
+out more.
+
+Three days later it finished spinning, and quieted down. Later I learned
+how much web it had spun in those three days. If the whole web were to
+be unravelled, it would be more than half a mile in length, seldom less.
+And if we figure out how many times the worm has to toss its head in
+these three days in order to let out all the web, it will appear that in
+these three days the worm tosses its head 300,000 times. Consequently,
+it makes one turn a second, without stopping. But after the work, when
+we took down a few cocoons and broke them open, we found inside the
+worms all dried up and white, looking like pieces of wax.
+
+I knew that from these larvae with their white, waxen bodies would come
+butterflies; but as I looked at them, I could not believe it. None the
+less I went to look at them on the twentieth day, to see what had become
+of them.
+
+On the twentieth day, I knew, there was to be a change. Nothing was to
+be seen, and I was beginning to think that something was wrong, when
+suddenly I noticed that the end of one of the cocoons grew dark and
+moist. I thought that it had probably spoiled, and wanted to throw it
+away. But then I thought that perhaps it began that way, and so I
+watched to see what would happen. And, indeed, something began to move
+at the wet end. For a long time I could not make out what it was. Later
+there appeared something like a head with whiskers. The whiskers moved.
+Then I noticed a leg sticking out through the hole, then another, and
+the legs scrambled to get out of the cocoon. It came out more and more,
+and I saw a wet butterfly. When all six legs scrambled out, the back
+jumped out, too, and the butterfly crawled out and stopped. When it
+dried it was white; it straightened its wings, flew away, circled
+around, and alighted on the window.
+
+Two days later the butterfly on the window-sill laid eggs in a row, and
+stuck them fast. The eggs were yellow. Twenty-five butterflies laid
+eggs. I collected five thousand eggs. The following year I raised more
+worms, and had more silk spun.
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FROM BOTANY
+
+
+
+
+THE APPLE-TREE
+
+
+I set out two hundred young apple-trees, and for three years I dug
+around them in the spring and the fall, and in winter wrapped them with
+straw against the hares. On the fourth year, when the snow melted, I
+went to take a look at my apple-trees. They had grown stouter during the
+winter: the bark was glossy and filled with sap; all the branches were
+sound, and at all the tips and axils there were pea-shaped flower-buds.
+Here and there the buds were bursting, and the purple edges of the
+flower-leaves could be seen. I knew that all the buds would be blossoms
+and fruit, and I was delighted as I looked at the apple-trees. But when
+I took off the wrapping from the first tree, I saw that down at the
+ground the bark was nibbled away, like a white ring, to the very wood.
+The mice had done that. I unwrapped a second tree, and the same had
+happened there. Of the two hundred trees not one was unharmed. I smeared
+pitch and wax on the nibbled spots; but when the trees were all in
+bloom, the blossoms at once fell off; there came out small leaves, and
+they, too, dropped off. The bark became wrinkled and black. Out of the
+two hundred apple-trees only nine were left. On these nine trees the
+bark had not been gnawed through all around, but strips of bark were
+left on the white ring. On the strips, where the bark held together,
+there grew out knots, and, although the trees suffered, they lived. All
+the rest were ruined; below the rings there came out shoots, but they
+were all wild.
+
+The bark of the tree is like the arteries in man: through the arteries
+the blood goes to the whole body, and through the bark the sap goes
+along the tree and reaches the branches, leaves, and flowers. The whole
+inside of a tree may be taken out, as is often the case with old
+willows, and yet the tree will live so long as the bark is alive; but
+when the bark is ruined, the tree is gone. If a man's arteries are cut
+through, he will die, in the first place, because the blood will flow
+out, and in the second, because the blood will not be distributed
+through the body.
+
+Even thus a birch dries up when the children bore a hole into it, in
+order to drink its sap, and all the sap flows out of it.
+
+Just so the apple-trees were ruined because the mice gnawed the bark all
+around, and the sap could not rise from the roots to the branches,
+leaves, and flowers.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD POPLAR
+
+
+For five years our garden was neglected. I hired labourers with axes and
+shovels, and myself began to work with them in the garden. We cut out
+and chopped out all the dry branches and wild shoots, and the
+superfluous trees and bushes. The poplars and bird-cherries grew ranker
+than the rest and choked the other trees. A poplar grows out from the
+roots, and it cannot be dug out, but the roots have to be chopped out
+underground.
+
+Beyond the pond there stood an enormous poplar, two men's embraces in
+circumference. About it there was a clearing, and this was all overgrown
+with poplar shoots. I ordered them to be cut out: I wanted the spot to
+look more cheerful, but, above all, I wanted to make it easier for the
+old poplar, because I thought that all those young trees came from its
+roots, and were draining it of its sap. When we cut out these young
+poplars, I felt sorry as I saw them chop out the sap-filled roots
+underground, and as all four of us pulled at the poplar that had been
+cut down, and could not pull it out. It held on with all its might, and
+did not wish to die. I thought that, no doubt, they had to live, since
+they clung so much to life. But it was necessary to cut them down, and
+so I did it. Only later, when nothing could be done, I learned that they
+ought not to have been cut down.
+
+I thought that the shoots were taking the sap away from the old poplar,
+but it turned out quite differently. When I was cutting them down, the
+old poplar was already dying. When the leaves came out, I saw (it grew
+from two boughs) that one bough was bare; and that same summer it dried
+up completely. The tree had been dying for quite awhile, and the tree
+knew it, so it tried to give its life to the shoots.
+
+That was the reason why they grew so fast. I wanted to make it easier
+for the tree, and only killed all its children.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRD-CHERRY
+
+
+A bird-cherry grew out on a hazel bush path and choked the bushes. I
+deliberated for a long time whether I had better cut down the
+bird-cherry, or not. This bird-cherry grew not as a bush, but as a tree,
+about six inches in diameter and thirty feet high, full of branches and
+bushy, and all besprinkled with bright, white, fragrant blossoms. You
+could smell it from a distance. I should not have cut it down, but one
+of the labourers (to whom I had before given the order to cut down the
+bird-cherry) had begun to chop it without me. When I came, he had
+already cut in about three inches, and the sap splashed under the axe
+whenever it struck the same cut. "It cannot be helped,--apparently such
+is its fate," I thought, and I picked up an axe myself and began to chop
+it with the peasant.
+
+It is a pleasure to do any work, and it is a pleasure to chop. It is a
+pleasure to let the axe enter deeply in a slanting line, and then to
+chop out the chip by a straight stroke, and to chop farther and farther
+into the tree.
+
+I had entirely forgotten the bird-cherry, and was thinking only of
+felling it as quickly as possible. When I got tired, I put down my axe
+and with the peasant pressed against the tree and tried to make it fall.
+We bent it: the tree trembled with its leaves, and the dew showered down
+upon us, and the white, fragrant petals of the blossoms fell down.
+
+At the same time something seemed to cry,--the middle of the tree
+creaked; we pressed against it, and it was as though something wept,
+there was a crash in the middle, and the tree tottered. It broke at the
+notch and, swaying, fell with its branches and blossoms into the grass.
+The twigs and blossoms trembled for awhile after the fall, and stopped.
+
+"It was a fine tree!" said the peasant. "I am mightily sorry for it!"
+
+I myself felt so sorry for it that I hurried away to the other
+labourers.
+
+
+
+
+HOW TREES WALK
+
+
+One day we were cleaning an overgrown path on a hillock near the pond.
+We cut down a lot of brier bushes, willows, and poplars,--then came the
+turn of a bird-cherry. It was growing on the path, and it was so old and
+stout that it could not be less than ten years old. And yet I knew that
+five years ago the garden had been cleaned. I could not understand how
+such an old bird-cherry could have grown out there. We cut it down and
+went farther. Farther away, in another thicket, there grew a similar
+bird-cherry, even stouter than the first. I looked at its root, and saw
+that it grew under an old linden. The linden with its branches choked
+it, and it had stretched out about twelve feet in a straight line, and
+only then came out to the light, raised its head, and began to blossom.
+
+I cut it down at the root, and was surprised to find it so fresh, while
+the root was rotten. After we had cut it down, the peasants and I tried
+to pull it off; but no matter how much we jerked at it, we were unable
+to drag it away: it seemed to have stuck fast. I said:
+
+"Look whether it has not caught somewhere."
+
+A workman crawled under it, and called out:
+
+"It has another root; it is out on the path!"
+
+I walked over to him, and saw that it was so.
+
+Not to be choked by the linden, the bird-cherry had gone away from
+underneath the linden out on the path, about eight feet from its former
+root. The root which I had cut down was rotten and dry, but the new one
+was fresh. The bird-cherry had evidently felt that it could not exist
+under the linden, so it had stretched out, dropped a branch to the
+ground, made a root of that branch, and left the other root. Only then
+did I understand how the first bird-cherry had grown out on the road. It
+had evidently done the same,--only it had had time to give up the old
+root, and so I had not found it.
+
+
+
+
+THE DECEMBRISTS
+
+Fragments of a Novel
+
+1863-1878
+
+
+
+
+THE DECEMBRISTS
+
+A Novel
+
+
+FIRST FRAGMENT
+
+I.
+
+This happened not long ago, in the reign of Alexander II., in our days
+of civilization, progress, questions, regeneration of Russia, and so
+forth, and so forth; at a time when the victorious Russian army was
+returning from Sevastopol, surrendered to the enemy; when all of Russia
+celebrated the annihilation of the Black Sea fleet, and white-stoned
+Moscow received and congratulated with this happy event the remainders
+of the crews of that fleet, offering them a good Russian cup of vodka,
+and bread and salt, according to the good Russian custom, and bowing
+down to their feet. It was that time when Russia, in the person of
+far-sighted virgin politicians, lamented the shattered dream of a Te
+Deum in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and the loss of two great men, so
+painful for the country, who had perished during the war (one, who had
+been carried away by the desire to celebrate the Te Deum in the
+above-mentioned cathedral at the earliest time possible, and who fell in
+the fields of Wallachia, but who, at least, left two squadrons of
+hussars in the same fields, and the other, an unappreciated man, who had
+distributed tea, other people's money, and bed-sheets to the wounded,
+without stealing any of these things); that time, when on all sides, in
+all branches of human activities, great men--generals, administrators,
+economists, writers, orators, and simply great men, without any especial
+calling or purpose--sprang up in Russia like mushrooms; that time, when,
+at the jubilee of a Moscow actor, there appeared the public opinion,
+confirmed by a toast, which began to rebuke all the criminals,--when
+menacing commissions galloped south from St. Petersburg, to convict and
+punish the evil-doers of the commissariat,--when in all the cities
+dinners with speeches were given to the heroes of Sevastopol, and when
+to them, with arms and legs torn off, toasts were drunk, on meeting them
+on the bridges and on the highways; that time, when oratorical talents
+developed so rapidly in the nation that a certain dram-shopkeeper
+everywhere and upon all occasions wrote and printed and recited by rote
+at dinners such strong speeches, that the guardians of the peace had to
+take repressive measures against the dram-shopkeeper's eloquence,--when
+in the very English club a special room was set aside for the discussion
+of public matters,--when periodicals sprang up under the most
+diversified standards,--periodicals that evolved European principles on
+a European basis, but with a Russian world conception, and periodicals
+on an exclusively Russian basis, but with a European world
+conception,--when suddenly there appeared so many periodicals that all
+names seemed to be exhausted,--"The Messenger," and "The Word," and "The
+Speaker," and "The Observer," and "The Star," and "The Eagle," and many
+more, and, in spite of it, there appeared ever new names; that time,
+when the constellation of philosophic writers made its appearance to
+prove that science was national, and not national, and non-national, and
+so forth, and the constellation of artistic writers, who described a
+grove, and the sunrise, and a storm, and the love of a Russian maiden,
+and the indolence of a certain official, and the bad conduct of many
+officials; that time, when on all sides appeared questions (as in the
+year '56 they called every concourse of circumstances, of which no one
+could make any sense), questions of cadet corps, universities,
+censorship, oral judicature, finance, banking, police, emancipation, and
+many more:--everybody tried to discover ever new questions, everybody
+tried to solve them, wrote, read, spoke, made projects, wanted to mend
+everything, destroy, change, and all Russians, like one man, were in
+indescribable ecstasy.
+
+That is a state of affairs which has been twice repeated in the Russia
+of the nineteenth century,--the first time, when in the year '12 we
+repulsed Napoleon I., and the second time, when in the year '56 we were
+repulsed by Napoleon III. Great, unforgettable time of the regeneration
+of the Russian people! Like the Frenchman who said that he has not lived
+who has not lived through the great French Revolution, I venture to say
+that he who has not lived through the year '56 in Russia does not know
+what life is. The writer of these lines not only lived through that
+time, but was one of the actors of that period. Not only did he pass
+several weeks in one of the blindages of Sevastopol, but he also wrote a
+work on the Crimean War, which brought him great fame, and in which he
+described clearly and minutely how the soldiers fired their guns from
+the bastions, how the wounds were dressed at the ambulance, and how they
+buried people in the cemetery. Having achieved these deeds, the writer
+of these lines arrived in the centre of the empire,--a rocket
+establishment,--where he cut the laurels for his deeds. He saw the
+transports of the two capitals and of the whole nation, and experienced
+in his person to what extent Russia knew how to reward real deserts. The
+mighty of this world sought his friendship, pressed his hands, gave him
+dinners, urged him to come to their houses, and, in order to learn the
+details of the war from him, informed him of their own sentimentalities.
+Consequently the writer of these lines can appreciate that great and
+memorable time. But that is another matter.
+
+At that very time, two vehicles on wheels and a sleigh were standing at
+the entrance of the best Moscow hotel. A young man ran through the door,
+to find out about quarters. In one of the vehicles sat an old man with
+two ladies. He was talking about the condition of Blacksmith Bridge in
+the days of the French. It was the continuation of a conversation
+started as they entered Moscow, and now the old man with the white
+beard, in his unbuttoned fur coat, calmly continued his conversation in
+the vehicle, as though he intended to stay in it overnight. His wife and
+daughter listened to him, but kept looking at the door with some
+impatience. The young man emerged from the door with the porter and room
+servant.
+
+"Well, Sergyey," asked the mother, thrusting her emaciated face out into
+the glare of the lamplight.
+
+Either because it was his habit, or because he did not wish the porter
+to take him for a lackey on account of the short fur coat which he wore,
+Sergyey replied in French that there were rooms to be had, and opened
+the carriage door. The old man looked for a moment at his son, and again
+turned to the dark corner of the vehicle, as though nothing else
+concerned him:
+
+"There was no theatre then."
+
+"Pierre!" said his wife, lifting her cloak; but he continued:
+
+"Madame Chalme was in Tverskaya Street--"
+
+Deep in the vehicle could be heard a youthful, sonorous laugh.
+
+"Papa, step out! You are forgetting where we are."
+
+The old man only then seemed to recall that they had arrived, and looked
+around him.
+
+"Do step out!"
+
+He pulled his cap down, and submissively passed through the door. The
+porter took him under his arm, but, seeing that the old man was walking
+well, he at once offered his services to the lady. Judging from the
+sable cloak, and from the time it took for her to emerge, and from the
+way she pressed down on his arm, and from the way she, leaning on her
+son's arm, walked straight toward the porch, without looking to either
+side, Natalya Nikolaevna, his wife, seemed to the porter to be an
+important personage. He did not even separate the young lady from the
+maids, who climbed out from the other vehicle; like them, she carried a
+bundle and a pipe, and walked behind. He recognized her only by her
+laughing and by her calling the old man father.
+
+"Not that way, father,--to the right!" she said, taking hold of the
+sleeve of his sheepskin coat. "To the right."
+
+On the staircase there resounded, through the noise of the steps, the
+doors, and the heavy breathing of the elderly lady, the same laughter
+which had been heard in the vehicle, and about which any one who heard
+it thought: "How excellently she laughs,--I just envy her."
+
+Their son, Sergyey, had attended to all the material conditions on the
+road, and, though he lacked knowledge of the matter, he had attended to
+it with the energy and self-satisfying activity which are characteristic
+of twenty-five years of age. Some twenty times, and apparently for no
+important reason, he ran down to the sleigh in his greatcoat, and ran
+up-stairs again, shivering in the cold and taking two or three steps at
+a time with his long, youthful legs. Natalya Nikolaevna asked him not to
+catch a cold, but he said that it was all right, and continued to give
+orders, slamming doors, and walking, and, when it seemed that only the
+servants and peasants had to be attended to, he several times walked
+through all the rooms, leaving the drawing-room by one door, and coming
+in through another, as though he were looking for something else to do.
+
+"Well, papa, will you be driven to the bath-house? Shall I find out?" he
+asked.
+
+His papa was deep in thought and, it seemed, was not at all conscious of
+where he was. He did not answer at once. He heard the words, but did not
+comprehend them. Suddenly he comprehended.
+
+"Yes, yes, yes. Find out, if you please, at Stone Bridge."
+
+The head of the family walked through the rooms with hasty, agitated
+steps, and seated himself in a chair.
+
+"Now we must decide what to do, how to arrange matters," he said. "Help
+along, children, lively! Like good fellows, drag things around, put them
+up, and to-morrow we shall send Serezha with a note to sister Marya
+Ivanovna, to the Nikitins, or we shall go there ourselves. Am I right,
+Natasha? But now, fix things!"
+
+"To-morrow is Sunday. I hope, Pierre, that first of all you will go to
+mass," said his wife, kneeling in front of a trunk and opening it.
+
+"That is so, it is Sunday! We shall by all means all of us go to the
+Cathedral of the Assumption. Thus will our return begin. O Lord! When I
+think of the day when I was for the last time in the Cathedral of the
+Assumption! Do you remember, Natasha? But that is another matter."
+
+And the head of the family rose quickly from the chair, on which he had
+just seated himself.
+
+"Now we must settle down!"
+
+And without doing anything, he kept walking from one room to another.
+
+"Well, shall we drink tea? Or are you tired, and do you want to rest?"
+
+"Yes, yes," replied his wife, taking something out from the trunk. "You
+wanted to go to the bath-house, did you not?"
+
+"Yes--in my day it was near Stone Bridge. Serezha, go and find out
+whether there is still a bath-house near Stone Bridge. This room here
+Serezha and I shall occupy. Serezha! Will you be comfortable here?"
+
+But Serezha had gone to find out about the bath-house.
+
+"No, that will not do," he continued. "You will not have a straight
+passage to the drawing-room. What do you think, Natasha?"
+
+"Calm yourself, Pierre, everything will come out all right," Natasha
+said, from another room, where peasants were bringing in things.
+
+But Pierre was still under the influence of that ecstatic mood which the
+arrival had evoked in him.
+
+"Look there,--don't mix up Serezha's things! You have thrown his
+snow-shoes down in the drawing-room." And he himself picked them up and
+with great care, as though the whole future order of the quarters
+depended upon it, leaned them against the door-post and tried to make
+them stand there. But the snow-shoes did not stick to it, and, the
+moment Pierre walked away from them, fell with a racket across the door.
+Natalya Nikolaevna frowned and shuddered, but, seeing the cause of the
+fall, she said:
+
+"Sonya, darling, pick them up!"
+
+"Pick them up, darling," repeated the husband, "and I will go to the
+landlord, or else you will never get done. I must talk things over with
+him."
+
+"You had better send for him, Pierre. Why should you trouble yourself?"
+
+Pierre assented.
+
+"Sonya, bring him here, what do you call him? M. Cavalier, if you
+please. Tell him that we want to speak about everything."
+
+"Chevalier, papa," said Sonya, ready to go out.
+
+Natalya Nikolaevna, who was giving her commands in a soft voice, and was
+softly stepping from room to room, now with a box, now with a pipe, now
+with a pillow, imperceptibly finding places for a mountain of baggage,
+in passing Sonya, had time to whisper to her:
+
+"Do not go yourself, but send a man!"
+
+While a man went to call the landlord, Pierre used his leisure, under
+the pretext of aiding his consort, in crushing a garment of hers and in
+stumbling against an empty box. Steadying himself with his hand against
+the wall, the Decembrist looked around with a smile; but Sonya was
+looking at him with such smiling eyes that she seemed to be waiting for
+permission to laugh. He readily granted her that permission, and himself
+burst out into such a good-natured laugh that all those who were in the
+room, his wife, the maids, and the peasants, laughed with him. This
+laughter animated the old man still more. He discovered that the divan
+in the room for his wife and daughter was not standing very conveniently
+for them, although they affirmed the opposite, and asked him to calm
+himself. Just as he was trying with his own hands to help a peasant to
+change the position of that piece of furniture, the landlord, a
+Frenchman, entered the room.
+
+"You sent for me," the landlord asked sternly and, in proof of his
+indifference, if not contempt, slowly drew out his handkerchief, slowly
+unfolded it, and slowly cleared his nose.
+
+"Yes, my dear sir," said Peter Ivanovich, stepping up toward him, "you
+see, we do not know ourselves how long we are going to stay here, I and
+my wife--" and Peter Ivanovich, who had the weakness of seeing a
+neighbour in every man, began to expound his plans and affairs to him.
+
+M. Chevalier did not share that view of people and was not interested in
+the information communicated to him by Peter Ivanovich, but the good
+French which Peter Ivanovich spoke (the French language, as is known, is
+something like rank in Russia) and his lordly manner somewhat raised the
+landlord's opinion about the newcomers.
+
+"What can I do for you?" he asked.
+
+This question did not embarrass Peter Ivanovich. He expressed his desire
+to have rooms, tea, a samovar, supper, dinner, food for the servants, in
+short, all those things for which hotels exist, and when M. Chevalier,
+marvelling at the innocence of the old man, who apparently imagined that
+he was in the Trukhmen steppe, or supposed that all these things would
+be given him without pay, informed him that he could have all those
+things, Peter Ivanovich was in ecstasy.
+
+"Now that is nice! Very nice! And so we shall get things all fixed.
+Well, then please--" but he felt embarrassed to be speaking all the time
+about himself, and he began to ask M. Chevalier about his family and his
+business. When Sergyey Petrovich returned to the room, he did not seem
+to approve of his father's address; he observed the landlord's
+dissatisfaction, and reminded his father of the bath. But Peter
+Ivanovich was interested in the question of how a French hotel could be
+run in Moscow in the year '56, and of how Madame Chevalier passed her
+time. Finally the landlord himself bowed and asked him whether he was
+not pleased to order anything.
+
+"We will have tea, Natasha. Yes? Tea, then, if you please! We will have
+some other talks, my dear monsieur! What a charming man!"
+
+"And the bath, papa?"
+
+"Oh, yes, then we shall have no tea."
+
+Thus the only result from the conversation with the newly arrived guests
+was taken from the landlord. But Peter Ivanovich was now proud and happy
+of his arrangements. The drivers, who came to ask a _pourboire_, vexed
+him, because Serezha had no change, and Peter Ivanovich was on the point
+of sending once more for the landlord, but the happy thought that
+others, too, ought to be happy on that evening helped him out of that
+predicament. He took two three-rouble bills, and, sticking one bill into
+the hand of one of the drivers, he said, "This is for you" (Peter
+Ivanovich was in the habit of saying "you" to all without exception,
+unless to a member of his family); "and this is for you," he said,
+transferring the other bill from the palm of his hand to that of the
+driver, in some such manner as people do when paying a doctor for a
+visit. After attending to all these things, he was taken to the
+bath-house.
+
+Sonya, who was sitting on the divan, put her hand under her head and
+burst out laughing.
+
+"Oh, how nice it is, mamma! Oh, how nice!"
+
+Then she placed her feet on the divan, stretched herself, adjusted
+herself, and fell into the sound, calm sleep of a healthy girl of
+eighteen years of age, after six weeks on the road. Natalya Nikolaevna,
+who was still busy taking out things in her sleeping-room, heard, no
+doubt with her maternal ear, that Sonya was not stirring, and went out
+to take a look at her. She took a pillow and, raising the girl's
+reddened, dishevelled head with her large white hand, placed her on the
+pillow. Sonya drew a deep, deep sigh, shrugged her shoulders, and put
+her head on the pillow, without saying "_Merci_," as though that had all
+been done of its own accord.
+
+"Not on that bed, not on that, Gavrilovna, Katya," Natalya Nikolaevna
+immediately turned to the maids who were making a bed, and with one
+hand, as though in passing, she adjusted the straying hair of her
+daughter. Without stopping and without hurrying, Natalya Nikolaevna
+dressed herself, and upon the arrival of her husband and her son
+everything was ready: the trunks were no longer in the rooms; in
+Pierre's sleeping-room everything was arranged as it had been for
+several decades in Irkutsk: the morning-gown, the pipe, the
+tobacco-pouch, the sugared water, the Gospel, which he read at night,
+and even the image stuck to the rich wall-paper in the rooms of
+Chevalier, who never used such adornments, but on that evening they
+appeared in all the rooms of the third division of the hotel.
+
+Having dressed herself, Natalya Nikolaevna adjusted her collar and
+cuffs, which, in spite of the journey, were still clean, combed herself,
+and seated herself opposite the table. Her beautiful black eyes gazed
+somewhere into the distance: she looked and rested herself. She seemed
+to be resting, not from the unpacking alone, nor from the road, nor from
+the oppressive years,--she seemed to be resting from her whole life, and
+the distance into which she was gazing, and in which she saw living and
+beloved faces, was that rest which she was wishing for. Whether it was
+an act of love, which she had done for her husband, or the love which
+she had experienced for her children when they were young, or whether it
+was a heavy loss, or a peculiarity of her character,--everyone who
+looked at that woman could not help seeing that nothing could be
+expected from her, that she had long ago given all of herself to life,
+and that nothing was left of her. All that there was left was something
+worthy of respect, something beautiful and sad, as a reminiscence, as
+the moonlight. She could not be imagined otherwise than surrounded by
+all the comforts of life. It was impossible for her ever to be hungry,
+or to eat eagerly, or to have on soiled clothes, or to stumble, or to
+forget to clear her nose. It was a physical impossibility. Why it was
+so, I do not know, but every motion of hers was dignity, grace,
+gentleness toward all those who could enjoy her sight.
+
+    "Sie pflegen und weben
+    Himmlische Rosen ins irdische Leben."
+
+She knew those verses and loved them, but was not guided by them. All
+her nature was an expression of that thought; all her life was this one
+unconscious weaving of invisible roses in the lives of those with whom
+she came in contact. She had followed her husband to Siberia only
+because she loved him; she had not thought what she could do for him,
+and instinctively had done everything. She had made his bed, had put
+away his things, had prepared his dinner and his tea, and, above all,
+had always been where he was, and no woman could have given more
+happiness to her husband.
+
+In the drawing-room the samovar was boiling on the round table. Natalya
+Nikolaevna sat near it. Sonya wrinkled her face and smiled under her
+mother's hand, which was tickling her, when father and son, with
+wrinkled finger-tips and glossy cheeks and foreheads (the father's bald
+spot was particularly glistening), with fluffy white and black hair, and
+with beaming countenances, entered the room.
+
+"It has grown brighter since you have come in," said Natalya Nikolaevna.
+"O Lord, how white you are!"
+
+She had been saying that each Saturday, for several decades, and each
+Saturday Pierre experienced bashfulness and delight, whenever he heard
+that. They seated themselves at the table; there was an odour of tea and
+of the pipe, and there were heard the voices of the parents, the
+children, and the servants, who received their cups in the same room.
+They recalled everything funny that had happened on the road, admired
+Sonya's hair-dressing, and laughed. Geographically they were all
+transferred a distance of five thousand versts, into an entirely
+different, strange milieu, but morally they were that evening still at
+home, just such as the peculiar, long, solitary family life had made
+them to be. It will not be so to-morrow. Peter Ivanovich seated himself
+near the samovar, and lighted his pipe. He was not in a cheerful mood.
+
+"So here we are," he said, "and I am glad that we shall not see any one
+to-night; this is the last evening we shall pass with the family," and
+he washed these words down with a large mouthful of tea.
+
+"Why the last, Pierre?"
+
+"Why? Because the eaglets have learned to fly, and they have to make
+their own nests, and from here they will fly each in a different
+direction--"
+
+"What nonsense!" said Sonya, taking his glass from him, and smiling at
+him, as she smiled at everything. "The old nest is good enough!"
+
+"The old nest is a sad nest; the old man did not know how to make
+it,--he was caught in a cage, and in the cage he reared his young ones,
+and was let out only when his wings no longer would hold him up. No, the
+eaglets must make their nests higher up, more auspiciously, nearer to
+the sun; that is what they are his children for, that his example might
+serve them; but the old one will look on, so long as he is not blind,
+and will listen, when he becomes blind-- Pour in some rum, more,
+more--enough!"
+
+"We shall see who is going to leave," replied Sonya, casting a cursory
+glance at her mother, as though she felt uneasy speaking in her
+presence. "We shall see who is going to leave," she continued. "I am not
+afraid for myself, neither am I for Serezha." (Serezha was walking up
+and down in the room, thinking of how clothes would be ordered for him
+to-morrow, and wondering whether he had better go to the tailor, or send
+for him; he was not interested in Sonya's conversation with his father.)
+Sonya began to laugh.
+
+"What is the matter? What?" asked her father.
+
+"You are younger than we, papa. Much younger, indeed," she said, again
+bursting out into a laugh.
+
+"Indeed!" said the old man, and his austere wrinkles formed themselves
+into a gentle, and yet contemptuous, smile.
+
+Natalya Nikolaevna bent away from the samovar which prevented her seeing
+her husband.
+
+"Sonya is right. You are still sixteen years old, Pierre. Serezha is
+younger in feelings, but you are younger in soul. I can foresee what he
+will do, but you will astound me yet."
+
+Whether he recognized the justice of this remark, or was flattered by
+it, he did not know what reply to make, and only smoked in silence,
+drank his tea, and beamed with his eyes. But Serezha, with
+characteristic egoism of youth, interested in what was said about him,
+entered into the conversation and affirmed that he was really old, that
+his arrival in Moscow and the new life, which was opening before him,
+did not gladden him in the least, and that he calmly reflected on the
+future and looked forward toward it.
+
+"Still, it is the last evening," repeated Peter Ivanovich. "It will not
+be again to-morrow."
+
+And he poured a little more rum into his glass. He sat for a long time
+at the tea-table, with an expression as though he wished to say many
+things, but had no hearers. He moved up the rum toward him, but his
+daughter softly carried away the bottle.
+
+II.
+
+When M. Chevalier, who had been up-stairs to look after his guests,
+returned to his room and gave the benefit of his observations on the
+newcomers to his life companion, in laces and a silk garment, who in
+Parisian fashion was sitting back of the counter, several habitual
+visitors of the establishment were sitting in the room. Serezha, who had
+been down-stairs, had taken notice of that room and of its visitors. If
+you have been in Moscow, you have, no doubt, noticed that room yourself.
+
+If you, a modest man who do not know Moscow, have missed a dinner to
+which you are invited, or have made a mistake in your calculations,
+imagining that the hospitable Muscovites would invite you to dinner, or
+simply wish to dine in the best restaurant, you enter the lackeys' room.
+Three or four lackeys jump up: one of them takes off your fur coat and
+congratulates you on the occasion of the New Year, or of the
+Butter-week, or of your arrival, or simply remarks that you have not
+called for a long while, though you have never been in that
+establishment before.
+
+You enter, and the first thing that strikes your eyes is a table set, as
+you in the first moment imagine, with an endless quantity of palatable
+dishes. But that is only an optical illusion, for the greater part of
+that table is occupied by pheasants in feather, raw lobsters, boxes with
+perfume and pomatum, and bottles with cosmetics and candy. Only at the
+very edge, if you look well, will you find the vodka and a piece of
+bread with butter and sardines, under a wire globe, which is quite
+useless in Moscow in the month of December, even though it is precisely
+such as those which are used in Paris. Then, beyond the table, you see
+the room, where behind a counter sits a Frenchwoman, of extremely
+repulsive exterior, but wearing the cleanest of gloves and a most
+exquisite, fashionable gown. Near the Frenchwoman you will see an
+officer in unbuttoned uniform, taking a dram of vodka, a civilian
+reading a newspaper, and somebody's military or civilian legs lying on a
+velvet chair, and you will hear French conversation, and more or less
+sincere, loud laughter.
+
+If you wish to know what is going on in that room, I should advise you
+not to enter within, but only to look in, as though merely passing by to
+take a sandwich. Otherwise you will feel ill at ease from the
+interrogative silence and glances, and you will certainly take your tail
+between your legs and skulk away to one of the tables in the large hall,
+or to the winter garden. Nobody will keep you from doing so. These
+tables are for everybody, and there, in your solitude, you may call Dey
+a garcon and order as many truffles as you please. The room with the
+Frenchwoman, however, exists for the select, golden Moscow youth, and it
+is not so easy to find your way among the select as you imagine.
+
+On returning to this room, M. Chevalier told his wife that the gentleman
+from Siberia was dull, but that his son and daughter were fine people,
+such as could be raised only in Siberia.
+
+"You ought just to see the daughter! She is a little rose-bush!"
+
+"Oh, this old man is fond of fresh-looking women," said one of the
+guests, who was smoking a cigar. (The conversation, of course, was
+carried on in French, but I render it in Russian, as I shall continue to
+do in this story.)
+
+"Oh, I am very fond of them!" replied M. Chevalier. "Women are my
+passion. Do you not believe me?"
+
+"Do you hear, Madame Chevalier?" shouted a stout officer of Cossacks,
+who owed a big bill in the institution and was fond of chatting with the
+landlord.
+
+"He shares my taste," said M. Chevalier, patting the stout man on his
+epaulet.
+
+"And is this Siberian young lady really pretty?"
+
+M. Chevalier folded his fingers and kissed them.
+
+After that the conversation between the guests became confidential and
+very jolly. They were talking about the stout officer; he smiled as he
+listened to what they were saying about him.
+
+"How can one have such perverted taste!" cried one, through the
+laughter. "Mlle. Clarisse! You know, Strugov prefers such of the women
+as have chicken calves."
+
+Though Mlle. Clarisse did not understand the salt of that remark, she
+behind her counter burst out into a laughter as silvery as her bad
+teeth and advanced years permitted.
+
+"Has the Siberian lady turned him to such thoughts?" and she laughed
+more heartily still. M. Chevalier himself roared with laughter, as he
+said:
+
+"_Ce vieux coquin_," patting the officer of Cossacks on his head and
+shoulders.
+
+"But who are they, those Siberians? Mining proprietors or merchants?"
+one of the gentlemen asked, during a pause in the laughter.
+
+"Nikita, ask ze passport from ze chentleman zat as come," said M.
+Chevalier.
+
+"We, Alexander, ze Autocrat--" M. Chevalier began to read the passport,
+which had been brought in the meantime, but the officer of Cossacks tore
+it out of his hands, and his face expressed surprise.
+
+"Guess who it is," he said, "for you all know him by reputation."
+
+"How can we guess? Show it to us! Well, Abdel Kader, ha, ha, ha! Well,
+Cagliostro-- Well, Peter III.--ha, ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"Well, read it!"
+
+The officer of Cossacks unfolded the paper and read the name of him who
+once had been Prince Peter Ivanovich, and the family name which
+everybody knows and pronounces with a certain respect and pleasure, when
+speaking of a person bearing that name, as of a near and familiar
+person. We shall call him Labazov. The officer of Cossacks had a dim
+recollection that this Peter Labazov had been something important in the
+year '25, and that he had been sent to hard labour,--but what he had
+been famous for, he did not exactly know. But of the others not one knew
+anything about him, and they replied:
+
+"Oh, yes, the famous prince," just as they would have said, "Of course,
+he is famous!" about Shakespeare, who had written the "Aeneid." But they
+recognized him from the explanations of the stout officer, who told
+them that he was a brother of Prince Ivan, an uncle of the Chikins, of
+Countess Prut, in short, the well-known--
+
+"He must be very rich, if he is a brother of Prince Ivan," remarked one
+of the young men, "if the fortune has been returned to him. It has been
+returned to some."
+
+"What a lot of exiles are returning nowadays!" remarked another.
+"Really, fewer seem to have been sent away, than are returning now.
+Zhikinski, tell us that story of the 18th!" he turned to an officer of
+sharp-shooters, who had the reputation of being a good story-teller.
+
+"Do tell it!"
+
+"In the first place, it is a true story, and happened here, at
+Chevalier's, in the large hall. Three Decembrists came to have their
+dinner. They were sitting at one table, eating, drinking, talking.
+Opposite them sat down a gentleman of respectable mien, of about the
+same age, and he listened to their talking about Siberia. He asked them
+something, they exchanged a few words, began to converse, and it turned
+out that he, too, was from Siberia.
+
+"'And do you know Nerchinsk?'
+
+"'Indeed I do, I lived there.'
+
+"'And do you know Tatyana Ivanovna?'
+
+"'Of course I do!'
+
+"'Permit me to ask you,--were you, too, exiled?'
+
+"'Yes, I had the misfortune to suffer, and you?'
+
+"'We are all exiles of the 14th of December. It is strange that we
+should not know you, if you, too, were exiled for the 14th. Permit me to
+know your name!'
+
+"'Fedorov.'
+
+"'Also for the 14th?'
+
+"'No, for the 18th.'
+
+"'For the 18th?'
+
+"'For the 18th of September, for a gold watch. I was falsely accused of
+having stolen it, and I suffered, though innocent.'"
+
+All of them rolled in laughter, except the story-teller, who with a most
+serious face looked at the outstretched hearers and swore that it was a
+true story.
+
+Soon after the story one of the young men got up and went to the club.
+He passed through the halls which were filled with tables at which old
+men were playing whist; turned into the "infernal region," where the
+famous "Puchin" had begun his game against the "company;" stood for
+awhile near one of the billiard-tables, where, holding on to the
+cushion, a distinguished old man was fumbling around and with difficulty
+striking a ball; looked into the library, where a general, holding a
+newspaper a distance away from him, was reading it slowly above his
+glasses, and a registered young man turned the leaves of one periodical
+after another, trying to make no noise; and finally seated himself on a
+divan in the billiard-room, near some young people who were playing
+pyramids, and who were as much gilded as he was.
+
+It was a day of dinners, and there were there many gentlemen who always
+frequented the club. Among them was Ivan Vavilovich Pakhtin. He was a
+man of about forty years of age, of medium stature, fair-complexioned,
+with broad shoulders and hips, with a bare head, and a glossy, happy,
+clean-shaven face. He was not playing at pyramids, but had just sat down
+beside Prince D----, with whom he was on "thou" terms, and had accepted
+a glass of champagne which had been offered to him. He had located
+himself so comfortably after the dinner, having quietly unbuckled his
+trousers at the back, that it looked as though he could sit there all
+his life, smoking a cigar, drinking champagne, and feeling the proximity
+of princes, counts, and the children of ministers. The news of the
+arrival of the Labazovs interfered with his calm.
+
+"Where are you going, Pakhtin," said a minister's son, having noticed
+during the game that Pakhtin had got up, pulled his waistcoat down, and
+emptied his champagne in a large gulp.
+
+"Syevernikov has invited me," said Pakhtin, feeling a restlessness in
+his legs. "Well, will you go there?"
+
+"Anastasya, Anastasya, please unlock the door for me." That was a
+well-known gipsy-song, which was in vogue at that time.
+
+"Perhaps. And you?"
+
+"Where shall I, an old married man, go?"
+
+"Well!"
+
+Pakhtin, smiling, went to the glass hall, to join Syevernikov. He was
+fond of having his last word appear to be a joke. And so it came out at
+that time, too.
+
+"Well, how is the countess's health?" he asked, walking over to
+Syevernikov, who had not called him at all, but who, according to
+Pakhtin's surmise, should more than any one else learn of the arrival of
+the Labazovs. Syevernikov had somehow been mixed up with the affair of
+the 14th, and was a friend of the Decembrists. The countess's health was
+much better, and Pakhtin was very glad to hear it.
+
+"Do you know, Labazov has arrived; he is staying at Chevaliers."
+
+"You don't say so! We are old friends. How glad I am! How glad! The poor
+old fellow must have grown old. His wife wrote to my wife--"
+
+But Syevernikov did not finish saying what it was she had written,
+because his partners, who were playing without trumps, had made some
+mistake. While speaking with Ivan Pavlovich, he kept an eye on them, and
+now he leaned forward with his whole body against the table, and,
+thumping it with his hands, he tried to prove that they ought to have
+played from the seven. Ivan Pavlovich got up and, going up to another
+table, in the middle of a conversation informed another worthy gentleman
+of his bit of news, again got up, and repeated the same at a third
+table. The worthy gentlemen were all glad to hear of the arrival of the
+Labazovs, so that, upon returning to the billiard-room, Ivan Pavlovich,
+who at first had had his misgivings about whether he had to rejoice in
+the return of the Labazovs, or not, no longer started with an
+introduction about the ball, about an article in the _Messenger_, about
+health, or weather, but approached everybody directly with the
+enthusiastic announcement of the safe return of the famous Decembrist.
+
+The old man, who was still vainly endeavouring to hit the white ball
+with his cue, would, in Pakhtin's opinion, be very much delighted to
+hear the news. He went up to him.
+
+"Are you playing well, your Excellency?" he said, just as the old man
+stuck his cue into the marker's red waistcoat, wishing to indicate that
+it had to be chalked.
+
+"Your Excellency" was not said, as you might think, from a desire of
+being subservient (no, that was not the fashion in '56). Ivan Pavlovich
+was in the habit of calling the old man by his name and patronymic, but
+this was said partly as a joke on men who spoke that way, partly in
+order to hint that he knew full well to whom he was talking, and yet was
+taking liberties, and partly in truth: altogether it was a very delicate
+jest.
+
+"I have just learned that Peter Labazov has returned. Straight from
+Siberia, with his whole family."
+
+These words Pakhtin pronounced just as the old man again missed his
+ball, for such was his bad luck.
+
+"If he has returned as cracked as he went away, there is no cause for
+rejoicing," gruffly said the old man, who was irritated by his
+incomprehensible failure.
+
+This statement vexed Ivan Pavlovich, and again he was at a loss whether
+there was any cause for rejoicing at Labazov's return, and, in order
+fully to settle his doubt, he directed his steps to a room, where
+generally assembled the clever people, who knew the meaning and value of
+each thing, and, in short, knew everything. Ivan Pavlovich was on the
+same footing of friendship with the frequenters of the intellectual room
+as with the gilded youths and with the dignitaries. It is true, he had
+no special place of his own in the intellectual room, but nobody was
+surprised to see him enter and seat himself on a divan. They were just
+discussing in what year and upon what occasion there had taken place a
+quarrel between two Russian journalists. Waiting for a moment of
+silence, Ivan Pavlovich communicated his bit of news, not as something
+joyous, nor as an unimportant event, but as though part of the
+conversation. But immediately, from the way the "intellectuals" (I use
+the word "intellectuals" as a name for the frequenters of the
+"intellectual" room) received the news and began to discuss it, Ivan
+Pavlovich understood that it belonged there, and that only there would
+it receive such an elaboration as to enable him to carry it farther and
+_savoir a quoi s'en tenir_.
+
+"Labazov was the only one who was wanting," said one of the
+intellectuals; "now all the living Decembrists have returned to Russia."
+
+"He was one of the herd of the famous--" said Pakhtin, still with an
+inquisitive glance, prepared to make that quotation both jocular and
+serious.
+
+"Indeed, Labazov was one of the most remarkable men of that time," began
+an intellectual. "In 1819 he was an ensign of the Semenovski regiment,
+and was sent abroad with messages to Duke Z----. Then he returned and in
+the year '24 was received in the First Masonic lodge. The Masons of that
+time used all to gather at the house of D---- and at his house. He was
+very rich. Prince Zh----, Fedor D----, Ivan P----, those were his
+nearest friends. Then his uncle, Prince Visarion, to remove the young
+man from that society, took him to Moscow."
+
+"Pardon me, Nikolay Stepanovich," another intellectual interrupted him,
+"it seems to me that that happened in the year '23, because Visarion
+Labazov was appointed a commander of the Third Corps in '24, and was
+then in Warsaw. He had offered him an adjutantship, and after his
+refusal, he was removed. However, pardon me for interrupting you."
+
+"Not at all. Proceed!"
+
+"Pardon me!"
+
+"Proceed! You ought to know that better than I, and, besides, your
+memory and knowledge have been sufficiently attested here."
+
+"In Moscow he against his uncle's will left the army," continued the one
+whose memory and knowledge had been attested, "and there he gathered
+around him a second society, of which he was the progenitor and the
+heart, if it be possible so to express it. He was rich, handsome,
+clever, educated; they say he was exceedingly amiable. My aunt used to
+tell me that she did not know a more bewitching man. Here he married
+Miss Krinski, a few months before the revolt broke out."
+
+"The daughter of Nikolay Krinski, the one of Borodino fame, you know,"
+somebody interrupted him.
+
+"Well, yes. Her immense fortune he still possesses, but his own paternal
+estate passed over to his younger brother, Prince Ivan, who is now
+Ober-Hof-Kaffermeister" (he gave him some such name) "and was a
+minister."
+
+"The best thing is what he did for his brother," continued the narrator.
+"When he was arrested, there was one thing which he succeeded in
+destroying, and that was his brother's letters and documents."
+
+"Was his brother mixed up in it, too?"
+
+The narrator did not say "Yes," but compressed his lips and gave a
+significant wink.
+
+"Then, during all the inquests Peter Labazov kept denying everything
+which concerned his brother, and so suffered more than the rest. But the
+best part of it is that Prince Ivan got all the property, and never sent
+a penny to his brother."
+
+"They say that Peter Labazov himself declined it," remarked one of the
+hearers.
+
+"Yes; but he declined it only because Prince Ivan wrote him before the
+coronation, excusing himself and saying that if he had not taken it, it
+would have been confiscated, and that he had children and debts, and
+that now he was unable to return it to him. Peter Labazov replied to him
+in two lines: 'Neither I nor my heirs have any right, nor can have any
+right, to the property legally appropriated by you.' That was all. How
+was that? And Prince Ivan swallowed it, and in delight locked up that
+document with the notes in a safe, and showed it to no one."
+
+One of the peculiarities of the intellectual room was that its visitors
+knew, whenever they wanted to know, everything that was taking place in
+the world, no matter how secret the event might have been.
+
+"Still it is a question," said a new interlocutor, "whether it was just
+to deprive the children of Prince Ivan of the property, with which they
+have grown up and have been educated, and to which they thought they had
+a right."
+
+Thus the conversation was transferred to an abstract sphere, which did
+not interest Pakhtin.
+
+He felt the necessity of communicating the news to fresh people, and so
+he rose and, speaking to the right and to the left, walked from one hall
+to another. One of his fellow officers stopped him to give him the news
+of Labazov's arrival.
+
+"Who does not know that?" replied Ivan Pavlovich, with a calm smile,
+turning to the exit. The news had had time to complete its circle, and
+was again returning to him.
+
+There was nothing else to do in the club, and he went to an evening
+party. It was not a special entertainment, but a salon where guests were
+received any evening. There were there eight ladies, and one old
+colonel, and all found it terribly dull. Pakhtin's firm gait alone and
+his smiling face cheered the ladies and maidens. And the news was the
+more appropriate, since the old Countess Fuks and her daughter were
+present in the salon. When Pakhtin told nearly word for word what he had
+heard in the intellectual room, Madame Fuks, shaking her head and
+marvelling at her old age, began to recall how she used to go out
+together with Natasha Krinski, the present Princess Labazov.
+
+"Her marriage is a very romantic story, and all that happened under my
+eyes. Natasha was almost engaged to Myatlin, who was later killed in a
+duel with Debras. Just then Prince Peter arrived in Moscow, fell in love
+with her, and proposed to her. But her father, who wanted Myatlin very
+much,--they were, in general, afraid of Labazov because he was a
+Mason,--refused him. The young man continued to see her at balls,
+everywhere, and became friendly with Myatlin, whom he begged to decline.
+Myatlin agreed to do so, and he persuaded her to elope. She, too,
+agreed, but the last repentance----" (the conversation was taking place
+in French), "and she went to her father and said that everything was
+ready for the elopement, and she could leave him, but hoped for his
+magnanimity. And, indeed, her father forgave her,--everybody begged for
+her,--and gave his consent. Thus the wedding was celebrated, and it was
+a jolly wedding! Who of us thought that a year later she would follow
+him to Siberia! She, an only daughter, the most beautiful, the richest
+woman of that time. Emperor Alexander always used to notice her at
+balls, and had danced with her so often. Countess G---- gave a _bal
+costume_,--I remember it as though it were to-day,--and she was a
+Neapolitan maid, oh, so charming! Whenever he came to Moscow, he used to
+ask, '_que fait la belle Napolitaine_?' And suddenly this woman, in such
+a condition (she bore a child on the way), did not stop for a moment to
+think, without preparing anything, without collecting her things, just
+as she was, when they took him, followed him a distance of five thousand
+versts."
+
+"Oh, what a remarkable woman!" said the hostess.
+
+"Both he and she were remarkable people," said another lady. "I have
+been told,--I don't know whether it is true,--that wherever they worked
+in the mines in Siberia, or whatever it is called, the convicts, who
+were with them, improved in their presence."
+
+"But she has never worked in the mines," Pakhtin corrected her.
+
+How much that year '56 meant! Three years before no one had been
+thinking of the Labazovs, and if any one recalled them, it was with that
+unaccountable feeling of dread with which one speaks of one lately dead;
+but now they vividly recalled all the former relations, all the
+beautiful qualities, and each lady was making a plan for getting the
+monopoly of the Labazovs, in order to treat the other guests to them.
+
+"Their son and their daughter have come with them," said Pakhtin.
+
+"If they are only as handsome as their mother used to be," said Countess
+Fuks. "Still, their father, too, was very, very handsome."
+
+"How could they educate their children there?" asked the hostess.
+
+"They say, nicely. They say that the young man is as nice, as amiable,
+and as cultured as though he had been brought up in Paris."
+
+"I predict great success to that young person," said a homely spinster.
+"All those Siberian ladies have something pleasantly trivial about them,
+which everybody, however, likes."
+
+"Yes, yes," said another spinster.
+
+"Here we have another rich prospective bride," said a third spinster.
+
+The old colonel, of German origin, who had come to Moscow three years
+before, in order to marry a rich girl, decided as quickly as possible,
+before the young people knew anything about it, to present himself and
+propose. But the spinsters and ladies thought almost the same about the
+young Siberian.
+
+"No doubt that is the one I am destined to marry," thought a spinster
+who had been going out for eight years.
+
+"No doubt it was for the best that that stupid officer of the Chevalier
+Guards did not propose to me. I should certainly have been unhappy."
+
+"Well, they will again grow yellow with envy, if this one, too, falls in
+love with me," thought a young and pretty lady.
+
+We hear much about the provincialism of small towns,--but there is
+nothing worse than the provincialism of the upper classes. There are no
+new persons there, and society is prepared to receive all kinds of new
+persons, if they should make their appearance; but they are rarely, very
+rarely, recognized as belonging to their circle and accepted, as was the
+case with the Labazovs, and the sensation produced by them is stronger
+than in a provincial town.
+
+III.
+
+"This is Moscow, white-stoned Mother Moscow," said Peter Ivanovich,
+rubbing his eyes in the morning, and listening to the tolling of the
+bells which was proceeding from Gazette Lane. Nothing so vividly
+resurrects the past as sounds, and these sounds of the Moscow bells,
+combined with the sight of a white wall opposite the window, and with
+the rumbling of wheels, so vividly reminded him not only of the Moscow
+which he had known thirty-five years before, but also of the Moscow with
+the Kremlin, with the palaces, with Ivan the bell, and so forth, which
+he had been carrying in his heart, that he experienced a childish joy at
+being a Russian, and in Moscow.
+
+There appeared the Bukhara morning-gown, wide open over the broad chest
+with its chintz shirt, the pipe with its amber, the lackey with soft
+manners, tea, the odour of tobacco; a loud male voice was heard in
+Chevalier's apartments; there resounded the morning kisses, and the
+voices of daughter and son, and the Decembrist was as much at home as in
+Irkutsk, and as he would have been in New York or in Paris.
+
+No matter how much I should like to present to my readers the Decembrist
+hero above all foibles, I must confess, for truth's sake, that Peter
+Ivanovich took great pains in shaving and combing himself, and in
+looking at himself in the mirror. He was dissatisfied with the garments,
+which had been made in Siberia with little elegance, and two or three
+times he buttoned and unbuttoned his coat.
+
+But Natalya Nikolaevna entered the drawing-room, rustling with her black
+moire gown, with mittens and with ribbons in her cap, which, though not
+according to the latest fashion, were so arranged that, far from making
+her appear _ridicule_, they made her look _distinguee_. For this ladies
+have a special sixth sense and perspicacity, which cannot be compared to
+anything.
+
+Sonya, too, was so dressed that, although she was two years behind in
+fashion, she could not be reproached in any way. On her mother
+everything was dark and simple, and on the daughter bright and
+cheerful.
+
+Serezha had just awakened, and so they went by themselves to mass.
+Father and mother sat in the back seat, and their daughter was opposite
+them. Vasili climbed on the box, and the hired carriage took them to the
+Kremlin. When they got out of the carriage, the ladies adjusted their
+robes, and Peter Ivanovich took the arm of his Natalya Nikolaevna, and,
+throwing back his head, walked up to the door of the church. Many
+people, merchants, officers, and everybody else, could not make out what
+kind of people they were.
+
+Who was that old man with his old sunburnt, and still unblanched face,
+with the large, straight work wrinkles of a peculiar fold, different
+from the wrinkles acquired in the English club, with snow-white hair and
+beard, with a good, proud glance and energetic movements? Who was that
+tall lady with that determined gait, and those weary, dimmed, large,
+beautiful eyes? Who was that fresh, stately, strong young lady, neither
+fashionable, nor timid? Merchants? No, no merchants. Germans? No, no
+Germans. Gentlefolk? No, they are different,--they are distinguished
+people. Thus thought those who saw them in church, and for some reason
+more readily and cheerfully made way for them than for men in thick
+epaulets. Peter Ivanovich bore himself just as majestically as at the
+entrance, and prayed quietly, with reserve, and without forgetting
+himself. Natalya Nikolaevna glided down on her knees, took out a
+handkerchief, and wept much during the cherubical song. Sonya seemed to
+be making an effort over herself in order to pray. Devotion did not come
+to her, but she did not look around, and diligently made the signs of
+the cross.
+
+Serezha stayed at home, partly because he had overslept himself, partly
+because he did not like to stand through a mass, which made his legs
+faint,--a matter he was unable to understand, since it was a mere trifle
+for him to walk forty miles on snow-shoes, whereas standing through
+twelve pericopes was the greatest physical torture for him,--but chiefly
+because he felt that more than anything he needed a new suit of clothes.
+He dressed himself and went to Blacksmith Bridge. He had plenty of
+money. His father had made it a rule, ever since his son had passed his
+twenty-first year, to let him have as much money as he wished. It lay
+with him to leave his parents entirely without money.
+
+How sorry I am for the 250 roubles which he threw away in Kuntz's shop
+of ready-made clothes! Any one of the gentlemen who met Serezha would
+have been only too happy to show him around, and would have regarded it
+as a piece of happiness to go with him to get his clothes made. But, as
+it was, he was a stranger in the crowd, and, making his way in his cap
+along Blacksmith Bridge, he went to the end, without looking into the
+shops, opened the door, and came out from it in a cinnamon-coloured
+half-dress coat, which was tight (though at that time they wore wide
+coats), and in loose black trousers (though they wore tight trousers),
+and in a flowery atlas waistcoat, which not one of the gentlemen, who
+were in Chevalier's special room, would have allowed their lackeys to
+wear, and bought a number of other a things; on the other hand, Kuntz
+marvelled at the young man's slender waist, the like of which, as he
+explained to everybody, he had never seen. Serezha knew that he had a
+beautiful waist, and he was very much flattered by the praise of a
+stranger, such as Kuntz was.
+
+He came out with 250 roubles less, but was dressed badly, in fact so
+badly that his apparel two days later passed over into Vasili's
+possession and always remained a disagreeable memory for Serezha.
+
+At home he went down-stairs, seated himself in the large hall, looking
+now and then into the sanctum, and ordered a breakfast of such strange
+dishes that the servant in the kitchen had to laugh. Then he asked for
+a periodical, and pretended to be reading. When the servant, encouraged
+by the inexperience of the young man, addressed some questions to him,
+Serezha said, "Go to your place!" and blushed. But he said this so
+proudly that the servant obeyed. Mother, father, and daughter, upon
+returning home, found his clothes excellent.
+
+Do you remember that joyous sensation of childhood, when you were
+dressed up for your name-day and taken to mass, and when, upon returning
+with a holiday expression in your clothes, upon your countenance, and in
+your soul, you found toys and guests at home? You knew that on that day
+there would be no classes, that even the grown-ups celebrated on that
+day, and that that was a day of exceptions and pleasures for the whole
+house; you knew that you alone were the cause of that holiday, and that
+you would be forgiven, no matter what you might do, and you were
+surprised to see that the people in the streets did not celebrate along
+with your home folk, and the sounds were more audible, and the colours
+brighter,--in short, a name-day sensation. It was a sensation of that
+kind that Peter Ivanovich experienced on his return from church.
+
+Pakhtin's solicitude of the evening before did not pass in vain: instead
+of toys Peter Ivanovich found at home several visiting-cards of
+distinguished Muscovites, who, in the year '56, regarded it as their
+peremptory duty to show every attention possible to a famous exile, whom
+they would under no consideration have wished to see three years before.
+In the eyes of Chevalier, the porter, and the servants of the hotel, the
+appearance of carriages asking for Peter Ivanovich, on that one morning
+increased their respect and subserviency tenfold.
+
+All those were name-day toys for Peter Ivanovich. No matter how much
+tried in life, how clever a man may be, the expression of respect from
+people respected by a large number of men is always agreeable. Peter
+Ivanovich felt light of heart when Chevalier, bowing, offered to change
+his apartments and asked him to order anything he might need, and
+assured him that he regarded Peter Ivanovich's visit as a piece of luck,
+and when, examining the visiting-cards and throwing them into a vase, he
+called out the names of Count S----, Prince D----, and so forth.
+
+Natalya Nikolaevna said that she would not receive anybody and that she
+would go at once to the house of Marya Ivanovna, to which Peter
+Ivanovich consented, though he wished very much to talk to some of the
+visitors.
+
+Only one visitor managed to get through before the refusal to meet him.
+That was Pakhtin. If this man had been asked why he went away from the
+Prechistenka to go to Gazette Lane, he would have been unable to give
+any excuse, except that he was fond of everything new and remarkable,
+and so had come to see Peter Ivanovich, as something rare. One would
+think that, coming to see a stranger for no other reason than that, he
+would have been embarrassed. But the contrary was true. Peter Ivanovich
+and his son and Sonya Petrovna became embarrassed. Natalya Nikolaevna
+was too much of a _grande dame_ to become embarrassed for any reason
+whatever. The weary glance of her beautiful black eyes was calmly
+lowered on Pakhtin. But Pakhtin was refreshing, self-contented, and
+gaily amiable, as always. He was a friend of Marya Ivanovna's.
+
+"Ah!" said Natalya Nikolaevna.
+
+"Not a friend,--the difference of our years,--but she has always been
+kind to me."
+
+Pakhtin was an old admirer of Peter Ivanovich's,--he knew his
+companions. He hoped that he could be useful to the newcomers. He would
+have appeared the previous evening, but could not find the time, and
+begged to be excused, and sat down and talked for a long time.
+
+"Yes, I must tell you, I have found many changes in Russia since then,"
+Peter Ivanovich said, in reply to a question.
+
+The moment Peter Ivanovich began to speak, you ought to have seen with
+what respectful attention Pakhtin received every word that flew out of
+the mouth of the distinguished old man, and how after each sentence, at
+times after a word, Pakhtin with a nod, a smile, or a motion of his eyes
+gave him to understand that he had received and accepted the memorable
+sentence or word.
+
+The weary glance approved of that manoeuvre. Sergyey Petrovich seemed to
+be afraid lest his father's conversation should not be weighty enough,
+corresponding to the attention of the hearer. Sonya Petrovna, on the
+contrary, smiled that imperceptible self-satisfied smile which people
+smile who have caught a man's ridiculous side. It seemed to her that
+nothing was to be got from him, that he was a "shyushka," as she and her
+brother nicknamed a certain class of people.
+
+Peter Ivanovich declared that during his journey he had seen enormous
+changes, which gave him pleasure.
+
+"There is no comparison, the masses--the peasants--stand so much higher
+now, have so much greater consciousness of their dignity," he said, as
+though repeating some old phrases. "I must say that the masses have
+always interested me most. I am of the opinion that the strength of
+Russia does not lie in us, but in the masses," and so forth.
+
+Peter Ivanovich with characteristic zeal evolved his more or less
+original ideas in regard to many important subjects. We shall hear more
+of them in fuller form. Pakhtin was melting for joy, and fully agreed
+with him in everything.
+
+"You must by all means meet the Aksatovs. Will you permit me to
+introduce them to you, prince? You know they have permitted him to
+publish his periodical. To-morrow, they say, the first number will
+appear. I have also read his remarkable article on the consistency of
+the theory of science in the abstract. Remarkably interesting. Another
+article, the history of Servia in the eleventh century, of that famous
+general Karbovanets, is also very interesting. Altogether an enormous
+step."
+
+"Indeed," said Peter Ivanovich. But he was apparently not interested in
+all these bits of information; he did not even know the names and merits
+of all those men whom Pakhtin quoted as universally known.
+
+But Natalya Nikolaevna, without denying the necessity of knowing all
+these men and conditions, remarked in justification of her husband that
+Pierre received his periodicals very late. He read entirely too much.
+
+"Papa, shall we not go to aunty?" asked Sonya, upon coming in.
+
+"We shall, but we must have our breakfast. Won't you have anything?"
+
+Pakhtin naturally declined, but Peter Ivanovich, with the hospitality
+characteristic of every Russian and of him in particular, insisted that
+Pakhtin should eat and drink something. He himself emptied a wine-glass
+of vodka and a tumbler of Bordeaux. Pakhtin noticed that as he was
+filling his glass, Natalya accidentally turned away from it, and the son
+cast a peculiar glance on his father's hands.
+
+After the wine, Peter Ivanovich, in response to Pakhtin's questions
+about what his opinion was in respect to the new literature, the new
+tendency, the war, the peace (Pakhtin had a knack of uniting the most
+diversified subjects into one senseless but smooth conversation), in
+response to these questions Peter Ivanovich at once replied with one
+general _profession de foi_, and either under the influence of the wine,
+or of the subject of the conversation, he became so excited that tears
+appeared in his eyes, and Pakhtin, too, was in ecstasy, and himself
+became tearful, and without embarrassment expressed his conviction that
+Peter Ivanovich was now in advance of all the foremost men and should
+become the head of all the parties. Peter Ivanovich's eyes became
+inflamed,--he believed what Pakhtin was telling him,--and he would have
+continued talking for a long time, if Sonya Petrovna had not schemed to
+get Natalya Nikolaevna to put on her mantilla, and had not come herself
+to raise Peter Ivanovich from his seat. He poured out the rest of the
+wine into a glass, but Sonya Petrovna drank it.
+
+"What is this?"
+
+"I have not had any yet, papa, pardon."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"Well, let us go to Marya Ivanovna's. You will excuse us, Monsieur
+Pakhtin."
+
+And Peter Ivanovich left the room, carrying his head high. In the
+vestibule he met a general, who had come to call on his old
+acquaintance. They had not seen each other for thirty-five years. The
+general was toothless and bald.
+
+"How fresh you still are!" he said. "Evidently Siberia is better than
+St. Petersburg. These are your family,--introduce me to them! What a
+fine fellow your son is! So to dinner to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, yes, by all means."
+
+On the porch they met the famous Chikhaev, another old acquaintance.
+
+"How did you find out that I had arrived?"
+
+"It would be a shame for Moscow if it did not know it. It is a shame
+that you were not met at the barrier. Where do you dine? No doubt with
+your sister, Marya Ivanovna. Very well, I shall be there myself."
+
+Peter Ivanovich always had the aspect of a proud man for one who could
+not through that exterior make out the expression of unspeakable
+goodness and impressionableness; but just then even Marya Nikolaevna was
+delighted to see his unwonted dignity, and Sonya Petrovna smiled with
+her eyes, as she looked at him. They arrived at the house of Marya
+Ivanovna. Marya Ivanovna was Peter Ivanovich's godmother and ten years
+his senior. She was an old maid.
+
+Her history, why she did not get married, and how she had passed her
+youth, I will tell some time later.
+
+She had lived uninterruptedly for forty years in Moscow. She had neither
+much intelligence, nor great wealth, and she did not think much of
+connections,--on the contrary; and there was not a man who did not
+respect her. She was so convinced that everybody ought to respect her
+that everybody actually respected her. There were some young liberals
+from the university who did not recognize her power, but these gentlemen
+made a bold front only in her absence. She needed only to enter the
+drawing-room with her royal gait, to say something in her calm manner,
+to smile her kindly smile, and they were vanquished. Her society
+consisted of everybody. She looked upon all of Moscow as her home folk,
+and treated them as such. She had friends mostly among the young people
+and clever men, but women she did not like. She had also dependents,
+whom our literature has for some reason included with the Hungarian
+woman and with generals in one common class for contempt; but Marya
+Ivanovna considered it better for Skopin, who had been ruined in cards,
+and Madame Byeshev, whom her husband had driven away, to be living with
+her than in misery, and so she kept them.
+
+But the two great passions in Marya Ivanovna's present life were her two
+brothers. Peter Ivanovich was her idol. Prince Ivan was hateful to her.
+She had not known that Peter Ivanovich had arrived; she had attended
+mass, and was just finishing her coffee.
+
+At the table sat the vicar of Moscow, Madame Byeshev, and Skopin. Marya
+Ivanovna was telling them about young Count V----, the son of P----
+Z----, who had returned from Sevastopol, and with whom she was in love.
+(She had some passion all the time.) He was to dine with her on that
+day. The vicar got up and bowed himself out. Marya Ivanovna did not keep
+him,--she was a freethinker in this respect: she was pious, but had no
+use for monks and laughed at the ladies that ran after them, and boldly
+asserted that in her opinion monks were just such men as we sinful
+people, and that it was better to find salvation in the world than in a
+monastery.
+
+"Give the order not to receive anybody, my dear," she said, "I will
+write to Pierre. I cannot understand why he is not coming. No doubt,
+Natalya Nikolaevna is ill."
+
+Marya Ivanovna was of the opinion that Natalya Nikolaevna did not like
+her and was her enemy. She could not forgive her because it was not she,
+his sister, who had given up her property and had followed him to
+Siberia, but Natalya Nikolaevna, and because her brother had definitely
+declined her offer when she got ready to go with him. After thirty-five
+years she was beginning to believe that Natalya Nikolaevna was the best
+woman in the world and his guardian angel; but she was envious, and it
+seemed all the time to her that she was not a good woman.
+
+She got up, took a few steps in the parlour, and was on the point of
+entering the cabinet when the door opened, and Madame Byeshev's
+wrinkled, grayish face, expressing joyous terror, was thrust through the
+door.
+
+"Marya Ivanovna, prepare yourself," she said.
+
+"A letter?"
+
+"No, something better--"
+
+But before she had a chance to finish, a man's loud voice was heard in
+the antechamber:
+
+"Where is she? Go, Natasha."
+
+"He!" muttered Marya Ivanovna, walking with long, firm steps toward her
+brother. She met them all as though she had last seen them the day
+before.
+
+"When didst thou arrive? Where have you stopped? How have you come,--in
+a carriage?" Such were the questions which Marya Ivanovna put, walking
+with them to the drawing-room and not hearing the answers, and looking
+with large eyes, now upon one, and now upon another. Madame Byeshev was
+surprised at this calm, even indifference, and did not approve of it.
+They all smiled; the conversation died down, and Marya Ivanovna looked
+silently and seriously at her brother.
+
+"How are you?" asked Peter Ivanovich, taking her hand, and smiling.
+
+Peter Ivanovich said "you" to her, though she had said "thou." Marya
+Ivanovna once more looked at his gray beard, his bald head, his teeth,
+his wrinkles, his eyes, his sunburnt face, and recognized all that.
+
+"Here is my Sonya."
+
+But she did not look around.
+
+"What a stup--" her voice faltered, and she took hold of his bald head
+with her large white hands. "What a stupid you are," she had intended to
+say, "not to have prepared me," but her shoulders and breast began to
+tremble, her old face twitched, and she burst out into sobs, pressing to
+her breast his bald head, and repeating: "What a stupid you are not to
+have prepared me!"
+
+Peter Ivanovich no longer appeared as such a great man to himself, not
+so important as he had appeared on Chevalier's porch. His back was
+resting against a chair, but his head was in his sister's arms, his nose
+was pressed against her corset, his nose was tickled, his hair
+dishevelled, and there were tears in his eyes. But he felt happy.
+
+When this outburst of joyous tears was over, Marya Ivanovna understood
+what had happened and believed it, and began to examine them all. But
+several times during the course of the day, whenever she recalled what
+he had been then, and what she had been, and what they were now, and
+whenever the past misfortunes, and past joys and loves, vividly rose in
+her imagination, she was again seized by emotion, and got up and
+repeated: "What a stupid you are, Pierre, what a stupid not to have
+prepared me!"
+
+"Why did you not come straight to me? I should have found room for you,"
+said Marya Ivanovna. "At least, stay to dinner. You will not feel
+lonesome, Sergyey,--a young, brave Sevastopol soldier is dining here
+to-day. Do you not know Nikolay Mikhaylovich's son? He is a writer,--has
+written something nice. I have not read it, but they praise it, and he
+is a dear fellow,--I shall send for him. Chikhaev, too, wanted to come.
+He is a babbler,--I do not like him. Has he already called on you? Have
+you seen Nikita? That is all nonsense. What do you intend to do? How are
+you, how is your health, Natalya? What are you going to do with this
+young fellow, and with this beauty?"
+
+But the conversation somehow did not flow.
+
+Before dinner Natalya Nikolaevna went with the children to an old aunt;
+brother and sister were left alone, and he began to tell her of his
+plans.
+
+"Sonya is a young lady, she has to be taken out; consequently, we are
+going to live in Moscow," said Marya Ivanovna.
+
+"Never."
+
+"Serezha has to serve."
+
+"Never."
+
+"You are still as crazy as ever."
+
+But she was just as fond of the crazy man.
+
+"First we must stay here, then go to the country, and show everything to
+the children."
+
+"It is my rule not to interfere in family matters," said Marya
+Ivanovna, after calming down from her agitation, "and not to give
+advice. A young man has to serve, that I have always thought, and now
+more than ever. You do not know, Pierre, what these young men nowadays
+are. I know them all: there, Prince Dmitri's son is all ruined. Their
+own fault. I am not afraid of anybody, I am an old woman. It is not
+good." And she began to talk about the government. She was dissatisfied
+with it for the excessive liberty which was given to everything. "The
+one good thing they have done was to let you out. That is good."
+
+Pierre began to defend it, but Marya Ivanovna was not Pakhtin: they
+could come to no terms. She grew excited.
+
+"What business have you to defend it? You are just as senseless as ever,
+I see."
+
+Peter Ivanovich grew silent, with a smile which showed that he did not
+surrender, but that he did not wish to quarrel with Marya Ivanovna.
+
+"You are smiling. We know that. You do not wish to discuss with me, a
+woman," she, said, merrily and kindly, and casting a shrewd, intelligent
+glance at her brother, such as could not be expected from her old,
+large-featured face. "You could not convince me, my friend. I am ending
+my three score and ten. I have not been a fool all that time, and have
+seen a thing or two. I have read none of your books, and I never will.
+There is only nonsense in them!"
+
+"Well, how do you like my children? Serezha?" Peter Ivanovich said, with
+the same smile.
+
+"Wait, wait!" his sister replied, with a threatening gesture. "Don't
+switch me off on your children! We shall have time to talk about them.
+Here is what I wanted to tell you. You are a senseless man, as senseless
+as ever, I see it in your eye. Now they are going to carry you in their
+arms. Such is the fashion. You are all in vogue now. Yes, yes, I see by
+your eyes that you are as senseless as ever," she added, in response to
+his smile. "Keep away, I implore you in the name of Jesus Christ our
+Lord, from those modern liberals. God knows what they are up to. I know
+it will not end well. Our government is silent just now, but when it
+comes later to showing up the nails, you will recall my words. I am
+afraid lest you should get mixed up in things again. Give it up! It is
+all nonsense. You have children."
+
+"Evidently you do not know me, Marya Ivanovna," said her brother.
+
+"All right, all right, we shall see. Either I do not know you, or you do
+not know yourself. I just told you what I had on my heart, and if you
+will listen to me, well and good. Now we can talk about Serezha. What
+kind of a lad is he?" She wanted to say, "I do not like him very much,"
+but she only said: "He resembles his mother remarkably: they are like
+two drops of water. Sonya is you all over,--I like her very much, very
+much--so sweet and open. She is a dear. Where is she, Sonya? Yes, I
+forgot."
+
+"How shall I tell you? Sonya will make a good wife and a good mother,
+but my Serezha is clever, very clever,--nobody will take that from him.
+He studied well,--a little lazy. He is very fond of the natural
+sciences. We have been fortunate: we had an excellent, excellent
+teacher. He wants to enter the university,--to attend lectures on the
+natural sciences, chemistry--"
+
+Marya Ivanovna scarcely listened when her brother began to speak of the
+natural sciences. She seemed to feel sad, especially when he mentioned
+chemistry. She heaved a deep sigh and replied directly to that train of
+thoughts which the natural sciences evoked in her.
+
+"If you knew how sorry I am for them, Pierre," she said, with sincere,
+calm, humble sadness. "So sorry, so sorry. A whole life before them. Oh,
+how much they will suffer yet!"
+
+"Well, we must hope that they will be more fortunate than we."
+
+"God grant it, God grant it! It is hard to live, Pierre! Take this one
+advice from me, my dear: don't philosophize! What a stupid you are,
+Pierre, oh, what a stupid! But I must attend to matters. I have invited
+a lot of people, but how am I going to feed them?" She flared up, turned
+away, and rang the bell.
+
+"Call Taras!"
+
+"Is the old man still with you?"
+
+"Yes; why, he is a boy in comparison with me."
+
+Taras was angry and clean, but he undertook to get everything done.
+
+Soon Natalya Nikolaevna and Sonya, agleam with cold and happiness, and
+rustling in their dresses, entered the room; Serezha was still out,
+attending to some purchases.
+
+"Let me get a good look at her!"
+
+Marya Ivanovna took her face. Natalya Nikolaevna began to tell
+something.
+
+
+THE DECEMBRISTS
+
+SECOND FRAGMENT
+
+(Variant of the First Chapter)
+
+The litigation "about the seizure in the Government of Penza, County of
+Krasnoslobodsk, by the landed proprietor and ex-lieutenant of the
+Guards, Ivan Apykhtin, of four thousand desyatinas of land from the
+neighbouring Crown peasants of the village of Izlegoshcha," was through
+the solicitude of the peasants' representative, Ivan Mironov, decided in
+the court of the first instance--the County Court--in favour of the
+peasants, and the enormous parcel of land, partly in forest, and partly
+in ploughings which had been broken by Apykhtin's serfs, in the year
+1815 returned into the possession of the peasants, and they in the year
+1816 sowed in this land and harvested.
+
+The winning of this irregular case by the peasants surprised all the
+neighbours and even the peasants themselves. This success of theirs
+could be explained only on the supposition that Ivan Petrovich Apykhtin,
+a very meek, peaceful man, who was opposed to litigations and was
+convinced of the righteousness of this matter, had taken no measures
+against the action of the peasants. On the other hand, Ivan Mironov, the
+peasants' representative, a dry, hook-nosed, literate peasant, who had
+been a township elder and had acted in the capacity of collector of
+taxes, had collected fifty kopeks from each peasant, which money he
+cleverly applied in the distribution of presents, and had very shrewdly
+conducted the whole affair.
+
+Immediately after the decision handed down by the County Court,
+Apykhtin, seeing the danger, gave a power of attorney to the shrewd
+manumitted serf, Ilya Mitrofanov, who appealed to the higher court
+against the decision of the County Court. Ilya Mitrofanov managed the
+affair so shrewdly that, in spite of all the cunning of the peasants'
+representative, Ivan Mironov, in spite of the considerable presents
+distributed by him to the members of the higher court, the case was
+retried in the Government Court in favour of the proprietor, and the
+land was to go back to him from the peasants, of which fact their
+representative was duly informed.
+
+The representative, Ivan Mironov, told the peasants at the meeting of
+the Commune that the gentleman in the Government capital had pulled the
+proprietor's leg and had "mixed up" the whole business, so that they
+wanted to take the land back again, but that the proprietor would not be
+successful, because he had a petition all written up to be sent to the
+Senate, and that then the land would be for ever confirmed to the
+peasants; all they had to do was to collect a rouble from each soul. The
+peasants decided to collect the money and again to entrust the whole
+matter to Ivan Mironov. When Mironov had all the money in his hands, he
+went to St. Petersburg.
+
+When, in the year 1817, during Passion-week,--it fell late that
+year,--the time came to plough the ground, the Izlegoshcha peasants
+began to discuss at a meeting whether they ought to plough the land
+under litigation during that year, or not; and, although Apykhtin's
+clerk had come to see them during Lent with the order that they should
+not plough the land and should come to some agreement with him in regard
+to the rye already planted in what had been the doubtful, and now was
+Apykhtin's land, the peasants, for the very reason that the winter crop
+had been sowed on the debatable land, and because Apykhtin, in his
+desire to avoid being unfair to them, wished to arbitrate the matter
+with them, decided to plough the land under litigation and to take
+possession of it before touching any other fields.
+
+On the very day when the peasants went out to plough, which was Maundy
+Thursday, Ivan Petrovich Apykhtin, who had been preparing himself for
+communion during the Passion-week, went to communion, and early in the
+morning drove to the church in the village of Izlegoshcha, of which he
+was a parishioner, and there he, without knowing anything about the
+matter, amicably chatted with the church elder. Ivan Petrovich had been
+to confession the night before, and had attended vigils at home; in the
+morning he had himself read the Rules, and at eight o'clock had left the
+house. They waited for him with the mass. As he stood at the altar,
+where he usually stood, Ivan Petrovich rather reflected than prayed,
+which made him dissatisfied with himself.
+
+Like many people of that time, and, so far as that goes, of all times,
+he was not quite clear in matters of religion. He was past fifty years
+of age; he never omitted carrying out any rite, attended church, and
+went to communion once a year; in talking to his only daughter, he
+instructed her in the articles of faith; but, if he had been asked
+whether he really believed, he would not have known what to reply.
+
+On that day more than on any other, he felt meek of spirit, and,
+standing at the altar, he, instead of praying, thought of how strangely
+everything was constructed in the world: there he was, almost an old
+man, taking the communion for perhaps the fortieth time in his life, and
+he knew that everybody, all his home folk and all the people in the
+church, looked at him as a model and took him for an example, and he
+felt himself obliged to act as an example in matters of religion,
+whereas he himself did not know anything, and soon, very soon, he would
+die, and even if he were killed he could not tell whether that in which
+he was showing an example to others was true. And it also seemed strange
+to him how every one considered--that he saw--old people to be firm and
+to know what was necessary and what not (thus he always thought about
+old men), and there he was old and positively failed to know, and was
+just as frivolous as he had been twenty years before; the only
+difference was that formerly he did not conceal it, while now he did.
+Just as in his childhood it had occurred to him during the service that
+he might crow like a cock, even so now all kinds of foolish things
+passed through his mind, and he, the old man, reverentially bent his
+head, touching the flagstones of the church with the old knuckles of his
+hands, and Father Vasili was evidently timid in celebrating mass in his
+presence, and incited to zeal by his zeal.
+
+"If they only knew what foolish things are running through my head! But
+that is a sin, a sin; I must pray," he said to himself, when the service
+commenced; and, trying to catch the meaning of the responses, he began
+to pray. Indeed, he soon transferred himself in feeling to the prayer
+and thought of his sins and of everything which he regretted.
+
+A respectable-looking old man, bald-headed, with thick gray hair,
+dressed in a fur coat with a new white patch on one-half of his back,
+stepping evenly with his out-toeing bast shoes, went up to the altar,
+bowed low to him, tossed his hair, and went beyond the altar to place
+some tapers. This was the church elder, Ivan Fedotov, one of the best
+peasants of the village of Izlegoshcha. Ivan Petrovich knew him. The
+sight of this stern, firm face led Ivan Petrovich to a new train of
+thoughts. He was one of those peasants who wanted to take the land away
+from him, and one of the best and richest married farmers, who needed
+the land, who could manage it, and had the means to work it. His stern
+aspect, ceremonious bow, and measured gait, and the exactness of his
+wearing-apparel,--the leg-rags fitted his legs like stockings and the
+laces crossed each other symmetrically on either leg,--all his
+appearance seemed to express rebuke and enmity on account of the land.
+
+"I have asked forgiveness of my wife, of Manya" (his daughter), "of the
+nurse, of my valet, Volodya, but it is his forgiveness that I ought to
+ask for, and I ought to forgive him," thought Ivan Petrovich, and he
+decided that after matins he would ask Ivan Fedotov to forgive him.
+
+And so he did.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were but few people in church. The country people were in the
+habit of going to communion in the first and in the fourth week. Now
+there were only forty men and women present, who had not had time to go
+to communion before, a few old peasant women, the church servants, and
+the manorial people of the Apykhtins and his rich neighbours, the
+Chernyshevs. There was also there an old woman, a relative of the
+Chernyshevs, who was living with them, and a deacon's widow, whose son
+the Chernyshevs, in the goodness of their hearts, had educated and made
+a man of, and who now was serving as an official in the Senate. Between
+the matins and the mass there were even fewer people left in the church.
+There were left two beggar women, who were sitting in the corner and
+conversing with each other and looking at Ivan Petrovich with the
+evident desire to congratulate him and talk with him, and two
+lackeys,--one his own, in livery, and the other, Chernyshev's, who had
+come with the old woman. These two were also whispering in an animated
+manner to each other, just as Ivan Petrovich came out from the
+altar-place; when they saw him, they grew silent. There was also a
+woman in a tall head-gear with a pearl face-ornament and in a white fur
+coat, with which she covered up a sick child, who was crying, and whom
+she was attempting to quiet; and another, a stooping old woman, also in
+a head-gear, but with a woollen face-ornament and a white kerchief,
+which was tied in the fashion of old women, and in a gray gathered coat
+with an iris-design on the back, who, kneeling in the middle of the
+church, and turning to an old image between two latticed windows, over
+which hung a new scarf with red edges, was praying so fervently,
+solemnly, and impassionately that one could not fail directing one's
+attention to her.
+
+Before reaching the elder, who, standing at the little safe, was
+kneading over the remnants of some tapers into one piece of wax, Ivan
+Petrovich stopped to take a look at the praying woman. The old woman was
+praying well. She knelt as straight as it was possible to kneel in front
+of the image; all the members of her body were mathematically
+symmetrical; her feet behind her pressed with the tips of her bast shoes
+at the same angle against the stone floor; her body was bent back, to
+the extent to which her stooping shoulders permitted her to do so; her
+hands were quite regularly placed below her abdomen; her head was thrown
+back, and her face, with an expression of bashful commiseration,
+wrinkled, and with a dim glance, was turned straight toward the image
+with the scarf. Having remained in an immobile position for a minute or
+less,--evidently a definite space of time,--she heaved a deep sigh and,
+taking her right hand away, swung it above her head-gear, touched the
+crown of her head with folded fingers, and made ample crosses by
+carrying her hand down again to her abdomen and to her shoulders; then
+she swayed back and dropped her head on her hands, which were placed
+evenly on the floor, and again raised herself, and repeated the same.
+
+"Now she is praying," Ivan Petrovich thought, as he looked at her. "She
+does it differently from us sinners: this is faith, though I know that
+she is praying to her own image, or to her scarf, or to her adornment on
+the image, just like the rest of them. All right. What of it?" he said
+to himself, "every person has his own faith: she prays to her image, and
+I consider it necessary to beg the peasant's forgiveness."
+
+And he walked over to the elder, instinctively scrutinizing the church
+in order to see who was going to see his deed, which both pleased and
+shamed him. It was disagreeable to him, because the old beggar women
+would see it, and more disagreeable still, because Mishka, his lackey,
+would see it. In the presence of Mishka,--he knew how wide-awake and
+shrewd he was,--he felt that he should not have the strength to walk up
+to Ivan Fedotov. He beckoned to Mishka to come up to him.
+
+"What is it you wish?"
+
+"Go, my dear, and bring me the rug from the carriage, for it is too damp
+here for my feet."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+When Mishka went away, Ivan Petrovich at once went up to Ivan Fedotov.
+Ivan Fedotov was disconcerted, like a guilty person, at the approach of
+the gentleman. Timidity and hasty motions formed a queer contradiction
+to his austere face and curly steel-gray hair and beard.
+
+"Do you wish a dime taper?" he said, raising the desk, and now and then
+casting his large, beautiful eyes upon the master.
+
+"No, I do not want a taper, Ivan. I ask you to forgive me for Christ's
+sake, if I have in any way offended you. Forgive me, for Christ's sake,"
+Ivan Petrovich repeated, with a low bow.
+
+Ivan Fedotov completely lost his composure and began to move restlessly,
+but when he comprehended it all, he smiled a gentle smile:
+
+"God forgives," he said. "It seems to me, I have received no offence
+from you. God will forgive you,--I have not been offended by you," he
+hastened to repeat.
+
+"Still--"
+
+"God will forgive you, Ivan Petrovich. So you want two dime tapers?"
+
+"Yes, two."
+
+"He is an angel, truly, an angel. He begs even a base peasant to forgive
+him. O Lord, true angels," muttered the deacon's widow, in an old black
+capote and black kerchief. "Truly, we ought to understand that."
+
+"Ah, Paramonovna!" Ivan Petrovich turned to her. "Are you getting ready
+for communion, too? You, too, must forgive me, for Christ's sake."
+
+"God will forgive you, sir, angel, merciful benefactor! Let me kiss your
+hand!"
+
+"That will do, that will do, you know I do not like that," said Ivan
+Petrovich, smiling, and going away from the altar.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The mass, as always, did not take long to celebrate in the parish of
+Izlegoshcha, the more so since there were few communicants. Just as,
+after the Lord's Prayer, the regal doors were closed, Ivan Petrovich
+looked through the north door, to call Mishka to take off his fur coat.
+When the priest saw that motion, he angrily beckoned to the deacon, and
+the deacon almost ran out to call in the lackey. Ivan Petrovich was in a
+pretty good humour, but this subserviency and expression of respect from
+the priest who was celebrating mass again soured him entirely; his thin,
+bent, shaven lips were bent still more and his kindly eyes were lighted
+up by sarcasm.
+
+"He acts as though I were his general," he thought, and immediately he
+thought of the words of the German tutor, whom he had once taken to the
+altar to attend a Russian divine service, and who had made him laugh
+and had angered his wife, when he said, "_Der Pop war ganz boese, dass
+ich ihm Alles nachgesehen hatte_." He also recalled the answer of the
+young Turk that there was no God, because he had eaten up the last piece
+of him. "And here I am going to communion," he thought, and, frowning,
+he made a low obeisance.
+
+He took off his bear-fur coat, and in his blue dress coat with bright
+buttons and in his tall white neckerchief and waistcoat, and tightly
+fitting trousers, and heelless, sharp-toed boots, went with his soft,
+modest, and light gait to make his obeisances to the large images. Here
+he again met that same obsequiousness from the other communicants, who
+gave up their places to him.
+
+"They act as though they said, '_Apres vous, s'il en reste_,'" he
+thought, awkwardly making side obeisances; this awkwardness was due to
+the fact that he was trying to find that mean in which there would be
+neither disrespect, nor hypocrisy. Finally the doors were opened. He
+said the prayer after the priest, repeating the words, "As a robber;"
+his neckerchief was covered with the chalice cloth, and he received his
+communion and the lukewarm water in the ancient dipper, having put new
+silver twenty-kopek pieces on ancient plates; after hearing the last
+prayers, he kissed the cross and, putting on his fur coat left the
+church, receiving congratulations and experiencing the pleasant
+sensation of having everything over. As he left the church, he again
+fell in with Ivan Fedotov.
+
+"Thank you, thank you!" he replied to his congratulations. "Well, are
+you going to plough soon?"
+
+"The boys have gone out, the boys have," replied Ivan Fedotov, more
+timidly even than before. He supposed that Ivan Petrovich knew whither
+the Izlegoshcha peasants had gone out to plough. "It is damp, though.
+Damp it is. It is early yet, early it is."
+
+Ivan Petrovich went up to his parents' monument, bowed to it, and went
+back to be helped into his six-in-hand with an outrider.
+
+"Well, thank God," he said to himself, swaying on the soft, round
+springs and looking at the vernal sky with the scattering clouds, at the
+bared earth and the white spots of unmelted snow, and at the tightly
+braided tail of a side horse, and inhaling the fresh spring air, which
+was particularly pleasant after the air in the church.
+
+"Thank God that I have been through the communion, and thank God that I
+now may take a pinch of snuff." And he took out his snuff-box and for a
+long time held the pinch between his fingers, smiling and, without
+letting the pinch out of the hand, raising his cap in response to the
+low bows of the people on the way, especially of the women, who were
+washing the tables and chairs in front of their houses, just as the
+carriage at a fast trot of the large horses of the six-in-hand plashed
+and clattered through the mud of the street of the village of
+Izlegoshcha.
+
+Ivan Petrovich held the pinch of snuff, anticipating the pleasure of
+snuffing, not only down the whole village, but even until they got out
+of a bad place at the foot of a hill, toward which the coachman
+descended not without anxiety: he held up the reins, seated himself more
+firmly, and shouted to the outrider to go over the ice. When they went
+around the bridge, over the bed of the river, and scrambled out of the
+breaking ice and mud, Ivan Petrovich, looking at two plovers that rose
+from the hollow, took the snuff and, feeling chilly, put on his glove,
+wrapped himself in his fur coat, plunged his chin into the high
+neckerchief, and said to himself, almost aloud, "Glorious!" which he was
+in the habit of saying secretly to himself whenever he felt well.
+
+In the night snow had fallen, and when Ivan Petrovich had driven to
+church the snow had not yet disappeared, but was soft; now, though there
+was no sun, it was all melted from the moisture, and on the highway, on
+which he had to travel for three versts before turning into Chirakovo,
+the snow was white only in last year's grass, which grew in parallel
+lines along the ruts; but on the black road the horses splashed through
+the viscous mud. The good, well-fed, large horses of his own stud had no
+difficulty in pulling the carriage, and it just rolled over the grass,
+where it left black marks, and over the mud, without being at all
+detained. Ivan Petrovich was having pleasant reveries; he was thinking
+of his home, his wife, and his daughter.
+
+"Manya will meet me at the porch, and with delight. She will see such
+holiness in me! She is a strange, sweet girl, but she takes everything
+too much to heart. The role of importance and of knowing everything that
+is going on in this world, which I must play before her, is getting to
+be too serious and ridiculous. If she knew that I am afraid of her!" he
+thought. "Well, Kato," (his wife) "will no doubt be in good humour
+to-day, she will purposely be in good humour, and we shall have a fine
+day. It will not be as it was last week on account of the Proshkin
+women. What a remarkable creature! How afraid of her I am! What is to be
+done? She does not like it herself." And he recalled a famous anecdote
+about a calf. A proprietor, having quarrelled with his wife, was sitting
+at a window, when he saw a frisky calf: "I should like to get you
+married!" he said. And Ivan Petrovich smiled again, according to his
+custom solving every difficulty and every perplexity by a joke, which
+generally was directed against himself.
+
+At the third verst, near a chapel, the outrider bore to the left, into a
+cross-road, and the coachman shouted to him for having turned in so
+abruptly that the centre horses were struck by the shaft; and the
+carriage almost glided all the way down-hill. Before reaching the house,
+the outrider looked back at the coachman and pointed to something; the
+coachman looked back at the lackey, and indicated something to him. And
+all of them looked in the same direction.
+
+"What are you looking at?" asked Ivan Petrovich.
+
+"Geese," said Mishka.
+
+"Where?"
+
+Though he strained his vision, he could not see them.
+
+"There they are. There is the forest, and there is the cloud, so be
+pleased to look between the two."
+
+Ivan Petrovich could not see anything.
+
+"It is time for them. Why, it is less than a week to Annunciation."
+
+"That's so."
+
+"Well, go on!"
+
+Near a puddle, Mishka jumped down from the footboard and tested the
+road, again climbed up, and the carriage safely drove on the pond dam in
+the garden, ascended the avenue, drove past the cellar and the laundry,
+from which water was falling, and nimbly rolled up and stopped at the
+porch. The Chernyshev calash had just left the yard. From the house at
+once ran the servants: gloomy old Danilych with the side whiskers,
+Nikolay, Mishka's brother, and the boy Pavlushka; and after them came a
+girl with large black eyes and red arms, which were bared above the
+elbow, and with just such a bared neck.
+
+"Marya Ivanovna, Marya Ivanovna! Where are you going? Your mother will
+be worried. You will have time," was heard the voice of fat Katerina
+behind her.
+
+But the girl paid no attention to her; just as her father had expected
+her to do, she took hold of his arm and looked at him with a strange
+glance.
+
+"Well, papa, have you been to communion?" she asked, as though in dread.
+
+"Yes. You look as though you were afraid that I am such a sinner that I
+could not receive the communion."
+
+The girl was apparently offended by her father's jest at such a solemn
+moment. She heaved a sigh and, following him, held his hand, which she
+kissed.
+
+"Who is here?"
+
+"Young Chernyshev. He is in the drawing-room."
+
+"Is mamma up? How is she?"
+
+"Mamma feels better to-day. She is sitting down-stairs."
+
+In the passage room Ivan Petrovich was met by nurse Evprakseya, clerk
+Andrey Ivanovich, and a surveyor, who was living at the house, in order
+to lay out some land. All of them congratulated Ivan Petrovich. In the
+drawing-room sat Luiza Karlovna Trugoni, for ten years a friend of the
+house, an emigrant governess, and a young man of sixteen years,
+Chernyshev, with his French tutor.
+
+
+THE DECEMBRISTS
+
+THIRD FRAGMENT
+
+(Variant of the First Chapter)
+
+On the 2d of August, 1817, the sixth department of the Directing Senate
+handed down a decision in the debatable land case between the economic
+peasants of the village of Izlegoshcha and Chernyshev, which was in
+favour of the peasants and against Chernyshev. This decision was an
+unexpected and important calamitous event for Chernyshev. The case had
+lasted five years. It had been begun by the attorney of the rich village
+of Izlegoshcha with its three thousand inhabitants, and was won by the
+peasants in the County Court; but when, with the advice of lawyer Ilya
+Mitrofanov, a manorial servant bought of Prince Saltykov, Prince
+Chernyshev carried the case to the Government, he won it and besides,
+the Izlegoshcha peasants were punished by having six of them, who had
+insulted the surveyor, put in jail.
+
+After that, Prince Chernyshev, with his good-natured and merry
+carelessness, entirely acquiesced, the more so since he knew full well
+that he had not "appropriated" any land of the peasants, as was said in
+the petition of the peasants. If the land was "appropriated," his father
+had done it, and since then more than forty years had passed. He knew
+that the peasants of the village of Izlegoshcha were getting along well
+without that land, had no need of it, and lived on terms of friendship
+with him, and was unable to understand why they had become so infuriated
+against him. He knew that he never offended and never wished to offend
+any one, that he lived in peace with everybody, and that he never wished
+to do otherwise, and so could not believe that any one should think of
+offending him. He hated litigations, and so did not defend his case in
+the Senate, in spite of the advice and earnest solicitations of his
+lawyer, Ilya Mitrofanov; by allowing the time for the appeal to lapse,
+he lost the case in the Senate, and lost it in such a way that he was
+confronted with complete ruin. By the decree of the Senate he not only
+was to be deprived of five thousand desyatinas of land, but also, for
+the illegal tenure of that land, was to be mulcted to the amount of
+107,000 roubles in favour of the peasants.
+
+Prince Chernyshev had eight thousand souls, but all the estates were
+mortgaged and he had large debts, so that this decree of the Senate
+ruined him with his whole large family. He had a son and five daughters.
+He thought of his case when it was too late to attend to it in the
+Senate. According to Ilya Mitrofanov's words there was but one
+salvation, and that was, to petition the sovereign and to transfer the
+case to the Imperial Council. To obtain this it was necessary in person
+to approach one of the ministers or a member of the Council, or, better
+still, the emperor himself. Taking all that into consideration, Prince
+Grigori Ivanovich in the fall of the year 1817 with his whole family
+left his beloved estate of Studenets, where he had lived so long without
+leaving it, and went to Moscow. He started for Moscow, and not for St.
+Petersburg, because in the fall of that year the emperor with his whole
+court, with all the highest dignitaries, and with part of the Guards, in
+which the son of Grigori Ivanovich was serving, was to arrive in Moscow
+to lay the corner-stone of the Church of the Saviour in commemoration
+of the liberation of Russia from the French invasion.
+
+In August, immediately after receiving the terrible news of the decree
+of the Senate, Prince Grigori Ivanovich got ready to go to Moscow. At
+first the majordomo was sent away to fix the prince's own house on the
+Arbat; then was sent out a caravan with furniture, servants, horses,
+carriages, and provisions. In September the prince with his whole family
+travelled in seven carriages, drawn by his own horses, and, after
+arriving in Moscow, settled in his house. Relatives, friends, visitors
+from the province and from St. Petersburg began to assemble in Moscow in
+the month of September. The Moscow life, with its entertainments, the
+arrival of his son, the debuts of his daughters, and the success of his
+eldest daughter, Aleksandra, the only blonde among all the brunettes of
+the Chernyshevs, so much occupied and diverted the prince's attention
+that, in spite of the fact that here in Moscow he was spending
+everything which would be left to him after paying all he owed, he
+forgot his affair and was annoyed and tired whenever Ilya Mitrofanov
+talked of it, and undertook nothing for the success of his case.
+
+Ivan Mironovich Baushkin, the chief attorney of the peasants, who had
+conducted the case against the prince with so much zeal in the Senate,
+who knew all the approaches to the secretaries and departmental chiefs,
+and who had so skilfully distributed the ten thousand roubles, collected
+from the peasants, in the shape of presents, now himself brought his
+activity to an end and returned to the village, where, with the money
+collected for him as a reward and with what was left of the presents, he
+bought himself a grove from a neighbouring proprietor and built there a
+hut and an office. The case was finished in the court of the highest
+instance, and everything would now proceed of its own accord.
+
+The only ones of those concerned in the case who could not forget it
+were the six peasants who were passing their seventh month in jail, and
+their families that were left without their heads. But nothing could be
+done in the matter. They were imprisoned in Krasnoslobodsk, and their
+families tried to get along as well as they could. Nobody could be
+invoked in the case. Ivan Mironovich himself said that he could not take
+it up, because it was not a communal, nor a civil, but a criminal case.
+The peasants were in prison, and nobody paid any attention to them; but
+one family, that of Mikhail Gerasimovich, particularly his wife
+Tikhonovna, could not get used to the idea that the precious old man,
+Gerasimovich, was sitting in prison with a shaven head. Tikhonovna could
+not rest quiet. She begged Mironovich to take the case, but he declined
+it. Then she decided to go herself to pray to God for the old man. She
+had made a vow the year before that she would go on a pilgrimage to a
+saint, and had delayed it for another year only because she had had no
+time and did not wish to leave the house to the young daughters-in-law.
+Now that the misfortune had happened and Gerasimovich was put into jail,
+she recalled her vow; she turned her back on her house and, together
+with the deacon's wife of the same village, got ready to go on the
+pilgrimage.
+
+First they went to the county seat to see her old man in the prison and
+to take him some shirts; from there they went through the capital of the
+Government to Moscow. On her way Tikhonovna told the deacon's wife of
+her sorrow, and the latter advised her to petition the emperor who, it
+was said, was to be in Penza, telling her of various cases of pardon
+granted by him.
+
+When the pilgrims arrived in Penza, they heard that there was there, not
+the emperor, but his brother Grand Duke Nikolay Pavlovich. When he came
+out of the cathedral, Tikhonovna pushed herself forward, dropped down on
+her knees, and began to beg for her husband. The grand duke was
+surprised, the governor was angry, and the old woman was taken to the
+lockup. The next day she was let out and she proceeded to Troitsa. In
+Troitsa she went to communion and confessed to Father Paisi. At the
+confession she told him of her sorrow, and repented having petitioned
+the brother of the Tsar. Father Paisi told her that there was no sin in
+that and that there was no sin in petitioning the Tsar even in a just
+case, and dismissed her. In Khotkov she called on the blessed abbess,
+and she ordered her to petition the Tsar himself.
+
+On their way back, Tikhonovna and the deacon's wife stopped in Moscow to
+see the saints. Here she heard that the Tsar was there, and she thought
+that it was evidently God's command that she should petition the Tsar.
+All that had to be done was to write the petition.
+
+In Moscow the pilgrims stopped in a hostelry. They begged permission to
+stay there overnight; they were allowed to do so. After supper the
+deacon's wife lay down on the oven, and Tikhonovna, placing her wallet
+under her head, lay down on a bench and fell asleep. In the morning,
+before daybreak, Tikhonovna got up, woke the deacon's wife, and went
+out. The innkeeper spoke to her just as she walked into the yard.
+
+"You are up early, granny," he said.
+
+"Before we get there, it will be time for matins," Tikhonovna replied.
+
+"God be with you, granny!"
+
+"Christ save you!" said Tikhonovna, and the pilgrims went to the
+Kremlin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After standing through the matins and the mass, and having kissed the
+relics, the old women, with difficulty making their way, arrived at the
+house of the Chernyshevs. The deacon's wife said that the old lady had
+given her an urgent invitation to stop at her house, and had ordered
+that all pilgrims should be received.
+
+"There we shall find a man who will write the petition," said the
+deacon's wife, and the pilgrims started to blunder through the streets
+and ask their way. The deacon's wife had been there before, but had
+forgotten where it was. Two or three times they were almost crushed, and
+people shouted at them and scolded them. Once a policeman took the
+deacon's wife by the shoulder and, giving her a push, forbade her to
+walk through the street on which they were, and directed them through a
+forest of lanes. Tikhonovna did not know that they were driven off the
+Vozdvizhenka for the very reason that through that street was to drive
+the Tsar, of whom she was thinking all the time, and to whom she
+intended to give the petition.
+
+The deacon's wife walked, as always, heavily and complainingly, while
+Tikhonovna, as usual, walked lightly and briskly, with the gait of a
+young woman. At the gate the pilgrims stopped. The deacon's wife did not
+recognize the house: there was there a new hut which she had not seen
+before; but on scanning the well with the pumps in the corner of the
+yard, she recognized it all. The dogs began to bark and made for the
+women with the staffs.
+
+"Don't mind them, aunties, they will not touch you. Away there, accursed
+ones!" the janitor shouted to the dogs, raising the broom on them. "They
+are themselves from the country, and just see them bark at country
+people! Come this way! You will stick in the mud,--God has not given any
+frost yet."
+
+But the deacon's wife, frightened by the dogs, and muttering in a
+whining tone, sat down on a bench near the gate and asked the janitor to
+take her by. Tikhonovna made her customary bow to the janitor and,
+leaning on her crutch and spreading her feet, which were tightly
+covered with leg-rags, stopped near her, looking as always calmly in
+front of her and waiting for the janitor to come up to them.
+
+"Whom do you want?" the janitor asked.
+
+"Do you not recognize us, dear man? Is not your name Egor?" asked the
+deacon's wife. "We are coming back from the saints, and so are calling
+on her Serenity."
+
+"You are from Izlegoshcha," said the janitor. "You are the wife of the
+old deacon,--of course. All right, all right. Go to the house! Everybody
+is received here,--nobody is refused. And who is this one?"
+
+He pointed to Tikhonovna.
+
+"From Izlegoshcha, Gerasimovich's wife,--used to be Fadyeev's,--I
+suppose you know her?" said Tikhonovna. "I myself am from Izlegoshcha."
+
+"Of course! They say your husband has been put into jail."
+
+Tikhonovna made no reply; she only sighed and with a strong motion threw
+her wallet and fur coat over her shoulder.
+
+The deacon's wife asked whether the old lady was at home and, hearing
+that she was, asked him to announce them to her. Then she asked about
+her son, who was an official and, thanks to the prince's influence, was
+serving in St. Petersburg. The janitor could not give her any
+information about him and directed them over a walk, which crossed the
+yard, to the servants' house. The old women went into the house, which
+was full of people,--women, children, both old and young,--all of them
+manorial servants, and prayed turning to the front corner. The deacon's
+wife was at once recognized by the laundress and the old lady's maid,
+and she was at once surrounded and overwhelmed with questions: they took
+off her wallet, placed her at the table, and offered her something to
+eat. In the meantime Tikhonovna, having made the sign of the cross to
+the images and saluted everybody, was standing at the door, waiting to
+be invited in. At the very door, in front of the first window, sat an
+old man, making boots.
+
+"Sit down, granny! Don't stand up. Sit down here, and take off your
+wallet," he said.
+
+"There is not enough room to turn around as it is. Take her to the
+'black' room," said a woman.
+
+"This comes straight from Madame Chalme," said a young lackey, pointing
+to the iris design on Tikhonovna's peasant coat, "and the pretty
+stockings and shoes."
+
+He pointed to her leg-rags and bast shoes, which were new, as she had
+specially put them on for Moscow.
+
+"Parasha, you ought to have such."
+
+"If you are to go to the 'black' room, all right; I will take you
+there." And the old man stuck in his awl and got up; but, on seeing a
+little girl, he called her to take the old woman to the black room.
+
+Tikhonovna not only paid no attention to what was being said in her
+presence and of her, but did not even look or listen. From the time that
+she entered the house, she was permeated with the feeling of the
+necessity of working for God and with the other feeling, which had
+entered her soul, she did not know when, of the necessity of handing the
+petition. Leaving the clean servant room, she walked over to the
+deacon's wife and, bowing, said to her:
+
+"Mother Paramonovna, for Christ's sake do not forget about my affair!
+See whether you can't find a man."
+
+"What does that woman need?"
+
+"She has suffered insult, and people have advised her to hand a petition
+to the Tsar."
+
+"Take her straight to the Tsar!" said the jesting lackey.
+
+"Oh, you fool, you rough fool," said the old shoemaker. "I will teach
+you a lesson with this last, then you will know how to grin at old
+people."
+
+The lackey began to scold, but the old man, paying no attention to him,
+took Tikhonovna to the black room.
+
+Tikhonovna was glad that she was sent out of the baking-room, and was
+taken to the black, the coachmen's room. In the baking-room everything
+looked clean, and the people were all clean, and Tikhonovna did not feel
+at ease there. The black coachmen's room was more like the inside of a
+peasant house, and Tikhonovna was more at home there. The black hut was
+a dark pine building, twenty by twenty feet, with a large oven, bed
+places, and hanging-beds, and a newly paved, dirt-covered floor. When
+Tikhonovna entered the room, there were there the cook, a white,
+ruddy-faced, fat, manorial woman, with the sleeves of her chintz dress
+rolled up, who with difficulty was moving a pot in the oven with an
+oven-fork; then a young, small coachman, who was learning to play the
+balalayka; an old man with an unshaven, soft white beard, who was
+sitting on a bed place with his bare feet and, holding a skein of silk
+between his lips, was sewing on some fine, good material, and a
+shaggy-haired, swarthy young man, in a shirt and blue trousers, with a
+coarse face, who, chewing bread, was sitting on a bench at the oven and
+leaning his head on both his arms, which were steadied against his
+knees.
+
+Barefoot Nastka with sparkling eyes ran into the room with her lithe,
+bare feet, in front of the old woman, jerking open the door, which stuck
+fast from the steam within, and squeaking in her thin voice:
+
+"Aunty Marina, Simonych sends this old woman, and says that she should
+be fed. She is from our parts: she has been with Paramonovna to worship
+the saints. Paramonovna is having tea.--Vlasevna has sent for her--"
+
+The garrulous little girl would have gone on talking for quite awhile
+yet; the words just poured forth from her and, apparently, it gave her
+pleasure to hear her own voice. But Marina, who was in a perspiration,
+and who had not yet succeeded in pushing away the pot with the beet
+soup, which had caught in the hearth, shouted angrily at her:
+
+"Stop your babbling! What old woman am I to feed now? I have enough to
+do to feed our own people. Shoot you!" she shouted to the pot, which
+came very near falling down, as she removed it from the spot where it
+was caught.
+
+But when she was satisfied in regard to the pot, she looked around and,
+seeing trim Tikhonovna with her wallet and correct peasant attire,
+making the sign of the cross and bowing low toward the front corner,
+felt ashamed of her words and, as though regaining her consciousness
+after the cares which had worn her out, she put her hand to her breast,
+where beneath the collar-bone buttons clasped her dress, and examined it
+to see whether it was buttoned, and then put her hands to her head to
+fasten the knot of the kerchief, which covered her greasy hair, and took
+up an attitude, leaning against the oven-fork and waiting for the salute
+of the trim old woman. Tikhonovna made her last low obeisance to God,
+and turned around and saluted in three directions.
+
+"God aid you, good day!" she said.
+
+"You are welcome, aunty!" said the tailor.
+
+"Thank you, granny, take off your wallet! Sit down here," said the cook,
+pointing to a bench where sat the shaggy-haired man. "Move a little,
+can't you? Are you stuck fast?"
+
+The shaggy man, scowling more angrily still, rose, moved away, and,
+continuing to chew, riveted his eyes on the old woman. The young
+coachman made a bow and, stopping his playing, began to tighten the
+strings of his balalayka, looking now at the old woman, and now at the
+tailor, not knowing how to treat the old woman,--whether respectfully,
+as he thought she ought to be treated, because the old woman wore the
+same kind of attire that his grandmother and mother wore at home (he
+had been taken from the village to be an outrider), or making fun of
+her, as he wished to do and as seemed to him to accord with his present
+condition, his blue coat and his boots. The tailor winked with one eye
+and seemed to smile, drawing the silk to one side of his mouth, and
+looked on. Marina started to put in another pot, but, even though she
+was busy working, she kept looking at the old woman, while she briskly
+and nimbly took off her wallet and, trying not to disturb any one, put
+it under the bench. Nastka ran up to her and helped her, by taking away
+the boots, which were lying in her way under the bench.
+
+"Uncle Pankrat," she turned to the gloomy man, "I will put the boots
+here. Is it all right?"
+
+"The devil take them! Throw them into the oven, if you wish," said the
+gloomy man, throwing them into another corner.
+
+"Nastka, you are a clever girl," said the tailor. "A pilgrim has to be
+made comfortable."
+
+"Christ save you, girl! That is nice," said Tikhonovna. "I am afraid I
+have put you out, dear man," she said, turning to Pankrat.
+
+"All right," said Pankrat.
+
+Tikhonovna sat down on the bench, having taken off her coat and
+carefully folded it, and began to take off her footgear. At first she
+untied the laces, which she had taken special care in twisting smooth
+for her pilgrimage; then she carefully unwrapped the white lambskin
+leg-rags and, carefully rubbing them soft, placed them on her wallet.
+Just as she was working on her other foot, another of awkward Marina's
+pots got caught and spilled over, and she again started to scold
+somebody, catching the pot with the fork.
+
+"The hearth is evidently burned out, grandfather. It ought to be
+plastered," said Tikhonovna.
+
+"When are you going to plaster it? The chimney never cools off: twice a
+day you have to bake bread; one set is taken out, and the other is
+started."
+
+In response to Marina's complaint about the bread-baking and the
+burnt-out hearth, the tailor defended the ways of the Chernyshev house
+and said that they had suddenly arrived in Moscow, that the hut was
+built and the oven put up in three weeks, and that there were nearly one
+hundred servants who had to be fed.
+
+"Of course, lots of cares. A large establishment," Tikhonovna confirmed
+him.
+
+"Whence does God bring you?" the tailor turned to her.
+
+And Tikhonovna, continuing to take off her foot-gear, at once told him
+where she came from, whither she had gone, and how she was going home.
+She did not say anything about the petition. The conversation never
+broke off. The tailor found out everything about the old woman, and the
+old woman heard all about awkward, pretty Marina. She learned that
+Marina's husband was a soldier, and she was made a cook; that the tailor
+was making caftans for the driving coachmen; that the stewardess's
+errand girl was an orphan, and that shaggy-haired, gloomy Pankrat was a
+servant of the clerk, Ivan Vasilevich.
+
+Pankrat left the room, slamming the door. The tailor told her that he
+was a gruff peasant, but that on that day he was particularly rude
+because the day before he had smashed the clerk's knickknacks on the
+window, and that he was going to be flogged to-day in the stable. As
+soon as Ivan Vasilevich should come, he would be flogged. The little
+coachman was a peasant lad, who had been made an outrider, and now that
+he was grown he had nothing to do but attend to the horses, and strum
+the balalayka. But he was not much of a hand at it.
+
+
+
+
+ON POPULAR EDUCATION
+
+1875
+
+
+
+
+ON POPULAR EDUCATION
+
+
+I suppose each of us has had more than one occasion to come in contact
+with monstrous, senseless phenomena, and to find back of these phenomena
+put forward some important principle, which overshadowed those
+phenomena, so that in our youthful and even maturer years we began to
+doubt whether it was true that those phenomena were monstrous, and
+whether we were not mistaken. And having been unable to convince
+ourselves that monstrous phenomena might be good, or that the protection
+of an important principle was illegitimate, or that the principle was
+only a word, we remained in regard to those phenomena in an ambiguous,
+undecided condition.
+
+In such a state I was, and I assume many of us are, in respect to the
+principle of "development" which obfuscates pedagogy, in its connection
+with the rudiments. But popular education is too near to my heart, and I
+have busied myself too much with it, to remain too long in indecision.
+The monstrous phenomena of the imaginary development I could not call
+good, nor could I be persuaded that the development of the pupil was
+bad, and so I began to inquire what that development was. I do not
+consider it superfluous to communicate the deductions to which I have
+been led during the study of this matter.
+
+To define what is understood by the word "development," I shall take the
+manuals of Messrs. Bunakov and Evtushevski, as being new works, which
+combine all the latest deductions of German pedagogy, intended as guides
+for the teachers in the popular schools, and selected by the advocates
+of the sound method as manuals in their schools.
+
+In discussing what is to form the foundation for a choice of this or
+that method for the teaching of reading, Mr. Bunakov says:
+
+"No, an opinion about the method of construction based on such
+near-sighted and flimsy foundations (that is, on experience) will be too
+doubtful. Only the theoretical substratum, based on the study of human
+nature, can make the judgments in this sphere firm and independent of
+all casualties, and to a considerable degree guard them against gross
+errors. Consequently for the final choice of the best method of teaching
+the rudiments, it is necessary first of all to stand on theoretic soil,
+on the basis of previous considerations, the general conditions of which
+give to this or that method the actual right to be called satisfactory
+from the pedagogical standpoint. These conditions are: (1) It has to be
+a method which is capable of developing the child's mental powers, so
+that the acquisition of the rudiments may be obtained together with the
+development and the strengthening of the reasoning powers. (2) It must
+introduce into the instruction the child's personal interest, so that
+the matter be furthered by this interest, and not by dulling violence.
+(3) It must represent in itself the process of self-instruction,
+inciting, supporting, and directing the child's self-activity. (4) It
+must be based on the impressions of hearing, as of the sense which
+serves for the acquisition of language. (5) It has to combine analysis
+with synthesis, beginning with the dismemberment of the complex whole
+into simple principles, and passing over to the composition of a complex
+whole out of the simple principles."
+
+So this is what the method of instruction is to be based upon. I will
+remark, not for contradiction, but for the sake of simplicity and
+clearness, that the last two statements are quite superfluous, because
+without the union of analysis and synthesis there can be not only no
+instruction, but also no other activity of the mind, and every
+instruction, except that of the deaf and dumb, is based on the sense of
+hearing. These two conditions are put down only for beauty's sake and
+for the obscuration of the style, so common in pedagogical treatises,
+and so have no meaning whatever. The first three at first sight appear
+quite true as a programme. Everybody, of course, would like to know how
+the method is secured that will "develop," that will "introduce into the
+instruction the pupil's personal interest," and that will "represent the
+process of self-instruction."
+
+But to the questions as to why this method combines all those qualities
+you will find an answer neither in the books of Messrs. Bunakov and
+Evtushevski, nor in any other pedagogical work of the founders of this
+school of pedagogy, unless they be those hazy discussions of this
+nature, such as that every instruction must be based on the union of
+analysis and synthesis, and by all means on the sense of hearing, and so
+forth; or you will find, as in Mr. Evtushevski's book, expositions about
+how in man are formed impressions, sensations, representations, and
+concepts, and you will find the rule that "it is necessary to start from
+the object and lead the pupil up to the idea, and not start with the
+idea, which has no point of contact in his consciousness," and so forth.
+After such discussions there always follows the conclusion that
+therefore the method advocated by the pedagogue gives that exclusive
+real development which it was necessary to find.
+
+After the above-cited definition of what a good method ought to be, Mr.
+Bunakov explains how children ought to be educated, and, having given an
+exposition of all the methods, which in my opinion and experience lead
+to results which are diametrically opposite to development, he says
+frankly and definitely:
+
+"From the standpoint of the above-mentioned fundamental principles for
+estimating the value of the satisfactoriness of the methods of
+rudimentary instruction, the method which we have just elucidated in its
+general features presents the following plastic qualities and
+peculiarities: (1) As a sound method it wholly preserves the
+characteristic peculiarities of all sound method,--it starts from the
+impressions of hearing, at once establishing the regular relation to
+language, and only later adds to them the impressions of sight, thus
+clearly distinguishing sound, matter, and the letter, its
+representation. (2) As a method which unites reading with writing it
+begins with decomposition and passes over to composition, combining
+analysis with synthesis. (3) As a method which passes over to the study
+of words and sounds from the study of objects it proceeds along a
+natural path, cooperates with the regular formation of concepts and
+ideas, and acts in a developing way on all the sides of the child's
+nature: it incites the children to be observant, to group their
+observations, to render them orally; it develops the external senses,
+mind, imagination, memory, the gift of speech, concentration,
+self-activity, the habit of work, the respect for order. (4) As a method
+which provides ample work to all the mental powers of the child, it
+introduces into instruction the personal interest, rousing in children
+willingness and love of work, and transforming it into a process of
+self-instruction."
+
+This is precisely what Mr. Evtushevski does; but why it is all so
+remains inexplicable to him who is looking for actual reasons and does
+not become entangled in such words as psychology, didactics, methodics,
+heuristics. I advise all those who have no inclination for philosophy
+and therefore have no desire to verify all those deductions of the
+pedagogues not to be embarrassed by these words and to be assured that
+a thing which is not clear cannot be the basis of anything, least of all
+of such an important and simple thing as popular education.
+
+All the pedagogues of this school, especially the Germans, the founders
+of the school, start with the false idea that those philosophical
+questions which have remained as questions for all the philosophers from
+Plato to Kant, have been definitely settled by them. They are settled so
+definitely that the process of the acquisition by man of impressions,
+sensations, concepts, ratiocinations, has been analyzed by them down to
+its minutest details, and the component parts of what we call the soul
+or the essence of man have been dissected and divided into parts by
+them, and that, too, in such a thorough manner that on this firm basis
+can go up the faultless structure of the science of pedagogy. This fancy
+is so strange that I do not regard it as necessary to contradict it,
+more especially as I have done so in my former pedagogical essays. All I
+will say is that those philosophical considerations which the pedagogues
+of this school put at the basis of their theory not only fail to be
+absolutely correct, not only have nothing in common with real
+philosophy, but even lack a clear, definite expression with which the
+majority of the pedagogues might agree.
+
+But, perchance, the theory of the pedagogues of the new school, in spite
+of its unsuccessful references to philosophy, has some value in itself.
+And so we will examine it, to see what it consists in. Mr. Bunakov says:
+
+"To these little savages (that is, the pupils) must be imparted the main
+order of school instruction, and into their consciousness must be
+introduced such initial concepts as they will have to come in contact
+with from the start, during the first lessons of drawing, reading,
+writing, and every elementary instruction, such as: the right side and
+the left, to the right--to the left, up--down, near by--around, in
+front--in back, close by--in the distance, before--behind,
+above--below, fast--slow, softly--aloud, and so forth. No matter how
+simple these concepts may be, I know from practice that even city
+children, from well-to-do families, are frequently, when they come to
+the elementary schools, unable to distinguish the right side from the
+left. I assume that there is no need of expatiating on the necessity of
+explaining such concepts to village children, for any one who has had to
+deal with village schools knows this as well as I do."
+
+And Mr. Evtushevski says:
+
+"Without entering into the broad field of the debatable question about
+the innate ability of man, we only see that the child can have no innate
+concepts and ideas about real things,--they have to be formed, and on
+the skill with which they are formed by the educator and teacher depends
+both their regularity and their permanency. In watching the development
+of the child's soul one has to be much more cautious than in attending
+to his body. If the food for the body and the various bodily exercises
+are carefully chosen both as regards their quantity and their quality,
+in conformity with the man's growth, so much more cautious have we to be
+in the choice of food and exercises for the mind. A badly placed
+foundation will precariously support what is fastened to it."
+
+Mr. Bunakov advises that ideas be imparted as follows:
+
+"The teacher may begin a conversation such as he deems fit: one will ask
+every pupil for his name; another about what is going on outside; a
+third about where each comes from, where he lives, what is going on at
+home,--and then he may pass over to the main subject. 'Where are you
+sitting now? Why did you come here? What are we going to do in this
+room? Yes, we are going to study in this room,--so let us call it a
+class-room. See what there is under your feet, below you. Look, but do
+not say anything. The one I will tell to speak shall answer. Tell me,
+what do you see under your feet? Repeat everything we have found out
+and have said about this room: in what room are we sitting? What are the
+parts of the room? What is there on the walls? What is standing on the
+floor?'
+
+"The teacher from the start establishes the order which is necessary for
+the success of his work: each pupil is to answer only when asked to do
+so; all the others are to listen and should be able to repeat the words
+of the teacher and of their companions; the desire to answer, when the
+teacher directs a question to everybody, is to be expressed by raising
+the left hand; the words are to be pronounced neither in a hurry, nor by
+drawing them out, but loudly, distinctly, and correctly. To obtain this
+latter result the teacher gives them a living example by his loud,
+correct, distinct enunciation, showing them in practice the difference
+between soft and loud, distinct and correct, slow and fast. The teacher
+should see to it that all the children take part in the work, by having
+somebody's question answered or repeated, now by one, now by another,
+and now by the whole class at once, but especially by rousing the
+indifferent, inattentive, and playful children: the first he must
+enliven by frequent questions, the second he must cause to concentrate
+themselves on the subject of the common work, and the third he must
+curb. During the first period the children ought to answer in full, that
+is, by repeating the question: 'We are sitting in the class-room' (and
+not in brief, 'In the class-room'); 'Above, over my head, I see the
+ceiling;' 'On the left I see three windows,' and so forth."
+
+Mr. Evtushevski advises that in this way be begun all the lessons on
+numbers from 1 to 10, of which there are to be 120, and which are to be
+continued through the year.
+
+"One. The teacher shows the pupils a cube, and asks: 'How many cubes
+have I?' and taking several cubes into the other hand, he asks, 'And how
+many are there here?'--'Many, a few.'
+
+"'Name here in the class-room an object of which there are
+several.'--'Bench, window, wall, copy-book, pencil, slate-pencil, pupil,
+and so forth.'--'Name an object of which there is only one in the
+class-room.'--'The blackboard, stove, door, ceiling, floor, picture,
+teacher, and so forth.'--'If I put this cube away in my pocket, how many
+cubes will there be left in my hand?'--'Not one.'--'And how many must I
+again put into my hand, to have as many as before?'--'One.'--'What is
+meant by saying that Petya fell down once? How many times did Petya
+fall? Did he fall another time? Why does it say once?'--'Because we are
+speaking only of one case and not of another case.'--'Take your slates
+(or copy-books). Make on them a line of this size.' (The teacher draws
+on the blackboard a line two or four inches in length, or shows on the
+ruler that length.) 'Rub it off. How many lines are left?'--'Not
+one.'--'Draw several such lines.' It would be unnatural to invent any
+other exercises in order to acquaint the children with number one. It
+suffices to rouse in them that conception of unity which they, no doubt,
+had previous to their school instruction."
+
+Then Mr. Bunakov speaks of exercises on the board, and so on, and Mr.
+Evtushevski of the number four with its decomposition. Before examining
+the theory itself of the transmission of ideas, the question
+involuntarily arises whether that theory is not mistaken in its very
+problem. Has the condition of the pedagogical material with which it has
+to do been correctly defined? The first thing that startles us is the
+strange relation to some imaginary children, to such as I, at least,
+have never seen in the Russian Empire. The conversations, and the
+information which they impart, refer to children of less than two years
+of age, because two-year-old children know all that is contained in
+them, but as to the questions which have to be asked, they have
+reference to parrots. Any pupil of six, seven, eight, or nine years will
+not understand a thing in these questions, because he knows all about
+that, and cannot make out what it all means. The demands for such
+conversations evince either complete ignorance, or a desire to ignore
+that degree of development on which the pupils stand.
+
+Maybe the children of Hottentots and negroes, or some German children,
+do not know what is imparted to them in such conversations, but Russian
+children, except demented ones, all those who come to a school, not only
+know what is up and what down, what is a bench and what a table, what is
+two and what one, and so forth, but, in my experience, the peasant
+children who are sent to school by their parents can every one of them
+express their thoughts well and correctly, can understand another
+person's thought (if it is expressed in Russian), and can count to
+twenty and more; playing with knuckle-bones they count in pairs and
+sixes, and they know how many points and pairs there are in a six.
+Frequently the pupils who came to my school brought with them the
+problem with the geese, and explained it to me. But even if we admit
+that children possess no such conceptions as those the pedagogues want
+to impart to them by means of conversations, I do not find the method
+chosen by them to be correct.
+
+Thus, for example, Mr. Bunakov has written a reader. This book is to be
+used in conjunction with the conversations to teach the children
+language. I have run through the book and have found it to be a series
+of bad language blunders, wherever extracts from other books are not
+quoted. The same complete ignorance of language I have found in Mr.
+Evtushevski's problems. Mr. Evtushevski wants to give ideas by means of
+problems. First of all he ought to have seen to it that the tool for the
+transmission of ideas, that is, the language, was correct.
+
+What has been mentioned here refers to the form in which the development
+is imparted. Let us look at the contents themselves. Mr. Bunakov
+proposes the following questions to be put to the children: "Where can
+you see cats? where a magpie? where sand? where a wasp and a suslik?
+what are a suslik and a magpie and a cat covered with, and what are the
+parts of their bodies?" (The suslik is a favourite animal of pedagogy,
+no doubt because not one peasant child in the centre of Russia knows
+that word.)
+
+"Naturally the teacher does not always put these questions straight to
+the children, as forming the predetermined programme of the lesson; more
+frequently the small and undeveloped children have to be led up to the
+solution of the question of the programme by a series of suggestive
+questions, by directing their attention to the side of the subject which
+is more correct at the given moment, or by inciting them to recall
+something from their previous observations. Thus the teacher need not
+put the question directly: 'Where can a wasp be seen?' but, turning to
+this or that pupil, he may ask him whether he has seen a wasp, where he
+has seen it, and then only, combining the replies of several pupils,
+compose an answer to the first question of his programme. In answering
+the teacher's questions, the children will often connect several remarks
+that have no direct relation to the matter; for example, when the
+question is about what the parts of a magpie are, one may say
+irrelevantly that a magpie jumps, another that it chatters funnily, a
+third that it steals things,--let them add and give utterance to
+everything that arises in their memory or imagination,--it is the
+teacher's business to concentrate their attention in accordance with the
+programme, and these remarks and additions of the children he should
+take notice of for the purpose of elaborating the other parts of the
+programme. In viewing a new subject, the children at every convenient
+opportunity return to the subjects which have already been under
+consideration. Since they have observed that a magpie is covered with
+feathers, the teacher asks: 'Is the suslik also covered with feathers?
+What is it covered with? And what is a chicken covered with? and a
+horse? and a lizard?' When they have observed that a magpie has two
+legs, the teacher asks: 'How many legs has a dog? and a fox? and a
+chicken? and a wasp? What other animals do you know with two legs? with
+four? with six?'"
+
+Involuntarily the question arises: Do the children know, or do they not
+know, what is so well explained to them in these conversations? If the
+pupils know it all, then, upon occasion, in the street or at home, where
+they do not need to raise their left hands, they will certainly be able
+to tell it in more beautiful and more correct Russian than they are
+ordered to do. They will certainly not say that a horse is "covered"
+with wool; if so, why are they compelled to repeat these questions just
+as the teacher has put them? But if they do not know them (which is not
+to be admitted except as regards the suslik), the question arises: by
+what will the teacher be guided in what is with so much unction called
+the programme of questions,--by the science of zoology, or by logic? or
+by the science of eloquence? But if by none of the sciences, and merely
+by the desire to talk about what is visible in the objects, there are so
+many visible things in objects, and they are so diversified, that a
+guiding thread is needed to show what to talk upon, whereas in objective
+instruction there is no such thread, and there can be none.
+
+All human knowledge is subdivided for the purpose that it may more
+conveniently be gathered, united, and transmitted, and these
+subdivisions are called sciences. But outside their scientific
+classifications you may talk about objects anything you please, and you
+may say all the nonsense imaginable, as we actually see. In any case,
+the result of the conversation will be that the children are either
+made to learn by heart the teacher's words about the suslik, or to
+change their own words, place them in a certain order (not always a
+correct order), and to memorize and repeat them. For this reason all the
+manuals of this kind, in general all the exercises of development,
+suffer on the one hand from absolute arbitrariness, and on the other
+from superfluity. For example, in Mr. Bunakov's book the only story
+which, it seems, is not copied from another author, is the following:
+
+"A peasant complained to a hunter about his trouble: a fox had carried
+off several of his chickens and one duck; the fox was not in the least
+afraid of watch-dog Dandy, who was chained up and kept barking all night
+long; in the morning he had placed a trap with a piece of roast meat in
+the fresh tracks on the snow,--evidently the red-haired sneak was
+disporting near the house, but he did not go into the trap. The hunter
+listened to what the peasant had to say to him, and said: 'Very well;
+now we will see who will be shrewder!' The hunter walked all day with
+his gun and with his dog, over the tracks of the fox, to discover how he
+found his way into the yard. In the daytime the sneak sleeps in his
+lair, and knows nothing of what is going on, so that had to be
+considered: on its path the hunter dug a hole and covered it with
+boards, dirt, and snow; a few steps from it he put down a piece of
+horseflesh. In the evening he seated himself with a loaded gun in his
+ambush, fixed things in such a way that he could see everything and
+shoot comfortably, and there he waited. It grew dark. The moon swam out.
+Cautiously, looking around and listening, the fox crept out of his lair,
+raised his nose, and sniffed. He at once smelled the odour of
+horseflesh, and ran at a slow trot to the place, and suddenly stopped
+and pricked his ears: the shrewd one saw that there was a mound there
+which had not been in that spot the previous evening. This mound
+apparently vexed him, and made him think; he took a large circle around
+it, and sniffed and listened, and sat down, and for a long time looked
+at the meat from a distance, so that the hunter could not shoot him,--it
+was too far. The fox thought and thought, and suddenly ran at full speed
+between the meat and the mound. Our hunter was careful, and did not
+shoot. He knew that the sneak was merely trying to find out whether
+anybody was sitting behind that mound; if he had shot at the running
+fox, he would certainly have missed him, and then he would not have seen
+the sneak, any more than he could see his own ears. Now the fox quieted
+down,--the mound no longer disturbed him: he walked briskly up to the
+meat, and ate it with great delight. Then the hunter aimed carefully,
+without haste, so that he might not miss him. Bang! The fox jumped up
+from pain and fell down dead."
+
+Everything is arbitrary here: it is an arbitrary invention to say that a
+fox could carry off a peasant's duck in winter, that peasants trap
+foxes, that a fox sleeps in the daytime in his lair (for he sleeps only
+at night); arbitrary is that hole which is uselessly dug in winter and
+covered with boards without being made use of; arbitrary is the
+statement that the fox eats horseflesh, which he never does; arbitrary
+is the supposed cunning of the fox, who runs past the hunter; arbitrary
+are the mound and the hunter, who does not shoot for fear of missing,
+that is, everything, from beginning to end, is bosh, for which any
+peasant boy might arraign the author of the story, if he could talk
+without raising his hand.
+
+Then a whole series of so-called exercises in Mr. Bunakov's lessons is
+composed of such questions as: "Who bakes? Who chops? Who shoots?" to
+which the pupil is supposed to answer: "The baker, the wood-chopper, and
+the marksmen," whereas he might just as correctly answer that the woman
+bakes, the axe chops, and the teacher shoots, if he has a gun. Another
+arbitrary statement in that book is that the throat is a part of the
+mouth, and so on.
+
+All the other exercises, such as "The ducks fly, and the dogs?" or "The
+linden and birch are trees, and the horse?" are quite superfluous.
+Besides, it must be observed that if such conversations are really
+carried on with the pupils (which never happens) that is, if the pupils
+are permitted to speak and ask questions, the teacher, choosing simple
+subjects (they are most difficult), is at each step perplexed, partly
+through ignorance, and partly because _ein Narr kann mehr fragen, als
+zehn Weise antworten_.
+
+Exactly the same takes place in the instruction of arithmetic, which is
+based on the same pedagogical principle. Either the pupils are informed
+in the same way of what they already know, or they are quite arbitrarily
+informed of combinations of a certain character that are not based on
+anything. The lesson mentioned above and all the other lessons up to ten
+are merely information about what the children already know. If they
+frequently do not answer questions of that kind, this is due to the fact
+that the question is either wrongly expressed in itself, or wrongly
+expressed as regards the children. The difficulty which the children
+encounter in answering a question of that character is due to the same
+cause which makes it impossible for the average boy to answer the
+question: Three sons were to Noah,[1]--Shem, Ham, and Japheth,--who was
+their father? The difficulty is not mathematical, but syntactical, which
+is due to the fact that in the statement of the problem and in the
+question there is not one and the same subject; but when to the
+syntactical difficulty there is added the awkwardness of the proposer of
+the problems in expressing himself in Russian, the matter becomes of
+greater difficulty still to the pupil; but the trouble is no longer
+mathematical.
+
+  [Footnote 1: The Russian way of saying "Noah had three sons."]
+
+Let anybody understand at once Mr. Evtushevski's problem: "A certain boy
+had four nuts, another had five. The second boy gave all his nuts to the
+first, and this one gave three nuts to a third, and the rest he
+distributed equally to three other friends. How many nuts did each of
+the last get?" Express the problem as follows: "A boy had four nuts. He
+was given five more. He gave away three nuts, and the rest he wants to
+give to three friends. How many can he give to each?" and a child of
+five years of age will solve it. There is no problem here at all, but
+the difficulty may arise only from a wrong statement of the problem, or
+from a weak memory. And it is this syntactical difficulty, which the
+children overcome by long and difficult exercises, that gives the
+teacher cause to think that, teaching the children what they know
+already, he is teaching them anything at all. Just as arbitrarily are
+the children taught combinations in arithmetic and the decomposition of
+numbers according to a certain method and order, which have their
+foundation only in the fancy of the teacher. Mr. Evtushevski says:
+
+"Four. (1) The formation of the number. On the upper border of the board
+the teacher places three cubes together--I I I. How many cubes are there
+here? Then a fourth cube is added. And how many are there now? I I I I.
+How are four cubes formed from three and one? We have to add one cube to
+the three.
+
+"(2) Decomposition into component parts. How can four cubes be formed?
+or, How can four cubes be broken up? Four cubes may be broken up into
+two and two: II + II. Four cubes may be formed from one, and one, and
+one, and one more, or by taking four times one cube: I + I + I + I. Four
+cubes may be broken up into three and one: III + I. It may be formed
+from one, and one, and two: I + I + II. Can four cubes be put together
+in any other way? The pupils convince themselves that there can be no
+other decomposition, distinct from those already given. If the pupils
+begin to break the four cubes in this way: one, two, and one, or, two,
+one and one; or, one and three, the teacher will easily point out to
+them that these decompositions are only repetitions of what has been got
+before, only in a different order.
+
+"Every time, whenever the pupils indicate a new method of decomposition,
+the teacher places the cubes on a ledge of the blackboard in the manner
+here indicated. Thus there will be four cubes on the upper ledge; two
+and two in a second place; in a third place the four cubes will be
+separated at some distance from each other; in a fourth place, three and
+one, and in a fifth one, one, and two.
+
+"(3) Decomposition in order. It may easily happen that the children will
+at once point out the decomposition of the number into component parts
+in order; even then the third exercise cannot be regarded as
+superfluous: Here we have formed four cubes of twos, of separate cubes,
+and of threes,--in what order had we best place the cubes on the board?
+With what shall the decomposition of the four cubes begin? With the
+decomposition into separate cubes. How are four cubes to be formed from
+separate cubes? We must take four times one cube. How are four cubes to
+be formed from twos, from a pair? We must take two twos,--twice two
+cubes, two pairs of cubes. How shall we afterward break up the four
+cubes? They can be formed of threes: for this purpose we take three and
+one, or one and three. The teacher explains to the pupils that the last
+decomposition, that is, 1 1 2, does not come under the accepted order,
+and is a modification of one of the first three."
+
+Why does Mr. Evtushevski not admit this last decomposition? Why must
+there be the order indicated by him? All that is a matter of mere
+arbitrariness and fancy. In reality, it is apparent to every thinking
+man that there is only one foundation for any composition and
+decomposition, and for the whole of mathematics. Here is the
+foundation: 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 1 = 4, and so forth,--precisely
+what the children learn at home, and what in common parlance is called
+counting to ten, to twenty, and so forth. This process is known to every
+pupil, and no matter what decomposition Mr. Evtushevski may make, it is
+to be explained from this one. A boy that can count to four, considers
+four as a whole, and so also three, and two, and one. Consequently, he
+knows that four was produced from the consecutive addition of one.
+Similarly he knows that four is produced by adding twice one to two,
+just as he knows twice one is two. What, then, are the children taught
+here? That which they know, or that process of counting which they must
+learn according to the teacher's fancy.
+
+The other day I happened to witness a lesson in mathematics according to
+Grube's method. The pupil was asked: "How much is 8 and 7?" He hastened
+to answer and said 16. His neighbour, too, was in a hurry and, without
+raising his left hand, said: "8 and 8 is 16, and one less is 15." The
+teacher sternly stopped him, and compelled the first boy to add one
+after one to 8, until he came to 15, though the boy knew long ago that
+he had made a blunder. In that school they had reached the number 15,
+but 16 was supposed to be unknown yet.
+
+I am afraid that many people, reading all these long refutals of the
+methods of object instruction and counting according to Grube, which I
+am making, will say: "What is there here to talk about? Is it not
+evident that it is all mere nonsense which it is not worth while to
+criticize? Why pick out the errors and blunders of a Bunakov and
+Evtushevski, and criticize what is beneath all criticism?"
+
+That was the way I myself thought before I was led to see what was going
+on in the pedagogical world, when I convinced myself that Messrs.
+Bunakov and Evtushevski were not mere individuals, but authorities in
+our pedagogics, and that what they prescribe is actually carried out in
+our schools. In the backwoods we may find teachers, especially women,
+who spread Evtushevski's and Bunakov's manuals out before them and ask
+according to their prescription how much one feather and one feather is,
+and what a hen is covered with. All that would be funny if it were only
+an invention of the theorist, and not a guide in practical work, a guide
+that some follow already, and if it did not concern one of the most
+important affairs of life,--the education of the children. I was amused
+at it when I read it as theoretical fancies; but when I learned and saw
+that that was being practised on children, I felt pity for them and
+ashamed.
+
+From a theoretical standpoint, not to mention the fact that they
+faultily define the aim of education, the pedagogues of this school make
+this essential error, that they depart from the conditions of all
+instruction, whether this instruction be on the highest or lowest stage
+of the science, in a university or in a popular school. The essential
+conditions of all instruction consist in selecting the homogeneous
+phenomena from an endless number of heterogeneous phenomena, and in
+imparting the laws of these phenomena to the students. Thus, in the
+study of language, the pupils are taught the laws of the word, and in
+mathematics, the laws of the numbers. The study of language consists in
+imparting the laws of the decomposition and of the reverse composition
+of sentences, words, syllables, sounds,--and these laws form the subject
+of instruction. The instruction of mathematics consists in imparting the
+laws of the composition and decomposition of the numbers (but I beg to
+observe,--not in the process of the composition and the decomposition of
+the numbers, but in imparting the laws of that composition and
+decomposition). Thus, the first law consists in the ability of regarding
+a collection of units as a unit of a higher order, precisely what a
+child does when he says: "2 and 1 = 3." He regards 2 as a kind of unit.
+On this law are based the consequent laws of numeration, then of
+addition, and of the whole of mathematics. But arbitrary conversations
+about the wasp, and so forth, or problems within the limit of 10,--its
+decomposition in every manner possible,--cannot form a subject of
+instruction, because, in the first place, they transcend the subject
+and, in the second place, because they do not treat of its laws.
+
+That is the way the matter presents itself to me from its theoretical
+side; but theoretical criticism may frequently err, and so I will try to
+verify my deductions by means of practical data. G---- P---- has given
+us a sample of the practical results of both object instruction and of
+mathematics according to Grube's method. One of the older boys was told:
+"Put your hand under your book!" in order to prove that he had been
+taught the conceptions of "over" and "under," and the intelligent boy,
+who, I am sure, knew what "over" and "under" was, when he was three
+years old, put his hand on the book when he was told to put it under it.
+I have all the time observed such examples, and they prove more clearly
+than anything else how useless, strange, and disgraceful, I feel like
+saying, this object instruction is for Russian children. A Russian child
+cannot and will not believe (he has too much respect for the teacher and
+for himself) that the teacher is in earnest when he asks him whether the
+ceiling is above or below, or how many legs he has. In arithmetic, too,
+we have seen that pupils who did not even know how to write the numbers
+and during the whole time of the instruction were exercised only in
+mental calculations up to 10, for half an hour did not stop blundering
+in every imaginable way in response to questions which the teacher put
+to them within the limit of 10. Evidently the instruction of mental
+calculation brought no results, and the syntactical difficulty, which
+consists in unravelling a question that is improperly put, has remained
+the same as ever. And thus, the practical results of the examination
+which took place did not confirm the usefulness of the development.
+
+But I will be more exact and conscientious. Maybe the process of
+development, which at first is confined not so much to the study, as to
+the analysis of what the pupils know already, will produce results later
+on. Maybe the teacher, who at first takes possession of the pupils'
+minds by means of the analysis, later guides them firmly and with ease,
+and from the narrow sphere of the descriptions of a table and the count
+of 2 and 1 leads them into the real sphere of knowledge, in which the
+pupils are no longer confined to learning what they know already, but
+also learn something new, and learn that new information in a new, more
+convenient, more intelligent manner. This supposition is confirmed by
+the fact that all the German pedagogues and their followers, among them
+Mr. Bunakov, say distinctly that object instruction is to serve as an
+introduction to "home science" and "natural science." But we should be
+looking in vain in Mr. Bunakov's manual to find out how this "home
+science" is to be taught, if by this word any real information is to be
+understood, and not the descriptions of a hut and a vestibule,--which
+the children know already. Mr. Bunakov, on page 200, after having
+explained that it is necessary to teach where the ceiling is and where
+the stove, says briefly:
+
+"Now it is necessary to pass over to the third stage of object
+instruction, the contents of which have been defined by me as follows:
+The study of the country, county, Government, the whole realm with its
+natural products and its inhabitants, in general outline, as a sketch of
+home science and the beginning of natural science, with the predominance
+of reading, which, resting on the immediate observations of the first
+two grades, broadens the mental horizon of the pupils,--the sphere of
+their concepts and ideas. We can see from the mere definition that here
+the objectivity appears as a complement to the explanatory reading and
+narrative of the teacher,--consequently, what is said in regard to the
+occupations of the third year has more reference to the discussion of
+the second occupation, which enters into the composition of the subject
+under instruction, which is called the native language,--the explanatory
+reading."
+
+We turn to the third year,--the explanatory reading, but there we find
+absolutely nothing to indicate how the new information is to be
+imparted, except that it is good to read such and such books, and in
+reading to put such and such questions. The questions are extremely
+queer (to me, at least), as, for example, the comparison of the article
+on water by Ushinski and of the article on water by Aksakov, and the
+request made of the pupils that they should explain that Aksakov
+considers water as a phenomenon of Nature, while Ushinski considers it
+as a substance, and so forth. Consequently, we find here again the same
+foisting of views on the pupils, and of subdivisions (generally
+incorrect) of the teacher, and not one word, not one hint, as to how any
+new knowledge is to be imparted.
+
+It is not known what shall be taught: natural history, or geography.
+There is nothing there but reading with questions of the character I
+have just mentioned. On the other side of the instruction about the
+word,--grammar and orthography,--we should just as much be looking in
+vain for any new method of instruction which is based on the preceding
+development. Again the old Perevlevski's grammar, which begins with
+philosophical definitions and then with syntactical analysis, serves as
+the basis of all new grammatical exercises and of Mr. Bunakov's manual.
+
+In mathematics, too, we should be looking in vain, at that stage where
+the real instruction in mathematics begins, for anything new and more
+easy, based on the whole previous instruction of the exercises of the
+second year up to 20. Where in arithmetic the real difficulties are met
+with, where it becomes necessary to explain the subject from all its
+sides to the pupil, as in numeration, in addition, subtraction,
+division, in the division and multiplication of fractions, you will not
+find even a shadow of anything easier, any new explanation, but only
+quotations from old arithmetics.
+
+The character of this instruction is everywhere one and the same. The
+whole attention is directed toward teaching the pupil what he already
+knows. And since the pupil knows what he is being taught, and easily
+recites in any order desired what he is asked to recite by the teacher,
+the teacher thinks that he is really teaching something, and the pupil's
+progress is great, and the teacher, paying no attention to what forms
+the real difficulty of teaching, that is, to teaching something new,
+most comfortably stumps about in one spot.
+
+This explains why our pedagogical literature is overwhelmed with manuals
+for object-lessons, with manuals about how to conduct kindergartens (one
+of the most monstrous excrescences of the new pedagogy), with pictures
+and books for reading, in which are eternally repeated the same articles
+about the fox and the blackcock, the same poems which for some reason
+are written out in prose in all kinds of permutations and with all kinds
+of explanations; but we have not a single new article for children's
+reading, not one Russian, nor Church-Slavic grammar, nor a Church-Slavic
+dictionary, nor an arithmetic, nor a geography, nor a history for the
+popular schools. All the forces are absorbed in writing text-books for
+the instruction of children in subjects they need not and ought not to
+be taught in school, because they are taught them in life. Of course,
+there is no end to the writing of such books; for there can be only one
+grammar and arithmetic, but of exercises and reflections, like those I
+have quoted from Bunakov, and of the orders of the decomposition of
+numbers from Evtushevski, there may be an endless number.
+
+Pedagogy is in the same condition in which a science would be that would
+teach how a man ought to walk; and people would try to discover rules
+about how to teach the children, how to enjoin them to contract this
+muscle, stretch that muscle, and so forth. This condition of the new
+pedagogy results directly from its two fundamental principles: (1) that
+the aim of the school is development and not science, and (2) that
+development and the means for attaining it may be theoretically defined.
+From this has consistently resulted that miserable and frequently
+ridiculous condition in which the whole matter of the schools now is.
+Forces are wasted in vain, and the masses, who at the present moment are
+thirsting for education, as the dried-up grass thirsts for rain, and are
+ready to receive it, and beg for it,--instead of a loaf receive a stone,
+and are perplexed to understand whether they were mistaken in regarding
+education as something good, or whether something is wrong in what is
+being offered to them. That matters are really so there cannot be the
+least doubt for any man who becomes acquainted with the present theory
+of teaching and knows the actual condition of the school among the
+masses. Involuntarily there arises the question: how could honest,
+cultured people, who sincerely love their work and wish to do good,--for
+such I regard the majority of my opponents to be,--have arrived at such
+a strange condition and be in such deep error?
+
+This question has interested me, and I will try to communicate those
+answers which have occurred to me. Many causes have led to it. The most
+natural cause which has led pedagogy to the false path on which it now
+stands, is the criticism of the old order, the criticism for the sake of
+criticism, without positing new principles in the place of those
+criticized. Everybody knows that criticizing is an easy business, and
+that it is quite fruitless and frequently harmful, if by the side of
+what is condemned one does not point out the principles on the basis of
+which this condemnation is uttered. If I say that such and such a thing
+is bad because I do not like it, or because everybody says that it is
+bad, or even because it is really bad, but do not know how it ought to
+be right, the criticism will always be useless and injurious. The views
+of the pedagogues of the new school are, above all, based on the
+criticism of previous methods. Even now, when it seems there would be no
+sense in striking a prostrate person, we read and hear in every manual,
+in every discussion, "that it is injurious to read without
+comprehension; that it is impossible to learn by heart the definitions
+of numbers and operations with numbers; that senseless memorizing is
+injurious; that it is injurious to operate with thousands without being
+able to count 2-3," and so forth. The chief point of departure is the
+criticism of the old methods and the concoction of new ones to be as
+diametrically opposed to the old as possible, but by no means the
+positing of new foundations of pedagogy, from which new methods might
+result.
+
+It is very easy to criticize the old-fashioned method of studying
+reading by means of learning by heart whole pages of the psalter, and of
+studying arithmetic by memorizing what a number is, and so forth. I will
+remark, in the first place, that nowadays there is no need of attacking
+these methods, because there will hardly be found any teachers who would
+defend them, and, in the second place, that if, criticizing such
+phenomena, they want to let it be known that I am a defender of the
+antiquated method of instruction, it is no doubt due to the fact that my
+opponents, in their youth, do not know that nearly twenty years ago I
+with all my might and main fought against those antiquated methods of
+pedagogy and cooperated in their abolition.
+
+And thus it was found that the old methods of instruction were not good
+for anything, and, without building any new foundation, they began to
+look for new methods. I say "without building any new foundation,"
+because there are only two permanent foundations of pedagogy:
+
+(1) The determination of the criterion of what ought to be taught, and
+(2) the criterion of how it has to be taught, that is, the determination
+that the chosen subjects are most necessary, and that the chosen method
+is the best.
+
+Nobody has even paid any attention to these foundations, and each school
+has in its own justification invented quasi-philosophical justificatory
+reflections. But this "theoretical substratum," as Mr. Bunakov has
+accidentally expressed himself quite well, cannot be regarded as a
+foundation. For the old method of instruction possessed just such a
+theoretical substratum.
+
+The real, peremptory question of pedagogy, which fifteen years ago I
+vainly tried to put in all its significance, "Why ought we to know this
+or that, and how shall we teach it?" has not even been touched. The
+result of this has been that as soon as it became apparent that the old
+method was not good, they did not try to find out what the best method
+would be, but immediately set out to discover a new method which would
+be the very opposite of the old one. They did as a man may do who finds
+his house to be cold in winter and does not trouble himself about
+learning why it is cold, or how to help matters, but at once tries to
+find another house which will as little as possible resemble the one he
+is living in. I was then abroad, and I remember how I everywhere came
+across messengers roving all over Europe in search of a new faith, that
+is, officials of the ministry, studying German pedagogy.
+
+We have adopted the methods of instruction current with our nearest
+neighbours, the Germans, in the first place, because we are always
+prone to imitate the Germans; in the second, because it was the most
+complicated and cunning of methods, and if it comes to taking something
+from abroad, of course, it has to be the latest fashion and what is most
+cunning; in the third, because, in particular, these methods were more
+than any others opposed to the old way. And thus, the new methods were
+taken from the Germans, and not by themselves, but with a theoretical
+substratum, that is, with a quasi-philosophical justification of these
+methods.
+
+This theoretical substratum has done great service. The moment parents
+or simply sensible people, who busy themselves with the question of
+education, express their doubt about the efficacy of these methods, they
+are told: "And what about Pestalozzi, and Diesterweg, and Denzel, and
+Wurst, and methodics, heuristics, didactics, concentrism?" and the bold
+people wave their hands, and say: "God be with them,--they know better."
+In these German methods there also lay this other advantage (the cause
+why they stick so eagerly to this method), that with it the teacher does
+not need to try too much, does not need to go on studying, does not need
+to work over himself and the methods of instruction. For the greater
+part of the time the teacher teaches by this method what the children
+know, and, besides, teaches it from a text-book, and that is convenient.
+And unconsciously, in accordance with an innate human weakness, the
+teacher is fond of this convenience. It is very pleasant for me, with my
+firm conviction that I am teaching and doing an important and very
+modern work, to tell the children from the book about the suslik, or
+about a horse's having four legs, or to transpose the cubes by twos and
+by threes, and ask the children how much two and two is; but if, instead
+of telling about the suslik, the teacher had to tell or read something
+interesting, to give the foundations of grammar, geography, sacred
+history, and of the four operations, he would at once be led to working
+over himself, to reading much, and to refreshing his knowledge.
+
+Thus, the old method was criticized, and a new one was taken from the
+Germans. This method is so foreign to our Russian un-pedantic mental
+attitude, its monstrosity is so glaring, that one would think that it
+could never have been grafted on Russia, and yet it is being applied,
+even though only in a small measure, and in some way gives at times
+better results than the old church method. This is due to the fact that,
+since it was taken in our country (just as it originated in Germany)
+from the criticism of the old method, the faults of the former method
+have really been rejected, though, in its extreme opposition to the old
+method, which, with the pedantry characteristic of the Germans, has been
+carried to the farthest extreme, there have appeared new faults, which
+are almost greater than the former ones.
+
+Formerly reading was taught in Russia by attaching to the consonants
+useless endings (_buki_--_uki_, _vyedi_--_yedi_), and in Germany _es em
+de ce_, and so forth, by attaching a vowel to each consonant, now in
+front, and now behind, and that caused some difficulty. Now they have
+fallen into the other extreme, by trying to pronounce the consonants
+without the vowels, which is an apparent impossibility. In Ushinski's
+grammar (Ushinski is with us the father of the sound method), and in all
+the manuals on sound, a consonant is defined thus: "That sound which
+cannot be pronounced by itself." And it is this sound which the pupil is
+taught before any other. When I remarked that it is impossible to
+pronounce _b_ alone, but that it always gives you _b[)u]_, I was told
+that was due to the inability of some persons, and that it took great
+skill to pronounce a consonant. And I have myself seen a teacher correct
+a pupil more than ten times, though he seemed quite satisfactorily to
+pronounce short _b_, until at last the pupil began to talk nonsense. And
+it is with these _b's_, that is, sounds that cannot be pronounced, as
+Ushinski defines them, or the pronunciation of which demands special
+skill, that the instruction of reading begins according to the pedantic
+German manuals.
+
+Formerly syllables were senselessly learned by heart (that was bad);
+diametrically opposed to this, the new fashion enjoins us not to divide
+up into syllables at all, which is absolutely impossible in a long word,
+and which in reality is never done. Every teacher, according to the
+sound method, feels the necessity of letting a pupil rest after a part
+of a word, having him pronounce it separately. Formerly they used to
+read the psalter, which, on account of its high and deep style, is
+incomprehensible to the children (which was bad); in contrast to this
+the children are made to read sentences without any contents whatever,
+to explain intelligible words, or to learn by heart what they cannot
+understand. In the old school the teacher did not speak to the pupil at
+all; now the teacher is ordered to talk to them on anything and
+everything, on what they know already, or what they do not need to know.
+In mathematics they formerly learned by heart the definition of
+operations, but now they no longer have anything to do with operations,
+for, according to Evtushevski, they reach numeration only in the third
+year, and it is assumed that for a whole year they are to be taught
+nothing but numbers up to ten. Formerly the pupils were made to work
+with large abstract numbers, without paying any attention to the other
+side of mathematics, to the disentanglement of the problem (the
+formation of an equation). Now they are taught solving puzzles, forming
+equations with small numbers before they know numeration and how to
+operate with numbers, though experience teaches any teacher that the
+difficulty of forming equations or the solution of puzzles are overcome
+by a general development in life, and not in school.
+
+It has been observed--quite correctly--that there is no greater aid for
+a pupil, when he is puzzled by a problem with large numbers, than to
+give him the same problem with smaller numbers. The pupil, who in life
+learns to grope through problems with small numbers, is conscious of the
+process of solving, and transfers this process to the problem with large
+numbers. Having observed this, the new pedagogues try to teach only the
+solving of puzzles with small numbers, that is, what cannot form the
+subject of instruction and is only the work of life.
+
+In the instruction of grammar the new school has again remained
+consistent with its point of departure,--with the criticism of the old
+and the adoption of the diametrically opposite method. Formerly they
+used to learn by heart the definition of the parts of speech, and from
+etymology passed over to syntax; now they not only begin with syntax,
+but even with logic, which the children are supposed to acquire.
+According to the grammar of Mr. Bunakov, which is an abbreviation of
+Perevlevski's grammar, even with the same choice of examples, the study
+of grammar begins with syntactical analysis, which is so difficult and,
+I will say, so uncertain for the Russian language, which does not fully
+comply with the classic forms of syntax. To sum up, the new school has
+removed certain disadvantages, of which the chief are the superfluous
+addition to the consonants and the memorizing of definitions, and in
+this it is superior to the old method, and in reading and writing
+sometimes gives better results; but, on the other hand, it has
+introduced new defects, which are that the contents of the reading are
+most senseless and that arithmetic is no longer taught as a study.
+
+In practice (I can refer in this to all the inspectors of schools, to
+all the members of school councils, who have visited the schools, and to
+all the teachers), in practice, in the majority of schools, where the
+German method is prescribed, this is what takes place, with rare
+exceptions. The children learn not by the sound system, but by the
+method of letter composition; instead of saying _b_, _v_, they say
+_b[)u]_, _v[)u]_, and break up the words into syllables. The object
+instruction is entirely lost sight of, arithmetic does not proceed at
+all, and the children have absolutely nothing to read. The teachers
+quite unconsciously depart from the theoretical demands and fall in with
+the needs of the masses. These practical results, which are repeated
+everywhere, should, it seems, prove the incorrectness of the method
+itself; but among the pedagogues, those that write manuals and prescribe
+rules, there exists such a complete ignorance of and aversion to the
+knowledge of the masses and their demands that the relation of reality
+to these methods does not in the least impair the progress of their
+business. It is hard to imagine the conception about the masses which
+exists in this world of the pedagogues, and from which result their
+method and all the consequent manner of instruction.
+
+Mr. Bunakov, in proof of how necessary the object instruction and
+development is for the children of a Russian school, with extraordinary
+naivete adduces Pestalozzi's words: "Let any one who has lived among the
+common people," he says, "contradict my words that there is nothing more
+difficult than to impart any idea to these creatures. Nobody, indeed,
+gainsays that. The Swiss pastors affirm that when the people come to
+them to receive instruction they do not understand what they are told,
+and the pastors do not understand what the people say to them. City
+dwellers who settle in the country are amazed at the inability of the
+country population to express themselves; years pass before the country
+servants learn to express themselves to their masters." This relation of
+the common people in Switzerland to the cultured class is assumed as the
+foundation for just such a relation in Russia.
+
+I regard it as superfluous to expatiate on what is known to everybody,
+that in Germany the people speak a special language, called
+Plattdeutsch, and that in the German part of Switzerland this
+Plattdeutsch is especially far removed from the German language, whereas
+in Russia we frequently speak a bad language, while the masses always
+speak a good Russian, and that in Russia it will be more correct to put
+these words of Pestalozzi in the mouth of peasants speaking of the
+teachers. A peasant and his boy will say quite correctly that it is very
+hard to understand what those creatures, meaning the teachers, say. The
+ignorance about the masses is so complete in this world of the
+pedagogues that they boldly say that to the peasant school come little
+savages, and therefore boldly teach them what is down and what up, that
+a blackboard is placed on a stand, and that underneath it there is a
+groove. They do not know that if the pupils asked the teacher, there
+would turn up very many things which the teacher would not know; that,
+for example, if you rub off the paint from the board, nearly any boy
+will tell you of what kind of wood the board is made, whether of pine,
+linden, or aspen, which the teacher cannot tell; that a boy will always
+tell better than the teacher about a cat or a chicken, because he has
+observed them better than the teacher; that instead of the problem about
+the wagons the boy knows the problems about the crows, about the cattle,
+and about the geese. (About the crows: There flies a flock of crows, and
+there stand some oak-trees: if two crows alight on each, a crow will be
+lacking; if one on each, an oak-tree will be lacking. How many crows and
+how many oak-trees are there? About the cattle: For one hundred roubles
+buy one hundred animals,--calves at half a rouble, cows at three
+roubles, and oxen at ten roubles. How many oxen, cows, and calves are
+there?) The pedagogues of the German school do not even suspect that
+quickness of perception, that real vital development, that contempt for
+everything false, that ready ridicule of everything false, which are
+inherent in every Russian peasant boy,--and only on that account so
+boldly (as I myself have seen), under the fire of forty pairs of
+intelligent youthful eyes, perform their tricks at the risk of ridicule.
+For this reason, a real teacher, who knows the masses, no matter how
+sternly he is enjoined to teach the peasant children what is up and what
+down, and that two and three is five, not one real teacher, who knows
+the pupils with whom he has to deal, will be able to do that.
+
+Thus, the chief causes which have led us into such error are: (1) the
+ignorance about the masses; (2) the involuntarily seductive ease of
+teaching the children what they already know; (3) our proneness to
+imitate the Germans, and (4) the criticism of the old, without putting
+down a new, foundation. This last cause has led the pedagogues of the
+new school to this, that, in spite of the extreme external difference of
+the new method from the old, it is identical with it in its foundation,
+and, consequently, in the methods of instruction and in the results. In
+either method the essential principle consists in the teacher's firm and
+absolute knowledge of what to teach and how to teach, and this knowledge
+of his he does not draw from the demands of the masses and from
+experience, but simply decides theoretically once for all that he must
+teach this or that and in such a way, and so he teaches. The pedagogue
+of the ancient school, which for briefness' sake I shall call the church
+school, knows firmly and absolutely that he must teach from the
+prayer-book and the psalter by making the children learn by rote, and he
+admits no alterations in his methods; in the same manner the teacher of
+the new, the German, school knows firmly and absolutely that he must
+teach according to Bunakov and Evtushevski, begin with the words
+"whisker" and "wasp," ask what is up and what down, and tell about the
+favourite suslik, and he admits no alterations in his method. Both of
+them base their opinion on the firm conviction that they know the best
+methods. From the identity of the foundations arises also a further
+similarity. If you tell a teacher of the church reading that it takes
+the children a long time and causes them difficulty to acquire reading
+and writing, he will reply that the main interest is not in the reading
+and writing, but in the "divine instruction," by which he means the
+study of the church books. The same you will be told by a teacher of
+Russian reading according to the German method. He will tell you (all
+say and write it) that the main question is not the rapidity of the
+acquisition of the art of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but in the
+"development." Both place the aim of instruction in something
+independent of reading, writing, and arithmetic, that is, of science, in
+something else, which is absolutely necessary.
+
+This similarity continues down to the minutest details. In either method
+all instruction previous to the school, all knowledge acquired outside
+the school, is not taken into account,--all entering pupils are regarded
+as equally ignorant, and all are made to learn from the beginning. If a
+boy who knows the letters and the syllables _a_, _be_, enters a church
+school, he is made to change them to _buki-az_--_ba_. The same is true
+of the German school.
+
+Just so, in either school it happens that some children cannot learn the
+rudiments.
+
+Just so, with either method, the mechanical side of instruction
+predominates over the mental. In either school the pupils excel in a
+good handwriting and good enunciation with absolutely exact reading,
+that is, not as it is spoken, but as it is written. Just so, with either
+method, there always reigns an external order in the school, and the
+children are in constant fear and can be guided only with the greatest
+severity. Mr. Korolev has incidentally remarked that in instruction
+according to the sound method blows are not neglected. I have seen the
+same in the schools of the German method, and I assume that without
+blows it is impossible to get along even in the new German school,
+because, like the church school, it teaches without asking what the
+pupil finds interesting to know, but what, in the teacher's opinion,
+seems necessary, and so the school can be based only on compulsion.
+Compulsion is attained with children generally by means of blows. The
+church and the new German school, starting from the same principles and
+arriving at the same results, are absolutely identical. But, if it came
+to choosing one of the two, I should still prefer the church school. The
+defects are the same, but on the side of the church school is the custom
+of a thousand years and the authority of the church, which is so
+powerful with the masses.
+
+Having finished the analysis and criticism of the German school, I
+consider it necessary,--in view of what I have said, namely, that
+criticism is fruitful only when, condemning, it points out how that
+which is bad ought to be,--I consider it necessary to speak of those
+foundations of instruction which I regard as legitimate, and on which I
+rear my method of instruction.
+
+In order to elucidate in what I find these unquestionable foundations of
+every pedagogical activity, I shall be compelled to repeat myself, that
+is, to repeat what I said fifteen years ago in the pedagogical
+periodical, _Yasnaya Polyana_, which I then published. This repetition
+will not be tedious for the pedagogues of the new school, because what I
+then wrote is not exactly forgotten, but has never been considered by
+the pedagogues,--and yet I still think that just what was expressed by
+me at that time might have placed pedagogy, as a theory, on a firm
+foundation. Fifteen years ago, when I took up the matter of popular
+education without any preconceived theories or views on the subject,
+with the one desire to advance the matter in a direct and
+straightforward manner, I, as a teacher in my school, was at once
+confronted with two questions: (1) What must I teach? and (2) How must
+I teach it?
+
+At that time, even as at the present, there existed the greatest
+diversity of opinion in the answers to these questions.
+
+I know that some pedagogues, who are locked up in their narrow
+theoretical world, think that there is no other light than what peeps
+through the windows, and that there is no longer any diversity of
+opinions.
+
+I ask those who think so to observe that it only seems so to them, just
+as it seems so to the circles that are opposed to them. In the whole
+mass of people who are interested in education, there exists, as it has
+existed before, the greatest diversity of opinions. Formerly, just as
+now, some, in reply to the question of what ought to be taught, said
+that outside of the rudiments the most useful information for a primary
+school is obtained from the natural sciences; others, even as now, that
+that was not necessary, and was even injurious; even as now, some
+proposed history, or geography, while others denied their necessity;
+some proposed the Church-Slavic language and grammar, and religion,
+while others found that, too, superfluous, and ascribed a prime
+importance to "development." On the question of how to teach there has
+always been a still greater diversity of answers. The most diversified
+methods of instructing in reading and arithmetic have been proposed.
+
+In the bookstalls there were sold, side by side, the self-teachers
+according to the _buki-az--ba_, Bunakov's lessons, Zolotov's charts,
+Madame Daragan's alphabets, and all had their advocates. When I
+encountered these questions and found no answer for them in Russian
+literature, I turned to the literature of Europe. After having read what
+had been written on the subject and having made the personal
+acquaintance of the so-called best representatives of the pedagogical
+science in Europe, I not only failed to find anywhere an answer to the
+question I was interested in, but I convinced myself that this question
+does not even exist for pedagogy, as a science; that every pedagogue of
+any given school firmly believed that the methods which he used were the
+best, because they were based on absolute truth, and that it would be
+useless for him to look at them with a critical eye.
+
+However, because, as I said, I took up the matter of popular education
+without any preconceived notions, or because I took up the matter
+without prescribing laws from a distance about how I ought to teach, but
+became a schoolmaster in a village popular school in the backwoods,--I
+could not reject the idea that there must of necessity exist a criterion
+by means of which the question could be solved: What to teach and how to
+teach it. Should I teach the psalter by heart, or the classification of
+the organisms? Should I teach according to the sound alphabet,
+translated from the German, or from the prayer-book? In the solution of
+this question I was aided by a certain pedagogical tact, with which I am
+gifted, and especially by that close and impassioned relation in which I
+stood to the matter.
+
+When I entered at once into the closest direct relations with those
+forty tiny peasants that formed my school (I call them tiny peasants
+because I found in them the same characteristics of perspicacity, the
+same immense store of information from practical life, of jocularity,
+simplicity, and loathing for everything false, which distinguish the
+Russian peasant), when I saw that susceptibility, that readiness to
+acquire the information which they needed, I felt at once that the
+antiquated church method of instruction had outlived its usefulness and
+was not good for them. I began to experiment on other proposed methods
+of instruction; but, because compulsion in education, both by my
+conviction and by my character, are repulsive to me, I did not exercise
+any pressure, and, the moment I noticed that something was not readily
+received, I did not compel them, and looked for something else. From
+these experiments it appeared to me and to those teachers who instructed
+with me at Yasnaya Polyana and in other schools on the same principle of
+freedom, that nearly everything which in the pedagogical world was
+written about schools was separated by an immeasurable abyss from
+reality, and that many of the proposed methods, such as object-lessons,
+the natural sciences, the sound method, and others, called forth
+contempt and ridicule, and were not accepted by the pupils. We began to
+look for those contents and those methods which were readily taken up by
+the pupils, and struck that which forms my method of instruction.
+
+But this method stood in a line with all other methods, and the question
+of why it was better than the rest remained as unsolved as before.
+Consequently, the question of what the criterion was as to what to teach
+and how to teach received an even greater meaning for me; only by
+solving it could I be convinced that what I taught was neither injurious
+nor useless. This question both then and now has appeared to me as a
+corner-stone of the whole pedagogy, and to the solution of this question
+I devoted the publication of the pedagogical periodical _Yasnaya
+Polyana_. In several articles (I do not renounce anything I then said) I
+tried to put the question in all its significance and to solve it as
+much as I could. At that time I found no sympathy in all the pedagogical
+literature, not even any contradiction, but the most complete
+indifference to the question which I put. There were some attacks on
+certain details and trifles, but the question itself evidently did not
+interest any one. I was young then, and that indifference grieved me. I
+did not understand that with my question, "How do you know what to teach
+and how to teach?" I was like a man who, let us say, in a gathering of
+Turkish pashas discussing the question in what manner they may collect
+the greatest revenue from the people, should propose to them the
+following: "Gentlemen, in order to know how much revenue to collect from
+each, we must first analyze the question on what your right to exact
+that revenue is based." Obviously all the pashas would continue their
+discussion of the measures of extortion, and would reply only with
+silence to his irrelevant question. But the question cannot be
+circumvented. Fifteen years ago no attention was paid to it, and the
+pedagogues of every school, convinced that everybody else was talking to
+the wind and that they were right, most calmly prescribed their laws,
+basing their principles on philosophies of a very doubtful character,
+which they used as a substratum for their wee little theories.
+
+And yet, this question is not quite so difficult if we only renounce
+completely all preconceived notions. I have tried to elucidate and solve
+this question, and, without repeating those proofs, which he who wishes
+may read in the article, I will enunciate the results to which I was
+led. "The only criterion of pedagogy is freedom, the only
+method--experience." After fifteen years I have not changed my opinion
+one hair's breadth; but I consider it necessary to define with greater
+precision what I understand by these words, not only in respect to
+education in general, but also in respect to the particular question of
+popular education in a primary school. One hundred years ago the
+question what to teach and how to teach could have had no place either
+in Europe or with us. Education was inseparably connected with religion.
+To learn reading meant to learn Holy Writ. In the Mohammedan countries
+this relation of the rudiments and religion still persists in its full
+force. To learn means to learn the Koran, and, therefore, Arabic. But
+the moment religion ceased to be the criterion of what ought to be
+taught, and the school became independent of it, this question had to
+arise. But it did not arise because the school was not suddenly freed
+from its dependence on religion, but by imperceptible steps. Now it is
+accepted by everybody that religion cannot serve as the contents, nor as
+an indication of the method of education, and that education has
+different demands for its basis. In what do these demands consist? On
+what are they based? In order that these principles should be
+incontrovertible, it is necessary either that they be proved
+philosophically, incontrovertibly, or that, at least, all educated
+people should be agreed on them. But is it so? There can be no doubt
+whatsoever about this, that in philosophy have not been found those
+principles on which could be built up the decision of what ought to be
+taught, the more so since the matter itself is not an abstract, but a
+practical affair, which depends on an endless number of vital
+conditions. Still less can these principles be discovered in the common
+consent of all men who busy themselves with this matter, in the consent
+which we may take as a practical foundation, as an expression of the
+universal common sense. Not only in matters of popular, but even of
+higher education do we see a complete diversity of opinions among the
+best representatives of education, as, for example, in the question of
+classicism and realism. And yet, in spite of the absence of any
+foundations, we see education proceeding on its own path and on the
+whole being guided by only one principle, namely by freedom. There exist
+side by side the classical and the real school, each of which is
+prepared to regard itself as the only natural school, and both satisfy
+some want, for parents send their children to either.
+
+In the popular school the right to determine what the children shall
+learn, no matter from what standpoint we may consider this question,
+belongs just as much to the masses, that is, either to the pupils
+themselves, or to the parents who send the children to school, and so
+the answer to the question what the children are to be taught in a
+popular school can be got only from the masses. But, perhaps, we shall
+say that we, as highly cultured people, must not submit to the demands
+of the rude masses and that we must teach the masses what to wish. Thus
+many think, but to that I can give this one answer: give us a firm,
+incontrovertible foundation why this or that is chosen by you, show me a
+society in which the two diametrically opposed views on education do not
+exist among the highly cultured people; where it is not eternally
+repeated that if education falls into the hands of the clergy, the
+masses are educated in one sense, and if education falls into the hands
+of the progressists, the people are educated in another sense,--show me
+a state of society where that does not exist, and I will agree with you.
+So long as that does not exist, there is no criterion except the freedom
+of the learner, where, in matters of the popular school, the place of
+the learning children is taken by their parents, that is, by the needs
+of the masses.
+
+These needs are not only definite, quite clear, and everywhere the same
+throughout Russia, but also so intelligent and broad that they include
+all the most diversified demands of the people who are debating what the
+masses ought to be taught. These needs are: the knowledge of Russian and
+Church-Slavic reading, and calculation. The masses everywhere and always
+regard the natural sciences as useless trifles. Their programme is
+remarkable not only by its unanimity and firm definiteness, but, in my
+opinion, also by the breadth of its demands and the correctness of its
+view. The masses admit two spheres of knowledge, the most exact and the
+least subject to vacillation from a diversity of views,--the languages
+and mathematics; everything else they regard as trifles. I think that
+the masses are quite correct,--in the first place, because in this
+knowledge there can be no half information, no falseness, which they
+cannot bear, and, in the second, because the sphere of those two kinds
+of knowledge is immense. Russian and Church-Slavic grammar and
+calculation, that is, the knowledge of one dead and one living language,
+with their etymological and syntactical forms and their literatures, and
+arithmetic, that is, the foundation of all mathematics, form their
+programme of knowledge, which, unfortunately, but the rarest of the
+cultured class possess. In the third place, the masses are right,
+because by this programme they will be taught in the primary school only
+what will open to them the more advanced paths of knowledge, for it is
+evident that the thorough knowledge of two languages and their forms,
+and, in addition to them, of arithmetic, completely opens the paths to
+an independent acquisition of all other knowledge. The masses, as though
+feeling the false relation to them, when they are offered incoherent
+scraps of all kinds of information, repel that lie from themselves, and
+say: "I need know but this much,--the church language and my own and the
+laws of the numbers, but that other knowledge I will take myself if I
+want it."
+
+Thus, if we admit freedom as the criterion of what is to be taught, the
+programme of the popular schools is clearly and firmly defined, until
+the time when the masses shall express some new demands. Church-Slavic
+and Russian and arithmetic to their highest possible stages, and nothing
+else but that. That is the determination of the limits of the programme
+of the popular school, which, however, does not presume that all three
+subjects be introduced systematically. With such a programme the
+attainment of symmetrical results in all three subjects would naturally
+be desirable; but it cannot be said that the predominance of one subject
+over another would be injurious. The problem consists only in keeping
+within the limits of the programme. It may happen that from the demands
+of the parents, and especially from the knowledge of the teacher, this
+or that subject will be more prominent,--with a clerical person the
+Church-Slavic language, with a teacher from a county school--either
+Russian or arithmetic; in all these cases the demands of the masses will
+be satisfied, and the instruction will not depart from its fundamental
+criterion.
+
+The second part of the question, how to teach, that is, how to discover
+which method is the best, has remained just as unsolved.
+
+Just as in the first part of the question of what to teach, the
+assumption that on the basis of reflections it is possible to build a
+programme of instruction leads to contradictory schools, so it is also
+with the question as to how to teach. Let us take the very first
+stage of the teaching of reading. One asserts that it is easier to
+teach so from cards; another--according to the _b_, _v_ system; a
+third--according to Korf; a fourth--according to the _be_, _ve_, _ge_
+system, and so forth. It is said that the nuns teach reading in six
+weeks by the _buki-az_--_ba_ system. And every teacher, convinced of the
+superiority of his method, proves this superiority either by the fact
+that he teaches with it faster than others, or by reflections of the
+character which Mr. Bunakov and the German pedagogues adduce. At the
+present time, when there are thousands of examples, we ought to know
+precisely by what to be guided in our choice. Neither theory, nor
+reflections, nor even the results of instruction can show this
+completely.
+
+Education and instruction are generally considered in the abstract, that
+is, the question is discussed how in the best and easiest manner to
+produce a certain act of instruction on a certain subject (whether it be
+one child or a mass of children). This view is quite faulty. All
+education and instruction can be viewed only as a certain relation of
+two persons or of two groups of persons having for their aim education
+or instruction. This definition, more general than all the other
+definitions, has special reference to popular education, where the
+question is the education of an immense number of persons, and where
+there can be no question about an ideal education. In general, with the
+popular education we cannot put the question, "How is the best education
+to be given?" just as with the question of the nutrition of the masses
+we cannot ask how the most nutritious and best loaf is to be baked. The
+question has to be put like this: "How is the best relation to be
+established between given people who want to learn and others who want
+to teach?" or, "How is the best bread to be made from given bolted
+flour?" Consequently the question of how to teach and what is the best
+method is a question of what will be the best relation between teacher
+and pupil.
+
+Nobody, I suppose, will deny that the best relation between teacher and
+pupil is that of naturalness, and that the contrary relation is that of
+compulsion. If so, the measure of all methods is to be found in the
+greater or lesser naturalness of relations and, therefore, in the lesser
+or greater compulsion in instruction. The less the children are
+compelled to learn, the better is the method; the more--the worse. I am
+glad that I do not have to prove this evident truth. Everybody is agreed
+that just as in hygiene the use of any food, medicine, exercise, that
+provokes loathing or pain, cannot be useful, so also in instruction can
+there be no necessity of compelling children to learn anything that is
+tiresome and repulsive to them, and that, if necessity demands that
+children be compelled, it only proves the imperfection of the method.
+Any one who has taught children has no doubt observed that the less the
+teacher himself knows the subject which he teaches and the less he likes
+it, the more will he have to have recourse to severity and compulsion;
+on the contrary, the more the teacher knows and loves his subject, the
+more natural and easy will his instruction be. With the idea that for
+successful instruction not compulsion is wanted, but the rousing of the
+pupil's interest, all the pedagogues of the school which is opposed to
+me agree. The only difference between us is that the conception that the
+teaching must rouse the child's interest is with them lost in a mass of
+other conflicting notions about "development," of the value of which
+they are convinced and in which they exercise compulsion; whereas I
+consider the rousing of the pupil's interest, the greatest possible
+ease, and, therefore, the non-compulsion and naturalness of instruction
+as the fundamental and only measure of good and bad instruction.
+
+Every progress of pedagogy, if we attentively consider the history of
+this matter, consists in an ever increasing approximation toward
+naturalness of relations between teacher and pupil, in a lessened
+compulsion, and in a greater ease of instruction.
+
+The objection was formerly made and, I know, is made even now that it is
+hard to find the limit of freedom which shall be permitted in school. To
+this I will reply that this limit is naturally determined by the
+teacher, his knowledge, his ability to manage the school; that this
+freedom cannot be prescribed; the measure of this freedom is only the
+result of the greater or lesser knowledge and talent of the teacher.
+This freedom is not a rule, but serves as a check in comparing schools
+between themselves, and as a check in comparing new methods which are
+introduced into the school curriculum. The school in which there is less
+compulsion is better than the one in which there is more. The method
+which at its introduction into the school does not demand an increase of
+discipline is good; but the one which demands greater severity is
+certainly bad. Take, for example, a more or less free school, such as
+mine was, and try to start a conversation in it about the table and the
+ceiling, or to transpose cubes,--you will see what it hubbub will arise
+in the school and how you will feel the necessity of restoring order by
+means of severity; try to tell them an interesting story, or to give
+them problems, or make one write on the board and let the others correct
+his mistakes, and allow them to leave the benches, and you will find
+them all occupied and there will be no naughtiness, and you will not
+have to increase your severity,--and you may safely say that the method
+is good.
+
+In my pedagogical articles I have given theoretical reasons why I find
+that only the freedom of choice on the side of the learners as to what
+they are to be taught and how can form a foundation of any instruction;
+in practice I have always applied these rules in the schools under my
+guidance, at first on a large scale, and later in narrower limits, and
+the results have always been very good, both for the teachers and the
+pupils, as also for the evolution of new methods,--and this I assert
+boldly, for hundreds of visitors have come to the Yasnaya Polyana school
+and know all about it.
+
+The consequences of such a relation to the pupils has been for the
+teachers that they did not consider that method best which they knew,
+but tried to discover other methods, became acquainted with other
+teachers for the purpose of learning their methods, tested new methods,
+and, above all, were learning something all the time. A teacher never
+permitted himself to think that in cases of failure it was the pupils'
+fault,--their laziness, playfulness, dulness, deafness, stammering,--but
+was firmly convinced that he alone was to blame for it, and for every
+failure of a pupil or of all the pupils he tried to find a remedy. For
+the pupils the result was that they learned readily, always begged the
+teachers to give them evening classes in the winter, and were absolutely
+free in the school,--which, in my conviction and experience, is the
+chief condition for successful progress in instruction. Between teachers
+and pupils there were always established friendly, natural relations,
+with which alone it is possible for the teacher to know his pupils well.
+If, from a first, external impression of the school, we were to
+determine the difference between the church, the German, and my own
+school, it would be this: in a church school you hear a peculiar,
+unnatural, monotonous shouting of all the pupils and now and then the
+stern cries of the teacher; in the German school you hear only the
+teacher's voice and now and then the timid voices of the pupils; in mine
+you hear the loud voices of the teachers and the pupils, almost
+simultaneously.
+
+As for the methods of instruction the consequences were that not one
+method of instruction was adopted or rejected because it was liked or
+not, but only because it was accepted or not by the pupils without
+compulsion. But in addition to the good results which were always
+obtained without fail from the application of my method by myself and by
+everybody else (more than twenty teachers), who taught according to my
+method ("without fail" I say for the reason that not once did we have a
+pupil who did not learn the rudiments), besides these results, the
+application of the principles of which I have spoken had the effect that
+during these fifteen years all the various modifications, to which my
+method was subjected, not only did not remove it from the needs of the
+masses, but, on the contrary, brought it nearer and nearer to them. The
+masses, at least in our parts, know the method itself and discuss it,
+and prefer it to the church method, which I cannot say of the sound
+method. In the schools which are conducted according to my method the
+teacher cannot remain motionless in his knowledge, such as he is and
+must be with the method of sounds. If a teacher according to the new
+German fashion wants to go ahead and perfect himself, he has to follow
+the pedagogical literature, that is, to read all those new inventions
+about the conversations about the suslik and about the transposition of
+the squares. I do not think that that can promote his personal
+education. On the contrary, in my school, where the subjects of
+instruction, language and mathematics, demand positive knowledge, every
+teacher, in advancing his pupils, feels the need of learning himself,
+which was constantly the case with all the teachers I had.
+
+Besides, the methods of instruction themselves, which are not settled
+once for all, but always strive to be as easy and as simple as possible,
+are modified and improved from the indications which the teacher
+discovers in the relations of the learners to his instruction.
+
+The very opposite to this I see in what, unfortunately, takes place in
+the schools of the German pattern, which of late have been introduced in
+our country in an artificial manner. The failure to recognize that
+before deciding what to teach and how to teach we must solve the
+question how we can find that out has led the pedagogues to a complete
+disagreement with reality, and the abyss which fifteen years ago was
+felt to exist between theory and practice has now reached the farthest
+limits. Now that the masses are on all sides begging for education,
+while pedagogy has more than ever passed to personal fancies, this
+discord has reached incredible proportions.
+
+This discord between the demands of pedagogy and reality has of late
+found its peculiarly striking expression not only in the matter of
+instruction itself, but also in another very important side of the
+school, namely in its administration. In order to show in what condition
+this matter has been and might be, I shall speak of Krapivensk County of
+the Government of Tula, in which I live, which I know, and which, from
+its position, forms the type of the majority of counties of central
+Russia.
+
+In 1862 fourteen schools were opened in a district of ten thousand
+souls, when I was rural judge; besides, there existed about ten schools
+in the district among the clericals and in the manors among the
+servants. In the three remaining districts of the county there were
+fifteen large and thirty small schools among the clericals and manorial
+servants. Without saying anything about the number of the learners, of
+which, I assume, there were in general not less than now, nor about the
+instruction itself, which was partly bad and partly good, but on the
+whole not worse than at present, I will tell how and on what that
+business was based.
+
+All schools were then, with few exceptions, based on a free agreement of
+the teacher with the parents of the pupils, or with the whole
+partnership of the peasants paying a lump sum for everybody. Such a
+relation between the parents or Communes and the teachers is even now
+met with in some exceedingly rare places of our county and of the
+Government in general. Everybody will agree that, leaving aside the
+question of the quality of instruction, such a relation of the teacher
+to the parents and peasants is most just, natural, and desirable. But,
+with the introduction of the law of 1864, this relation was abolished
+and is being abolished more and more. Everybody who knows the matter as
+it is will observe that with the abolition of this relation the people
+take less and less part in the matter of their education, which is only
+natural. In some County Councils the school tax of the peasants is even
+turned into the County Council, and the salary, appointment of teachers,
+location of schools,--all that is done quite independently of those for
+whom it is intended (in theory the peasants, no doubt, are members of
+the County Council, but in practice they have through this mediation no
+influence on their own schools). Nobody will, I suppose, assert that
+that is just, but some will say: "The illiterate peasants cannot judge
+what is good and what bad, and we must build for them as well as we
+can." But how do we know? Do we know firmly, are we all of one opinion,
+how to build schools? And does it not frequently turn out bad, for we
+have built much worse than they have?
+
+Thus, in relation to the administrative side of the schools I have again
+to put a third question, on the same basis of freedom: Why do we know
+how best to arrange a school? To this question German pedagogy gives an
+answer which is quite consistent with its whole system. It knows what
+the best school is, it has formed a clear, definite ideal, down to the
+minutest details, the benches, the hours of instruction, and so forth,
+and gives an answer: the school has to be such and such, according to
+this pattern,--this alone is good and every other school is injurious. I
+know that, although the desire of Henry IV. to give each Frenchman soup
+and a chicken was unrealizable, it was impossible to say that the desire
+was false. But the matter assumes an entirely different aspect when the
+soup is of a very questionable quality and is not a chicken soup, but a
+worthless broth. And yet the so-called science of pedagogy is in this
+matter indissolubly connected with power; both in Germany and with us
+there are prescribed certain ideal one-class, two-class schools, and so
+forth; and the pedagogical and the administrative powers do not wish to
+know the fact that the masses would like to attend to their own
+education. Let us see how such a view of popular education has been
+reflected in practice on the question of education.
+
+Beginning with the year 1862 the idea that education was necessary has
+more and more spread among the masses: on all sides schools were
+established by church servants, hired teachers, and the Communes.
+Whether good or bad, these schools were spontaneous and grew out
+directly from the needs of the masses; with the introduction of the law
+of 1864 this tendency was increased, and in 1870 there were, according
+to the reports, about sixty schools in Krapivensk County. Since then
+officials of the ministry and members of the County Council have begun
+to meddle more and more with school matters, and in Krapivensk County
+forty schools have been closed and schools of a lower order have been
+prohibited from being opened. I know that those who closed those schools
+affirm that these schools existed only nominally and were very bad; but
+I cannot believe it, because I know well-instructed pupils from three
+villages, Trosna, Lamintsovo, and Yasnaya Polyana, where schools were
+closed. I also know---and this will seem incredible to many---what is
+meant by prohibiting the opening of schools. It means that, on the basis
+of a circular of the ministry of public instruction, which spoke of the
+prohibition of unreliable teachers (this, no doubt, had reference to the
+Nihilists), the school council transferred this prohibition to the minor
+schools, taught by sextons, soldiers, and so forth, which the peasants
+themselves had opened, and which, no doubt, are not at all comprised in
+the circular. But, instead, there exist twenty schools with teachers,
+who are supposed to be good because they receive a salary of two hundred
+roubles in silver, and the County Council has distributed Ushinski's
+text-books, and these schools are called one-class schools, because they
+teach in them according to a programme, and the whole year around, that
+is, also in summer, with the exception of July and August.
+
+Leaving aside the question of the quality of the former schools, we
+shall now take a glance at their administrative side, and we will
+compare, from this side, what was before, with what is now. In the
+administrative, external side of the school there are five main
+subjects, which are so closely connected with the school business itself
+that on their good or bad structure depend to a great extent the success
+and dissemination of popular education. These five subjects are: (1) the
+school building, (2) the schedule of instruction, (3) the distribution
+of the schools according to localities, (4) the choice of the teacher,
+and--what is most important--(5) the material means, the remuneration of
+the teachers.
+
+In regard to the school building the masses rarely have any difficulty,
+when they start a school for themselves, and if the Commune is rich and
+there are any communal buildings, such as a storehouse or a deserted
+inn, the Commune fixes it up; if there is none, it buys a building, at
+times even from a landed proprietor, or it builds one of its own. If the
+Commune is not well-to-do and is small, it hires quarters from a
+peasant, or establishes a rotation, and the teacher passes from hut to
+hut. If the Commune, as it most generally does, selects a teacher from
+its own midst, a manorial servant, a soldier, or a church servant, the
+school is located at the house of that person, and the Commune looks
+only after the heating. In any case, I have never heard that the
+question of the location of the school ever troubled a Commune, or that
+half the sum set aside for instruction should be lost, as is done by
+school councils, on the buildings, nay, not even one-sixth or one-tenth
+of the whole sum. The peasant Communes have arranged it one way or
+another, but the question of the school building has never been regarded
+as troublesome. Only under the influence of the higher authorities do
+there occur cases where the Communes build brick buildings with iron
+roofs. The peasants assume that the school is not in the structure, but
+in the teacher, and that the school is not a permanent institution, but
+that as soon as the parents have acquired knowledge, the next generation
+will get the rudiments without a teacher. But the County Council
+department of the ministry always assumes--since for it the whole
+problem consists in inspecting and classifying--that the chief
+foundation of the school is the structure and that the school is a
+permanent establishment, and so, as far as I know, now spends about
+one-half of its money on buildings, and inscribes empty school buildings
+in the list of the schools of the third order. In the Krapivensk County
+Council seven hundred roubles out of two thousand roubles are spent on
+buildings. The ministerial department cannot admit that the teacher
+(that educated pedagogue who is assumed for the masses) would lower
+himself to such an extent as to be willing to go, like a tailor, from
+hut to hut, or to teach in a smoky house. But the masses assume nothing
+and only know that for their money they can hire whom they please, and
+that, if they, the hiring peasants, live in smoky huts, the hired
+teacher has no reason to turn up his nose at them.
+
+In regard to the second question, about the division of the school time,
+the masses have always and everywhere invariably expressed one demand,
+and that is that the instruction shall be carried on in the winter only.
+
+Everywhere the parents quit sending their children in the spring, and
+those children who are left in the school, from one-fourth to one-fifth
+of the whole number, are the little tots or the children of rich
+parents, and they attend school unwillingly. When the masses hire a
+teacher themselves, they always hire him by the month and only for the
+winter. The ministerial department assumes that, just as in the
+institutions of learning there are two months of vacation, so it ought
+also to be in a one-class country school. From the standpoint of the
+ministerial department that is quite reasonable: the children will not
+forget their instruction, the teacher is provided for during the whole
+year, and the inspectors find it more comfortable to travel in the
+summer; but the masses know nothing about all that, and their common
+sense tells them that in winter the children sleep for ten hours,
+consequently their minds are fresh; that in winter there are no plays
+and no work for the children, and that if they study in winter as long
+as possible, taking in even the evenings, for which a lamp costing one
+rouble fifty kopeks is needed and kerosene costing as much, there will
+be enough instruction. Besides, in the summer every boy is of use to
+the peasant, and in summer proceeds the life instruction, which is more
+important than school learning. The masses say that there is no reason
+why they should pay the teacher during the summer. "Rather will we
+increase his pay for the winter months, and that will please him better.
+We prefer to hire a teacher at twenty-five roubles a month for seven
+months, than at twelve roubles a month for the whole year. For the
+summer the teacher will hire himself out elsewhere."
+
+As to the third question, the distribution of the schools according to
+localities, the arrangements of the masses most markedly differ from
+those of the school council. In the first place, the distribution of the
+schools, that is, whether there shall be more or less of them for a
+certain locality, always depends on the character of the whole
+population (when the masses themselves attend to it). Wherever the
+masses are more industrial and work out, where they are nearer to the
+cities, where they need the rudiments,--there there are more schools;
+where the locality is more removed and agricultural, there there are
+fewer of them. In the second place, when the masses themselves attend to
+the matter, they distribute the schools in such a way as to give all the
+parents a chance to make use of the schools in return for their money,
+that is, to send their children to school. The peasants of small, remote
+villages of from thirty to forty souls, where half the population will
+be found, prefer to have a cheap teacher in their own village, than an
+expensive one in the centre of the township, whither their children
+cannot walk or be driven. By this distribution of the schools, the
+schools themselves, as arranged by the peasants, depart, it is true,
+from the required pattern of the school, but, instead, acquire the most
+diversified forms, everywhere adapting themselves to local conditions.
+Here a clerical person from a neighbouring village teaches eight boys at
+his house, receiving fifty kopeks a month from each. Here a small
+village hires a soldier for eight roubles for the winter, and he goes
+from house to house. Here a rich innkeeper hires a teacher for his
+children for five roubles and board, and the neighbouring peasants join
+him, by adding two roubles for each of their boys. There a large village
+or a compact township levies fifteen kopeks from each of the twelve
+hundred souls and hires a teacher for 180 roubles for the winter. There
+the priest teaches, receiving as a remuneration either money, or labour,
+or both. The chief difference in this respect between the view of the
+peasants and that of the County Council is this: the peasants, according
+to the more or less favourable local conditions, introduce schools of a
+better or worse quality, but always in such a way that there is not a
+single locality where some kind of instruction is not offered; while
+with the arrangement of the County Council a large half of the
+population is left outside every possibility of partaking of that
+education even in the distant future.
+
+In matters of the petty villages, forming one-half of the population,
+the ministerial department acts most decisively. It says: "We provide
+schools where there is a building and where the peasants of the township
+have collected enough money to support a teacher at two hundred roubles.
+We will contribute from the County Council what is wanting, and the
+school is entered on the lists." The villages that are removed from the
+school may send their children there, if they so wish. Of course, the
+peasants do not take their children there, because it is too far, and
+yet they pay. Thus, in the Yasenets township all pay for three schools,
+but only 450 souls in three villages make use of the school, though
+there are in all three thousand souls; thus, only one-seventh of the
+population makes use of the school, though all pay for it. In the
+Chermoshen township there are nine hundred souls and there is a school
+there, but only thirty pupils attend it, because all the villages of
+that township are scattered. To nine hundred souls there ought to be
+four hundred pupils. And yet, both in the Yasenets and the Chermoshen
+townships the question of the distribution of schools is regarded as
+satisfactorily solved.
+
+In matters of the choice of a teacher, the masses are again guided by
+quite different views from the County Council. In choosing a teacher,
+the masses look upon him in their own way, and judge him accordingly. If
+the teacher has been in the neighbourhood, and the masses know what the
+results of his teaching are, they value him according to these results
+as a good or as a bad teacher; but, in addition to the scholastic
+qualities, the masses demand that the teacher shall be a man who stands
+in close relations to the peasant, able to understand his life and to
+speak Russian, and so they will always prefer a country to a city
+teacher. In doing so, the masses have no bias and no antipathy toward
+any class in particular: he may be a gentleman, official, burgher,
+soldier, sexton, priest,--that makes no difference so long as he is a
+simple man and a Russian. For this reason the peasants have no cause for
+excluding clerical persons, as the County Councils do. The County
+Councils select their teachers from among strangers, getting them from
+the cities, while the masses look for them among themselves. But the
+chief difference in this respect between the view of the Communes and
+that of the County Council consists in this: the County Council has only
+one type,--the teacher who has attended pedagogical courses, who has
+finished a course in a seminary or school, at two hundred roubles; but
+with the masses, who do not exclude this teacher and appreciate him, if
+he is good, there are gradations of all kinds of teachers. Besides, with
+the majority of school councils there are definite favourite types of
+teachers, for the most part such as are foreign to the masses and
+antagonistic to them, and other types which the school councils
+dislike. Thus, evidently, the favourite type of many counties of the
+Government of Tula are lady teachers; the disliked type are the clerical
+persons, and in the whole of the Tula and Krapivensk counties there is
+not one school with a teacher from the clergy, which is quite remarkable
+from an administrative point of view. In Krapivensk County there are
+fifty parishes. The clerical persons are the cheapest of teachers,
+because they are permanently settled and for the most part can teach in
+their own houses with the aid of their wives and daughters,--and these
+are, it seems, purposely avoided, as though they were very harmful
+people.
+
+In matters of the remuneration of the teachers, the difference between
+the view of the masses and that of the County Council has almost all
+been expressed in the preceding pages. It consists in this: (1) the
+masses choose a teacher according to their means, and they admit and
+know from experience that there are teachers at all prices, from two
+puds of flour a month to thirty roubles a month; (2) teachers are to be
+remunerated for the winter months, for those during which there can be
+some instruction; (3) the masses, in the housing of the school as also
+in matters of the remuneration of the teachers, always know how to find
+a cheap way: they give flour, hay, the use of carts, eggs, and all kinds
+of trifles, which are imperceptible to the world at large, but which
+improve the teacher's condition; (4) above all, a teacher is paid, or is
+remunerated in addition to the payment, by the parents of the pupils,
+who pay by the month, or by the whole Commune which enjoys the
+advantages of the school, and not by the administration that has no
+direct interest in the matter.
+
+The ministerial department cannot act differently in this respect. The
+norm of the salary for a model teacher is given, consequently these
+means have to be got together in some way. For example: a Commune
+intends to open a school,--the township gives it a certain number of
+kopeks per soul. The County Council calculates how much to add. If there
+are no demands made by other schools, it gives more, sometimes twice as
+much as the Commune has given; at times, when all the money has been
+distributed, it gives less, or entirely refuses to give any. Thus, there
+is in Krapivensk County a Commune which gives ninety roubles, and the
+County Council adds to that three hundred roubles for a school with an
+assistant; and there is another Commune which gives 250 roubles, and the
+County Council adds another fifty roubles; and a third Commune which
+offers fifty-six roubles, and the County Council refuses to add anything
+or to open the school, because that money is insufficient for a normal
+school, and all the money has been distributed.
+
+Thus, the chief distinctions between the administrative view of the
+masses and that of the County Council are the following: (1) the County
+Council pays great attention to the housing and spends large sums upon
+it, while the masses obviate this difficulty by domestic, economic
+means, and look upon the primary schools as temporary, passing
+institutions; (2) the ministerial department demands that instruction be
+carried on during the whole year, with the exception of July and August,
+and nowhere introduces evening classes, while the masses demand that
+instruction be carried on only in the winter and are fond of evening
+classes; (3) the ministerial department has a definite type of teachers,
+without which it does not recognize the school, and has a loathing for
+clerical persons and, in general, for local instructors; the masses
+recognize no norm and choose their teachers preferably from local
+inhabitants; (4) the ministerial department distributes the schools by
+accident, that is, it is guided only by the desire of forming a normal
+school, and has no care for that greater half of the population which
+under such a distribution is left outside the school education; the
+masses not only recognize no definite external form of the school, but
+in the greatest variety of ways get teachers with all kinds of means,
+arranging worse and cheaper schools with small means and good and
+expensive schools with greater means, and turn their attention to
+furnishing all localities with instruction in return for their money;
+(5) the ministerial department determines one measure of remuneration,
+which is sufficiently high, and arbitrarily increases the amount from
+the County Council; the masses demand the greatest possible economy and
+distribute the remuneration in such a way that those whose children are
+taught pay directly.
+
+It seems as though it would be superfluous to expatiate on how clearly
+the common sense of the masses is expressed in these demands, in
+contradistinction to that artificial structure, in which, at its very
+birth, they are trying to imprison the business of popular education.
+Even besides this, the feeling of justice is involuntarily provoked
+against such an order of things. See what is taking place. The masses
+have felt the necessity of education, and have begun to work in the
+direction of attaining their end. In addition to all the taxes which
+they pay, they have voluntarily imposed upon themselves the tax for
+education, that is, they have begun to hire teachers. What have we done?
+"Oh, you are able to pay," we said, "wait, then, for you are stupid and
+rude. Let us have the money, and we will arrange it for you in the best
+manner possible."
+
+The masses have given up their money (as I have said, in many County
+Councils the levy for the schools has been turned directly into a tax).
+The money was taken, and the education was arranged for them.
+
+I am not going to repeat about the artificiality of the education, but
+how the whole matter has been arranged. In Krapivensk County there are
+forty thousand souls, including girls, according to the last census.
+According to Bunyakovski's table of the distribution of ten thousand of
+the Orthodox population for the year 1862, there ought to be, of the
+male sex between six and fourteen years, 1,834, and of the female sex,
+1,989,--in all 3,823 to each ten thousand. According to my own
+observations, there ought to be more, no doubt on account of the
+increase of the population, so that the average school population may
+boldly be put at four thousand. In a school there are, on an average, in
+the large centres, about sixty pupils, and in the smaller, from ten to
+twenty-five. In order that all may receive instruction, the smaller
+centres, forming the greater half of the population, need schools for
+ten, fifteen, and twenty pupils, so that the average of a school, in my
+opinion, would be not more than thirty pupils. How many schools are,
+then, needed for sixteen thousand pupils? Divide sixteen thousand by
+thirty, and we get 530 schools. Let us assume that, although at the
+opening of the schools all pupils from seven to fifteen years of age
+will enter, not all will attend regularly for the period of eight years;
+let us reject one-fourth, that is 130 schools and, consequently, 4,200
+pupils. Let us say that there are four hundred schools. Only twenty have
+been opened. The County Council gives two thousand roubles and has added
+one thousand roubles, making in all three thousand roubles. From some of
+the peasants, not from all, fifteen kopeks are levied from each soul, in
+all about four thousand roubles. On the building of schools seven
+hundred roubles are spent, and on the pedagogical courses twelve hundred
+roubles have been used in one year. But let us suppose that the County
+Council will act quite simply and sensibly, and will not waste money on
+pedagogical courses and other trifles; let us suppose that all peasants
+will pay the new school tax of fifteen kopeks, what will the future of
+this matter be? From the peasants six thousand, from the County Council
+three thousand, in all nine thousand. Let us assume that ten more
+schools will be added. Nine thousand roubles will barely suffice for the
+support of these schools, and that only in case the school council will
+act most prudently and economically. Consequently, with the County
+Council administration, thirty schools to forty thousand of the
+population are the highest limit of what the dissemination of the
+schools in the county may reach. And this limit of the school business
+can be attained only if the peasants will levy fifteen kopeks on each
+soul, which is extremely doubtful, and if the disbursement of this money
+will be in the hands of the peasants, and not of the County Council. I
+do not speak of the possible increase of three thousand roubles, because
+this increase of three thousand roubles partly falls back on those same
+peasants, and on the other hand is not secured by anything, forming only
+an accidental means. Thus, in order to bring the business of popular
+education to the state in which it ought to be, that is, in order that
+there shall be four hundred schools to the forty thousand of the
+population, and in order that the schools shall not be a toy, but may
+answer a real want of the masses, there is no other issue than that the
+peasants be taxed, not fifteen kopeks, but three roubles a soul, in
+order that the necessary three hundred roubles to each school be
+obtained. Even then I do not see any reason for thinking that as many
+schools as are needed would be built.
+
+Do we not see that now, when the simplest arithmetical calculation shows
+that the only means for the success of the schools is the simplification
+of methods, the simplicity and cheapness of the arrangement of the
+school,--the pedagogues are busy, as though having made a wager to
+concoct a most difficult, most complicated, and expensive (and, I must
+add, most bad) instruction? In the manuals of Messrs. Bunakov and
+Evtushevski I have figured up three hundred roubles' worth of aids to
+instruction which, in their opinion, are absolutely necessary for the
+establishment of a primary school. All they talk about in pedagogical
+circles is how to prepare improved teachers in the seminaries, so that a
+village might not be able to get them even for four hundred roubles. On
+that road of perfection, on which pedagogy stands, it is quite apparent
+to me that if 120,000 roubles were collected in a county, the pedagogues
+would find use for them all in twenty schools, with adjustable tables,
+seminaries for teachers, and so forth. Have we not seen that forty
+schools were closed in Krapivensk County, and that those who closed them
+were fully convinced that they thus advanced the cause of education, for
+now they have twenty "good" schools? But what is most remarkable is that
+those who express these demands are not in the least interested in
+knowing whether the masses for whom they are preparing all these things
+want them, and still less, who is going to pay for it all. But the
+County Councils are so befogged by these demands that they do not see
+the simple calculation and the simple justice. It is as though a man
+asked me to buy him two puds of flour for a month, and I bought him for
+that rouble a box of perfumed confectionery and reproached him for his
+ignorance, because he was dissatisfied.
+
+As I wish to remain true to my rule that criticism should point out how
+that which is not good ought to be, I shall try to show how the whole
+school business ought to be arranged, if it is not to be a plaything,
+and is to have a future. The answer is the same as to the first two
+questions,--freedom. The masses must be given the freedom to arrange
+their schools as they wish, and as little as possible should any one
+interfere in their arrangement. Only with such a view of the matter will
+all the obstacles to the dissemination of the schools be obviated,
+though they have seemed insuperable. The chief obstacles are the
+insufficiency of the means and the impossibility of increasing them. To
+the first the masses reply that they are using all the measures at
+their command to make the schools cost little; to the second they reply
+that the means will always be found so long as they themselves are the
+masters, and that they are not willing to increase the means for the
+support of that which they do not need.
+
+The essential difference between the view of the people and of the
+ministerial department consists in the following: (1) In the opinion of
+the masses there is no one definite norm and form of the school, outside
+and below which the school is not recognized, as is assumed by the
+ministerial department; a school may be of any kind, either a very good
+and expensive one, or a very poor and cheap one, but even in a very poor
+one reading and writing may be learned, and, as in a richer parish a
+better pope is appointed and a better church built, so also may a better
+school be built in a wealthy village, and a poorer school in a less
+well-to-do village; but just as one can pray equally well in a poor or
+in a rich parish, even so it is with learning. (2) The masses regard as
+the first condition of their education an even, equal distribution of
+this education, though it be in its lowest stage, and then only they
+propose a further, again an even, raising of the level of education,
+while the ministerial department considers it necessary to give to a
+certain chosen few, to one-twentieth of the whole number, a specimen of
+education, to show them how nice it is. (3) The ministerial department,
+either unable or purposely unwilling to calculate, has raised the
+educational business to such a high, expensive level, and one which is
+so foreign to the masses, that considering the high price at which the
+education is acquired, no issue from that situation can be foreseen, and
+the number of learners can never be increased; but the masses, who know
+how to calculate, and who are interested in that calculation, have no
+doubt long ago figured out what I have pointed out above, and see as
+clear as daylight that those expensive schools, which cost as much as
+four hundred roubles each, may be good indeed, but are not what they
+need, and try in every way possible to diminish the expenses for their
+schools.
+
+What, then, is to be done? How are the County Councils to act in order
+that this business may not be a plaything and a pastime, but shall have
+a future? Let them conform with the needs of the masses, and, so far as
+possible, cheapen and free the forms of the school, and afford the
+Communes the greatest possible power in the establishment of the
+schools.
+
+For this it is necessary that the County Councils shall entirely abandon
+the distribution of the taxes to the schools and the distribution of the
+schools according to localities, but shall leave this distribution to
+the peasants themselves. The determination of the pay to the teacher,
+the hiring, purchase, or building of the house, the choice of place and
+of the teacher himself,--all that ought to be left to the peasants. The
+County Council, that is, the school council, should only demand that the
+Communes inform it where and on what foundations schools have been
+established, not in order that, upon learning the facts, it shall
+prohibit them, as is done now, but in order that, learning about the
+conditions under which the school exists, it may add (if the conditions
+are in conformity with the demands of the council) from its County
+Council's sums, for the support of the school newly founded, a certain,
+definite part of what the school costs the Commune: a half, a third, a
+fourth, according to the quality of the school and the means and wishes
+of the County Council. Thus, for example, a village of twenty souls
+hires a transient man at two roubles a month to teach the children. The
+school council, that is, a person authorized by it, of whom I shall
+speak later, upon receiving that information, invites the transient to
+come to him, asks him what he knows and how he teaches, and, if the
+transient is the least bit educated and does not represent anything
+harmful, apportions to him the amount determined upon by the County
+Council, one-half, one-third, or one-fourth, in precisely the same way
+the school council proceeds in reference to a clerical person hired by
+the Commune at five roubles per month, or in reference to a teacher
+hired at fifteen roubles per month. Of course, that is the way the
+school council acts in reference to the teachers hired by the Communes
+themselves; but if the Communes turn to the school council, the latter
+recommends to them teachers under the same conditions. But in doing so
+the County Council must not forget that there should not be merely
+teachers at two hundred roubles; the school council should be an
+employment agency for teachers of every description and of every price,
+from one rouble to thirty roubles a month. On buildings the school
+council ought not to spend or add anything, because they are one of the
+most unproductive items of expense. But the County Council ought not to
+disdain, as it now does, teachers at two, three, four, five roubles per
+month and locations in smoky huts or by rotation from farm to farm.
+
+The County Council ought to remember that the prototype of the school,
+that ideal toward which it ought to tend, is not a stone building with
+an iron roof, with blackboards and desks, such as we see in model
+schools, but the very hut in which the peasant lives, with those benches
+and tables on which he eats, and not a teacher in a Prince Albert or a
+lady teacher in a chignon, but a male teacher in a caftan and shirt, or
+a female teacher in a peasant skirt and with a kerchief on her head, and
+not with one hundred pupils, but with five, six, or ten.
+
+The County Council must have no bias or antipathy for certain types of
+teachers, as is the case at present. Thus, for example, the Tula County
+Council just now has a special bias for the type of school-teachers from
+the gymnasia and clerical schools, and the greater part of the schools
+in Tula County are in their charge. In Krapivensk County there exists a
+strange antipathy for teachers from the clerical profession, so that in
+this county, where there are as many as fifty parishes, there is not one
+clerical person employed as a teacher. The County Council, in proposing
+a teacher, ought to be guided by two chief considerations: in the first
+place, that the teacher should be as cheap as possible; in the second,
+that by his education he should stand as near to the masses as possible.
+Only thanks to the opposite view on the matter can be explained such an
+inexplicable phenomenon as that in Krapivensk County (almost the same is
+true of the whole Government and of the majority of Governments) there
+are fifty parishes and twenty schools, and that for these twenty schools
+there is not a single clerical teacher, although there is not a parish
+where a priest, or a deacon, or a sexton, or their daughters and wives
+could not be found, who would not be glad to do the teaching for
+one-fourth the pay that the teachers coming from the city would be
+willing to take.
+
+But I shall be told: What kind of schools will those be with bigots,
+drunken soldiers, expelled scribes, and sextons? And what control can
+there be over those formless schools? To this I will reply that, in the
+first place, these teachers, bigots, soldiers, and sextons are not so
+bad as they are imagined to be. In my school practice I often had to do
+with pupils from these schools, and some of them could read fluently and
+write beautifully, and soon abandoned the bad habits which they brought
+with them from those schools. All of us know peasants who have learned
+the rudiments in such schools, and it cannot be said that this learning
+was useless or injurious. In the second place, I will say that teachers
+of that calibre are especially bad because they are quite abandoned in
+the backwoods and teach without any aid or instruction, and that now
+there is not to be found a single one of the old teachers who would not
+tell you with regret that he does not know the new methods and has
+himself learned for copper pence, and that many of them, especially the
+younger church servants, are quite willing to learn the new methods.
+These teachers ought not to be rejected without further ado as
+absolutely worthless. There are among them better and worse teachers
+(and I have seen some very capable ones). They ought to be compared; the
+better of them ought to be selected, encouraged, brought together with
+other better teachers, and instructed,--which is quite feasible and
+precisely the thing in which the duty of the school council is to
+consist.
+
+But how are they to be controlled, watched, and taught, if they breed by
+the hundred in each county? In my opinion the work of the County Council
+and school council ought to consist in nothing but watching the
+pedagogical side of the business, and that is feasible, if these means
+will be taken: in every County Council, which has taken upon itself the
+duty of the dissemination of popular education, or the cooperation with
+it, there ought to be one person--whether it be an unpaid member of the
+school council, or a man at a salary of not less than one thousand
+roubles, hired by the County Council--who is to attend to the
+pedagogical side of the business in the county. That person ought to
+have a general, fresh education within the limits of a gymnasium course,
+that is, he must know Russian thoroughly and Church-Slavic partly,
+arithmetic and algebra thoroughly, and be a teacher, that is, know the
+practice of pedagogy. This person must be freshly educated, because I
+have observed that frequently the information of a man who has long ago
+finished his course even in a university, and who has not refreshed his
+education, is insufficient, not only for the guidance of teachers, but
+even for the examination of a village school. This person must by all
+means be a teacher himself in the same locality, in order that in his
+demands and instructions he may always have in view that pedagogical
+material with which the other teachers have to deal, and that he may
+sustain in himself that live relation to reality which is the chief
+preservative against error and delusion. If a County Council does not
+possess such a man and does not wish to employ one, it has, in my
+opinion, absolutely nothing to do with the popular education, except to
+give money, because every interference with the administrative side of
+the matter, in the way it is done now, can only be injurious.
+
+This member of the County Council, or the educated person hired by it,
+must have the best model school, with an assistant, in the county. In
+addition to conducting this school and applying to it all the newest
+methods of instruction, this head teacher ought to keep an eye on all
+the other schools. This school is not to be a model in the sense of
+introducing into it all kinds of cubes and pictures and all kinds of
+nonsense invented by the Germans, but the teacher in this school should
+experiment on just such peasant children as the other schools consist
+of, in order to determine the simplest methods which may be adopted by
+the majority of the teachers, sextons, and soldiers, who form the bulk
+of all the schools. Since with the arrangement which I propose there
+will certainly be formed large complete schools in the larger centres
+(as I think, in the proportion of one to twenty of all the other
+schools), and in these large schools the teachers will be of a grade of
+education equal to that of the seminarists who have finished a course in
+a theological school, the head teacher will visit all these larger
+schools, bring together these teachers on Sundays, point out to them the
+defects, propose new methods, give counsel and books for their own
+education, and invite them to his school on Sundays. The library of the
+head teacher ought to consist of several copies of the Bible, of
+Church-Slavic and Russian grammars, arithmetic, and algebra. The head
+teacher, whenever he has time, will visit also the small schools and
+invite their teachers to come to see him; but the duty of watching the
+minor teachers is imposed on the older teachers, who just in the same
+way visit their district and invite those teachers to come to see them
+on Sundays and on week-days. The County Council either pays the teachers
+for travelling, or, in adding its portion to what the Communes levy,
+makes it a condition that the Communes furnish transportation. The
+meetings of the teachers and the visits in similar or better schools are
+one of the chief conditions for the successful conduct of the business
+of education, and so the County Council ought to direct its main
+attention to the organization of these meetings, and not spare any money
+for them.
+
+Besides, in the large schools, where there will be more than fifty
+pupils, there ought to be chosen, instead of the assistants which they
+now have, such of the pupils, of either sex, as show marked ability for
+a teacher's calling, and they should be made assistants, two or three in
+each school. These assistants should receive a salary of fifty kopeks to
+one rouble per month, and the teacher should work with them separately
+in the evenings, so that they may not fall behind the others. These
+assistants, chosen from among the best, are to form the future teachers,
+to take the place of the lowest in the minor schools.
+
+Naturally the organization of these teachers' meetings, both for the
+smaller and the larger schools, and the head teacher's visits of
+inspection, and the formation of teachers from pupils acting as
+assistants may take place in a large variety of ways; the main point is
+that the surveillance of any number of schools (even though it may reach
+the norm of one school to every one hundred souls) is possible in this
+manner. With such an arrangement the teachers of both the large and the
+small schools will feel that their labours are appreciated, that they
+have not buried themselves in the backwoods without hope of salvation,
+that they have companions and guides, and that in the matter of
+instruction, both for their own further education and for the
+improvement of their situation, they have means for advancement. With
+such an arrangement, the devotee and the sexton who are able to learn
+will learn; while those who are unable or unwilling to do so will be
+replaced by some one else.
+
+The time of instruction ought to be, as is the wish of all peasants,
+during the seven winter months, and so the salary is to be determined by
+the month. With such an arrangement, leaving out the rapidity and the
+equal distribution of education, the advantage will be this, that the
+schools will be established in those centres where the necessity for
+them is felt by the masses, where they are established spontaneously
+and, therefore, firmly. Where the character of the population demands
+education it will be permanent. Just look: in the towns, the children of
+the innkeepers and well-to-do peasants learn to read in one way or
+another and never forget what they have learned; but in the backwoods,
+where a landed proprietor founds a school, the children learn well, but
+in ten years all is forgotten, and the population is as illiterate as
+ever. For this reason the centres, large or small, where the schools are
+established spontaneously, are particularly precious. Where such a
+school has germinated, no matter how poor it be, it will throw out
+roots, and sooner or later the population will be able to read and
+write. Consequently, these sprouts ought to be deemed precious, and not
+be treated, as they are everywhere,--they ought not to be forbidden,
+because the schools are not according to our taste, that is, the sprouts
+ought not to be killed, and branches stuck in the ground where they will
+not take root.
+
+With merely such an arrangement, without the establishment of costly and
+artificial seminaries, the chosen ones--those selected from the best of
+the pupils themselves, and those who are educated in the schools--will
+form that contingent of cheap popular teachers who will take the place
+of the soldiers and sextons and will fully satisfy all the demands of
+the masses and of the educated classes. The chief advantage of such an
+arrangement is that it alone gives the development of popular education
+a future, that is, takes us out from that blind alley into which the
+County Councils have gone, thanks to the expensive schools and to the
+absence of new sources for the increase of their numbers. Only when the
+masses themselves choose the centres for the schools, themselves choose
+teachers, determine the amount of the remuneration, and directly enjoy
+the advantages of the schools, will they be ready to add means for the
+schools if such should become necessary. I know Communes that paid fifty
+kopeks a soul for a school in each of their villages; but it is
+difficult to compel the peasants to pay fifteen kopeks for a school in
+the township, if not all of them can make use of it. For the whole
+county, for the County Council, the peasants will not add a single
+kopek, because they feel that they will not enjoy the advantages of
+their money. Only with such an arrangement will be found soon the means
+for the proper maintenance of all schools, of one to each one hundred
+souls, which seems so impossible in the present state of affairs.
+
+In addition to this, with the arrangement which I propose, the interests
+of the peasant Communes and of the County Council, as the representative
+of the intelligence of the locality, will indissolubly be connected. Let
+us say that the County Council gives one-third of what the peasants
+give. In furnishing this amount, it will evidently, in one way or
+another, see to it that the money is not wasted, and, consequently, will
+also keep an eye on the two-thirds given by the peasant Communes. The
+peasant Commune sees that the County Council gives its part, and so
+admits the right of the Council to follow the progress of the
+instruction. At the same time, it has an object-lesson in the difference
+which exists between a school maintained at a smaller and that
+maintained at a greater expense, and chooses the one which it needs or
+which is more accessible to it in accordance with its means.
+
+I will again take Krapivensk County, with which I am familiar, to show
+what difference the proposed arrangement would make. I cannot have the
+slightest doubt that the moment permission is granted to open schools,
+wherever wanted and of any description desired, there will at once
+appear very many schools. I am convinced that in Krapivensk County, in
+which there are fifty parishes, there will always be a school in each
+parish, because the parishes are always centres of population, and
+because among the church servants there will always be found one who is
+capable of teaching, likes to teach, and will find his advantage in it.
+In addition to the schools maintained by the church servants there will
+be opened those forty schools that have been closed (more correctly
+thirty, because ten of them were church schools), and there will be
+opened very many new schools, so that in a very short time there will be
+not far from four hundred instead of the twenty at present.
+
+I may be believed or not, but I will assume that in Krapivensk County
+380 additional schools will be opened, the moment they are given over to
+the masses, so that there will be four hundred in all, and I will try to
+determine whether the existence of these four hundred schools, that is,
+of twenty times as many as at present, is possible under the conditions
+which I have assumed in discussing the existing order.
+
+Assuming that all peasants pay fifteen kopeks per soul, and the County
+Council gives three thousand roubles, there will be nine thousand
+roubles, which will suffice only for thirty schools with the former
+arrangement. But with the new arrangement:
+
+I assume that ten of the old schools are left intact; in these schools
+the teachers get twenty roubles per month, which, for the seven winter
+months, amounts to fourteen hundred roubles.
+
+I assume that in every parish there will be established a school with
+the teacher's salary at five roubles per month, which, for fifty
+schools, amounts to 1,750 roubles.
+
+I assume the remaining 340 schools are of the cheap character, at two
+roubles per month; fifteen roubles for each of the 340 schools makes
+5,100 roubles.
+
+Thus the four hundred schools will demand an expenditure in salaries
+amounting to 8,250 roubles. There are still left 750 roubles for school
+appliances and transportation.
+
+The figures for the teachers' wages are not chosen arbitrarily by me: on
+the other hand, the expensive teachers are given a larger salary than
+they now get by the month for the whole year. Even so, the amount
+apportioned to the church servants is what they now receive in the
+majority of cases. But the cheap schools at two roubles per month are
+assumed by me at a higher rate than what the peasants in reality pay, so
+that the calculation may boldly be accepted. In this calculation is
+included the kernel of ten chief teachers and ten or more church servant
+teachers. It is evident that only with such a calculation will the
+school business be placed on a serious and possible basis and have a
+clear and definite future.
+
+If what I have pointed out does not convince anybody that will mean that
+I did not express clearly what I wanted to say, and do not wish to enter
+into any disputes with anybody. I know that no deaf people are so
+hopeless as those who do not want to hear. I know how it is with
+farmers. A new threshing-machine has been bought at a great expense, and
+it is put up and started threshing. It threshes miserably, no matter how
+you set the screw; it threshes badly, and the grain falls into the
+straw. There is a loss, and it is as clear as can be that the machine
+ought to be abandoned and another means be employed for threshing, but
+the money has been spent and the threshing-machine is put up. "Let her
+thresh," says the master. Precisely the same thing will happen with this
+matter. I know that for a long time to come there will flourish the
+object instruction, and cubes, and buttons instead of arithmetic, and
+hissing and sputtering, in teaching the letters, and twenty expensive
+schools of the German pattern, instead of the needed four hundred
+popular, cheap schools. But I know just as surely that the common sense
+of the Russian nation will not permit this false, artificial system of
+instruction to be foisted upon it.
+
+The masses are the chief interested person and the judge, and now do not
+pay a particle of attention to our more or less ingenious discussions
+about the manner in which the spiritual food of education is best to be
+prepared for them. They do not care, because they are firmly convinced
+that in the great business of their mental development they will not
+make a false step and will not accept what is bad,--and it would be like
+making pease stick to the wall to attempt to educate, direct, and teach
+them in the German fashion.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT MEN LIVE BY
+
+1881
+
+
+
+
+WHAT MEN LIVE BY
+
+     We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love
+     the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.
+     (First Ep. of John, iii. 14.)
+
+     But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need,
+     and shutteth, up his heart from him, how dwelleth the love of God
+     in him? (_Ib._ iii. 17.)
+
+     My children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in
+     deed and in truth. (_Ib._ iii. 18.)
+
+     Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and
+     knoweth God. (_Ib._ iv. 7.)
+
+     He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (_Ib._ iv. 8.)
+
+     No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God
+     dwelleth in us. (_Ib._ iv. 12.)
+
+     God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God
+     in him. (_Ib._ iv. 16.)
+
+     If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for
+     he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love
+     God whom he hath not seen. (_Ib._ iv. 20.)
+
+
+I.
+
+A shoemaker was lodging with his wife and children at the house of a
+peasant. He had no house, no land of his own, and supported his family
+by his shoemaker's trade. Bread was dear, but work was cheap, and he
+spent everything he made. The shoemaker and his wife had one fur coat
+between them, and even that was all worn to tatters; this was the second
+year that the shoemaker had been meaning to buy a sheepskin for a new
+fur coat.
+
+Toward fall the shoemaker had saved some money: three roubles in paper
+lay in his wife's coffer, and five roubles and twenty kopeks were
+outstanding in the village.
+
+In the morning the shoemaker went to the village to get him that fur
+coat. He put on his wife's wadded nankeen jacket over his shirt, and
+over it his cloth caftan; he put the three-rouble bill into his pocket,
+broke off a stick, and started after breakfast. He thought:
+
+"I shall get the five roubles from the peasant, will add my own three,
+and with that will buy me a sheepskin for the fur coat."
+
+The shoemaker came to the village, and called on the peasant: he was not
+at home, and his wife promised to send her husband with the money, but
+gave him none herself. He went to another peasant, but the peasant swore
+that he had no money, and gave him only twenty kopeks for mending a pair
+of boots. The shoemaker made up his mind to take the sheepskin on
+credit, but the furrier would not give it to him.
+
+"Bring me the money," he said, "and then you can choose any you please;
+we know what it means to collect debts."
+
+Thus the shoemaker accomplished nothing. All he got was the twenty
+kopeks for the boots he had mended, and a peasant gave him a pair of
+felt boots to patch with leather.
+
+The shoemaker was grieved, spent all the twenty kopeks on vodka, and
+started home without the fur coat. In the morning it had seemed frosty
+to him, but now that he had drunk a little he felt warm even without the
+fur coat. The shoemaker walked along, with one hand striking the stick
+against the frozen mud clumps, and swinging the felt boots in the other,
+and talking to himself.
+
+"I am warm even without a fur coat," he said. "I have drunk a cup, and
+the vodka is coursing through all my veins. I do not need a sheepskin.
+I have forgotten my woe. That's the kind of a man I am! What do I care!
+I can get along without a fur coat: I do not need it all the time. The
+only trouble is the old woman will be sorry. It is a shame indeed: I
+work for him, and he leads me by the nose. Just wait! If you do not
+bring the money, I'll take away your cap, upon my word, I will! How is
+this? He pays me back two dimes at a time! What can you do with two
+dimes? Take a drink, that is all. He says he suffers want. You suffer
+want, and am I not suffering? You have a house, and cattle, and
+everything, and here is all I possess; you have your own grain, and I
+have to buy it. I may do as I please, but I have to spend three roubles
+a week on bread. I come home, and the bread is gone: again lay out a
+rouble and a half! So give me what is mine!"
+
+Thus the shoemaker came up to a chapel at the turn of the road, and
+there he saw something that looked white, right near the chapel. It was
+growing dusk, and the shoemaker strained his eyes, but could not make
+out what it was.
+
+"There was no stone here," he thought. "A cow? It does not look like a
+cow. It looks like the head of a man, and there is something white
+besides. And what should a man be doing there?"
+
+He came nearer, and he could see plainly. What marvel was that? It was
+really a man, either alive or dead, sitting there all naked, leaning
+against the chapel, and not stirring in the least. The shoemaker was
+frightened, and thought to himself:
+
+"Somebody must have killed a man, and stripped him of his clothes, and
+thrown him away there. If I go up to him, I shall never clear myself."
+
+And the shoemaker went past. He walked around the chapel, and the man
+was no longer to be seen. He went past the chapel, and looked back, and
+saw the man leaning away from the building and moving, as though
+watching him. The shoemaker was frightened even more than before, and he
+thought to himself:
+
+"Shall I go up to him, or not? If I go up, something bad may happen. Who
+knows what kind of a man he is? He did not get there for anything good.
+If I go up, he will spring at me and choke me, and I shall not get away
+from him; and if he does not choke me, I may have trouble with him all
+the same. What can I do with him, since he is naked? Certainly I cannot
+take off the last from me and give it to him! May God save me!"
+
+And the shoemaker increased his steps. He was already a distance away
+from the chapel, when his conscience began to smite him.
+
+And the shoemaker stopped on the road.
+
+"What are you doing, Semen?" he said to himself. "A man is dying in
+misery, and you go past him and lose your courage. Have you suddenly
+grown so rich? Are you afraid that they will rob you of your wealth? Oh,
+Semen, it is not right!"
+
+Semen turned back, and went up to the man.
+
+
+II.
+
+Semen walked over to the man, and looked at him; and saw that it was a
+young man, in the prime of his strength, with no bruises on his body,
+but evidently frozen and frightened: he was leaning back and did not
+look at Semen, as though he were weakened and could not raise his eyes.
+Semen went up close to him, and the man suddenly seemed to wake up. He
+turned his head, opened his eyes, and looked at Semen. And this one
+glance made Semen think well of the man. He threw down the felt boots,
+ungirt himself, put his belt on the boots, and took off his caftan.
+
+"What is the use of talking?" he said. "Put it on! Come now!"
+
+Semen took the man by his elbows and began to raise him. The man got up.
+And Semen saw that his body was soft and clean, his hands and feet not
+calloused, and his face gentle. Semen threw his caftan over the man's
+shoulders. He could not find his way into the sleeves. So Semen put them
+in, pulled the caftan on him, wrapped him in it, and girded it with the
+belt.
+
+Semen took off his torn cap, intending to put it on the naked man, but
+his head grew cold, and so he thought: "My whole head is bald, while he
+has long, curly hair." He put it on again. "I had better put the boots
+on him."
+
+He seated himself and put the felt boots on him.
+
+The shoemaker addressed him and said:
+
+"That's the way, my friend! Now move about and get warmed up. This
+business will be looked into without us. Can you walk?"
+
+The man stood, looking meekly at Semen, but could not say a word.
+
+"Why don't you speak? You can't stay here through the winter. We must
+make for a living place. Here, take my stick, lean on it, if you are
+weak. Tramp along!"
+
+And the man went. And he walked lightly, and did not fall behind.
+
+As they were walking along, Semen said to him:
+
+"Who are you, please?"
+
+"I am a stranger."
+
+"I know all the people here about. How did you get near that chapel?"
+
+"I cannot tell."
+
+"Have people insulted you?"
+
+"No one has. God has punished me."
+
+"Of course, God does everything, but still you must be making for some
+place. Whither are you bound?"
+
+"It makes no difference to me."
+
+Semen was surprised. He did not resemble an evil-doer, and was gentle of
+speech, and yet did not say anything about himself. And Semen thought
+that all kinds of things happen, and so he said to the man:
+
+"Well, come to my house and warm yourself a little."
+
+Semen walked up to the farm, and the stranger did not fall behind, but
+walked beside him. A wind rose and blew into Semen's shirt, and his
+intoxication went away, and he began to feel cold. He walked along,
+sniffling, and wrapping himself in his wife's jacket, and he thought:
+
+"There is your fur coat: I went to get myself a fur coat, and I am
+coming back without a caftan, and am even bringing a naked man with me.
+Matrena will not praise me for it!"
+
+And as Semen thought of Matrena, he felt sorry; and as he looked at the
+stranger and recalled how he had looked at him at the chapel, his blood
+began to play in his heart.
+
+[Illustration: "'Whither are you bound?'"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshenko_]
+
+
+III.
+
+Semen's wife got things done early. She chopped the wood, brought the
+water, fed the children, herself took a bite of something, and fell to
+musing. She was thinking about when to set the bread, whether to-day or
+to-morrow. There was a big slice of it left.
+
+"If Semen has his dinner there," she thought, "and does not eat much for
+supper, the bread will last until to-morrow."
+
+Matrena turned the slice around and a second time, and thought:
+
+"I will not set any bread to-day. I have enough meal for just one
+setting. We shall somehow hold out until Friday."
+
+Matrena put the bread away, and seated herself at the table to put a
+patch in her husband's shirt. She was sewing and thinking of how he
+would buy a sheepskin for a fur coat.
+
+"If only the furrier does not cheat him, for my man is too simple for
+anything. He himself will not cheat a soul, but a little child can
+deceive him. Eight roubles is no small sum. One can pickup a good fur
+coat for it. It will not be tanned, still it will be a fur coat. How we
+suffered last winter without a fur coat! We could not get down to the
+river, or anywhere. And there he has gone out, putting everything on
+him, and I have nothing to dress in. He went away early; it is time for
+him to be back. If only my dear one has not gone on a spree!"
+
+Just as Matrena was thinking this, the steps creaked on the porch, and
+somebody entered. Matrena stuck the needle in the cloth, and went out
+into the vestibule. She saw two coming in: Semen, and with him a man
+without a cap and in felt boots.
+
+Matrena at once smelt the liquor in her husband's breath. "Well," she
+thought, "so it is: he has been on a spree." And when she saw that he
+was without his caftan, in nothing but the jacket, and that he was not
+bringing anything, but only keeping silent and crouching, something
+broke in Matrena's heart. "He has spent all the money in drinks," she
+thought, "and has been on a spree with some tramp, and has even brought
+him along."
+
+Matrena let them pass into the hut, and then stepped in herself. She saw
+the lean young man, and he had on him their caftan. No shirt was to be
+seen under the caftan, and he had no hat on his head. When he entered,
+he stood still, and did not stir, and did not raise his eyes. And
+Matrena thought: "He is not a good man,--he is afraid."
+
+Matrena scowled and went to the oven, waiting to see what would happen.
+
+Semen took off his cap and sat down on the bench like a good man.
+
+"Well, Matrena, will you let us have something for supper, will you?" he
+said.
+
+Matrena growled something under her breath. She stood at the oven, and
+did not stir: she looked now at the one, and now at the other, and shook
+her head. Semen saw that his wife was not in a good humour, but there
+was nothing to be done, and he acted as though he did not see it. He
+took the stranger by the arm:
+
+"Sit down, my friend," he said, "we shall have our supper."
+
+The stranger sat down on the bench.
+
+"Well, have you not cooked anything?"
+
+That simply roiled Matrena.
+
+"I have cooked, but not for you. You seem to have drunk away your
+senses, I see. You went to get a fur coat, and come back without your
+caftan, and have even brought some kind of a naked tramp with you. I
+have no supper for you drunkards."
+
+"Stop, Matrena! What is the use of wagging your tongue without any
+sense? First ask what kind of a man it is--"
+
+"Tell me what you did with the money."
+
+Semen stuck his hand into the caftan, took out the bill, and opened it
+before her.
+
+"Here is the money. Trifonov has not paid me,--he promised to give it to
+me to-morrow."
+
+That enraged Matrena even more: he had bought no fur coat, and the only
+caftan they had he had put on a naked fellow, and had even brought him
+along.
+
+She grabbed the bill from the table, and ran to put it away, and said:
+
+"I have no supper. One cannot feed all the drunkards."
+
+"Oh, Matrena, hold your tongue. First hear what I have to say--"
+
+"Much sense shall I hear from a drunken fool. With good reason did I
+object to marrying you, a drunkard. My mother gave me some linen, and
+you spent it on drinks; you went to buy a fur coat, and spent that,
+too."
+
+Semen wanted to explain to his wife that he had spent twenty kopeks
+only, and wanted to tell her that he had found the man; but Matrena
+began to break in with anything she could think of, and to speak two
+words at once. Even what had happened ten years before, she brought up
+to him now.
+
+Matrena talked and talked, and jumped at Semen, and grabbed him by the
+sleeve.
+
+"Give me my jacket. That is all I have left, and you have taken it from
+me and put it on yourself. Give it to me, you freckled dog,--may the
+apoplexy strike you!"
+
+Semen began to take off the bodice; as he turned back his arm, his wife
+gave the bodice a jerk, and it ripped at the seam. Matrena grabbed the
+jacket, threw it over her head, and made for the door. She wanted to go
+out, but stopped: her heart was doubled, for she wanted to have her
+revenge, and also to find out what kind of a man he was.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Matrena stopped and said:
+
+"If he were a good man, he would not be naked; but, as it is, he has not
+even a shirt on him. If he meant anything good, you would tell me where
+you found that dandy."
+
+"I am telling you: as I was walking along, I saw him sitting at the
+chapel, without any clothes, and almost frozen. It is not summer, and he
+was all naked. God sent me to him, or he would have perished. Well, what
+had I to do? All kinds of things happen! I picked him up and dressed
+him, and brought him here. Calm yourself! It is a sin, Matrena. We shall
+all die."
+
+Matrena wanted to go on scolding, but she looked at the stranger and
+kept silence. The stranger sat without moving, just as he had seated
+himself on the edge of the bench. His hands were folded on his knees,
+his head drooped on his breast, his eyes were not opened, and he frowned
+as though something were choking him. Matrena grew silent. And Semen
+said:
+
+"Matrena, have you no God?"
+
+When Matrena heard these words, she glanced at the stranger, and
+suddenly her heart became softened. She went away from the door, walked
+over to the oven corner, and got the supper ready. She placed a bowl on
+the table, filled it with kvas, and put down the last slice of bread.
+She handed them a knife and spoons.
+
+"Eat, if you please," she said.
+
+Semen touched the stranger.
+
+"Creep through here, good fellow!" he said.
+
+Semen cut up the bread and crumbled it into the kvas, and they began to
+eat. And Matrena sat down at the corner of the table, and leaned on her
+arm, and kept looking at the stranger.
+
+And Matrena pitied the stranger, and took a liking for him. And suddenly
+the stranger grew merry, stopped frowning, raised his eyes on Matrena,
+and smiled.
+
+They got through with their supper. The woman cleared the table, and
+began to ask the stranger:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"I am a stranger."
+
+"How did you get on the road?"
+
+"I cannot tell."
+
+"Has somebody robbed you?"
+
+"God has punished me."
+
+"And you were lying there naked?"
+
+"Yes, I was lying naked, and freezing. Semen saw me, took pity on me,
+pulled off his caftan, put it on me, and told me to come here. And you
+have given me to eat and to drink, and have pitied me. The Lord will
+save you!"
+
+Matrena got up, took from the window Semen's old shirt, the same that
+she had been patching, and gave it to the stranger; and she found a pair
+of trousers, and gave them to him.
+
+"Here, take it! I see that you have no shirt. Put it on, and lie down
+wherever it pleases you,--on the hanging bed or on the oven."
+
+The stranger took off the caftan, put on the shirt, and lay down on the
+hanging bed. Matrena put out the light, took the caftan, and climbed to
+where her husband was.
+
+Matrena covered herself with the corner of the caftan, and she lay and
+could not sleep: the stranger would not leave her mind.
+
+As she thought how he had eaten the last slice of bread and how there
+would be no bread for the morrow; as she thought how she had given him a
+shirt and a pair of trousers, she felt pretty bad; but when she thought
+of how he smiled, her heart was gladdened.
+
+Matrena could not sleep for a long time, and she heard that Semen, too,
+was not sleeping; he kept pulling the caftan on himself.
+
+"Semen!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"We have eaten up the last bread, and I have not set any. I do not know
+what to do for to-morrow. Maybe I had better ask Gossip Malanya for
+some."
+
+"If we are alive we shall find something to eat."
+
+The woman lay awhile and kept silence.
+
+"He must be a good man. But why does he not tell about himself?"
+
+"I suppose he cannot."
+
+"Semen!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"We give, but why does nobody give to us?"
+
+Semen did not know what to say. He only said, "Stop talking!" and turned
+over, and fell asleep.
+
+
+V.
+
+In the morning Semen awoke. The children were asleep; his wife had gone
+to the neighbours to borrow some bread. The stranger of last night, in
+the old trousers and shirt, was alone, sitting on the bench and looking
+upward. And his face was brighter than on the day before.
+
+And Semen said:
+
+"Well, dear man, the belly begs for bread, and the naked body for
+clothes. We must earn our living. Can you work?"
+
+"I do not know anything."
+
+Semen wondered at him, and said:
+
+"If only you are willing: people can learn anything."
+
+"People work, and I, too, will work."
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Michael."
+
+"Well, Mikhayla, you do not want to talk about yourself,--that is your
+business; but a man has to live. If you work as I order you, I will feed
+you."
+
+"God save you, and I will learn. Show me what to do!"
+
+Semen took the flax, put it on his fingers and began to make an end.
+
+"It is not a hard thing to do, you see."
+
+Mikhayla watched him, himself put the flax on his fingers, and made a
+thread end, as Semen had taught him.
+
+Semen showed him how to wax it. Mikhayla again learned the way at once.
+The master showed him how to weld the bristle, and how to whet, and
+Mikhayla learned it all at once.
+
+No matter what work Semen showed to him, he grasped it at once, and on
+the third day he began to sew as though he had done nothing else in all
+his life. He worked without unbending himself, ate little, between the
+periods of work kept silence, and all the time looked toward the sky. He
+did not go into the street, spoke no superfluous word, and did not jest
+or laugh.
+
+Only once was he seen to smile, and that was the first evening, when the
+woman gave him a supper.
+
+
+VI.
+
+Day was added to day, week to week, and the circle of a year went by.
+Mikhayla was living as before with Semen, and working. And the report
+spread about Semen's workman that nobody sewed a boot so neatly and so
+strongly as he. And people from all the surrounding country began to
+come to Semen for boots, and Semen's income began to grow.
+
+One time, in the winter, Semen was sitting with Mikhayla and working,
+when a troyka with bells stopped at the door. They looked through the
+window: the carriage had stopped opposite the hut, and a fine lad jumped
+down from the box and opened the carriage door. Out of the carriage
+stepped a gentleman in a fur coat. He came out of the carriage, walked
+toward Semen's house, and went on the porch. Up jumped Matrena and
+opened the door wide. The gentleman bent his head and entered the hut;
+he straightened himself up, almost struck the ceiling with his head, and
+took up a whole corner.
+
+Semen got up, bowed to the gentleman, and wondered what he wanted. He
+had not seen such men. Semen himself was spare-ribbed, and Mikhayla was
+lean, and Matrena was as dry as a chip, while this one was like a man
+from another world: his face was red and blood-filled, his neck like a
+bull's, and altogether he looked as though cast in iron.
+
+The gentleman puffed, took off his fur coat, seated himself on a bench,
+and said:
+
+"Who is the master shoemaker?"
+
+Semen stepped forward, and said:
+
+"I, your Excellency."
+
+The gentleman shouted to his lad:
+
+"Oh, Fedka, let me have the material!"
+
+The lad came running in and brought a bundle. The gentleman took it and
+put it on the table.
+
+"Open it!" he said.
+
+The lad opened it. The gentleman pointed to the material, and said to
+Semen:
+
+"Listen now, shoemaker! Do you see the material?"
+
+"I do," he said, "your Honour."
+
+"Do you understand what kind of material this is?"
+
+Semen felt of it, and said:
+
+"It is good material."
+
+"I should say it is! You, fool, have never seen such before. It is
+German material: it costs twenty roubles."
+
+Semen was frightened, and he said:
+
+"How could we have seen such?"
+
+"That's it. Can you make me boots to fit my feet from this material?"
+
+"I can, your Honour."
+
+The gentleman shouted at him:
+
+"That's it: you can. You must understand for whom you are working, and
+what material you have to work on. Make me a pair of boots that will
+wear a year without running down or ripping. If you can, undertake it
+and cut the material; if you cannot, do not undertake it and do not cut
+the material. I tell you in advance: if the boots wear off or rip before
+the year is over, I will put you into jail; if they do not wear off or
+rip for a year, I will give you ten roubles for the work."
+
+Semen was frightened and did not know what to say. He looked at
+Mikhayla. He nudged him with his elbow, and said:
+
+"Friend, what do you say?"
+
+Mikhayla nodded to him: "Take the work!"
+
+Semen took Mikhayla's advice and undertook to make a pair of boots that
+would not wear down or rip.
+
+The gentleman shouted at his lad, told him to pull off the boot from his
+left foot, and stretched out his leg.
+
+"Take the measure!"
+
+Semen sewed together a piece of paper, ten inches in length, smoothed it
+out, knelt down, carefully wiped his hand on his apron so as not to soil
+the gentleman's stocking, and began to measure. He measured the sole,
+then the instep, and then the calf, but there the paper was not long
+enough. His leg at the calf was as thick as a log.
+
+"Be sure and do not make them too tight in the boot-leg!"
+
+Semen sewed up another piece to the strip. The gentleman sat and moved
+his toes in his stocking, and watched the people in the room. He caught
+sight of Mikhayla.
+
+"Who is that man there?" he asked.
+
+"That is my master workman,--he will make those boots."
+
+"Remember," said the gentleman to Mikhayla, "remember! Make them so that
+they will wear a year."
+
+Semen, too, looked at Mikhayla, and he saw that Mikhayla was not looking
+at the gentleman, but gazed at the corner, as though he saw some one
+there. Mikhayla looked and looked, suddenly smiled and shone bright.
+
+"What makes you show your teeth, fool? You had better be sure and get
+the boots in time."
+
+And Mikhayla said:
+
+"They will be done in time."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+The gentleman put on his boot and his fur coat, and wrapped himself up,
+and went to the door. He forgot to bow down, and hit his head against
+the lintel.
+
+The gentleman cursed awhile, and rubbed his head, and seated himself in
+the carriage, and drove away.
+
+When the gentleman was gone, Semen said:
+
+"He is mighty flinty! You can't kill him with a club. He has knocked out
+the lintel, but he himself took little harm."
+
+And Matrena said:
+
+"How can he help being smooth, with the life he leads? Even death will
+not touch such a sledge-hammer!"
+
+
+VII.
+
+And Semen said to Mikhayla:
+
+"To be sure, we have undertaken to do the work, if only we do not get
+into trouble! The material is costly, and the gentleman is cross. I hope
+we shall not make a blunder. Your eyes are sharper, and your hands are
+nimbler than mine, so take this measure! Cut the material, and I will
+put on the last stitches."
+
+Mikhayla did not disobey him, but took the gentleman's material, spread
+it out on the table, doubled it, took the scissors, and began to cut.
+
+Matrena came up and saw Mikhayla cutting, and was wondering at what he
+was doing. Matrena had become used to the shoemaker's trade, and she
+looked, and saw that Mikhayla was not cutting the material in shoemaker
+fashion, but in a round shape.
+
+Matrena wanted to say something, but thought: "Perhaps I do not
+understand how boots have to be made for a gentleman; no doubt Mikhayla
+knows better, and I will not interfere."
+
+Mikhayla cut the pair, and picked up the end, and began to sew, not in
+shoemaker fashion, with the two ends meeting, but with one end, like
+soft shoes.
+
+Again Matrena marvelled, but did not interfere. And Mikhayla kept sewing
+and sewing. They began to eat their dinner, and Semen saw that Mikhayla
+had made a pair of soft shoes from the gentleman's material.
+
+Semen heaved a sigh. "How is this?" he thought. "Mikhayla has lived with
+me a whole year, and has never made a mistake, and now he has made such
+trouble for me. The gentleman ordered boots with long boot-legs, and he
+has made soft shoes, without soles, and has spoiled the material. How
+shall I now straighten it out with the master? No such material can be
+found."
+
+And he said to Mikhayla:
+
+"What is this, dear man, that you have done? You have ruined me. The
+master has ordered boots, and see what you have made!"
+
+He had just begun to scold Mikhayla, when there was a rattle at the door
+ring,--some one was knocking. They looked through the window: there was
+there a man on horseback, and he was tying up his horse. They opened the
+door: in came the same lad of that gentleman.
+
+"Good day!"
+
+"Good day, what do you wish?"
+
+"The lady has sent me about the boots."
+
+"What about the boots?"
+
+"What about the boots? Our master does not need them. Our master has bid
+us live long."
+
+"You don't say!"
+
+"He had not yet reached home, when he died in his carriage. The carriage
+drove up to the house, and the servants came to help him out, but he lay
+as heavy as a bag, and was stiff and dead, and they had a hard time
+taking him out from the carriage. So the lady has sent me, saying: 'Tell
+the shoemaker that a gentleman came to see him, and ordered a pair of
+boots, and left the material for them; well, tell him that the boots are
+not wanted, but that he should use the leather at once for a pair of
+soft shoes. Wait until they make them, and bring them with you.' And so
+that is why I have come."
+
+Mikhayla took the remnants of the material from the table, rolled them
+up, and took the soft shoes which he had made, and clapped them against
+each other, and wiped them off with his apron, and gave them to the lad.
+The lad took the soft shoes.
+
+"Good-bye, masters, good luck to you!"
+
+
+VIII.
+
+There passed another year, and a third, and Mikhayla was now living the
+sixth year with Semen. He was living as before. He went nowhere, did not
+speak an unnecessary word, and all that time had smiled but twice: once,
+when they gave him the supper, and the second time when the gentleman
+came. Semen did not get tired admiring his workman. He no longer asked
+him where he came from; he was only afraid that Mikhayla might leave
+him.
+
+One day they were sitting at home. The housewife was putting the iron
+pots into the oven, and the children were running on the benches, and
+looking out of the window. Semen was sharpening his knives at one
+window, and Mikhayla was heeling a shoe at the other.
+
+One of the little boys ran up to Mikhayla on the bench, leaned against
+his shoulder, and looked out of the window.
+
+"Uncle Mikhayla, look there: a merchant woman is coming to us with some
+little girls. One of the girls is lame."
+
+When the boy said that, Mikhayla threw down his work, turned to the
+window, and looked out into the street.
+
+And Semen marvelled. Mikhayla had never before looked into the street,
+and now he had rushed to the window, and was gazing at something. Semen,
+too, looked out of the window: he saw, indeed, a woman who was walking
+over to his yard. She was well dressed, and led two little girls in fur
+coats and shawls. The girls looked one like the other, so that it was
+hard to tell them apart, only one had a maimed left leg,--she walked
+with a limp.
+
+The woman walked up the porch to the vestibule, felt for the entrance,
+pulled at the latch, and opened the door. First she let the two girls
+in, and then entered herself.
+
+"Good day, people!"
+
+"You are welcome! What do you wish?"
+
+The woman seated herself at the table. The girls pressed close to her
+knees: they were timid before the people.
+
+"I want you to make some leather boots for the girls for the spring."
+
+"Well, that can be done. We have not made such small shoes, but we can
+do it. We can make sharp-edged shoes, or turnover shoes on linen.
+Mikhayla is my master."
+
+Semen looked around at Mikhayla, and he saw that Mikhayla had put away
+his work and was sitting and gazing at the girls.
+
+And Semen marvelled at Mikhayla. Indeed, the girls were pretty:
+black-eyed, chubby, ruddy-faced, and the fur coats and shawls which they
+had on were fine; but still Semen could not make out why he was gazing
+at them as though they were friends of his.
+
+Semen marvelled, and began to talk with the woman and to bargain. They
+came to an agreement, and he took the measures. The woman took the lame
+girl on her knees, and said:
+
+"For this girl take two measures: make one shoe for the lame foot, and
+three for the sound foot. They have the same size of feet, exactly
+alike. They are twins."
+
+Semen took the measure, and he said about the lame girl:
+
+"What has made her lame? She is such a pretty girl. Was she born this
+way?"
+
+"No, her mother crushed her."
+
+Matrena broke in,--she wanted to know who the woman was, and whose the
+children were, and so she said:
+
+"Are you not their mother?"
+
+"I am not their mother, nor their kin, housewife! I am a stranger to
+them: I have adopted them."
+
+"Not your children! How you care for them!"
+
+"Why should I not care for them? I nursed them with my own breast. I had
+a child of my own, but God took him away. I did not care for him so much
+as I have cared for them."
+
+"Whose are they, then?"
+
+
+IX.
+
+The woman began to talk, and said:
+
+"It was six years ago that these orphans lost their parents in one week:
+their father was buried on a Tuesday, and their mother died on Friday.
+These orphans were born three days after their father's death, and their
+mother did not live a day. At that time I was living with my husband in
+the village. We were their neighbours, our yard joining theirs. Their
+father was a lonely man; he worked in the forest. They dropped a tree on
+him, and it fell across his body and squeezed out his entrails. They had
+barely brought him home, when he gave up his soul to God, and that same
+week his wife bore twins,--these girls. The woman was poor and alone;
+she had neither old woman nor girl with her.
+
+"Alone she bore them, and alone she died.
+
+"I went in the morning to see my neighbour, but she, the dear woman, was
+already cold. As she died she fell on the girl, and wrenched her leg.
+The people came, and they washed and dressed her, and made a coffin, and
+buried her. All of them were good people. The girls were left alone.
+What was to be done with them? Of all the women I alone had a baby. I
+had been nursing my first-born boy for eight weeks. I took them for the
+time being to my house. The peasants gathered and thought and thought
+what to do with them, and they said to me: 'Marya, keep the girls
+awhile, and we will try and think what to do with them.' And I nursed
+the straight girl once, but the lame girl I would not nurse. I did not
+want her to live. But, I thought, why should the angelic soul go out,
+and so I pitied her, too. I began to nurse her, and so I raised my own
+and the two girls, all three of them with my own breasts. I was young
+and strong, and I had good food. And God gave me so much milk in my
+breasts that at times they overflowed. I would feed two of them, while
+the third would be waiting. When one rolled away, I took the third. And
+God granted that I should raise the three, but my own child I lost in
+the second year. And God has given me no other children. We began to
+earn more and more, and now we are living here with the merchant at the
+mill. The wages are big, and our living is good. I have no children, and
+how should I live if it were not for these girls? How can I help loving
+them? They are all the wax of my tapers that I have."
+
+With one hand the woman pressed the lame girl to her side, and with the
+other she began to wipe off her tears.
+
+And Matrena sighed, and said:
+
+"Not in vain is the proverb: 'You can live without parents, but not
+without God.'"
+
+And so they were talking among themselves, when suddenly the room was
+lighted as though by sheet lightning from the corner where sat Mikhayla.
+All looked at him, and they saw Mikhayla sitting with folded hands on
+his knees, and looking up, and smiling.
+
+
+X.
+
+The woman went away with the girls, and Mikhayla got up from his bench.
+He lay down his work, took off his apron, bowed to the master and to the
+housewife, and said:
+
+"Forgive me, people! God has forgiven me. You, too, should forgive me."
+
+And the master and his wife saw a light coming from Mikhayla. And Semen
+got up, and bowed to Mikhayla, and said:
+
+"I see, Mikhayla, you are not a simple man, and I cannot keep you, and
+must not beg you to remain. But tell me this: Why, when I found you and
+brought you home, were you gloomy, and when my wife gave you a supper,
+why did you smile at her and after that grow brighter? Later, when the
+gentleman ordered the boots, you smiled for the second time, and after
+that grew brighter, and now, when the woman brought her girls, you
+smiled for the third time, and grew entirely bright. Tell me, Mikhayla,
+why does such light come from you, and why did you smile three times?"
+
+And Mikhayla said:
+
+"The light comes from me, because I had been punished, and now God has
+forgiven me. And I smiled three times because I had to learn three words
+of God. And I have learned the three words: one word I learned when your
+wife took pity on me, and so I smiled for the first time. The second
+word I learned when the rich man ordered the boots, and then I smiled
+for the second time. And now, when I saw the girls, I learned the last,
+the third word, and I smiled for the third time."
+
+And Semen said:
+
+"Tell me, Mikhayla, for what did God punish you, and what are those
+words of God, that I may know them."
+
+And Mikhayla said:
+
+"God punished me for having disobeyed him. I was an angel in heaven, and
+I disobeyed God. I was an angel in heaven, and God sent me down to take
+the soul out of a woman. I flew down to the earth, and I saw the woman
+lying sick, and she had borne twins,--two girls. The girls were
+squirming near their mother, and she could not take them to her breasts.
+The woman saw me, and she knew that God had sent me for her soul. She
+wept, and said: 'Angel of God! My husband has just been buried,--he was
+killed by a tree in the forest. I have neither sister, nor aunt, nor
+granny,--there is no one to bring up my orphans, so do not take my soul!
+Let me raise my own children, and put them on their feet. Children
+cannot live without a father, without a mother.' And I listened to the
+mother, and placed one girl to her breast, and gave the other one into
+her hands, and rose up to the Lord in heaven. And I came before the
+Lord, and said: 'I cannot take the soul out of the mother in childbirth.
+The father was killed by a tree, the mother bore twins, and she begged
+me not to take the soul out of her, saying, Let me rear and bring up my
+children, and put them on their feet. Children cannot live without a
+father or mother. I did not take the soul out of the woman in
+childbirth.' And the Lord said: 'Go and take the soul out of the woman
+in childbirth! And you will learn three words: you will learn what there
+is in men, and what is not given to men, and what men live by. When you
+learn them, you will return to heaven.' I flew back to earth and took
+the soul out of the woman.
+
+"The little ones fell away from the breasts. The dead body rolled over
+on the bed and crushed one of the girls, and wrenched her leg. I rose
+above the village and wanted to take the soul to God; but the wind
+caught me, and my wings fell flat; and dropped off, and the soul went by
+itself before God, and I fell near the road on the earth."
+
+
+XI.
+
+And Semen and Matrena understood whom they had clothed and fed, and who
+had lived with them, and they wept for terror and for joy, and said the
+angel:
+
+"I was left all alone in the field, and naked. I had not known before of
+human wants, neither of cold, nor of hunger, and I became a man. I was
+starved and chilled and did not know what to do. I saw in the field a
+chapel made for the Lord, and I went to God's chapel and wanted to hide
+myself in it. The chapel was locked, and I could not get in. And I
+seated myself behind the chapel, to protect myself against the wind. The
+evening came, I was hungry and chilled, and I ached all over. Suddenly I
+heard a man walking on the road; he was carrying a pair of boots and
+talking to himself. And I saw a mortal face, for the first time since I
+had become a man, and that face was terrible to me, and I turned away
+from it. And I heard the man talking to himself about how he might cover
+his body in the winter from the cold, and how he might feed his wife and
+children. And I thought: 'I am dying from hunger and cold, and here
+comes a man, who is thinking only of how to cover himself and his wife
+with a fur coat, and of how to feed his family. He cannot help me.' The
+man saw me; he frowned, and looked gloomier still, and passed by me. And
+I was in despair. Suddenly I heard the man coming back. I looked at him
+and did not recognize him: before that death had been in his face, and
+now he was revived, and in his face I saw God. He came up to me, and
+clothed me, and took me with him, and led me to his house. I came to
+his house, and a woman came out of the house and began to talk. The
+woman was more terrible yet than the man; the dead spirit was coming out
+of her mouth, and I could not breathe from the stench of death. She
+wanted to send me out into the cold, and I knew that she would die if
+she drove me out. And suddenly her husband reminded her of God. And the
+woman suddenly changed. And when she gave us to eat, and looked at us, I
+glanced at her: there was no longer death in her,--she was alive, and I
+recognized God in her.
+
+"And I recalled God's first word: 'You will know what there is in men.'
+And I learned that there was love in men. And I rejoiced at it, because
+God had begun to reveal to me what He had promised, and I smiled for the
+first time. But I could not yet learn everything. I could not understand
+what was not given to men, and what men lived by.
+
+"I began to live with you, and lived a year, and there came a man, to
+order a pair of boots, such as would wear a year, without ripping or
+turning. I looked at him, and suddenly I saw behind his shoulder my
+companion, the angel of death. None but me saw that angel; but I knew
+him, and I knew that the sun would not go down before the rich man's
+soul would be taken away. And I thought: 'The man is providing for a
+year, and does not know that he will not live until evening.' And I
+thought of God's second word: 'You will learn what is not given to men.'
+
+"I knew already what there was in men. Now I learned what was not given
+to men. It is not given men to know what they need for their bodies. And
+I smiled for the second time. I was glad because I had seen my comrade
+the angel, and because God had revealed the second word to me.
+
+"But I could not understand everything. I could not understand what men
+lived by. And I lived and waited for God to reveal to me the last word.
+And in the sixth year came the twin girls with the woman, and I
+recognized the girls and knew how they were kept alive. I recognized
+them, and I thought: 'The mother begged me for the sake of the children,
+and I believed the mother and thought that the children could not live
+without father and mother, and yet a strange woman has fed them and
+reared them.' And when the woman was touched as she looked at the
+children and wept, I saw in her the living God, and I understood what
+men lived by. And I learned that God had revealed the third word to me
+and forgave me. And I smiled for the third time."
+
+
+XII.
+
+And the angel's body was bared and clothed in light, so that the eye
+could not behold him, and he spoke louder, as though the voice were
+coming not from him but from heaven. And the angel said:
+
+"I have learned that every man lives not by the care for himself, but by
+love.
+
+"It was not given to the mother to know what her children needed for
+life. It was not given to the rich man to know what he needed for
+himself. And it is not given to any man to know whether before evening
+he will need boots for his life, or soft shoes for his death.
+
+"I was kept alive when I was a man not by what I did for myself, but
+because there was love in a passer-by and in his wife, and because they
+pitied and loved me. The orphans were left alive not by what was done
+for them, but because there was love in the heart of a strange woman,
+and she pitied and loved them. And all men live not by what they do for
+themselves, but because there is love in men.
+
+"I knew before that God gave life to men and that He wanted them to
+live; now I understand even something else.
+
+"I understand that God does not want men to live apart, and so He has
+not revealed to them what each needs for himself, but wants them to live
+together, and so He has revealed to them what they all need for
+themselves and for all.
+
+"I understand now that it only seems to men that they live by the care
+for themselves, and that they live only by love. He who has love, is in
+God, and God is in him, because God is love."
+
+And the angel began to sing the praise of God, and from his voice the
+whole hut shook. And the ceiling expanded, and a fiery column rose from
+earth to heaven. And Semen and his wife and children fell to the ground.
+And the wings were unfolded on the angel's shoulders, and he rose to
+heaven.
+
+And when Semen awoke, the hut was as before, and in the room were only
+his family.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE HERMITS
+
+1884
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE HERMITS
+
+     But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for
+     they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not
+     ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye
+     have need of, before ye ask him. (Matt. vi. 7-8.)
+
+
+A bishop was sailing in a ship from Arkhangelsk to Solovki. On this ship
+there were pilgrims on their way to visit the saints. The wind was
+favourable, the weather clear, and the vessel did not roll. Of the
+pilgrims some were lying down, some eating, some sitting in groups, and
+some talking with each other. The bishop, too, came out on deck, and
+began to walk up and down on the bridge. He walked up to the prow and
+saw there several men sitting together. A peasant was pointing to
+something in the sea and talking, while the people listened to him. The
+bishop stopped to see what the peasant was pointing at: he could see
+nothing except that the sun was glistening on the water. The bishop came
+nearer and began to listen. When the peasant saw the bishop, he took off
+his cap and grew silent. And the people, too, when they saw the bishop,
+took off their caps and saluted him.
+
+"Do not trouble yourselves, friends," said the bishop. "I have just come
+to hear what you, good man, are telling about."
+
+"The fisherman is telling us about the hermits," said a merchant, who
+was a little bolder than the rest.
+
+"What about those hermits?" asked the bishop. He walked over to the
+gunwale and sat down on a box. "Tell me, too, and I will listen. What
+were you pointing at?"
+
+"There is an island glinting there," said the peasant, pointing forward
+and to the right. "On that island the hermits are living and saving
+their souls."
+
+"Where is that island?" asked the bishop.
+
+"Please to follow my hand! There is a small cloud; below it and a little
+to the left of it the island appears like a streak."
+
+The bishop looked and looked, but only the water was rippling in the
+sun, and he could not make out anything with his unaccustomed eye.
+
+"I do not see it," he said. "What kind of hermits are living on that
+island?"
+
+"God's people," replied the peasant. "I had heard about them for a long
+time, and never had any chance to see them; but two summers ago I saw
+them myself."
+
+The fisherman went on to tell how he went out to catch fish and was
+driven to that island, and did not know where he was. In the morning he
+walked out and came to an earth hut, and there he saw one hermit, and
+then two more came out. They fed him and dried him and helped him to
+mend his boat.
+
+"What kind of people are they?" asked the bishop.
+
+"One is small and stooping, a very old man, in an old cassock; he must
+be more than a hundred years old, the gray of his beard is turning
+green, and he smiles all the time, and is as bright as an angel of
+heaven. The second is taller; he, too, is old, and wears a ragged
+caftan; his broad gray beard is streaked yellow, and he is a powerful
+man: he turned my boat around as though it were a vat, before I had a
+chance to help him; he also is a cheerful man. The third man is tall;
+his beard falls down to his knees and is as white as snow; he is a
+gloomy man, and his brows hang over his eyes; he is all naked, and
+girded only with a piece of matting."
+
+"What did they tell you?" asked the bishop.
+
+"They did everything mostly in silence, and spoke little to one another.
+When one looked up, the others understood him. I asked the tall man how
+long they had been living there. He frowned and muttered something, as
+though he were angry, but the little hermit took his arm and smiled, and
+the tall one grew silent. All the little hermit said was: 'Have mercy on
+us,' and smiled."
+
+While the peasant spoke, the ship came nearer to the island.
+
+"Now you can see it plainly," said the merchant. "Please to look there,
+your Reverence!" he said, pointing to the island.
+
+The bishop looked up and really saw a black strip, which was the island.
+The bishop looked at it for quite awhile, then he went away from the
+prow to the stern, and walked over to the helmsman.
+
+"What island is this that we see there?"
+
+"That is a nameless island. There are so many of them here."
+
+"Is it true what they say, that some hermits are saving their souls
+there?"
+
+"They say so, your Reverence, but I do not know whether it is so.
+Fishermen say that they have seen them. But they frequently speak to no
+purpose."
+
+"I should like to land on that island and see the hermits," said the
+bishop. "How can I do it?"
+
+"The ship cannot land there," said the helmsman. "You can get there by a
+boat, but you must ask the captain."
+
+The captain was called out.
+
+"I should like to see those hermits," said the bishop. "Can I not be
+taken there?"
+
+The captain began to dissuade him.
+
+"It can be done, but it will take much time, and, I take the liberty of
+informing your Reverence, it is not worth while to look at them. I have
+heard people say that they were foolish old men: they understand nothing
+and cannot speak, just like the fishes of the sea."
+
+"I wish it," said the bishop. "I will pay you for the trouble, so take
+me there."
+
+It could not be helped. The sailors shifted the sails and the helmsman
+turned the ship, and they sailed toward the island. A chair was brought
+out for the bishop and put at the prow. He sat down and looked. All the
+people gathered at the prow, and all kept looking at the island. Those
+who had sharper eyes saw the rocks on the island, and they pointed to
+the earth hut. And one man could make out the three hermits. The captain
+brought out his spy-glass and looked through it and gave it to the
+bishop.
+
+"That's so," he said, "there, on the shore, a little to the right from
+that big rock, stand three men."
+
+The bishop looked through the glass and turned it to the right spot.
+There were three men there: one tall, a second smaller, and a third a
+very small man. They were standing on the shore and holding each other's
+hands.
+
+The captain walked over to the bishop, and said:
+
+"Here, your Reverence, the ship has to stop. If you wish to go there by
+all means, you will please go from here in a boat, and we will wait here
+at anchor."
+
+The hawsers were let out, the anchor dropped, the sails furled, and the
+vessel jerked and shook. A boat was lowered, the oarsmen jumped into it,
+and the bishop went down a ladder. He sat down on a bench in the boat,
+and the oarsmen pulled at the oars and rowed toward the island. They
+came near to the shore and could see clearly three men standing there: a
+tall man, all naked, with a mat about his loins; the next in size, in a
+tattered caftan; and the stooping old man, in an old cassock. There they
+stood holding each other's hands.
+
+The oarsmen rowed up to the shore and caught their hook in it. The
+bishop stepped ashore.
+
+The old men bowed to him. He blessed them, and they bowed lower still.
+Then the bishop began to talk to them:
+
+"I have heard," he said, "that you are here, hermits of God, saving your
+souls and praying to Christ our God for men. I, an unworthy servant of
+Christ, have been called here by the mercy of God to tend His flock, and
+so I wanted to see you, the servants of God, and to give you some
+instruction, if I can do so."
+
+The hermits kept silence, and smiled, and looked at one another.
+
+"Tell me, how do you save yourselves and serve God?" asked the bishop.
+
+The middle-sized hermit heaved a sigh and looked at the older, the
+stooping hermit. And the stooping hermit smiled, and said:
+
+"We do not know, O servant of God, how to serve God. We only support
+ourselves."
+
+"How, then, do you pray to God?"
+
+And the stooping hermit said:
+
+"We pray as follows: There are three of you and three of us,--have mercy
+on us!"
+
+And the moment the stooping hermit had said that, all three of them
+raised their eyes to heaven, and all three said:
+
+"There are three of you and three of us,--have mercy on us!"
+
+The bishop smiled, and said:
+
+"You have heard that about the Holy Trinity, but you do not pray the
+proper way. I like you, hermits of God, and I see that you want to
+please God, but do not know how to serve Him. I will teach you, not
+according to my way, but from the Gospel will I teach you as God has
+commanded all men to pray to Him."
+
+And the bishop began to explain to the hermits how God had revealed
+Himself to men: he explained to them about God the Father, and God the
+Son, and God the Holy Ghost, and said:
+
+"God the Son came down upon earth to save men and taught them to pray as
+follows. Listen, and repeat after me."
+
+And the bishop began to say, "Our Father." And one of the hermits
+repeated, "Our Father," and the second repeated, "Our Father," and the
+third repeated, "Our Father."
+
+"Which art in heaven." The hermit repeated, "Which art in heaven." But
+the middle hermit got mixed in his words, and did not say it right; and
+the tall, naked hermit did not say it right: his moustache was all over
+his mouth, and he could not speak clearly; and the stooping, toothless
+hermit, too, lisped it indistinctly.
+
+The bishop repeated it a second time, and the hermits repeated it after
+him. And the bishop sat down on a stone, and the hermits stood around
+him and looked into his mouth and repeated after him so long as he
+spoke. And the bishop worked with them all day; he repeated one word
+ten, and twenty, and a hundred times, and the hermits repeated after
+him. They blundered, and he corrected them, and made them repeat from
+the beginning.
+
+The bishop did not leave the hermits until he taught them the whole
+Lord's prayer. They said it with him and by themselves. The middle-sized
+hermit was the first to learn it, and he repeated it all by himself. The
+bishop made him say it over and over again, and both the others said the
+prayer, too.
+
+It was beginning to grow dark, and the moon rose from the sea, when the
+bishop got up to go back to the ship. The bishop bade the hermits
+good-bye, and they bowed to the ground before him. He raised each of
+them, and kissed them, and told them to pray as he had taught them, and
+entered the boat, and was rowed back to the ship.
+
+And as the boat was rowed toward the ship, the bishop heard the hermits
+loudly repeating the Lord's prayer in three voices. The boat came nearer
+to the ship, and the voices of the hermits could no longer be heard, but
+in the moonlight they could be seen standing on the shore, in the spot
+where they had been left: the smallest of them was in the middle, the
+tallest on the right, and the middle-sized man on the left. The bishop
+reached the ship and climbed up to the deck. The anchors were weighed,
+the sails unfurled, and the wind blew and drove the ship, and on they
+sailed. The bishop went to the prow and sat down there and looked at the
+island. At first the hermits could be seen, then they disappeared from
+view, and only the island could be seen; then the island, too,
+disappeared, and only the sea glittered in the moonlight.
+
+The pilgrims lay down to sleep, and everything grew quiet on the deck.
+But the bishop did not feel like sleeping. He sat by himself at the prow
+and looked out to sea to where the island had disappeared, and thought
+of the good hermits. He thought of how glad they had been to learn the
+prayer, and thanked God for having taken him there to help the God's
+people,--to teach them the word of God.
+
+The bishop was sitting and thinking and looking out to sea to where the
+island had disappeared. There was something unsteady in his eyes: now a
+light quivered in one place on the waves, and now in another. Suddenly
+he saw something white and shining in the moonlight,--either a bird, a
+gull, or a white sail on a boat. The bishop watched it closely.
+
+"A sailboat is following after us," he thought. "It will soon overtake
+us. It was far, far away, but now it is very near. It is evidently not a
+boat, for there seems to be no sail. Still it is flying behind us and
+coming up close to us."
+
+The bishop could not make out what it was: a boat, no, it was not a
+boat; a bird, no, not a bird; a fish, no, not a fish! It was like a man,
+but too large for that, and then, how was a man to be in the middle of
+the ocean? The bishop got up and walked over to the helmsman.
+
+"See there, what is it?"
+
+"What is it, my friend? What is it?" asked the bishop, but he saw
+himself that those were the hermits running over the sea. Their beards
+shone white, and, as though the ship were standing still, they came up
+to it.
+
+The helmsman looked around and was frightened. He dropped the helm, and
+called out in a loud voice:
+
+"O Lord! The hermits are running after us on the sea as though it were
+dry land!"
+
+The people heard him, and rushed to the helm. All saw the hermits
+running and holding each other's hands. Those at the ends waved their
+hands, asking the ship to be stopped. All three were running over the
+water as though it were dry land, without moving their feet.
+
+Before the ship could be stopped, the hermits came abreast with the
+ship. They came up to the gunwale, raised their heads, and spoke in one
+voice:
+
+"O servant of God, we have forgotten your lesson. So long as we repeated
+it, we remembered it; but when we stopped for an hour, one word leaped
+out, and then the rest scattered. We do not remember a thing, so teach
+us again."
+
+The bishop made the sign of the cross, bent down to the hermits, and
+said:
+
+"Even your prayer, hermits of God, reaches the Lord. It is not for me to
+teach you. Pray for us sinful men!"
+
+And the bishop made a low obeisance to the hermits. And the hermits
+stopped, turned around, and walked back over the sea. And up to morning
+a light could be seen on the side where the hermits had departed.
+
+
+
+
+NEGLECT THE FIRE
+
+And You Cannot Put It Out
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+NEGLECT THE FIRE
+
+And You Cannot Put It Out
+
+     Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother
+     sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?
+
+     Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but,
+     Until seventy times seven.
+
+     Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king,
+     which would take account of his servants.
+
+     And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which
+     owed him ten thousand talents.
+
+     But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be
+     sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment
+     to be made.
+
+     The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord,
+     have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.
+
+     Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed
+     him, and forgave him the debt.
+
+     But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants,
+     which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took
+     him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest.
+
+     And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought him,
+     saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.
+
+     And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should
+     pay the debt.
+
+     So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they were very sorry,
+     and came and told unto their lord all that was done.
+
+     Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou
+     wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou
+     desiredst me:
+
+     Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant,
+     even as I had pity on thee?
+
+     And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till
+     he should pay all that was due unto him.
+
+     So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from
+     your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.
+     (Matt. xviii. 21-35.)
+
+
+There lived in a village a peasant, by the name of Ivan Shcherbakov. He
+lived well; he was himself in full strength, the first worker in the
+village, and he had three sons,--all of them on their legs: one was
+married, the second about to marry, and the third a grown-up lad who
+drove horses and was beginning to plough. Ivan's wife was a clever woman
+and a good housekeeper, and his daughter-in-law turned out to be a quiet
+person and a good worker. There was no reason why Ivan should not have
+led a good life with his family. The only idle mouth on the farm was his
+old, ailing father (he had been lying on the oven for seven years, sick
+with the asthma).
+
+Ivan had plenty of everything, three horses and a colt, a cow and a
+yearling calf, and fifteen sheep. The women made the shoes and the
+clothes for the men and worked in the field; the men worked on their
+farms.
+
+They had enough grain until the next crop. From the oats they paid their
+taxes and met all their obligations. An easy life, indeed, might Ivan
+have led with his children. But next door to him he had a neighbour,
+Gavrilo the Lame, Gordyey Ivanov's son. And there was an enmity between
+him and Ivan.
+
+So long as old man Gordyey was alive, and Ivan's father ran the farm,
+the peasants lived in neighbourly fashion. If the women needed a sieve
+or a vat, or the men had to get another axle or wheel for a time, they
+sent from one farm to another, and helped each other out in a
+neighbourly way. If a calf ran into the yard of the threshing-floor,
+they drove it out and only said: "Don't let it out, for the heap has not
+yet been put away." And it was not their custom to put it away and lock
+it up in the threshing-floor or in a shed, or to revile each other.
+
+Thus they lived so long as the old men were alive. But when the young
+people began to farm, things went quite differently.
+
+The whole thing began from a mere nothing. A hen of Ivan's
+daughter-in-law started laying early. The young woman gathered the eggs
+for Passion week. Every day she went to the shed to pick up an egg from
+the wagon-box. But, it seems, the boys scared away the hen, and she flew
+across the wicker fence to the neighbour's yard, and laid an egg there.
+The young woman heard the hen cackle, so she thought:
+
+"I have no time now, I must get the hut in order for the holiday; I will
+go there later to get it."
+
+In the evening she went to the wagon-box under the shed, to fetch the
+egg, but it was not there. The young woman asked her mother-in-law and
+her brother-in-law if they had taken it; but Taraska, her youngest
+brother-in-law, said:
+
+"Your hen laid an egg in the neighbour's yard, for she cackled there and
+flew out from that yard."
+
+The young woman went to look at her hen, and found her sitting with the
+cock on the perch; she had closed her eyes and was getting ready to
+sleep. The woman would have liked to ask her where she laid the egg, but
+she would not have given her any answer. Then the young woman went to
+her neighbour. The old woman met her.
+
+"What do you want, young woman?"
+
+"Granny, my hen has been in your yard to-day,--did she not lay an egg
+there?"
+
+"I have not set eyes on her. We have hens of our own, thank God, and
+they have been laying for quite awhile. We have gathered our own eggs,
+and we do not need other people's eggs. Young woman, we do not go to
+other people's yards to gather eggs."
+
+The young woman was offended. She said a word too much, the neighbour
+answered with two, and the women began to scold. Ivan's wife was
+carrying water, and she, too, took a hand in it. Gavrilo's wife jumped
+out, and began to rebuke her neighbour. She reminded her of things that
+had happened, and mentioned things that had not happened at all. And the
+tongue-lashing began. All yelled together, trying to say two words at
+the same time. And they used bad words.
+
+"You are such and such a one; you are a thief, a sneak; you are simply
+starving your father-in-law; you are a tramp."
+
+"And you are a beggar: you have torn my sieve; and you have our
+shoulder-yoke. Give me back the yoke!"
+
+They grabbed the yoke, spilled the water, tore off their kerchiefs, and
+began to fight. Gavrilo drove up from the field, and he took his wife's
+part. Ivan jumped out with his son, and they all fell in a heap. Ivan
+was a sturdy peasant, and he scattered them all. He yanked out a piece
+of Gavrilo's beard. People ran up to them, and they were with difficulty
+pulled apart.
+
+That's the way it began.
+
+Gavrilo wrapped the piece of his beard in a petition and went to the
+township court to enter a complaint.
+
+"I did not raise a beard for freckled Ivan to pull it out."
+
+In the meantime his wife bragged to the neighbours that they would now
+get Ivan sentenced and would have him sent to Siberia, and the feud
+began.
+
+The old man on the oven tried to persuade them to stop the first day
+they started to quarrel, but the young people paid no attention to him.
+He said to them:
+
+"Children, you are doing a foolish thing, and for a foolish thing have
+you started a feud. Think of it,--the whole affair began from an egg.
+The children picked up the egg,--well, God be with them! There is no
+profit in one egg. With God's aid there will be enough for everybody.
+Well, you have said a bad word, so correct it, show her how to use
+better words! Well, you have had a fight,--you are sinful people. That,
+too, happens. Well, go and make peace, and let there be an end to it! If
+you keep it up, it will only be worse."
+
+The young people did not obey the old man; they thought that he was not
+using sense, but just babbling in old man's fashion.
+
+Ivan did not give in to his neighbour.
+
+"I did not pull his beard," he said. "He jerked it out himself; but his
+son has yanked off my shirt-button and has torn my whole shirt. Here it
+is."
+
+And Ivan, too, took the matter to court. The case was heard before a
+justice of the peace, and in the township court. While they were suing
+each other, Gavrilo lost a coupling-pin out of his cart. The women in
+Gavrilo's house accused Ivan's son of having taken it.
+
+"We saw him in the night," they said, "making his way under the window
+to the cart, and the gossip says that he went to the dram-shop and asked
+the dram-shopkeeper to take the pin from him."
+
+Again they started a suit. But at home not a day passed but that they
+quarrelled, nay, even fought. The children cursed one another,--they
+learned this from their elders,--and when the women met at the brook,
+they did not so much strike the beetles as let loose their tongues, and
+to no good.
+
+At first the men just accused each other, but later they began to snatch
+up things that lay about loose. And they taught the women and children
+to do the same. Their life grew worse and worse. Ivan Shcherbakov and
+Gavrilo the Lame kept suing one another at the meetings of the Commune,
+and in the township court, and before the justices of the peace, and all
+the judges were tired of them. Now Gavrilo got Ivan to pay a fine, or he
+sent him to the lockup, and now Ivan did the same to Gavrilo. And the
+more they did each other harm, the more furious they grew. When dogs
+make for each other, they get more enraged the more they fight. You
+strike a dog from behind, and he thinks that the other dog is biting
+him, and gets only madder than ever. Just so it was with these peasants:
+when they went to court, one or the other was punished, either by being
+made to pay a fine, or by being thrown into prison, and that only made
+their rage flame up more and more toward one another.
+
+"Just wait, I will pay you back for it!"
+
+And thus it went on for six years. The old man on the oven kept
+repeating the same advice. He would say to them:
+
+"What are you doing, my children? Drop all your accounts, stick to your
+work, don't show such malice toward others, and it will be better. The
+more you rage, the worse will it be."
+
+They paid no attention to the old man.
+
+In the seventh year the matter went so far that Ivan's daughter-in-law
+at a wedding accused Gavrilo before people of having been caught with
+horses. Gavrilo was drunk, and he did not hold back his anger, but
+struck the woman and hurt her so that she lay sick for a week, for she
+was heavy with child. Ivan rejoiced, and went with a petition to the
+prosecuting magistrate.
+
+"Now," he thought, "I will get even with my neighbour: he shall not
+escape the penitentiary or Siberia."
+
+Again Ivan was not successful. The magistrate did not accept the
+petition: they examined the woman, but she was up and there were no
+marks upon her. Ivan went to the justice of the peace; but the justice
+sent the case to the township court. Ivan bestirred himself in the
+township office, filled the elder and the scribe with half a bucket of
+sweet liquor, and got them to sentence Gavrilo to having his back
+flogged. The sentence was read to Gavrilo in the court.
+
+The scribe read:
+
+"The court has decreed that the peasant Gavrilo Gordyey receive twenty
+blows with rods in the township office."
+
+Ivan listened to the decree and looked at Gavrilo, wondering what he
+would do. Gavrilo, too, heard the decree, and he became as pale as a
+sheet, and turned away and walked out into the vestibule. Ivan followed
+him out and wanted to go to his horse, when he heard Gavrilo say:
+
+"Very well, he will beat my back, and it will burn, but something of his
+may burn worse than that."
+
+When Ivan heard these words, he returned to the judges.
+
+"Righteous judges! He threatens to set fire to my house. Listen, he said
+it in the presence of witnesses."
+
+Gavrilo was called in.
+
+"Is it true that you said so?"
+
+"I said nothing. Flog me, if you please. Evidently I must suffer for my
+truth, while he may do anything he wishes."
+
+Gavrilo wanted to say something more, but his lips and cheeks trembled.
+He turned away toward the wall. Even the judges were frightened as they
+looked at him.
+
+"It would not be surprising," they thought, "if he actually did some
+harm to his neighbour or to himself."
+
+And an old judge said to them:
+
+"Listen, friends! You had better make peace with each other. Did you do
+right, brother Gavrilo, to strike a pregnant woman? Luckily God was
+merciful to you, but think what crime you might have committed! Is that
+good? Confess your guilt and beg his pardon! And he will pardon you.
+Then we shall change the decree."
+
+The scribe heard that, and said:
+
+"That is impossible, because on the basis of Article 117 there has taken
+place no reconciliation, but the decree of the court has been handed
+down, and the decree has to be executed."
+
+But the judge paid no attention to the scribe.
+
+"Stop currycombing your tongue. The first article, my friend, is to
+remember God, and God has commanded me to make peace."
+
+And the judge began once more to talk to the peasants, but he could not
+persuade them. Gavrilo would not listen to him.
+
+"I am fifty years old less one," he said, "and I have a married son. I
+have not been beaten in all my life, and now freckled Ivan has brought
+me to being beaten with rods, and am I to beg his forgiveness? Well, he
+will--Ivan will remember me!"
+
+Gavrilo's voice trembled again. He could not talk. He turned around and
+went out.
+
+From the township office to the village was a distance of ten versts,
+and Ivan returned home late. The women had already gone out to meet the
+cattle. He unhitched his horse, put it away, and entered the hut. The
+room was empty. The children had not yet returned from the field, and
+the women were out to meet the cattle. Ivan went in, sat down on a
+bench, and began to think. He recalled how the decision was announced to
+Gavrilo, and how he grew pale, and turned to the wall. And his heart was
+pinched. He thought of how he should feel if he were condemned to be
+flogged. He felt sorry for Gavrilo. He heard the old man coughing on the
+oven. The old man turned around, let down his legs, and sat up. He
+pulled himself with difficulty up to the bench, and coughed and coughed,
+until he cleared his throat, and leaned against the table, and said:
+
+"Well, have they condemned him?"
+
+Ivan said:
+
+"He has been sentenced to twenty strokes with the rods."
+
+The old man shook his head.
+
+"Ivan, you are not doing right. It's wrong, not wrong to him, but to
+yourself. Well, will it make you feel easier, if they flog him?"
+
+"He will never do it again," said Ivan.
+
+"Why not? In what way is he doing worse than you?"
+
+"What, he has not harmed me?" exclaimed Ivan. "He might have killed the
+woman; and he even now threatens to set fire to my house. Well, shall I
+bow to him for it?"
+
+The old man heaved a sigh, and said:
+
+"You, Ivan, walk and drive wherever you please in the free world, and I
+have passed many years on the oven, and so you think that you see
+everything, while I see nothing. No, my son, you see nothing,--malice
+has dimmed your eyes. Another man's sins are in front of you, but your
+own are behind your back. You say that he has done wrong. If he alone
+had done wrong, there would be no harm. Does evil between people arise
+from one man only? Evil arises between two. You see his badness, but you
+do not see your own. If he himself were bad, and you good, there would
+be no evil. Who pulled out his beard? Who blasted the rick which was at
+halves? Who is dragging him to the courts? And yet you put it always on
+him. You yourself live badly, that's why it is bad. Not thus did I live,
+and no such thing, my dear, did I teach you. Did I and the old man, his
+father, live this way? How did we live? In neighbourly fashion. If his
+flour gave out, and the woman came: 'Uncle Frol, I need some
+flour.'--'Go, young woman, into the granary, and take as much as you
+need.' If he had nobody to send out with the horses,--'Go, Ivan, and
+look after his horses!' And if I was short of anything, I used to go to
+him. 'Uncle Gordyey, I need this and that.' And how is it now? The other
+day a soldier was talking about Plevna. Why, your war is worse than what
+they did at Plevna. Do you call this living? It is a sin! You are a
+peasant, a head of a house. You will be responsible. What are you
+teaching your women and your children? To curse. The other day Taraska,
+that dirty nose, cursed Aunt Arina, and his mother only laughed at him.
+Is that good? You will be responsible for it. Think of your soul. Is
+that right? You say a word to me, and I answer with two; you box my
+ears, and I box you twice. No, my son, Christ walked over the earth and
+taught us fools something quite different. If a word is said to
+you,--keep quiet, and let conscience smite him. That's what he, my son,
+has taught us. If they box your ears, you turn the other cheek to them:
+'Here, strike it if I deserve it.' His own conscience will prick him. He
+will be pacified and will do as you wish. That's what he has commanded
+us to do, and not to crow. Why are you silent? Do I tell you right?"
+
+Ivan was silent, and he listened.
+
+The old man coughed again, and with difficulty coughed up the phlegm,
+and began to speak again:
+
+"Do you think Christ has taught us anything bad? He has taught us for
+our own good. Think of your earthly life: are you better off, or worse,
+since that Plevna of yours was started? Figure out how much you have
+spent on these courts, how much you have spent in travelling and in
+feeding yourself on the way? See what eagles of sons you have! You ought
+to live, and live well, and go up, but your property is growing less.
+Why? For the same reason. From your pride. You ought to be ploughing
+with the boys in the field and attend to your sowing, but the fiend
+carries you to court or to some pettifogger. You do not plough in time
+and do not sow in time, and mother earth does not bring forth anything.
+Why did the oats not do well this year? When did you sow them? When you
+came back from the city. And what did you gain from the court? Only
+trouble for yourself. Oh, son, stick to your business, and attend to
+your field and your house, and if any one has offended you, forgive him
+in godly fashion, and things will go better with you, and you will feel
+easier at heart."
+
+Ivan kept silence.
+
+"Listen, Ivan! Pay attention to me, an old man. Go and hitch the gray
+horse, and drive straight back to the office: squash there the whole
+business, and in the morning go to Gavrilo, make peace with him in godly
+fashion, and invite him to the holiday" (it was before Lady-day), "have
+the samovar prepared, get a half bottle, and make an end to all sins, so
+that may never happen again, and command the women and children to live
+in peace."
+
+Ivan heaved a sigh, and thought: "The old man is speaking the truth,"
+and his heart melted. The only thing he did not know was how to manage
+things so as to make peace with his neighbour.
+
+And the old man, as though guessing what he had in mind, began once
+more:
+
+"Go, Ivan, do not put it off! Put out the fire at the start, for when it
+burns up, you can't control it."
+
+The old man wanted to say something else, but did not finish, for the
+women entered the room and began to prattle like magpies. The news had
+already reached them about how Gavrilo had been sentenced to be flogged,
+and how he had threatened to set fire to the house. They had found out
+everything, and had had time in the pasture to exchange words with the
+women of Gavrilo's house. They said that Gavrilo's daughter-in-law had
+threatened them with the examining magistrate. The magistrate, they
+said, was receiving gifts from Gavrilo. He would now upset the whole
+case, and the teacher had already written another petition to the Tsar
+about Ivan, and that petition mentioned all the affairs, about the
+coupling-pin, and about the garden,--and half of the estate would go
+back to him. Ivan listened to their talk, and his heart was chilled
+again, and he changed his mind about making peace with Gavrilo.
+
+In a farmer's yard there is always much to do. Ivan did not stop to talk
+with the women, but got up and went out of the house, and walked over to
+the threshing-floor and the shed. Before he fixed everything and started
+back again, the sun went down, and the boys returned from the field.
+They had been ploughing up the field for the winter crop. Ivan met them,
+and asked them about their work and helped them to put up the horses. He
+laid aside the torn collar and was about to put some poles under the
+shed, when it grew quite dark. Ivan left the poles until the morrow;
+instead he threw some fodder down to the cattle, opened the gate, let
+Taraska out with the horses into the street, to go to the night pasture,
+and again closed the gate and put down the gate board.
+
+"Now to supper and to bed," thought Ivan. He took the torn collar and
+went into the house. He had entirely forgotten about Gavrilo, and about
+what his father had told him. As he took hold of the ring and was about
+to enter the vestibule, he heard his neighbour on the other side of the
+wicker fence scolding some one in a hoarse voice.
+
+"The devil take him!" Gavrilo was crying to some one. "He ought to be
+killed."
+
+These words made all the old anger toward his neighbour burst forth in
+Ivan. He stood awhile and listened to Gavrilo's scolding. Then Gavrilo
+grew quiet, and Ivan went into the house.
+
+He entered the room. Fire was burning within. The young woman was
+sitting in the corner behind the spinning-wheel; the old woman was
+getting supper ready; the eldest son was making laces for the bast
+shoes, the second was at the table with a book, and Taraska was getting
+ready to go to the night pasture.
+
+In the house everything was good and merry, if it were not for that
+curse,--a bad neighbour.
+
+Ivan was angry when he entered the room. He knocked the cat down from
+the bench and scolded the women because the vat was not in the right
+place. Ivan felt out of humour. He sat down, frowning, and began to mend
+the collar. He could not forget Gavrilo's words, with which he had
+threatened him in court, and how he had said about somebody, speaking in
+a hoarse voice: "He ought to be killed."
+
+The old woman got Taraska something to eat. When he was through with his
+supper, he put on a fur coat and a caftan, girded himself, took a piece
+of bread, and went out to the horses. The eldest brother wanted to see
+him off, but Ivan himself got up and went out on the porch. It was
+pitch-dark outside, the sky was clouded, and a wind had risen. Ivan
+stepped down from the porch, helped his little son to get on a horse,
+frightened a colt behind him, and stood looking and listening while
+Taraska rode down the village, where he met other children, and until
+they all rode out of hearing. Ivan stood and stood at the gate, and
+could not get Gavrilo's words out of his head, "Something of yours may
+burn worse."
+
+"He will not consider himself," thought Ivan. "It is dry, and a wind is
+blowing. He will enter somewhere from behind, the scoundrel, and will
+set the house on fire, and he will go free. If I could catch him, he
+would not get away from me."
+
+This thought troubled Ivan so much that he did not go back to the porch,
+but walked straight into the street and through the gate, around the
+corner of the house.
+
+"I will examine the yard,--who knows?"
+
+And Ivan walked softly down along the gate. He had just turned around
+the corner and looked up the fence, when it seemed to him that something
+stirred at the other end, as though it got up and sat down again. Ivan
+stopped and stood still,--he listened and looked: everything was quiet,
+only the wind rustled the leaves in the willow-tree and crackled through
+the straw. It was pitch-dark, but his eyes got used to the darkness:
+Ivan could see the whole corner and the plough and the penthouse. He
+stood and looked, but there was no one there.
+
+"It must have only seemed so to me," thought Ivan, "but I will,
+nevertheless, go and see," and he stole up along the shed. Ivan stepped
+softly in his bast shoes, so that he did not hear his own steps. He came
+to the corner, when, behold, something flashed by near the plough, and
+disappeared again. Ivan felt as though something hit him in the heart,
+and he stopped. As he stopped he could see something flashing up, and he
+could see clearly some one in a cap squatting down with his back toward
+him, and setting fire to a bunch of straw in his hands. He stood
+stock-still.
+
+"Now," he thought, "he will not get away from me. I will catch him on
+the spot."
+
+Before Ivan had walked two lengths of the fence it grew quite bright,
+and no longer in the former place, nor was it a small fire, but the
+flame licked up in the straw of the penthouse and was going toward the
+roof, and there stood Gavrilo so that the whole of him could be seen.
+
+As a hawk swoops down on a lark, so Ivan rushed up against Gavrilo the
+Lame.
+
+"I will twist him up," he thought, "and he will not get away from me."
+
+But Gavrilo the Lame evidently heard his steps and ran along the shed
+with as much speed as a hare.
+
+"You will not get away," shouted Ivan, swooping down on him.
+
+He wanted to grab him by the collar, but Gavrilo got away from him, and
+Ivan caught him by the skirt of his coat. The skirt tore off, and Ivan
+fell down.
+
+Ivan jumped up.
+
+"Help! Hold him!" and again he ran.
+
+As he was getting up, Gavrilo was already near his yard, but Ivan caught
+up with him. He was just going to take hold of him, when something
+stunned him, as though a stone had come down on his head. Gavrilo had
+picked up an oak post near his house and hit Ivan with all his might on
+the head, when he ran up to him.
+
+Ivan staggered, sparks flew from his eyes, then all grew dark, and he
+fell down. When he came to his senses, Gavrilo was gone. It was as light
+as day, and from his yard came a sound as though an engine were working,
+and it roared and crackled there. Ivan turned around and saw that his
+back shed was all on fire and the side shed was beginning to burn; the
+fire, and the smoke, and the burning straw were being carried toward the
+house.
+
+"What is this? Friend!" cried Ivan. He raised his hands and brought them
+down on his calves. "If I could only pull it out from the penthouse, and
+put it out! What is this? Friends!" he repeated. He wanted to shout, but
+he nearly strangled,--he had no voice. He wanted to run, but his feet
+would not move,--they tripped each other up. He tried to walk slowly,
+but he staggered, and he nearly strangled. He stood still again and drew
+breath, and started to walk. Before he came to the shed and reached the
+fire, the side shed was all on fire, and he could not get into the yard.
+People came running up, but nothing could be done. The neighbours
+dragged their own things out of their houses, and drove the cattle out.
+After Ivan's house, Gavrilo's caught fire; a wind rose and carried the
+fire across the street. Half the village burned down.
+
+All they saved from Ivan's house was the old man, who was pulled out,
+and everybody jumped out in just what they had on. Everything else was
+burned, except the horses in the pasture: the cattle were burned, the
+chickens on their roosts, the carts, the ploughs, the harrows, the
+women's chests, the grain in the granary,--everything was burned.
+
+Gavrilo's cattle were saved, and they dragged a few things out of his
+house.
+
+It burned for a long time, all night long. Ivan stood near his yard, and
+kept looking at it, and saying:
+
+"What is this? Friends! If I could just pull it out and put it out!"
+
+But when the ceiling in the hut fell down, he jumped into the hottest
+place, took hold of a brand, and wanted to pull it out. The women saw
+him and began to call him back, but he pulled out one log and started
+for another: he staggered and fell on the fire. Then his son rushed
+after him and dragged him out. Ivan had his hair and beard singed and
+his garments burnt and his hands blistered, but he did not feel
+anything.
+
+"His sorrow has bereft him of his senses," people said.
+
+The fire died down, but Ivan was still standing there, and saying:
+
+"Friends, what is this? If I could only pull it out."
+
+In the morning the elder sent his son to Ivan.
+
+"Uncle Ivan, your father is dying: he has sent for you, to bid you
+good-bye."
+
+Ivan had forgotten about his father, and did not understand what they
+were saying to him.
+
+"What father?" he said. "Send for whom?"
+
+"He has sent for you, to bid you good-bye. He is dying in our house.
+Come, Uncle Ivan!" said the elder's son, pulling him by his arm.
+
+Ivan followed the elder's son.
+
+When the old man, was carried out, burning straw fell on him and
+scorched him. He was taken to the elder's house in a distant part of the
+village. This part did not burn.
+
+When Ivan came to his father, only the elder's wife was there, and the
+children on the oven. The rest were all at the fire. The old man was
+lying on a bench, with a taper in his hand, and looking toward the door.
+When his son entered, he stirred a little. The old woman went up to him
+and said that his son had come. He told her to have him come closer to
+him. Ivan went up, and then the old man said:
+
+"What have I told you, Ivan? Who has burned the village?"
+
+"He, father," said Ivan, "he,--I caught him at it. He put the fire to
+the roof while I was standing near. If I could only have caught the
+burning bunch of straw and put it out, there would not have been
+anything."
+
+"Ivan," said the old man, "my death has come, and you, too, will die.
+Whose sin is it?"
+
+Ivan stared at his father and kept silence; he could not say a word.
+
+"Speak before God: whose sin is it? What have I told you?"
+
+It was only then that Ivan came to his senses, and understood
+everything. And he snuffled, and said:
+
+"Mine, father." And he knelt before his father, and wept, and said:
+"Forgive me, father! I am guilty toward you and toward God."
+
+The old man moved his hands, took the taper in his left hand, and was
+moving his right hand toward his brow, to make the sign of the cross,
+but he did not get it so far, and he stopped.
+
+"Glory be to thee, O Lord! Glory be to thee, O Lord!" he said, and his
+eyes were again turned toward his son.
+
+"Ivan! Oh, Ivan!"
+
+"What is it, father?"
+
+"What is to be done now?"
+
+Ivan was weeping.
+
+"I do not know, father," he said. "How am I to live now, father?"
+
+The old man closed his eyes and lisped something, as though gathering
+all his strength, and he once more opened his eyes and said:
+
+"You will get along. With God's aid will you get along." The old man was
+silent awhile, and he smiled and said:
+
+"Remember, Ivan, you must not tell who started the fire. Cover up
+another man's sin! God will forgive two sins."
+
+And the old man took the taper into both hands, folded them over his
+heart, heaved a sigh, stretched himself, and died.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ivan did not tell on Gavrilo, and nobody found out how the fire had been
+started.
+
+And Ivan's heart was softened toward Gavrilo, and Gavrilo marvelled at
+Ivan, because he did not tell anybody. At first Gavrilo was afraid of
+him, but later he got used to him. The peasants stopped quarrelling, and
+so did their families. While they rebuilt their homes, the two families
+lived in one house, and when the village was built again, and the
+farmhouses were built farther apart, Ivan and Gavrilo again were
+neighbours, living in the same block.
+
+And Ivan and Gavrilo lived neighbourly together, just as their fathers
+had lived. Ivan Shcherbakov remembered his father's injunction and God's
+command to put out the fire in the beginning. And if a person did him
+some harm, he did not try to have his revenge on the man, but to mend
+matters; and if a person called him a bad name, he did not try to answer
+with worse words still, but to teach him not to speak badly. And thus he
+taught, also the women folk and the children. And Ivan Shcherbakov
+improved and began to live better than ever.
+
+
+
+
+THE CANDLE
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+THE CANDLE
+
+     Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a
+     tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.
+     (Matt. v. 38, 39.)
+
+
+This happened in the days of slavery. There were then all kinds of
+masters. There were such as remembered their hour of death and God, and
+took pity on their people, and there were dogs,--not by that may their
+memory live! But there were no meaner masters than those who from
+serfdom rose, as though out of the mud, to be lords! With them life was
+hardest of all.
+
+There happened to be such a clerk in a manorial estate. The peasants
+were doing manorial labour. There was much land, and the land was good,
+and there was water, and meadows, and forests. There would have been
+enough for everybody, both for the master and for the peasants, but the
+master had placed over them a clerk, a manorial servant of his from
+another estate.
+
+The clerk took the power into his own hand, and sat down on the
+peasants' necks. He was a married man,--he had a wife and two married
+daughters,--and had saved some money: he might have lived gloriously
+without sin, but he was envious, and stuck fast in sin. He began by
+driving the peasants to manorial labour more than the usual number of
+days. He started a brick-kiln, and he drove all the men and women to
+work in it above their strength, and sold the brick. The peasants went
+to the proprietor in Moscow to complain against him, but they were not
+successful. When the clerk learned that the peasants had entered a
+complaint against him, he took his revenge out of them. The peasants led
+a harder life still. There were found faithless people among the
+peasants: they began to denounce their own brothers to the clerk, and to
+slander one another. And all the people became involved, and the clerk
+was furious.
+
+The further it went, the worse it got, and the clerk carried on so
+terribly that the people became afraid of him as of a wolf. When he
+drove through the village, everybody ran away from him as from a wolf,
+so as not to be seen by him. The clerk saw that and raved more than ever
+because people were afraid of him. He tortured the peasants with beating
+and with work, and they suffered very much from him.
+
+It used to happen that such evil-doers were put out of the way, and the
+peasants began to talk that way about him. They would meet somewhere
+secretly, and such as were bolder would say:
+
+"How long are we going to endure this evil-doer? We are perishing
+anyway,--and it is no sin to kill a man like him."
+
+One day the peasants met in the forest, before Easter week: the clerk
+had sent them to clean up the manorial woods. They came together at
+dinner-time, and began to talk:
+
+"How can we live now?" they said. "He will root us up. He has worn us
+out with work: neither in the daytime nor at night does he give any rest
+to us or to the women. And the moment a thing does not go the way he
+wants it to, he nags at us and has us flogged. Semen died from that
+flogging; Anisim he wore out in the stocks. What are we waiting for? He
+will come here in the evening and will again start to torment us. We
+ought just to pull him down from his horse, whack him with an axe, and
+that will be the end of it. We will bury him somewhere like a dog, and
+mum is the word. Let us agree to stand by each other and not give
+ourselves away."
+
+Thus spoke Vasili Minaev. He was more furious at the clerk than anybody
+else. The clerk had him flogged every week, and had taken his wife from
+him and made her a cook at his house.
+
+Thus the peasants talked, and in the evening the clerk came. He came on
+horseback, and immediately began to nag them because they were not
+cutting right. He found a linden-tree in the heap.
+
+"I have commanded you not to cut any lindens down," he said. "Who cut it
+down? Tell me, or I will have every one of you flogged!"
+
+He tried to find out in whose row the linden was. They pointed to Sidor.
+The clerk beat Sidor's face until the blood came, and struck Vasili with
+a whip because his pile was small. He rode home.
+
+In the evening the peasants met again, and Vasili began to speak.
+
+"Oh, people, you are not men, but sparrows! 'We will stand up, we will
+stand up!' but when the time for action came, they all flew under the
+roof. Even thus the sparrows made a stand against the hawk: 'We will not
+give away, we will not give away! We will make a stand, we will make a
+stand!' But when he swooped down on them, they made for the nettles. And
+the hawk seized one of the sparrows, the one he wanted, and flew away
+with him. Out leaped the sparrows: 'Chivik, chivik!' one of them was
+lacking. 'Who is gone? Vanka. Well, served him right!' Just so you did.
+'We will not give each other away, we will not give each other away!'
+When he took hold of Sidor, you ought to have come together and made an
+end of him. But there you say, We will not give away, we will not give
+away! We will make a stand, we will make a stand!' and when he swooped
+down on you, you made for the bushes."
+
+The peasants began to talk that way oftener and oftener, and they
+decided fully to make away with the clerk. During Passion week the clerk
+told the peasants to get ready to plough the manorial land for oats
+during Easter week. That seemed offensive to the peasants, and they
+gathered during Passion week in Vasili's back yard, and began to talk.
+
+"If he has forgotten God," they said, "and wants to do such things, we
+must certainly kill him. We shall be ruined anyway."
+
+Peter Mikhyeev came to them. He was a peaceable man, and did not take
+counsel with the peasants. He came, and listened to their speeches, and
+said:
+
+"Brothers, you are planning a great crime. It is a serious matter to
+ruin a soul. It is easy to ruin somebody else's soul, but how about our
+own souls? He is doing wrong, and the wrong is at his door. We must
+suffer, brothers."
+
+Vasili grew angry at these words.
+
+"He has got it into his head that it is a sin to kill a man. Of course
+it is, but what kind of a man is he? It is a sin to kill a good man, but
+such a dog even God has commanded us to kill. A mad dog has to be
+killed, if we are to pity men. If we do not kill him, there will be a
+greater sin. What a lot of people he will ruin! Though we shall suffer,
+it will at least be for other people. Men will thank us for it. If we
+stand gaping he will ruin us all. You are speaking nonsense, Mikhyeev.
+Will it be a lesser sin if we go to work on Christ's holiday? You
+yourself will not go."
+
+And Mikhyeev said:
+
+"Why should I not go? If they send me, I will go to plough. It is not
+for me. God will find out whose sin it is, so long as we do not forget
+him. Brothers, I am not speaking for myself. If we were enjoined to
+repay evil with evil, there would be a commandment of that kind, but we
+are taught just the opposite. You start to do away with evil, and it
+will only pass into you. It is not a hard thing to kill a man. But the
+blood sticks to your soul. To kill a man means to soil your soul with
+blood. You imagine that when you kill a bad man you have got rid of the
+evil, but, behold, you have reared a worse evil within you. Submit to
+misfortune, and misfortune will be vanquished."
+
+The peasants could not come to any agreement: their thoughts were
+scattered. Some of them believed with Vasili, and others agreed with
+Peter's speech that they ought not commit a crime, but endure.
+
+The peasants celebrated the first day, the Sunday. In the evening the
+elder came with the deputies from the manor, and said:
+
+"Mikhail Semenovich, the clerk, has commanded me to get all the peasants
+ready for the morrow, to plough the field for the oats." The elder made
+the round of the village with the deputies and ordered all to go out on
+the morrow to plough, some beyond the river, and some from the highway.
+The peasants wept, but did not dare to disobey, and on the morrow went
+out with their ploughs and began to plough.
+
+Mikhail Semenovich, the clerk, awoke late, and went out to look after
+the farm. His home folk--his wife and his widowed daughter (she had come
+for the holidays)--were all dressed up. A labourer hitched a cart for
+them, and they went to mass, and returned home again. A servant made the
+samovar, and when Mikhail Semenovich came, they sat down to drink tea.
+Mikhail Semenovich drank his tea, lighted a pipe, and sent for the
+elder.
+
+"Well," he said, "have you sent out the peasants to plough?"
+
+"Yes, Mikhail Semenovich."
+
+"Well, did all of them go?"
+
+"All. I placed them myself."
+
+"Of course, you have placed them,--but are they ploughing? Go and see,
+and tell them that I will be there in the afternoon, and by that time
+they are to plough a desyatina to each two ploughs, and plough it well.
+If I find any unploughed strips, I will pay no attention to the
+holiday."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The elder started to go out, but Mikhail Semenovich called him back. He
+called him back, but he hesitated, for he wanted to say something and
+did not know how to say it. He hesitated awhile, and then he said:
+
+"Listen to what those robbers are saying about me. Tell me
+everything,--who is scolding me, or whatever they may be saying. I know
+those robbers: they do not like to work; all they want to do is to lie
+on their sides and loaf. To eat and be idle, that is what they like;
+they do not consider that if the time of ploughing is missed it will be
+too late. So listen to what they have to say, and let me know everything
+you may hear! Go, but be sure you tell me everything and keep nothing
+from me!"
+
+The elder turned around and left the room. He mounted his horse and rode
+into the field to the peasants.
+
+The clerk's wife had heard her husband's talk with the elder, and she
+came in and began to implore him. The wife of the clerk was a peaceable
+woman, and she had a good heart. Whenever she could, she calmed her
+husband and took the peasants' part.
+
+She came to her husband, and began to beg him: "My dear Mishenka, do not
+sin, for the Lord's holiday! For Christ's sake, send the peasants home!"
+
+Mikhail Semenovich did not accept his wife's words, but only laughed at
+her:
+
+"Is it too long a time since the whip danced over you that you have
+become so bold, and meddle in what is not your concern?"
+
+"Mishenka, my dear, I have had a bad dream about you. Listen to my words
+and send the peasants home!"
+
+"Precisely, that's what I say. Evidently you have gathered so much fat
+that you think the whip will not hurt you. Look out!"
+
+Semenovich grew angry, knocked the burning pipe into her teeth, sent her
+away, and told her to get the dinner ready.
+
+Mikhail Semenovich ate cold gelatine, dumplings, beet soup with pork,
+roast pig, and milk noodles, and drank cherry cordial, and ate pastry
+for dessert; he called in the cook and made her sit down and sing songs
+to him, while he himself took the guitar and accompanied her.
+
+Mikhail Semenovich was sitting in a happy mood and belching, and
+strumming the guitar, and laughing with the cook. The elder came in,
+made a bow, and began to report what he had seen in the field.
+
+"Well, are they ploughing? Will they finish the task?"
+
+"They have already ploughed more than half."
+
+"No strips left?"
+
+"I have not seen any. They are afraid, and are working well."
+
+"And are they breaking up the dirt well?"
+
+"The earth is soft and falls to pieces like a poppy."
+
+The clerk was silent for awhile.
+
+"What do they say about me? Are they cursing me?"
+
+The elder hesitated, but Mikhail Semenovich commanded him to tell the
+whole truth.
+
+"Tell everything! You are not going to tell me your words, but theirs.
+If you tell me the truth, I will reward you; and if you shield them,
+look out, I will have you flogged. O Katyusha, give him a glass of vodka
+to brace him up!"
+
+The cook went and brought the elder the vodka. The elder saluted, drank
+the vodka, wiped his mouth, and began to speak. "I cannot help it," he
+thought, "it is not my fault if they do not praise him; I will tell him
+the truth, if he wants it." And the elder took courage and said:
+
+"They murmur, Mikhail Semenovich, they murmur."
+
+"What do they say? Speak!"
+
+"They keep saying that you do not believe in God."
+
+The clerk laughed.
+
+"Who said that?"
+
+"All say so. They say that you are submitting to the devil."
+
+The clerk laughed.
+
+"That is all very well," he said, "but tell me in particular what each
+says. What does Vasili say?"
+
+The elder did not wish to tell on his people, but with Vasili he had
+long been in a feud.
+
+"Vasili," he said, "curses more than the rest."
+
+"What does he say? Tell me!"
+
+"It is too terrible to tell. He says that you will die an unrepenting
+death."
+
+"What a brave fellow!" he said. "Why, then, is he gaping? Why does he
+not kill me? Evidently his arms are too short. All right," he said,
+"Vasili, we will square up accounts. And Tishka, that dog, I suppose he
+says so, too?"
+
+"All speak ill of you."
+
+"But what do they say?"
+
+"I loathe to tell."
+
+"Never mind! Take courage and speak!"
+
+"They say: 'May his belly burst, and his guts run out!'"
+
+Mikhail Semenovich was delighted, and he even laughed.
+
+"We will see whose will run out first. Who said that? Tishka?"
+
+[Illustration: "But the candle was still burning"
+
+_Photogravure from Painting by A. Kivshenko_]
+
+"Nobody said a good word. All of them curse you and threaten you."
+
+"Well, and Peter Mikhyeev? What does he say? He, too, I suppose, is
+cursing me?"
+
+"No, Mikhail Semenovich, Peter is not cursing."
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"He is the only one of all the peasants who is not saying anything. He
+is a wise peasant. I wondered at him, Mikhail Semenovich."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"All the peasants were wondering at what he was doing."
+
+"What was he doing?"
+
+"It is wonderful. I rode up to him. He is ploughing the slanting
+desyatina at Turkin Height. As I rode up to him, I heard some one
+singing such nice, high tones, and on the plough-staff something was
+shining."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It was shining like a light. I rode up to him, and there I saw a
+five-kopek wax candle was stuck on the cross-bar and burning, and the
+wind did not blow it out. He had on a clean shirt, and was ploughing and
+singing Sunday hymns. And he would turn over and shake off the dirt, but
+the candle did not go out. He shook the plough in my presence, changed
+the peg, and started the plough, but the candle was still burning and
+did not go out."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He said nothing. When he saw me, he greeted me and at once began to
+sing again."
+
+"What did you say to him?"
+
+"I did not say anything to him, but the peasants came up and laughed at
+him: 'Mikhyeev will not get rid of his sin of ploughing during Easter
+week even if he should pray all his life.'"
+
+"What did he say to that?"
+
+"All he said was: 'Peace on earth and good-will to men.' He took his
+plough, started his horses, and sang out in a thin voice, but the candle
+kept burning and did not go out."
+
+The clerk stopped laughing. He put down the guitar, lowered his head,
+and fell to musing.
+
+He sat awhile; then he sent away the cook and the elder, went behind the
+curtain, lay down on the bed, and began to sigh and to sob, just as
+though a cart were driving past with sheaves. His wife came and began to
+speak to him; he gave her no answer. All he said was:
+
+"He has vanquished me. My turn has come."
+
+His wife tried to calm him.
+
+"Go and send them home! Maybe it will be all right. See what deeds you
+have done, and now you lose your courage."
+
+"I am lost," he said. "He has vanquished me."
+
+His wife cried to him:
+
+"You just have it on your brain, 'He has vanquished me, he has
+vanquished me.' Go and send the peasants home, and all will be well. Go,
+and I will have your horse saddled."
+
+The horse was brought up, and the clerk's wife persuaded him to ride
+into the field to send the peasants home.
+
+Mikhail Semenovich mounted his horse and rode into the field. He drove
+through the yard, and a woman opened the gate for him, and he passed
+into the village. The moment the people saw the clerk, they hid
+themselves from him, one in the yard, another around a corner, a third
+in the garden.
+
+The clerk rode through the whole village and reached the outer gate. The
+gate was shut, and he could not open it while sitting on his horse. He
+called and called for somebody to open the gate, but no one would come.
+He got down from his horse, opened the gate, and in the gateway started
+to mount again. He put his foot into the stirrup, rose in it, and was on
+the point of vaulting over the saddle, when his horse shied at a pig and
+backed up toward the picket fence; he was a heavy man and did not get
+into his saddle, but fell over, with his belly on picket. There was but
+one sharp post in the picket fence, and it was higher than the rest. It
+was this post that he struck with his belly. He was ripped open and fell
+to the ground.
+
+When the peasants drove home from their work, the horses snorted and
+would not go through the gate. The peasants went to look, and saw
+Mikhail lying on his back. His arms were stretched out, his eyes stood
+open, and all his inside had run out and the blood stood in a pool,--the
+earth had not sucked it in.
+
+The peasants were frightened. They took their horses in by back roads,
+but Mikhyeev alone got down and walked over to the clerk. He saw that he
+was dead, so he closed his eyes, hitched his cart, with the aid of his
+son put the dead man in the bed of the cart, and took him to the manor.
+
+The master heard about all these things, and to save himself from sin
+substituted tenant pay for the manorial labour.
+
+And the peasants saw that the power of God was not in sin, but in
+goodness.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO OLD MEN
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO OLD MEN
+
+
+     Therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well:
+     and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to
+     draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For his
+     disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Then saith the
+     woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest
+     drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no
+     dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, If
+     thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee,
+     Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, for the Father
+     seeketh such to worship him. (John iv. 19-23.)
+
+
+I.
+
+Two old men got ready to go to old Jerusalem to pray to God. One of them
+was a rich peasant; his name was Efim Tarasych Shevelev. The other was
+not a well-to-do man, and his name was Elisey Bodrov.
+
+Efim was a steady man: he did not drink liquor, nor smoke tobacco, nor
+take snuff, had never cursed in his life, and was a stern, firm old man.
+He had served two terms as an elder, and had gone out of his office
+without a deficit. He had a large family,--two sons and a married
+grandson,--and all lived together. As to looks he was a sound, bearded,
+erect man, and only in his seventh decade did a gray streak appear in
+his beard.
+
+Elisey was neither wealthy nor poor; in former days he used to work out
+as a carpenter, but in his old age he stayed at home and kept bees. One
+son was away earning money, and another was living at home. Elisey was a
+good-natured and merry man. He liked to drink liquor and take snuff, and
+sing songs; but he was a peaceable man, and lived in friendship with his
+home folk and with the neighbours. In appearance he was an undersized,
+swarthy man, with a curly beard and, like his saint, Prophet Elisha, his
+whole head was bald.
+
+The old men had long ago made the vow and agreed to go together, but
+Tarasych had had no time before: he had so much business on hand. The
+moment one thing came to an end, another began; now he had to get his
+grandson married, now he was expecting his younger son back from the
+army, and now he had to build him a new hut.
+
+On a holiday the two old men once met, and they sat down on logs.
+
+"Well," said Elisey, "when are we going to carry out our vow?"
+
+Efim frowned.
+
+"We shall have to wait," he said, "for this is a hard year for me. I
+have started to build a house,--I thought I could do it with one
+hundred, but it is going on now in the third. And still it is not done.
+We shall have to let it go till summer. In the summer, God willing, we
+shall go by all means."
+
+"According to my understanding," said Elisey, "there is no sense in
+delaying. We ought to go at once. Spring is the best time."
+
+"The time is all right, but the work is begun, so how can I drop it?"
+
+"Have you nobody to attend to it? Your son will do it."
+
+"Do it? My eldest is not reliable,--he drinks."
+
+"When we die, friend, they will get along without us. Let your son learn
+it!"
+
+"That is so, but still I want to see things done under my eyes."
+
+"Oh, dear man! You can never attend to everything. The other day the
+women in my house were washing and cleaning up for the holidays. This
+and that had to be done, and everything could not be looked after. My
+eldest daughter-in-law, a clever woman, said: 'It is a lucky thing the
+holidays come without waiting for us, for else, no matter how much we
+might work, we should never get done.'"
+
+Tarasych fell to musing.
+
+"I have spent a great deal of money on this building," he said, "and I
+can't start out on the pilgrimage with empty hands. One hundred roubles
+are not a trifling matter."
+
+Elisey laughed.
+
+"Don't sin, friend!" he said. "You have ten times as much as I, and yet
+you talk about money. Only say when we shall start. I have no money, but
+that will be all right."
+
+Tarasych smiled.
+
+"What a rich man you are!" he said. "Where shall you get the money
+from?"
+
+"I will scratch around in the house and will get together some there;
+and if that is not enough, I will let my neighbour have ten hives. He
+has been asking me for them."
+
+"You will have a fine swarm! You will be worrying about it."
+
+"Worrying? No, my friend! I have never worried about anything in life
+but sins. There is nothing more precious than the soul."
+
+"That is so; but still, it is not good if things do not run right at
+home."
+
+"If things do not run right in our soul, it is worse. We have made a
+vow, so let us go! Truly, let us go!"
+
+
+II.
+
+Elisey persuaded his friend to go. Efim thought and thought about it,
+and on the following morning he came to Elisey.
+
+"Well, let us go," he said, "you have spoken rightly. God controls life
+and death. We must go while we are alive and have strength."
+
+A week later the old men started.
+
+Tarasych had money at home. He took one hundred roubles with him and
+left two hundred with his wife.
+
+Elisey, too, got ready. He sold his neighbour ten hives and the increase
+of ten other hives. For the whole he received seventy roubles. The
+remaining thirty roubles he swept up from everybody in the house. His
+wife gave him the last she had,--she had put it away for her funeral;
+his daughter-in-law gave him what she had.
+
+Efim Tarasych left all his affairs in the hands of his eldest son: he
+told him where to mow, and how many fields to mow, and where to haul the
+manure, and how to finish the hut and thatch it. He considered
+everything, and gave his orders. But all the order that Elisey gave was
+that his wife should set out the young brood separately from the hives
+sold and give the neighbour what belonged to him without cheating him,
+but about domestic affairs he did not even speak: "The needs
+themselves," he thought, "will show you what to do and how to do it. You
+have been farming yourselves, so you will do as seems best to you."
+
+The old men got ready. The home folk baked a lot of flat cakes for them,
+and they made wallets for themselves, cut out new leg-rags, put on new
+short boots, took reserve bast shoes, and started. The home folk saw
+them off beyond the enclosure and bade them good-bye, and the old men
+were off for their pilgrimage.
+
+Elisey left in a happy mood, and as soon as he left his village he
+forgot all his affairs. All the care he had was how to please his
+companion, how to keep from saying an unseemly word to anybody, how to
+reach the goal in peace and love, and how to get home again. As Elisey
+walked along the road he either muttered some prayer or repeated such of
+the lives of the saints as he knew. Whenever he met a person on the
+road, or when he came to a hostelry, he tried to be as kind to everybody
+as he could, and to say to them God-fearing words. He walked along and
+was happy. There was only one thing Elisey could not do: he wanted to
+stop taking snuff and had left his snuff-box at home, but he hankered
+for it. On the road a man offered him some. He wrangled with himself and
+stepped away from his companion so as not to lead him into sin, and took
+a pinch.
+
+Efim Tarasych walked firmly and well; he did no wrong and spoke no vain
+words, but there was no lightness in his heart. The cares about his home
+did not leave his mind. He was thinking all the time about what was
+going on at home,--whether he had not forgotten to give his son some
+order, and whether his son was doing things in the right way. When he
+saw along the road that they were setting out potatoes or hauling
+manure, he wondered whether his son was doing as he had been ordered. He
+just felt like returning, and showing him what to do, and doing it
+himself.
+
+
+III.
+
+The old men walked for live weeks. They wore out their home-made bast
+shoes and began to buy new ones. They reached the country of the
+Little-Russians. Heretofore they had been paying for their night's
+lodging and for their dinner, but when they came to the Little-Russians,
+people vied with each other in inviting them to their houses. They let
+them come in, and fed them, and took no money from them, but even filled
+their wallets with bread, and now and then with flat cakes. Thus the old
+men walked without expense some seven hundred versts. They crossed
+another Government and came to a place where there had been a failure of
+crops. There they let them into the houses and did not take any money
+for their night's lodging, but would not feed them. And they did not
+give them bread everywhere,--not even for money could the old men get
+any in some places. The previous year, so the people said, nothing had
+grown. Those who had been rich were ruined,--they sold everything; those
+who had lived in comfort came down to nothing; and the poor people
+either entirely left the country, or turned beggars, or just managed to
+exist at home. In the winter they lived on chaff and orach.
+
+One night the two old men stayed in a borough. There they bought about
+fifteen pounds of bread. In the morning they left before daybreak, so
+that they might walk a good distance before the heat. They marched some
+ten versts and reached a brook. They sat down, filled their cups with
+water, softened the bread with it and ate it, and changed their
+leg-rags. They sat awhile and rested themselves. Elisey took out his
+snuff-horn. Efim Tarasych shook his head at him.
+
+"Why don't you throw away that nasty thing?" he asked.
+
+Elisey waved his hand.
+
+"Sin has overpowered me," he said. "What shall I do?"
+
+They got up and marched on. They walked another ten versts. They came to
+a large village, and passed through it. It was quite warm then. Elisey
+was tired, and wanted to stop and get a drink, but Tarasych would not
+stop. Tarasych was a better walker, and Elisey had a hard time keeping
+up with him.
+
+"I should like to get a drink," he said.
+
+"Well, drink! I do not want any."
+
+Elisey stopped.
+
+"Do not wait for me," he said. "I will just run into a hut and get a
+drink of water. I will catch up with you at once."
+
+"All right," he said. And Efim Tarasych proceeded by himself along the
+road, while Elisey turned to go into a hut.
+
+Elisey came up to the hut. It was a small clay cabin; the lower part was
+black, the upper white, and the clay had long ago crumbled
+off,--evidently it had not been plastered for a long time,--and the roof
+was open at one end. The entrance was from the yard. Elisey stepped into
+the yard, and there saw that a lean, beardless man with his shirt stuck
+in his trousers in Little-Russian fashion was lying near the earth
+mound. The man had evidently lain down in a cool spot, but now the sun
+was burning down upon him. He was lying there awake. Elisey called out
+to him, asking him to give him a drink, but the man made no reply. "He
+is either sick, or an unkind man," thought Elisey, going up to the door.
+Inside he heard a child crying. He knocked with the door-ring. "Good
+people!" No answer. He struck with his staff against the door.
+"Christian people!" No stir. "Servants of the Lord!" No reply. Elisey
+was on the point of going away, when he heard somebody groaning within.
+"I wonder whether some misfortune has happened there to the people. I
+must see." And Elisey went into the hut.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Elisey turned the ring,--the door was not locked. He pushed the door
+open and walked through the vestibule. The door into the living-room was
+open. On the left there was an oven; straight ahead was the front
+corner; in the corner stood a shrine and a table; beyond the table was a
+bench, and on it sat a bareheaded old woman, in nothing but a shirt; her
+head was leaning on the table, and near her stood a lean little boy, his
+face as yellow as wax and his belly swollen, and he was pulling the old
+woman's sleeve, and crying at the top of his voice and begging for
+something.
+
+Elisey entered the room. There was a stifling air in the house. He saw a
+woman lying behind the oven, on the floor. She was lying on her face
+without looking at anything, and snoring, and now stretching out a leg
+and again drawing it up. And she tossed from side to side,--and from her
+came that oppressive smell: evidently she was very sick, and there was
+nobody to take her away. The old woman raised her head, when she saw the
+man.
+
+"What do you want?" she said, in Little-Russian. "What do you want? We
+have nothing, my dear man."
+
+Elisey understood what she was saying: he walked over to her.
+
+"Servant of the Lord," he said, "I have come in to get a drink of
+water."
+
+"There is none, I say, there is none. There is nothing here for you to
+take. Go!"
+
+Elisey asked her:
+
+"Is there no well man here to take this woman away?"
+
+"There is nobody here: the man is dying in the yard, and we here."
+
+The boy grew quiet when he saw the stranger, but when the old woman
+began to speak, he again took hold of her sleeve.
+
+"Bread, granny, bread!" and he burst out weeping.
+
+Just as Elisey was going to ask the old woman another question, the man
+tumbled into the hut; he walked along the wall and wanted to sit down on
+the bench, but before reaching it he fell down in the corner, near the
+threshold. He did not try to get up, but began to speak. He would say
+one word at a time, then draw his breath, then say something again.
+
+"We are sick," he said, "and--hungry. The boy is starving." He indicated
+the boy with his head and began to weep.
+
+Elisey shifted his wallet on his back, freed his arms, let the wallet
+down on the ground, lifted it on the bench, and untied it. When it was
+open, he took out the bread and the knife, out off a slice, and gave it
+to the man. The man did not take it, but pointed to the boy and the
+girl, to have it given to them. Elisey gave it to the boy. When the boy
+saw the bread, he made for it, grabbed the slice with both his hands,
+and stuck his nose into the bread. A girl crawled out from behind the
+oven and gazed at the bread. Elisey gave her, too, a piece. He cut off
+another slice and gave it to the old woman. She took it and began to
+chew at it.
+
+"If you would just bring us some water," she said. "Their lips are
+parched. I wanted to bring some yesterday or to-day,--I do not remember
+when,--but I fell down and left the pail there, if nobody took it away."
+
+Elisey asked where their well was. The old woman told him where. Elisey
+went out. He found the pail, brought some water, and gave the people to
+drink. The children ate some more bread with water, and the old woman
+ate some, but the man would not eat.
+
+"My stomach will not hold it," he said.
+
+The woman did not get up or come to: she was just tossing on the bed
+place. Elisey went to the shop, and bought millet, salt, flour, and
+butter. He found an axe, chopped some wood, and made a fire in the oven.
+The girl helped him. Elisey cooked a soup and porridge, and fed the
+people.
+
+
+V.
+
+The man ate a little, and so did the old woman, and the girl and the
+little boy licked the bowl clean and embraced each other and fell
+asleep.
+
+The man and the old woman told Elisey how it had all happened.
+
+"We lived heretofore poorly," they said, "but when the crop failed us,
+we ate up in the fall everything we had. When we had nothing left, we
+began to beg from our neighbours and from good people. At first they
+gave us some, but later they refused. Some of them would have been
+willing to give us to eat, but they had nothing themselves. Besides we
+felt ashamed to beg: we owed everybody money and flour and bread. I
+looked for work," said the man, "but could find none. People were
+everywhere looking for work to get something to eat. One day I would
+work, and two I would go around looking for more work. The old woman and
+the girl went a distance away to beg, but the alms were poor,--nobody
+had any bread. Still, we managed to get something to eat: we thought we
+might squeeze through until the new crop; but in the spring they quit
+giving us alms altogether, and sickness fell upon us. It grew pretty
+bad: one day we would have something to eat, and two we went without it.
+We began to eat grass. And from the grass, or from some other reason,
+the woman grew sick. She lay down, and I had no strength, and we had
+nothing with which to improve matters."
+
+"I was the only one," the old woman said, "who worked: but I gave out
+and grew weak, as I had nothing to eat. The girl, too, grew weak and
+lost her courage. I sent her to the neighbours, but she did not go. She
+hid herself in a corner and would not go. A neighbour came in two days
+ago, but when she saw that we were hungry and sick, she turned around
+and went out. Her husband has left, and she has nothing with which to
+feed her young children. So we were lying here and waiting for death."
+
+When Elisey heard what they said, he changed his mind about catching up
+with his companion, and remained there overnight. In the morning Elisey
+got up and began to work about the house as though he were the master.
+He set bread with the old woman and made a fire in the oven. He went
+with the girl to the neighbours to fetch what was necessary. Everything
+he wanted to pick up was gone: there was nothing left for farming, and
+the clothes were used up. Elisey got everything which was needed: some
+things he made himself, and some he bought. Elisey stayed with them one
+day, and a second, and a third. The little boy regained his strength,
+and he began to walk on the bench and to make friends with Elisey. The
+girl, too, became quite cheerful and helped him in everything. She kept
+running after Elisey: "Grandfather, grandfather!"
+
+The old woman got up and went to her neighbour. The man began to walk by
+holding on to the wall. Only the woman was lying down. On the third day
+she came to and asked for something to eat.
+
+"Well," thought Elisey, "I had not expected to lose so much time. Now I
+must go."
+
+
+VI.
+
+The fourth day was the last of a fast, and Elisey said to himself:
+
+"I will break fast with them. I will buy something for them for the
+holidays, and in the evening I must leave."
+
+Elisey went once more to the village and bought milk, white flour, and
+lard. He and the old woman cooked and baked a lot of things, and in the
+morning Elisey went to mass and came back and broke fast with the
+people. On that day the woman got up and began to move about. The man
+shaved himself, put on a clean shirt,--the old woman had washed it for
+him,--and went to a rich peasant to ask a favour of him. His mowing and
+field were mortgaged to the rich man, so he went to ask him to let him
+have the mowing and the field until the new crop. He came back gloomy in
+the evening, and burst out weeping. The rich man would not show him the
+favour; he had asked him to bring the money.
+
+Elisey fell to musing.
+
+"How are they going to live now? People will be going out to mow, but
+they cannot go, for it is all mortgaged. The rye will ripen and people
+will begin to harvest it (and there is such a fine stand of it!), but
+they have nothing to look forward to,--their desyatina is sold to the
+rich peasant. If I go away, they will fall back into poverty."
+
+And Elisey was in doubt, and did not go away in the evening, but put it
+off until morning. He went into the yard to sleep. He said his prayers
+and lay down, but could not fall asleep.
+
+"I ought to go,--as it is I have spent much time and money; but I am
+sorry for the people. You can't help everybody. I meant to bring them
+some water and give each a slice of bread, but see how far I have gone.
+Now I shall have to buy out his mowing and field. And if I buy out the
+field, I might as well buy a cow for the children, and a horse for the
+man to haul his sheaves with. Brother Elisey Kuzmich, you are in for it!
+You have let yourself loose, and now you will not straighten out
+things."
+
+Elisey got up, took the caftan from under his head, and unrolled it; he
+drew out his snuff-horn and took a pinch, thinking that he would clear
+his thoughts, but no,--he thought and thought and could not come to any
+conclusion. He ought to get up and go, but he was sorry for the people.
+He did not know what to do. He rolled the caftan up under his head and
+lay down to sleep. He lay there for a long time, and the cocks crowed,
+and then only did he fall asleep. Suddenly he felt as though some one
+had wakened him. He saw himself all dressed, with his wallet and staff,
+and he had to pass through a gate, but it was just open enough to let a
+man squeeze through. He went to the gate and his wallet caught on one
+side, and as he was about to free it, one of his leg-rags got caught on
+the other side and came open. He tried to free the leg-rag, but it was
+not caught in the wicker fence: it was the girl who was holding on to
+it, and crying, "Grandfather, grandfather, bread!" He looked at his
+foot, and there was the little boy holding on to it, and the old woman
+and the man were looking out of the window. Elisey awoke, and he began
+to speak to himself in an audible voice:
+
+"I will buy out the field and the mowing to-morrow, and will buy a
+horse, and flour to last until harvest-time, and a cow for the children.
+For how would it be to go beyond the sea to seek Christ and lose him
+within me? I must get the people started."
+
+And Elisey fell asleep until morning. He awoke early. He went to the
+rich merchant, bought out the rye and gave him money for the mowing. He
+bought a scythe,--for that had been sold, too,--and brought it home. He
+sent the man out to mow, and himself went to see the peasants: he found
+a horse and a cart for sale at the innkeeper's. He bargained with him
+for it, and bought it; then he bought a bag of flour, which he put in
+the cart, and went out to buy a cow. As he was walking, he came across
+two Little-Russian women, and they were talking to one another. Though
+they were talking in their dialect, he could make out what they were
+saying about him:
+
+"You see, at first they did not recognize him; they thought that he was
+just a simple kind of a man. They say, he went in to get a drink, and he
+has just stopped there. What a lot of things he has bought them! I
+myself saw him buy a horse and cart to-day of the innkeeper. Evidently
+there are such people in the world. I must go and take a look at him."
+
+When Elisey heard that, he understood that they were praising him, and
+so he did not go to buy the cow. He returned to the innkeeper and gave
+him the money for the horse. He hitched it up and drove with the flour
+to the house. When he drove up to the gate, he stopped and climbed down
+from the cart. When the people of the house saw the horse, they were
+surprised. They thought that he had bought the horse for them, but did
+not dare say so. The master came out to open the gates.
+
+"Grandfather, where did you get that horse?"
+
+"I bought it," he said. "I got it cheap. Mow some grass and put it in
+the cart, so that the horse may have some for the night. And take off
+the bag!"
+
+The master unhitched the horse, carried the bag to the granary, mowed a
+lot of grass, and put it into the cart. They lay down to sleep. Elisey
+slept in the street, and thither he had carried his wallet in the
+evening. All the people fell asleep. Elisey got up, tied his wallet, put
+on his shoes and his caftan, and started down the road to catch up with
+Efim.
+
+
+VII.
+
+Elisey had walked about five versts, when day began to break. He sat
+down under a tree, untied his wallet, and began to count his money. He
+found that he had seventeen roubles twenty kopeks left.
+
+"Well," he thought, "with this sum I cannot travel beyond the sea, but
+if I beg in Christ's name, I shall only increase my sin. Friend Efim
+will reach the place by himself, and will put up a candle for me. But I
+shall evidently never fulfil my vow. The master is merciful, and he will
+forgive me."
+
+Elisey got up, slung his wallet over his shoulders, and turned back. He
+made a circle around the village so that people might not see him. And
+soon he reached home. On his way out he had found it hard: it was hard
+keeping up with Efim; but on his way home God made it easy for him, for
+he did not know what weariness was. Walking was just play to him, and he
+swayed his staff, and made as much as seventy versts a day.
+
+Elisey came back home. The harvest was all in. The home folk were glad
+to see the old man. They asked all about him, why he had left his
+companion and why he had not gone to Jerusalem, but had returned home.
+Elisey did not tell them anything.
+
+"God did not grant me that I should," he said. "I spent my money on the
+way, and got separated from my companion. And so I did not go. Forgive
+me for Christ's sake."
+
+He gave the old woman what money he had left. He asked all about the
+home matters: everything was right; everything had been attended to and
+nothing missed, and all were living in peace and agreement.
+
+Efim's people heard that very day that Elisey had come back, and so they
+came to inquire about their old man. And Elisey told them the same
+story.
+
+"You see," he said, "the old man started to walk briskly, and three days
+before St. Peter's day we lost each other. I wanted to catch up with
+him, but it happened that I spent all my money and could not go on, so I
+returned home."
+
+The people marvelled how it was that such a clever man had acted so
+foolishly as to start and not reach the place and merely spend his
+money. They wondered awhile, and forgot about it. Elisey, too, forgot
+about it. He began to work about the house: he got the wood ready for
+the winter with his son, threshed the grain with the women, thatched the
+sheds, gathered in the bees, and gave ten hives with the young brood to
+his neighbour. When he got all the work done, he sent his son out to
+earn money, and himself sat down in the winter to plait bast shoes and
+hollow out blocks for the hives.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+All that day that Elisey passed with the sick people, Efim waited for
+his companion. He walked but a short distance and sat down. He waited
+and waited, and fell asleep; when he awoke, he sat awhile,--but his
+companion did not turn up. He kept a sharp lookout for him, but the sun
+was going down behind a tree, and still Elisey was not there.
+
+"I wonder whether he has not passed by me," he thought. "Maybe somebody
+drove him past, and he did not see me while I was asleep. But how could
+he help seeing me? In the steppe you can see a long distance off. If I
+go back, he may be marching on, and we shall only get farther separated
+from each other. I will walk on,--we shall meet at the resting-place for
+the night."
+
+When he came to a village, he asked the village officer to look out for
+an old man and bring him to the house where he stayed. Elisey did not
+come there for the night. Efim marched on, and asked everybody whether
+they had seen a bald-headed old man. No one had seen him. Efim was
+surprised and walked on.
+
+"We shall meet somewhere in Odessa," he thought, "or on the boat," and
+then he stopped thinking about it.
+
+On the road he fell in with a pilgrim. The pilgrim, in calotte, cassock,
+and long hair, had been to Mount Athos, and was now going for the second
+time to Jerusalem. They met at a hostelry, and they had a chat and
+started off together.
+
+They reached Odessa without any accident. They waited for three days for
+a ship. There were many pilgrims there, and they had come together from
+all directions. Again Efim asked about Elisey, but nobody had seen him.
+
+Efim provided himself with a passport,--that cost five roubles. He had
+forty roubles left for his round trip, and he bought bread and herring
+for the voyage. The ship was loaded, then the pilgrims were admitted,
+and Tarasych sat down beside the pilgrim he had met. The anchors were
+weighed, they pushed off from the shore, and the ship sailed across the
+sea.
+
+During the day they had good sailing; in the evening a wind arose, rain
+fell, and the ship began to rock and to be washed by the waves. The
+people grew excited; the women began to shriek, and such men as were
+weak ran up and down the ship, trying to find a safe place. Efim, too,
+was frightened, but he did not show it: where he had sat down on the
+floor on boarding the ship by the side of Tambov peasants, he sat
+through the night and the following day; all of them held on to their
+wallets and did not speak. On the third day it grew calmer. On the fifth
+day they landed at Constantinople.
+
+Some of the pilgrims went ashore there, to visit the Cathedral of St.
+Sophia, which now the Turks hold; Tarasych did not go, but remained on
+board the ship. All he did was to buy some white bread. They remained
+there a day, and then again sailed through the sea. They stopped at
+Smyrna town, and at another city by the name of Alexandria, and safely
+reached the city of Jaffa. In Jaffa all pilgrims go ashore: from there
+it is seventy versts on foot to Jerusalem. At the landing the people had
+quite a scare: the ship was high, and the people were let down into
+boats below; but the boats were rocking all the time, and two people
+were let down past the boat and got a ducking, but otherwise all went
+safely.
+
+When all were ashore, they went on afoot; on the third day they reached
+Jerusalem at dinner-time. They stopped in a suburb, in a Russian
+hostelry; there they had their passports stamped and ate their dinner,
+and then they followed a pilgrim to the holy places. It was too early
+yet to be admitted to the Sepulchre of the Lord, so they went to the
+Monastery of the Patriarch. There all the worshippers were gathered, and
+the female sex was put apart from the male. They were all ordered to
+take off their shoes and sit in a circle. A monk came out with a towel,
+and began to wash everybody's feet. He would wash, and rub them clean,
+and kiss them, and thus he went around the whole circle. He washed
+Efim's feet and kissed them. They celebrated vigils and matins, and
+placed a candle, and served a mass for the parents. There they were fed,
+and received wine to drink.
+
+On the following morning they went to the cell of Mary of Egypt, where
+she took refuge. There they placed candles, and a mass was celebrated.
+From there they went to Abraham's Monastery. They saw the Sebak garden,
+the place where Abraham wanted to sacrifice his son to God. Then they
+went to the place where Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene, and to the
+Church of Jacob, the brother of the Lord. The pilgrim showed them all
+the places, and in every place he told how much money they ought to
+give. At dinner they returned to the hostelry. They ate, and were just
+getting ready to lie down to sleep, when the pilgrim, who was rummaging
+through his clothes, began to sigh.
+
+"They have pulled out my pocketbook with money in it," he said. "I had
+twenty-three roubles,--two ten-rouble bills, and three in change."
+
+The pilgrim felt badly about it, but nothing could be done, and all went
+to sleep.
+
+
+IX.
+
+As Efim went to sleep, a temptation came over him.
+
+"They have not taken the pilgrim's money," he thought, "he did not have
+any. Nowhere did he offer anything. He told me to give, but he himself
+did not offer any. He took a rouble from me."
+
+As Efim was thinking so, he began to rebuke himself:
+
+"How dare I judge the man, and commit a sin. I will not sin." The moment
+he forgot himself, he again thought that the pilgrim had a sharp eye on
+money, and that it was unlikely that they had taken the money from him.
+"He never had any money," he thought. "It's only an excuse."
+
+They got up before evening and went to an early mass at the Church of
+the Resurrection,--to the Sepulchre of the Lord. The pilgrim did not
+leave Efim's side, but walked with him all the time.
+
+They came to the church. There was there collected a large crowd of
+worshippers, Greeks, and Armenians, and Turks, and Syrians. Efim came
+with the people to the Holy Gate. A monk led them. He took them past the
+Turkish guard to the place where the Saviour was taken from the cross
+and anointed, and where candles were burning in nine large candlesticks.
+He showed and explained everything to them. Efim placed a candle there.
+Then the monks led Efim to the right over steps to Golgotha, where the
+cross stood; there Efim prayed; then Efim was shown the cleft where the
+earth was rent to the lowermost regions; then he was shown the place
+where Christ's hands and feet had been nailed to the cross, and then he
+was shown Adam's grave, where Christ's blood dropped on his bones. Then
+they came to the rock on which Christ sat when they put the wreath of
+thorns on his head; then to the post to which Christ was tied when he
+was beaten. Then Efim saw the stone with the two holes, for Christ's
+feet. They wanted to show him other things, but the people hastened
+away: all hurried to the grotto of the Lord's Sepulchre. Some foreign
+mass was just ended, and the Russian began. Efim followed the people to
+the grotto.
+
+He wanted to get away from the pilgrim, for in thought he still sinned
+against him, but the pilgrim stuck to him, and went with him to mass at
+the Sepulchre of the Lord. They wanted to stand close to it, but were
+too late. There was such a crowd there that it was not possible to move
+forward or back. Efim stood there and looked straight ahead and prayed,
+but every once in awhile he felt his purse, to see whether it was in his
+pocket. His thoughts were divided; now he thought that the pilgrim had
+deceived him; and then he thought, if he had not deceived him, and the
+pocketbook had really been stolen, the same might happen to him.
+
+
+X.
+
+Efim stood there and prayed and looked ahead into the chapel where the
+Sepulchre itself was, and where over the Sepulchre thirty-six lamps were
+burning. Efim looked over the heads to see the marvellous thing: under
+the very lamps, where the blessed fire was burning, in front of all, he
+saw an old man in a coarse caftan, with a bald spot shining on his whole
+head, and he looked very much like Elisey Bodrov.
+
+"He resembles Elisey," he thought. "But how can it be he? He could not
+have got here before me. The previous ship started a week ahead of us.
+He could not have been on that ship. On our ship he was not, for I saw
+all the pilgrims."
+
+Just as Efim was thinking this, the old man began to pray, and made
+three bows: once in front of him, to God, and twice to either side, to
+all the Orthodox people. And as the old man turned his head to the
+right, Efim recognized him. Sure enough, it was Bodrov: it was his
+blackish, curly beard, and the gray streak on his cheeks, and his brows,
+his eyes, his nose, and full face,--all his. Certainly it was he, Elisey
+Bodrov.
+
+Efim was glad that he had found his companion, and he marvelled how
+Elisey could have got there ahead of him.
+
+"How in the world did Bodrov get to that place in front?" he thought.
+"No doubt he met a man who knew how to get him there. When all go out, I
+will hunt him up, and I will drop the pilgrim in the colette, and will
+walk with him. Maybe he will take me to the front place."
+
+Efim kept an eye on Elisey, so as not to lose him. When the masses were
+over, the people began to stir. As they went up to kiss the Sepulchre,
+they crowded and pushed Efim to one side. He was frightened lest his
+purse should be stolen. He put his hand to his purse and tried to make
+his way out into the open. When he got out, he walked and walked, trying
+to find Elisey, both on the outside and in the church. In the church he
+saw many people in the cells: some ate, and drank wine, and slept there,
+and read their prayers. But Elisey was not to be found. Efim returned to
+the hostelry, but he did not find his companion there either. On that
+evening the pilgrim, too, did not come back. He was gone, and had not
+returned the rouble to Efim. So Efim was left alone.
+
+On the following day Efim went again to the Sepulchre of the Lord with a
+Tambov peasant, with whom he had journeyed on the ship. He wanted to
+make his way to the front, but he was again pushed back, and so he stood
+at a column and prayed. He looked ahead of him, and there in front,
+under the lamps, at the very Sepulchre of the Lord, stood Elisey. He had
+extended his hands, like a priest at the altar, and his bald spot shone
+over his whole head.
+
+"Now," thought Efim, "I will not miss him."
+
+He made his way to the front, but Elisey was not there. Evidently he had
+left. On the third day he again went to the Sepulchre of the Lord, and
+there he saw Elisey standing in the holiest place, in sight of
+everybody, and his hands were stretched out, and he looked up, as though
+he saw something above him. And his bald spot shone over his whole head.
+
+"Now," thought Efim, "I will certainly not miss him; I will go and stand
+at the entrance, and then he cannot escape me."
+
+Efim went out and stood there for a long time. He stood until after
+noon: all the people had passed out, but Elisey was not among them.
+
+Efim passed six weeks in Jerusalem, and visited all the places,
+Bethlehem, and Bethany, and the Jordan, and had a stamp put on a new
+shirt at the Lord's Sepulchre, to be buried in it, and filled a bottle
+of Jordan water, and got some earth, and candles with blessed fire, and
+in eight places inscribed names for the mass of the dead. He spent all
+his money and had just enough left to get home on, and so he started for
+home. He reached Jaffa, boarded a ship, landed at Odessa, and walked
+toward his home.
+
+
+XI.
+
+Efim walked by himself the same way he had come out. As he was getting
+close to his village, he began to worry again about how things were
+going at his house without him. In a year, he thought, much water runs
+by. It takes a lifetime to get together a home, but it does not take
+long to ruin it. He wondered how his son had done without him, how the
+spring had opened, how the cattle had wintered, and whether the hut was
+well built. Efim reached the spot where the year before he had parted
+from Elisey. It was not possible to recognize the people. Where the year
+before they had suffered want, now there was plenty. Everything grew
+well in the field. The people picked up again and forgot their former
+misery. In the evening Efim reached the very village where the year
+before Elisey had fallen behind. He had just entered the village, when a
+little girl in a white shirt came running out of a hut.
+
+"Grandfather, grandfather! Come to our house!"
+
+Efim wanted to go on, but the girl would not let him. She took hold of
+his coat and laughed and pulled him to the hut. A woman with a boy came
+out on the porch, and she, too, beckoned to him:
+
+"Come in, grandfather, and eat supper with us and stay overnight!"
+
+Efim stepped in.
+
+"I can, at least, ask about Elisey," he thought. "This is the very hut
+into which he went to get a drink."
+
+Efim went inside. The woman took off his wallet, gave him water to wash
+himself, and seated him at the table. She fetched milk, cheese, cakes,
+and porridge, and placed it all on the table. Tarasych thanked her and
+praised the people for being hospitable to pilgrims. The woman shook her
+head.
+
+"We cannot help receiving pilgrims," she said. "We received life from a
+pilgrim. We lived forgetting God, and God punished us in such a way that
+all of us were waiting for death. Last summer we came to such a point
+that we were all lying down sick and starved. We should certainly have
+died, but God sent us an old man like you. He stepped in during the
+daytime to get a drink; when he saw us, he took pity on us and remained
+at our house. He gave us to eat and to drink, and put us on our feet
+again. He cleared our land from debt, and bought a horse and cart and
+left it with us."
+
+The old woman entered the room, and interrupted her speech:
+
+"We do not know," she said, "whether he was a man or an angel of the
+Lord. He was good to us all, and pitied us, and then went away without
+giving his name, so that we do not know for whom to pray to God. I see
+it as though it happened just now: I was lying down and waiting for
+death to come; I looked up and saw a man come in,--just a simple,
+bald-headed man,--and ask for a drink. I, sinful woman, thought that he
+was a tramp, but see what he did! When he saw us he put down his wallet,
+right in this spot, and opened it."
+
+The girl broke in.
+
+"No, granny," she said, "first he put his wallet in the middle of the
+room, and only later did he put it on the bench."
+
+And they began to dispute and to recall his words and deeds: where he
+had sat down, and where he had slept, and what he had done, and what he
+had said to each.
+
+Toward evening the master of the house came home on a horse, and he,
+too, began to tell about Elisey, and how he had stayed at their house.
+
+"If he had not come to us," he said, "we should all of us have died in
+sin. We were dying in despair, and we murmured against God and men. But
+he put us on our feet, and through him we found out God, and began to
+believe in good people. May Christ save him! Before that we lived like
+beasts, and he has made men of us."
+
+They gave Efim to eat and to drink, and gave him a place to sleep, and
+themselves went to bed.
+
+As Efim lay down, he could not sleep, and Elisey did not leave his mind,
+but he thought of how he had seen him three times in Jerusalem in the
+foremost place.
+
+"So this is the way he got ahead of me," he thought. "My work may be
+accepted or not, but his the Lord has accepted."
+
+In the morning Efim bade the people good-bye: they filled his wallet
+with cakes and went to work, while Efim started out on the road.
+
+
+XII.
+
+Efim was away precisely a year. In the spring he returned home.
+
+He reached his house in the evening. His son was not at home,--he was in
+the dram-shop. He returned intoxicated, and Efim began to ask him about
+the house. He saw by everything that the lad had got into bad ways
+without him. He had spent all the money, and the business he had
+neglected. His father scolded him, and he answered his father with rude
+words.
+
+"You ought to have come back yourself," he said. "Instead, you went away
+and took all the money with you, and now you make me responsible."
+
+The old man became angry and beat his son.
+
+The next morning Efim Tarasych went to the elder to talk to him about
+his son. As he passed Elisey's farm, Elisey's wife was standing on the
+porch and greeting him:
+
+"Welcome, friend!" she said. "Did you, dear man, have a successful
+journey?"
+
+Efim Tarasych stopped.
+
+"Thank God," he said, "I have been at Jerusalem, but I lost your husband
+on the way. I hear that he is back."
+
+And the old woman started to talk to him, for she was fond of babbling.
+
+"He is back, my dear; he has been back for quite awhile. He returned
+soon after Assumption day. We were so glad to see him back. It was
+lonely without him. Not that we mean his work,--for he is getting old.
+But he is the head, and it is jollier for us. How happy our lad was!
+Without him, he said, it was as without light for the eyes. It was
+lonely without him, my dear. We love him so much!"
+
+"Well, is he at home now?"
+
+"At home he is, neighbour, in the apiary, brushing in the swarms. He
+says it was a fine swarming season. The old man does not remember when
+there has been such a lot of bees. God gives us not according to our
+sins, he says. Come in, dear one! He will be so glad to see you."
+
+Efim walked through the vestibule and through the yard to the apiary, to
+see Elisey. When he came inside the apiary, he saw Elisey standing
+without a net, without gloves, in a gray caftan, under a birch-tree,
+extending his arms and looking up, and his bald spot shone over his
+whole head, just as he had stood in Jerusalem at the Lord's Sepulchre,
+and above him, through the birch-tree, the sun glowed, and above his
+head the golden bees circled in the form of a wreath, and did not sting
+him. Efim stopped.
+
+Elisey's wife called out to her husband:
+
+"Your friend is here."
+
+Elisey looked around. He was happy, and walked over toward his friend,
+softly brushing the bees out of his beard.
+
+"Welcome, friend, welcome, dear man! Did you have a successful journey?"
+
+"My feet took me there, and I have brought you some water from the river
+Jordan. Come and get it! But whether the Lord has received my work--"
+
+"Thank God! Christ save you!"
+
+Efim was silent.
+
+"I was there with my feet, but in spirit you were there, or somebody
+else--"
+
+"It is God's work, my friend, God's work."
+
+"On my way home I stopped at the hut where I lost you."
+
+Elisey was frightened, and he hastened to say:
+
+"It is God's work, my friend, God's work. Well, won't you step in? I
+will bring some honey."
+
+And Elisey changed the subject, and began to speak of home matters.
+
+Efim heaved a sigh. He did not mention the people of the hut to Elisey,
+nor what he had seen in Jerusalem. And he understood that God has
+enjoined that each man shall before his death carry out his vow--with
+love and good deeds.
+
+
+
+
+WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO
+
+
+Shoemaker Martyn Avdyeich lived in the city. He lived in a basement, in
+a room with one window. The window looked out on the street. Through it
+the people could be seen as they passed by: though only the feet were
+visible, Martyn Avdyeich could tell the men by their boots. He had lived
+for a long time in one place and had many acquaintances. It was a rare
+pair of boots in the neighbourhood that had not gone once or twice
+through his hands. Some he had resoled; on others he had put patches, or
+fixed the seams, or even put on new uppers. Frequently he saw his own
+work through the window. He had much to do, for he did honest work, put
+in strong material, took no more than was fair, and kept his word. If he
+could get a piece of work done by a certain time he undertook to do it,
+and if not, he would not cheat, but said so in advance. Everybody knew
+Avdyeich, and his work never stopped.
+
+Avdyeich had always been a good man, but in his old age he thought more
+of his soul and came near unto God. Even while Martyn had been living
+with a master, his wife had died, and he had been left with a boy three
+years of age. Their children did not live long. All the elder children
+had died before. At first Martyn had intended sending his son to his
+sister in a village, but then he felt sorry for the little lad, and
+thought: "It will be hard for my Kapitoshka to grow up in somebody
+else's family, and so I will keep him."
+
+Avdyeich left his master, and took up quarters with his son. But God did
+not grant Avdyeich any luck with his children. No sooner had the boy
+grown up so as to be a help to his father and a joy to him, than a
+disease fell upon him and he lay down and had a fever for a week and
+died. Martyn buried his son, and was in despair. He despaired so much
+that he began to murmur against God. He was so downhearted that more
+than once he asked God to let him die, and rebuked God for having taken
+his beloved only son, and not him. He even stopped going to church.
+
+One day an old man, a countryman of Avdyeich's, returning from
+Troitsa,--he had been a pilgrim for eight years,--came to see him.
+Avdyeich talked with him and began to complain of his sorrow:
+
+"I have even no desire to live any longer, godly man. If I could only
+die. That is all I am praying God for. I am a man without any hope."
+
+And the old man said to him:
+
+"You do not say well, Martyn. We cannot judge God's works. Not by our
+reason, but by God's judgment do we live. God has determined that your
+son should die, and you live. Evidently it is better so. The reason you
+are in despair is that you want to live for your own enjoyment."
+
+"What else shall we live for?" asked Martyn.
+
+And the old man said:
+
+"We must live for God, Martyn. He gives us life, and for Him must we
+live. When you shall live for Him and shall not worry about anything,
+life will be lighter for you."
+
+Martyn was silent, and he said:
+
+"How shall we live for God?"
+
+And the old man said:
+
+"Christ has shown us how to live for God. Do you know how to read? If
+so, buy yourself a Gospel and read it, and you will learn from it how to
+live for God. It tells all about it."
+
+These words fell deep into Avdyeich's heart. And he went that very day
+and bought himself a New Testament in large letters, and began to read.
+
+Avdyeich had meant to read it on holidays only, but when he began to
+read it, his heart was so rejoiced that he read it every day. Many a
+time he buried himself so much in reading that all the kerosene would be
+spent in the lamp, but he could not tear himself away from the book. And
+Avdyeich read in it every evening, and the more he read, the clearer it
+became to him what God wanted of him, and how he should live for God;
+and his heart grew lighter and lighter. Formerly, when he lay down to
+sleep, he used to groan and sob and think of his Kapitoshka, but now he
+only muttered:
+
+"Glory be to Thee, glory to Thee, O Lord! Thy will be done!"
+
+Since then Avdyeich's life had been changed. Formerly, he used on a
+holiday to frequent the tavern, to drink tea, and would not decline a
+drink of vodka. He would drink a glass with an acquaintance and, though
+he would not be drunk, he would come out of the tavern in a happier
+mood, and then he would speak foolish things, and would scold, or
+slander a man. Now all that passed away from him. His life came to be
+calm and happy. In the morning he sat down to work, and when he got
+through, he took the lamp from the hook, put it down on the table,
+fetched the book from the shelf, opened it, and began to read it. And
+the more he read, the better he understood it, and his mind was clearer
+and his heart lighter.
+
+One evening Martyn read late into the night. He had before him the
+Gospel of St. Luke. He read the sixth chapter and the verses: "And unto
+him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him
+that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to
+every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask
+them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to
+them likewise."
+
+And he read also the other verses, where the Lord says: "And why call ye
+me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Whosoever cometh to
+me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he
+is like: he is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and
+laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat
+vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded
+upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that
+without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the
+stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of
+that house was great."
+
+When Avdyeich read these words, there was joy in his heart. He took off
+his glasses, put them on the book, leaned his arms on the table, and
+fell to musing. And he began to apply these words to his life, and he
+thought:
+
+"Is my house on a rock, or on the sand? It is well if it is founded on a
+rock: it is so easy to sit alone,--it seems to me that I am doing
+everything which God has commanded; but if I dissipate, I shall sin
+again. I will just proceed as at present. It is so nice! Help me, God!"
+
+This he thought, and he wanted to go to sleep, but he was loath to tear
+himself away from the book. And he began to read the seventh chapter. He
+read about the centurion, about the widow's son, about the answer to
+John's disciples, and he reached the passage where the rich Pharisee
+invited the Lord to be his guest, and where the sinning woman anointed
+His feet and washed them with her tears, and he justified her. And he
+reached the 44th verse, and read: "And he turned to the woman, and said
+unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou
+gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears,
+and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but
+this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My
+head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my
+feet with ointment."
+
+When he had read these verses, he thought:
+
+"He gave no water for His feet; he gave no kiss; he did not anoint His
+head with oil."
+
+And again Avdyeich took off his glasses and placed them on the book, and
+fell to musing.
+
+"Evidently he was just such a Pharisee as I am. He, no doubt, thought
+only of himself: how to drink tea, and be warm, and in comfort, but he
+did not think of the guest. About himself he thought, but no care did he
+have for the guest. And who was the guest?--The Lord Himself. Would I
+have done so, if He had come to me?"
+
+And Avdyeich leaned his head on both his arms and did not notice how he
+fell asleep.
+
+"Martyn!" suddenly something seemed to breathe over his very ear.
+
+Martyn shuddered in his sleep: "Who is that?"
+
+He turned around and looked at the door, but there was nobody there. He
+bent down again, to go to sleep. Suddenly he heard distinctly:
+
+"Martyn, oh, Martyn, remember, to-morrow I will come to the street."
+
+Martyn awoke, rose from his chair, and began to rub his eyes. He did
+not know himself whether he had heard these words in his dream or in
+waking. He put out the light and went to sleep.
+
+Avdyeich got up in the morning before daybreak, said his prayers, made a
+fire, put the beet soup and porridge on the stove, started the samovar,
+tied on his apron, and sat down at the window to work. And, as he sat
+there at work, he kept thinking of what had happened the night before.
+His thoughts were divided: now he thought that it had only seemed so to
+him, and now again he thought he had actually heard the voice.
+
+"Well," he thought, "such things happen."
+
+Martyn was sitting at the window and not so much working as looking out
+into the street, and if somebody passed in unfamiliar boots, he bent
+over to look out of the window, in order to see not merely the boots,
+but also the face. A janitor passed by in new felt boots; then a
+water-carrier went past; then an old soldier of the days of Nicholas, in
+patched old felt boots, holding a shovel in his hands, came in a line
+with the window. Avdyeich recognized him by his felt boots. The old
+man's name was Stepanych, and he was living with a neighbouring merchant
+for charity's sake. It was his duty to help the janitor. Stepanych began
+to clear away the snow opposite Avdyeich's window. Avdyeich cast a
+glance at him and went back to his work.
+
+"Evidently I am losing my senses in my old age," Avdyeich laughed to
+himself. "Stepanych is clearing away the snow, and I thought that Christ
+was coming to see me. I, old fool, am losing my senses." But before he
+had made a dozen stitches, something drew him again toward the window.
+He looked out, and there he saw Stepanych leaning his shovel against the
+wall and either warming or resting himself.
+
+He was an old, broken-down man, and evidently shovelling snow was above
+his strength. Avdyeich thought: "I ought to give him some tea;
+fortunately the samovar is just boiling." He stuck the awl into the
+wood, got up, placed the samovar on the table, put some tea in the
+teapot, and tapped with his finger at the window. Stepanych turned
+around and walked over to the window. Avdyeich beckoned to him and went
+to open the door.
+
+"Come in and get warmed up!" he said. "I suppose you are feeling cold."
+
+"Christ save you! I have a breaking in my bones," said Stepanych.
+
+He came in, shook off the snow and wiped his boots so as not to track
+the floor, but he was tottering all the time.
+
+"Don't take the trouble to rub your boots. I will clean up,--that is my
+business. Come and sit down!" said Avdyeich. "Here, drink a glass of
+tea!"
+
+Avdyeich filled two glasses and moved one of them up to his guest, and
+himself poured his glass into the saucer and began to blow at it.
+
+Stepanych drank his glass; then he turned it upside down, put the lump
+of sugar on top of it, and began to express his thanks; but it was
+evident that he wanted another glass.
+
+"Have some more," said Avdyeich; and he poured out a glass for his guest
+and one for himself. Avdyeich drank his tea, but something kept drawing
+his attention to the window.
+
+"Are you waiting for anybody?" asked the guest.
+
+"Am I waiting for anybody? It is really a shame to say for whom I am
+waiting: no, I am not exactly waiting, but a certain word has fallen
+deep into my heart: I do not know myself whether it is a vision, or
+what. You see, my friend, I read the Gospel yesterday about Father
+Christ and how He suffered and walked the earth. I suppose you have
+heard of it?"
+
+"Yes, I have," replied Stepanych, "but we are ignorant people,--we do
+not know how to read."
+
+"Well, so I read about how He walked the earth. I read, you know, about
+how He came to the Pharisee, and the Pharisee did not give Him a good
+reception. Well, my friend, as I was reading last night about that very
+thing, I wondered how he could have failed to honour Father Christ. If
+He should have happened to come to me, for example, I should have done
+everything to receive Him. But he did not receive Him well. As I was
+thinking of it, I fell asleep. And as I dozed off I heard some one
+calling me by name: I got up and it was as though somebody were
+whispering to me: 'Wait,' he said: 'I will come to-morrow.' This he
+repeated twice. Would you believe it,--it has been running through my
+head,--I blame myself for it,--and I am, as it were, waiting for Father
+Christ."
+
+Stepanych shook his head and said nothing. He finished his glass and put
+it sidewise, but Avdyeich took it again and filled it with tea.
+
+"Drink, and may it do you good! I suppose when He, the Father, walked
+the earth, He did not neglect anybody, and kept the company mostly of
+simple folk. He visited mostly simple folk, and chose His disciples
+mostly from people of our class, labouring men, like ourselves the
+sinners. He who raises himself up, He said, shall be humbled, and he who
+humbles himself shall be raised. You call me Lord, He said, but I will
+wash your feet. He who wants to be the first, He said, let him be
+everybody's servant; because, He said, blessed are the poor, the meek
+the humble, and the merciful."
+
+Stepanych forgot his tea. He was an old man and easily moved to tears.
+He sat there and listened, and tears flowed down his cheeks.
+
+"Take another glass!" said Avdyeich.
+
+But Stepanych made the sign of the cross, thanked him for the tea,
+pushed the glass away from him, and got up.
+
+"Thank you, Martyn Avdyeich," he said. "You were hospitable to me, and
+have given food to my body and my soul."
+
+"You are welcome. Come in again,--I shall be glad to see you," said
+Avdyeich.
+
+Stepanych went away. Martyn poured out the last tea, finished another
+glass, put away the dishes, and again sat down at the window to
+work,--to tap a boot. And as he worked, he kept looking out of the
+window,--waiting for Christ and thinking of Him and His works. And all
+kinds of Christ's speeches ran through his head.
+
+There passed by two soldiers, one in Crown boots, the other in boots of
+his own; then the proprietor of a neighbouring house came by in clean
+galoshes, and then a baker with a basket. All of these went past the
+window, and then a woman in woollen stockings and peasant shoes came in
+line with the window. She went by the window and stopped near a wall.
+Avdyeich looked at her through the window, and saw that she was a
+strange, poorly dressed woman, with a child: she had stopped with her
+back to the wind and was trying to wrap the child, though she did not
+have anything to wrap it in. The woman's clothes were for the summer,
+and scanty at that. Avdyeich could hear the child cry in the street, and
+her vain attempt to quiet it. Avdyeich got up and went out of his room
+and up to the staircase, and called out:
+
+"Clever Woman! Clever woman!"
+
+The woman heard him and turned around.
+
+"Why are you standing there in the cold with the child? Come in here! It
+will be easier for you to wrap the child in a warm room. Here, this
+way!"
+
+The woman was surprised. She saw an old man in an apron, with glasses
+over his nose, calling to her. She followed him in.
+
+They went down the stairs and entered the room, and Martyn took the
+woman up to the bed.
+
+"Sit down here, clever woman, nearer to the stove, and get warm and feed
+the child."
+
+"There is no milk in my breasts,--I have not had anything to eat since
+morning," said the woman, but still she took the child to her breast.
+
+Avdyeich shook his head, went to the table, fetched some bread and a
+bowl, opened a door in the stove, filled the bowl with beet soup, and
+took out the pot of porridge, but it was not done yet. He put the soup
+on the table, put down the bread, and took off a rag from a hook and put
+it down on the table.
+
+"Sit down, clever woman, and eat, and I will sit with the babe,--I used
+to have children of my own, and so I know how to take care of them."
+
+The woman made the sign of the cross, sat down at the table, and began
+to eat, while Avdyeich seated himself on the bed with the child. He
+smacked his lips at it, but could not smack well, for he had no teeth.
+The babe kept crying all the time. Avdyeich tried to frighten it with
+his finger: he quickly carried his finger down toward the babe's mouth
+and pulled it away again. He did not put his finger into the child's
+mouth, because it was black,--all smeared with pitch. But the child took
+a fancy for his finger and grew quiet, and then began even to smile.
+Avdyeich, too, was happy. The woman was eating in the meantime and
+telling him who she was and whither she was going.
+
+"I am a soldier's wife," she said. "My husband was driven somewhere far
+away eight months ago, and I do not know where he is. I had been working
+as a cook when the baby was born; they would not keep me with the child.
+This is the third month that I have been without a place. I have spent
+all I had saved. I wanted to hire out as a wet-nurse, but they will not
+take me: they say that I am too thin. I went to a merchant woman, where
+our granny lives, and she promised she would take me. I thought she
+wanted me to come at once, but she told me she wanted me next week. She
+lives a distance away. I am all worn out and have worn out the dear
+child, too. Luckily our landlady pities us for the sake of Christ, or
+else I do not know how we should have lived until now."
+
+Avdyeich heaved a sigh, and said:
+
+"And have you no warm clothes?"
+
+"Indeed, it is time now to have warm clothing, dear man! But yesterday I
+pawned my last kerchief for twenty kopeks."
+
+The woman went up to the bed and took her child, but Avdyeich got up,
+went to the wall, rummaged there awhile, and brought her an old
+sleeveless cloak.
+
+"Take this!" he said. "It is an old piece, but you may use it to wrap
+yourself in."
+
+The woman looked at the cloak and at the old man, and took the cloak,
+and burst out weeping. Avdyeich turned his face away; he crawled under
+the bed, pulled out a box, rummaged through it, and again sat down
+opposite the woman.
+
+And the woman said:
+
+"May Christ save you, grandfather! Evidently He sent me to your window.
+My child would have frozen to death. When I went out it was warm, but
+now it has turned dreadfully cold. It was He, our Father, who taught you
+to look through the window and have pity on me, sorrowful woman."
+
+Avdyeich smiled, and said:
+
+"It is He who has instructed me: clever woman, there was good reason why
+I looked through the window."
+
+Martyn told the soldier woman about his dream, and how he had heard a
+voice promising him that the Lord would come to see him on that day.
+
+"Everything is possible," said the woman. She got up, threw the cloak
+over her, wrapped the child in it, and began to bow to Avdyeich and to
+thank him.
+
+"Accept this, for the sake of Christ," said Avdyeich, giving her twenty
+kopeks, with which to redeem her kerchief.
+
+The woman made the sign of the cross, and so did Avdyeich, and he saw
+the woman out.
+
+She went away. Avdyeich ate some soup, put the things away, and sat down
+once more to work. He was working, but at the same time thinking of the
+window: whenever it grew dark there, he looked up to see who was
+passing. There went by acquaintances and strangers, and there was
+nothing peculiar.
+
+Suddenly Avdyeich saw an old woman, a huckstress, stop opposite the very
+window. She was carrying a basket with apples. There were but few of
+them left,--evidently she had sold all, and over her shoulder she
+carried a bag with chips. No doubt, she had picked them up at some new
+building, and was on her way home. The bag was evidently pulling hard on
+her shoulder; she wanted to shift it to her other shoulder, so she let
+the bag down on the flagstones, set the apple-basket on a post, and
+began to shake down the chips. While she was doing that, a boy in a torn
+cap leaped out from somewhere, grasped any apple from the basket, and
+wanted to skip out, but the old woman saw him in time and turned around
+and grabbed the boy by the sleeve. The boy yanked and tried to get away,
+but the old woman held on to him with both her hands, knocked down his
+cap, and took hold of his hair. The boy cried, and the old woman
+scolded. Avdyeich did not have time to put away the awl. He threw it on
+the floor, jumped out of the room, stumbled on the staircase, and
+dropped his glasses. He ran out into the street. The old woman was
+pulling the boy's hair and scolding him. She wanted to take him to a
+policeman; the little fellow struggled and tried to deny what he had
+done:
+
+"I did not take any, so why do you beat me? Let me go!"
+
+Avdyeich tried to separate them. He took the boy's arm, and said:
+
+"Let him go, granny, forgive him for Christ's sake!"
+
+"I will forgive him in such a way that he will not forget until the new
+bath brooms are ripe. I will take the rascal to the police station!"
+
+Avdyeich began to beg the old woman:
+
+"Let him go, granny, he will not do it again. Let him go, for Christ's
+sake!"
+
+The woman let go of him. The boy wanted to run, but Avdyeich held on to
+him.
+
+"Beg the grandmother's forgiveness," he said. "Don't do that again,--I
+saw you take the apple."
+
+The boy began to cry, and he asked her forgiveness.
+
+"That's right. And now, take this apple!" Avdyeich took an apple from
+the basket and gave it to the boy. "I will pay for it, granny," he said
+to the old woman.
+
+"You are spoiling these ragamuffins," said the old woman. "He ought to
+be rewarded in such a way that he should remember it for a week."
+
+"Oh, granny, granny!" said Avdyeich. "That is according to our ways, but
+how is that according to God's ways? If he is to be whipped for an
+apple, what ought to be done with us for our sins?"
+
+The old woman grew silent.
+
+And Avdyeich told the old woman the parable of the lord who forgave his
+servant his whole large debt, after which the servant went and took his
+fellow servant who was his debtor by the throat. The old woman listened
+to him, and the boy stood and listened, too.
+
+"God has commanded that we should forgive," said Avdyeich, "or else we,
+too, shall not be forgiven. All are to be forgiven, but most of all an
+unthinking person."
+
+The old woman shook her head and sighed.
+
+"That is so," said the old woman, "but they are very much spoiled
+nowadays."
+
+"Then we old people ought to teach them," said Avdyeich.
+
+"That is what I say," said the old woman. "I myself had seven of
+them,--but only one daughter is left now." And the old woman began to
+tell where and how she was living with her daughter, and how many
+grandchildren she had. "My strength is waning," she said, "but still I
+work. I am sorry for my grandchildren, and they are such nice
+children,--nobody else meets me the way they do. Aksyutka will not go to
+anybody from me. 'Granny, granny dear, darling!'" And the old woman
+melted with tenderness.
+
+"Of course, he is but a child,--God be with him!" the old woman said
+about the boy.
+
+She wanted to lift the bag on her shoulders, when the boy jumped up to
+her, and said:
+
+"Let me carry it, granny! I am going that way."
+
+The old woman shook her head and threw the bag on the boy's shoulders.
+They walked together down the street. The old woman had forgotten to ask
+Avdyeich to pay her for the apple. Avdyeich stood awhile, looking at
+them and hearing them talk as they walked along.
+
+When they disappeared from sight, he returned to his room. He found his
+glasses on the staircase,--they were not broken,--and he picked up his
+awl and again sat down to work. He worked for awhile; he could not find
+the holes with the bristle, when he looked up and saw the lampman
+lighting the lamps.
+
+"It is evidently time to strike a light," he thought, and he got up and
+fixed the lamp and hung it on the hook, and sat down again to work. He
+finished a boot: he turned it around and looked at it, and he saw that
+it was well done. He put down his tool, swept up the clippings, put away
+the bristles and the remnants and the awls, took the lamp and put it on
+the table, and fetched the Gospel from the shelf. He wanted to open the
+book where he had marked it the day before with a morocco clipping, but
+he opened it in another place. And just as he went to open the Gospel,
+he thought of his dream of the night before. And just as he thought of
+it, it appeared to him as though something were moving and stepping
+behind him. He looked around, and, indeed, it looked as though people
+were standing in the dark corner, but he could not make out who they
+were. And a voice whispered to him:
+
+"Martyn, oh, Martyn, have you not recognized me?"
+
+"Whom?" asked Avdyeich.
+
+"Me," said the voice. "It is I."
+
+And out of the dark corner came Stepanych, and he smiled and vanished
+like a cloud and was no more.
+
+"And it is I," said a voice.
+
+And out of the dark corner came the woman with the babe, and the woman
+smiled and the child laughed, and they, too, disappeared.
+
+"And it is I," said a voice.
+
+And out came the old woman and the boy with the apple, and both smiled
+and vanished.
+
+And joy fell on Avdyeich's heart, and he made the sign of the cross, put
+on his glasses, and began to read the Gospel, there where he had opened
+it. And at the top of the page he read:
+
+"I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me
+drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in."
+
+And at the bottom of the page he read:
+
+"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren,
+ye have done it unto me." (Matt. xxv.)
+
+And Avdyeich understood that his dream had not deceived him, that the
+Saviour had really come to him on that day, and that he had received
+Him.
+
+
+
+
+TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+1885
+
+
+
+
+TEXTS FOR CHAPBOOK
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+
+
+THE FIEND PERSISTS, BUT GOD RESISTS
+
+
+In ancient times there lived a good master. He had plenty of everything,
+and many slaves served him. And the slaves prided themselves on their
+master. They said:
+
+"There is not a better master under heaven. He feeds us and dresses us
+well, and gives us work to do according to our strength, and never
+offends us with a word, and bears no grudge against any one; he is not
+like other masters who torture their slaves worse than cattle, and
+punish them with cause and without cause, and never say a good word to
+them. Our master wishes us good, and does us good, and speaks good words
+to us. We do not want any better life."
+
+Thus the slaves boasted of their master. And the devil was annoyed to
+see the slaves living well and in love with their master. And the devil
+took possession of one of the master's slaves, Aleb. He took possession
+of him and commanded him to seduce other slaves. And when all the slaves
+were resting and praising their master, Aleb raised his voice and said:
+
+"Brothers, in vain do you pride yourselves on the goodness of your
+master. Try to do the devil's bidding, and he, too, will be kind to you.
+We serve our master well, and please him in everything. He needs only
+to have a thing in mind, and we do it.--we guess his thoughts. Why,
+then, should he not be good to us? Stop doing his bidding and do him
+some wrong, and he will be like everybody else, and will repay evil with
+evil, much worse than the worst of masters."
+
+And the other slaves began to dispute with Aleb. They disputed and made
+a wager. Aleb undertook to anger the good master. He undertook to do so
+on condition that if he did not succeed in making him angry, he should
+lose his holiday garment, but if he did, each should give him his own
+holiday garment, and, besides, they promised to defend him against the
+master and to free him if the master should put him in irons or throw
+him into prison. They made this wager, and Aleb promised to anger the
+master on the following morning.
+
+Aleb was serving in the master's sheepfold and tended on costly
+thoroughbred rams. And so, when the good master came the next morning
+with his guests to the sheepfold to show them his favourite expensive
+rams, the devil's labourer winked to his companions: "Watch me now! I am
+going to anger the master." All the slaves gathered and looked through
+the door and over the enclosure, and the devil climbed a tree and looked
+from there into the yard, to see how his labourer was going to serve
+him. The master walked through the yard, showing his guests the sheep
+and lambs, and he wanted to show them his best ram.
+
+"The other rams are nice, too, but the one with the twisted horns is
+priceless, and I think more of him than of the pupil of my eye."
+
+The sheep and the lambs were shying from the people in the yard, and the
+guests could not get a good look at the expensive ram. The moment the
+ram stopped, the labourer of the devil, as though by accident,
+frightened the sheep, and they got all mixed. The guests could not make
+out which was the expensive ram. The master got tired of it, so he said:
+
+"Aleb, my dear friend, take the trouble carefully to catch the best ram
+with the twisted horns and to hold him awhile."
+
+The moment the master had said that, Aleb rushed forward, like a lion,
+into the midst of the rams and caught the priceless ram by his fleece.
+He got hold of the wool, and with one hand he seized the left hind leg
+and raised it and in the eyes of the master jerked it in such a way that
+it snapped like a linden post. Aleb had broken the ram's leg beneath the
+knee. The ram began to bleat and fell down on his fore legs. Aleb
+grasped the right leg while the left hung loose like a whip-cord. The
+guests and all the slaves groaned, and the devil rejoiced, when he saw
+how cleverly Aleb had done his work. The master looked blacker than
+night. He frowned, lowered his head, and did not say a word. The guests
+and the slaves were silent. They waited to see what would happen.
+
+The master was silent, then shook himself, as though he wanted to throw
+something off, and raised his head and lifted it to the sky. He looked
+at it for a short time, and the wrinkles on his face disappeared, and he
+smiled and lowered his eyes on Aleb. He looked at Aleb, and smiled, and
+said:
+
+"O Aleb, Aleb! Your master has commanded you to anger me. But my master
+is stronger than yours: you have not angered me, but I will anger your
+master. You were afraid that I would punish you, and you wanted to be
+free, Aleb. Know, then, that you will receive no punishment from me,
+and, since you wanted to be free, I free you in the presence of these my
+guests. Go in all four directions and take your holiday garment with
+you!"
+
+And the good master went with his guests to the house. But the devil
+ground his teeth and fell down from the tree and sank through the
+earth.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE GIRLS WISER THAN OLD PEOPLE
+
+
+It was an early Easter. They had just quit using sleighs. In the yards
+lay snow, and rills ran down the village. A large puddle had run down
+from a manure pile into a lane between two farms. And at this puddle two
+girls, one older than the other, had met. Both of them had been dressed
+by their mothers in new bodices. The little girl had a blue bodice, and
+the elder a yellow one with a design. Both had their heads wrapped in
+red kerchiefs. After mass the two girls went to the puddle, where they
+showed their new garments to each other, and began to play. They wanted
+to plash in the water. The little girl started to go into the puddle
+with her shoes on, but the older girl said to her:
+
+"Don't go, Malasha, your mother will scold you. I will take off my
+shoes, and you do the same."
+
+The girls took off their shoes, raised their skirts, and walked through
+the puddle toward each other. Malasha stepped in up to her ankles, and
+said:
+
+"It is deep, Akulka, I am afraid."
+
+"Never mind," she replied, "it will not be any deeper. Come straight
+toward me!" They came closer to each other. Akulka said:
+
+"Malasha, look out, and do not splash it up, but walk softly."
+
+She had barely said that when Malasha plumped her foot into the water
+and bespattered Akulka's bodice, and not only her bodice, but also her
+nose and eyes. When Akulka saw the spots on her bodice, she grew angry
+at Malasha, and scolded her, and ran after her, and wanted to strike
+her. Malasha was frightened and, seeing what trouble she had caused,
+jumped out of the puddle and ran home.
+
+Akulka's mother passed by; she saw her daughter's bodice bespattered and
+her shirt soiled.
+
+"Where, accursed one, did you get yourself so dirty?"
+
+"Malasha has purposely splashed it on me."
+
+Akulka's mother grasped Malasha and gave her a knock on the nape of her
+neck. Malasha began to howl, and her mother ran out of the house.
+
+"Why do you strike my daughter?" she began to scold her neighbour.
+
+One word brought back another, and the women began to quarrel. The men,
+too, ran out, and a big crowd gathered in the street. All were crying,
+and nobody could hear his neighbour. They scolded and cursed each other;
+one man gave another man a push, and a fight had begun, when Akulka's
+grandmother came out. She stepped in the midst of the peasants, and
+began to talk to them:
+
+"What are you doing, dear ones? Consider the holiday. This is a time for
+rejoicing. And see what sin you are doing!"
+
+They paid no attention to the old woman, and almost knocked her off her
+feet. She would never have stopped them, if it had not been for Akulka
+and Malasha. While the women exchanged words, Akulka wiped off her
+bodice, and went back to the puddle in the lane. She picked up a pebble
+and began to scratch the ground so as to let the water off into the
+street. While she was scratching, Malasha came up and began to help her:
+she picked up a chip and widened the rill. The peasants had begun to
+fight, just as the water went down the rill toward the place where the
+old woman was trying to separate the men. The girls ran, one from one
+side of the rill, the other from the other side.
+
+"Look out, Malasha, look out!" shouted Akulka.
+
+Malasha wanted to say something herself, but could not speak for
+laughter.
+
+The girls were running and laughing at a chip which was bobbing up and
+down the rill. They ran straight into the crowd of the peasants. The old
+woman saw them and said to the peasants:
+
+"Shame on you before God, men! You have started fighting on account of
+these two girls, and they have long ago forgotten it: the dear children
+have been playing nicely together. They are wiser than you."
+
+The men looked at the girls, and they felt ashamed. Then they laughed at
+themselves, and scattered to their farms.
+
+"Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the
+kingdom of heaven."
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO BROTHERS AND THE GOLD
+
+
+In ancient times there lived not far from Jerusalem two brothers, the
+elder named Athanasius, and the younger John. They lived in a mountain,
+not far from the city, and supported themselves on what people offered
+them. The brothers passed all their days at work. They worked not for
+themselves, but for the poor. Wherever were those who were oppressed by
+labour, or sick people, or orphans, or widows, thither the brothers
+went, and there they worked, and received no pay. Thus the two brothers
+passed the whole week away from each other, and met only on Saturday
+evening in their abode. On Sunday alone did they stay at home, and then
+they prayed and talked with each other. And an angel of the Lord came
+down to them and blessed them. On Monday they separated each in his own
+direction. Thus they lived for many years, and each week the angel of
+the Lord came down to them and blessed them.
+
+One Monday, when the brothers had already gone out to work and had gone
+each in his direction, the elder brother, Athanasius, was loath to part
+from his brother, and he stopped and looked back. John was walking with
+lowered head, in his direction, without looking back. But suddenly John,
+too, stopped and, as though he had suddenly noticed something, gazed at
+something, while shielding his eyes. Then he approached what he was
+gazing at, suddenly jumped to one side, and, without looking back, ran
+down-hill and up-hill again, away from the place, as though a wolf were
+after him. Athanasius was surprised. He went back to that spot, to see
+what it was that had so frightened his brother. He went up to it and
+saw something shining in the sun. He came nearer, and there lay a heap
+of gold on the ground, as though poured out from a measure. And
+Athanasius was still more surprised, both at the gold and at his
+brother's leap.
+
+"Why was he frightened, and why did he run away?" thought Athanasius.
+"There is no sin in gold. The sin is in man. With gold one may do wrong,
+but also some good. How many orphans and widows may be fed, how many
+naked people dressed, and the poor and sick aided with this gold! We now
+serve people, but our service is small, though it is to the best of our
+strength. With this gold, however, we can serve people better."
+
+Thus Athanasius thought, and he wanted to tell it all to his brother;
+but John was out of the range of hearing, and could be seen only as a
+speck the size of a beetle on another mountain.
+
+Athanasius took off his cloak, scooped up as much gold as he was able to
+carry away, threw it on his shoulder, and carried it into the city. He
+came to a hostelry and left the gold with the keeper, and went back for
+the rest. When he had brought all the gold, he went to the merchants,
+bought some land in the city, and stones and timber, and hired
+labourers, and began to build three houses.
+
+Athanasius lived for three months in the city, and built three houses
+there: one--an asylum for widows and orphans, another--a hospital for
+the sick and the lame, and a third--for pilgrims and for the needy. And
+Athanasius found three God-fearing old men, and one of them he placed in
+charge of the asylum, the second--of the hospital, and the third--of the
+hostelry. And Athanasius had still three thousand gold coins left. He
+gave each old man one thousand coins to distribute them to the poor.
+
+The three houses began to fill up with people, and the people began to
+praise Athanasius for everything he had done. And Athanasius was glad of
+that and did not feel like leaving the city. But he loved his brother
+and so he bade the people farewell and, without keeping a single coin,
+went back to his abode, wearing the same old garment in which he had
+come.
+
+As Athanasius was approaching his mountain, he thought:
+
+"My brother did not judge rightly when he jumped from the gold and ran
+away from it. Have I not done better?"
+
+And no sooner had Athanasius thought so than he saw the angel who used
+to bless him standing in the road and looking threateningly at him. And
+Athanasius was frightened and only said:
+
+"For what, O Lord?"
+
+And the angel opened his lips, and said:
+
+"Go hence! You are not worthy of living with your brother. One leap of
+your brother is worth all the deeds which you have done with your gold."
+
+And Athanasius began to speak of how many poor people and pilgrims he
+had fed, and how many orphans he had housed. And the angel said:
+
+"The devil who placed the gold there has also taught you these words."
+
+Then only did his conscience trouble him, and he saw that he had done
+his deeds not for God, and he wept and began to repent.
+
+The angel stepped out of the road and opened the path on which his
+brother, John, was already standing and waiting for him. After that
+Athanasius no longer submitted to the temptation of the devil who had
+scattered the gold, and he understood that not with gold, but only with
+words can we serve God and men.
+
+And the brothers began to live as before.
+
+
+
+
+ILYAS
+
+
+In the Government of Ufa there lived a Bashkir, Ilyas. His father had
+left him no wealth. His father had died a year after he had got his son
+married. At that time Ilyas had seven mares, two cows, and a score of
+sheep; but Ilyas was a good master and began to increase his
+possessions; he worked with his wife from morning until night, got up
+earlier than anybody, and went to bed later, and grew richer from year
+to year. Thus Ilyas passed thirty-five years at work, and came to have a
+vast fortune.
+
+Ilyas finally had two hundred head of horses, 150 head of cattle, and
+twelve hundred sheep. Men herded Ilyas's herds and flocks, and women
+milked the mares and cows, and made kumys, butter, and cheese. Ilyas had
+plenty of everything, and in the district everybody envied him his life.
+People said:
+
+"Ilyas is a lucky fellow. He has plenty of everything,--he does not need
+to die."
+
+Good people made Ilyas's friendship and became his friends. And guests
+came to him from a distance. He received them all, and fed them, and
+gave them to drink. No matter who came, he received kumys, and tea, and
+sherbet, and mutton. If guests came to see him, a sheep or two were
+killed, and if many guests arrived, he had them kill a mare.
+
+Ilyas had two sons and a daughter. He had got all of them married. When
+Ilyas had been poor, his sons had worked with him and had herded the
+horses and the cattle and the sheep; but when they grew rich, the sons
+became spoiled, and one of them even began to drink. One of them, the
+eldest, was killed in a fight, and the other, the younger, had a proud
+wife, and did not obey his father, and his father had to give him a
+separate maintenance.
+
+Ilyas gave him a house and cattle, and his own wealth was diminished.
+Soon after a plague fell on Ilyas's sheep, and many of them died. Then
+there was a famine year, the hay crop was a failure, and in the winter
+many head of cattle died. Then the Kirgizes drove off the best herd of
+horses. And thus Ilyas's estate grew less, and he fell lower and lower,
+and his strength began to wane.
+
+When he was seventy years old, he began to sell off his furs, rugs,
+saddles, and tents, and soon had to sell his last head of cattle, so
+that he was left without anything. Before he knew it, all was gone, and
+in his old age he had to go with his wife to live among strangers. All
+that Ilyas had left of his fortune was what garments he had on his body,
+a fur coat, a cap, and his morocco slippers and shoes, and his wife,
+Sham-shemagi, who was now an old woman. The son to whom he had given the
+property had left for a distant country, and his daughter had died. And
+so there was nobody to help the old people.
+
+Their neighbour, Muhamedshah, took pity on them. Muhamedshah was neither
+rich nor poor, and he lived an even life, and was a good man. He
+remembered Ilyas's hospitality, and so pitied him, and said to Ilyas:
+
+"Come to live with me, Ilyas, and bring your wife with you! In the
+summer work according to your strength in my truck-garden, and in the
+winter feed the cattle, and let Sham-shemagi milk the mares and make
+kumys. I will feed and clothe you and will let you have whatever you may
+need."
+
+Ilyas thanked his neighbour, and went to live with his wife as
+Muhamedshah's labourers. At first it was hard for them, but soon they
+got used to the work, and the old people worked according to their
+strength.
+
+It was profitable for the master to keep these people, for they had been
+masters themselves and knew all the order and were not lazy, but worked
+according to their strength; but it pained Muhamedshah to see the
+well-to-do people brought down so low.
+
+One day distant guests, match-makers, happened to call on Muhamedshah;
+and the mulla, too, came. Muhamedshah ordered his men to catch a sheep
+and kill it. Ilyas flayed the sheep and cooked it and sent it in to the
+guests. They ate the mutton, drank tea, and then started to drink kumys.
+The guests and the master were sitting on down cushions on the rugs,
+drinking kumys out of bowls, and talking; but Ilyas got through with his
+work and walked past the door. When Muhamedshah saw him, he said to a
+guest:
+
+"Did you see the old man who just went past the door?"
+
+"I did," said the guest; "but what is there remarkable about him?"
+
+"What is remarkable is that he used to be our richest man. Ilyas is his
+name; maybe you have heard of him?"
+
+"Of course I have," said the guest. "I have never seen him, but his fame
+has gone far abroad."
+
+"Now he has nothing left, and he lives with me as a labourer, and his
+wife is with him,--she milks the cows."
+
+The guest was surprised. He clicked with his tongue, shook his head, and
+said:
+
+"Evidently fortune flies around like a wheel: one it lifts up, another
+it takes down. Well, does the old man pine?"
+
+"Who knows? He lives quietly and peaceably, and works well."
+
+Then the guest said:
+
+"May I speak with him? I should like to ask him about his life."
+
+"Of course you may," said the master, and he called out of the tent:
+"Babay!" (This means "grandfather" in the Bashkia language.) "Come in
+and drink some kumys, and bring your wife with you!"
+
+Ilyas came in with his wife. He exchanged greetings with the guests and
+with the master, said a prayer, and knelt down at the door; but his wife
+went back of a curtain and sat down with the mistress.
+
+A bowl of kumys was handed to Ilyas. Ilyas saluted the guests and the
+master, made a bow, drank a little, and put down the bowl.
+
+"Grandfather," the guest said to him, "I suppose it makes you feel bad
+to look at us and think of your former life, considering what fortune
+you had and how hard your life is now."
+
+But Ilyas smiled and said:
+
+"If I should tell you about my happiness and unhappiness, you would not
+believe me,--you had better ask my wife. She is a woman, and what is in
+her heart is on her tongue: she will tell you all the truth about this
+matter."
+
+And the guest spoke to her behind the curtain:
+
+"Well, granny, tell us how you judge about your former happiness and
+present sorrow."
+
+And Sham-shemagi spoke from behind the curtain:
+
+"I judge like this: My husband and I lived for fifty years trying to
+find happiness, and we did not find it; but now it is the second year
+that we have nothing left and that we live as labourers, and we have
+found that happiness and need no other."
+
+The guests were surprised and the master marvelled, and he even got up
+to throw aside the curtain and to look at the old woman. But the old
+woman was standing with folded hands, smiling and looking at her
+husband, and the old man was smiling, too. The old woman said once
+more:
+
+"I am telling you the truth, without any jest: for half a century we
+tried to find happiness, and so long as we were rich, we did not find
+it; now nothing is left, and we are working out,--and we have come to
+have such happiness that we wish for no other.".
+
+"Wherein does your happiness lie?"
+
+"In this: when we were rich, my husband and I did not have an hour's
+rest: we had no time to talk together, to think of our souls, or to
+pray. We had so many cares! Now guests called on us,--and there were the
+cares about what to treat them to and what presents to make so that they
+should not misjudge us. When the guests left, we had to look after the
+labourers: they thought only of resting and having something good to
+eat, but we cared only about having our property attended to,--and so
+sinned. Now we were afraid that a wolf would kill a colt or a calf, and
+now that thieves might drive off a herd. When we lay down to sleep, we
+could not fall asleep, fearing lest the sheep might crush the lambs. We
+would get up in the night and walk around; no sooner would we be quieted
+than we would have a new care,--how to get fodder for the winter. And,
+worse than that, there was not much agreement between my husband and me.
+He would say that this had to be done so and so, and I would say
+differently, and so we began to quarrel, and sin. Thus we lived from one
+care to another, from one sin to another, and saw no happy life."
+
+"Well, and now?"
+
+"Now my husband and I get up, speak together peaceably, in agreement,
+for we have nothing to quarrel about, nothing to worry about,--all the
+care we have is to serve our master. We work according to our strength,
+and we work willingly so that our master shall have no loss, but profit.
+When we come back, dinner is ready, and supper, and kumys. If it is
+cold, there are dung chips to make a fire with and a fur coat to warm
+ourselves. For fifty years we looked for happiness, but only now have we
+found it."
+
+The guests laughed.
+
+And Ilyas said:
+
+"Do not laugh, brothers! This is not a joke, but a matter of human life.
+My wife and I were foolish and wept because we had lost our fortune, but
+now God has revealed the truth to us, and we reveal this to you, not for
+our amusement but for your good."
+
+And the mulla said:
+
+"That was a wise speech, and Ilyas has told the precise truth,--it says
+so, too, in Holy Writ."
+
+And the guests stopped laughing and fell to musing.
+
+
+
+
+A FAIRY-TALE
+
+     About Ivan the Fool and His Two Brothers, Semen the Warrior and
+     Taras the Paunch, and His Dumb Sister Malanya, and About the Old
+     Devil and the Three Young Devils
+
+     1885
+
+
+
+
+A FAIRY-TALE
+
+     About Ivan the Fool and His Two Brothers, Semen the Warrior and
+     Taras the Paunch, and His Dumb Sister Malanya, and About the Old
+     Devil and the Three Young Devils
+
+
+I.
+
+In a certain kingdom, in a certain realm, there lived a rich peasant. He
+had three sons, Semen the Warrior, Taras the Paunch, and Ivan the Fool,
+and a daughter Malanya, the dumb old maid.
+
+Semen the Warrior went to war, to serve the king; Taras the Paunch went
+to a merchant in the city, to sell wares; but Ivan the Fool and the girl
+remained at home, to work and hump their backs.
+
+Semen the Warrior earned a high rank and an estate, and married a lord's
+daughter. His salary was big, and his estate was large, but still he
+could not make both ends meet: whatever he collected, his wife scattered
+as though from a sleeve, and they had no money.
+
+Semen the Warrior came to his estate, to collect the revenue. His clerk
+said to him:
+
+"Where shall it come from? We have neither cattle, nor tools: neither
+horses, nor cows, nor plough, nor harrow. Everything has to be
+provided, then there will be an income."
+
+And Semen the Warrior went to his father:
+
+"You are rich, father," he said, "and you have not given me anything.
+Cut off a third and I will transfer it to my estate."
+
+And the old man said:
+
+"You have brought nothing to my house, why should I give you a third? It
+will be unfair to Ivan and to the girl."
+
+But Semen said:
+
+"But he is a fool, and she is a dumb old maid. What do they need?"
+
+And the old man said:
+
+"As Ivan says so it shall be!"
+
+But Ivan said:
+
+"All right, let him have it!"
+
+So Semen the Warrior took his third from the house, transferred it to
+his estate, and again went away to serve the king.
+
+Taras the Paunch, too, earned much money,--and married a merchant woman.
+Still he did not have enough, and he came to his father, and said:
+
+"Give me my part!"
+
+The old man did not want to give Taras his part:
+
+"You," he said, "have brought nothing to the house, and everything in
+the house has been earned by Ivan. I cannot be unfair to him and to the
+girl."
+
+But Taras said:
+
+"What does he want it for? He is a fool. He cannot marry, for no one
+will have him; and the dumb girl does not need anything, either. Give
+me," he said, "half of the grain, Ivan! I will not take your tools, and
+of your animals I want only the gray stallion,--you cannot plough with
+him."
+
+Ivan laughed.
+
+"All right," he said, "I will earn it again."
+
+So Taras, too, received his part. Taras took the grain to town, and
+drove off the gray stallion, and Ivan was left with one old mare, and he
+went on farming and supporting his father and his mother.
+
+
+II.
+
+The old devil was vexed because the brothers had not quarrelled in
+dividing up, but had parted in love. And so he called up three young
+devils.
+
+"You see," he said, "there are three brothers, Semen the Warrior, Taras
+the Paunch, and Ivan the Fool. They ought to be quarrelling, but,
+instead, they live peacefully; they exchange with each other bread and
+salt. The fool has spoiled all my business. Go all three of you.--get
+hold of them, and mix them up in such a way that they shall tear out one
+another's eyes. Can you do it?"
+
+"We can," they said.
+
+"How are you going to do it?"
+
+"We will do it like this," they said: "First we will ruin them, so that
+they will have nothing to eat; then we will throw them all in a heap, so
+that they will quarrel together."
+
+"Very well," he said. "I see that you know your business. Go, and do not
+return to me before you have muddled all three, or else I will flay all
+three of you."
+
+The three devils all went to a swamp, and considered how to take hold of
+the matter: they quarrelled and quarrelled, for they wanted each of them
+to get the easiest job, and finally they decided to cast lots for each
+man. If one of them got through first, he was to come and help the
+others. The devils cast lots, and set a time when they were to meet
+again in the swamp, in order to find out who was through, and who needed
+help.
+
+When the time came, the devils gathered in the swamp. They began to
+talk about their affairs. The first devil, Semen the Warrior's, began to
+speak.
+
+"My affair," he said, "is progressing. To-morrow my Semen will go to his
+father."
+
+His comrades asked him how he did it.
+
+"In the first place," he said, "I brought such bravery over Semen that
+he promised his king to conquer the whole world, and the king made him a
+commander and sent him out to fight the King of India. They came
+together for a fight. But that very night I wet all his powder, and I
+went over to the King of India and made an endless number of soldiers
+for him out of straw. When Semen's soldiers saw the straw soldiers
+walking upon them on all sides, they lost their courage. Semen commanded
+them to fire their cannon and their guns, but they could not fire them.
+Semen's soldiers were frightened and ran away like sheep. And the King
+of India vanquished them. Semen is disgraced,--they have taken his
+estate from him, and to-morrow he is to be beheaded. I have only one
+day's work left to do: to let him out of the prison, so that he can run
+home. To-morrow I shall be through with him, so tell me which of you I
+am to aid!"
+
+Then the other devil, Taras's, began to speak:
+
+"I do not need any help," he said, "for my affair is also progressing
+nicely,--Taras will not live another week. In the first place, I have
+raised a belly on him, and made him envious. He is so envious of other
+people's property that, no matter what he sees, he wants to buy it. He
+has bought up an endless lot of things and spent all his money on them
+and is still buying. He now buys on other people's money. He has quite a
+lot on his shoulders, and is so entangled that he will never free
+himself. In a week the time will come for him to pay, and I will change
+all his wares into manure,--and he will not be able to pay his debts,
+and will go to his father's."
+
+They began to ask the third devil, Ivan's.
+
+"How is your business?"
+
+"I must say, my business is not progressing at all. The first thing I
+did was to spit into his kvas jug, so as to give him a belly-ache, and I
+went to his field and made the soil so hard that he should not be able
+to overcome it. I thought that he would never plough it up, but he, the
+fool, came with his plough and began to tear up the soil. His belly-ache
+made him groan, but he stuck to his ploughing. I broke one plough of
+his, but he went home, fixed another plough, wrapped new leg-rags on
+him, and started once more to plough. I crept under the earth, and tried
+to hold the ploughshare, but I could not do it,--he pressed so hard on
+the plough; the ploughshares are sharp, and he has cut up my hands. He
+has ploughed up nearly the whole of it,--only a small strip is left.
+Come and help me, brothers, or else, if we do not overpower him, all our
+labours will be lost. If the fool is left and continues to farm, they
+will have no want, for he will feed them all."
+
+Semen's devil promised to come on the morrow to help him, and thereupon
+the devils departed.
+
+
+III.
+
+Ivan ploughed up all the fallow field, and only one strip was left. His
+belly ached, and yet he had to plough. He straightened out the lines,
+turned over the plough, and went to the field. He had just made one
+furrow, and was coming back, when something pulled at the plough as
+though it had caught in a root. It was the devil that had twined his
+legs about the plough-head and was holding it fast.
+
+"What in the world is that?" thought Ivan. "There were no roots here
+before, but now there are."
+
+Ivan stuck his hand down in the furrow, and felt something soft. He
+grabbed it and pulled it out. It was as black as a root, but something
+was moving on it. He took a glance at it, and, behold, it was a live
+devil.
+
+"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing!" And Ivan swung him and was
+about to strike him against the plough-handle; but the devil began to
+scream.
+
+"Do not beat me," he said, "and I will do for you anything you wish."
+
+"What will you do for me?"
+
+"Say what you want!"
+
+Ivan scratched himself.
+
+"My belly aches,--can you cure me?"
+
+"I can," he said.
+
+"Very well, cure me!"
+
+The devil bent down to the furrow, scratched awhile in it, pulled out a
+few roots,--three of them in a bunch,--and gave them to Ivan.
+
+"Here," he said, "is a root, which, if you swallow, will make your ache
+go away at once."
+
+Ivan took the roots, tore them up, and swallowed one. His belly-ache
+stopped at once.
+
+Then the devil began to beg again:
+
+"Let me go, now, and I will slip through the earth, and will not come up
+again."
+
+"All right," he said, "God be with you!"
+
+And the moment Ivan mentioned God's name, the devil bolted through the
+earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was left. Ivan
+put the remaining two roots in his cap, and started to finish his work.
+He ploughed up the strip, turned over the plough, and went home. He
+unhitched the horse, came to the house, and there found his eldest
+brother, Semen the Warrior, with his wife, eating supper. His estate had
+been taken from him, and he had with difficulty escaped from prison and
+come to his father's to live.
+
+Semen saw Ivan, and, "I have come to live with you," he said. "Feed me
+and my wife until I find a new place!"
+
+"All right," he said, "stay here!"
+
+Ivan wanted to sit down on a bench, but the lady did not like the smell
+of Ivan. So she said to her husband:
+
+"I cannot eat supper with a stinking peasant."
+
+"All right," he said, "I have to go anyway to pasture the mare for the
+night."
+
+Ivan took some bread and his caftan, and went out to herd his mare.
+
+
+IV.
+
+That night Semen's devil got through with his work and by agreement went
+to find Ivan's devil, to help to make an end of the fool. He came to the
+field and looked for him everywhere, but found only the hole.
+
+"Something has evidently gone wrong with my comrade," he thought,--"I
+must take his place. The ploughing is done,--I shall have to catch him
+in the mowing time."
+
+The devil went to the meadows and sent a flood on the mowing so that it
+was all covered with mud. Ivan returned in the morning from the night
+watch, whetted his scythe, and went out to mow the meadows. He came, and
+began to mow: he swung the scythe once, and a second time, and it grew
+dull and would not cut,--it was necessary to grind it. Ivan worked hard
+and in vain.
+
+"No," he said, "I will go home, and will bring the grindstone with me,
+and a round loaf. If I have to stay here for a week, I will not give up
+until I mow it all."
+
+When the devil heard it he thought:
+
+"This fool is stiff-necked,--I cannot get at him. I must try something
+else."
+
+Ivan came back, ground his scythe, and began to mow. The devil crept
+into the grass and began to catch the scythe by the snath-end and to
+stick the point into the ground. It went hard with Ivan, but he finished
+the mowing, and there was left only one scrubby place in the swamp. The
+devil crawled into the swamp and thought:
+
+"If I get both my paws cut, I will not let him mow it."
+
+Ivan went into the swamp; the grass was not dense, but he found it hard
+to move the scythe. Ivan grew angry and began to swing the scythe with
+all his might. The devil gave in; he had hardly time to get away,--he
+saw that matters were in bad shape, so he hid in a bush. Ivan swung the
+scythe with all his might and struck the bush, and cut off half of the
+devil's tail. Ivan finished the mowing, told the girl to rake it up, and
+himself went to cut the rye.
+
+He went out with a round knife, but the bobtailed devil had been there
+before him and had so mixed up the rye that he could not cut it with the
+round knife. Ivan went back, took the sickle, and began to cut it; he
+cut all the rye.
+
+"Now I must go to the oats," he said.
+
+The bobtailed devil heard it, and thought:
+
+"I could not cope with him on the rye, but I will get the better of him
+in the oats,--just let the morning come."
+
+The devil ran in the morning to the oats-field, but the oats were all
+cut down. Ivan had cut them in the night, to keep them from dropping the
+seed.
+
+The devil grew angry:
+
+"The fool has cut me all up, and has worn me out. I have not seen such
+trouble even in war-time. The accursed one does not sleep,--I cannot
+keep up with him. I will go now to the ricks, and will rot them all."
+
+And the devil went to the rye-rick, climbed between the sheaves, and
+began to rot them: he warmed them up, and himself grew warm and fell
+asleep.
+
+Ivan hitched his mare, and went with the girl to haul away the ricks. He
+drove up to one and began to throw the sheaves into the cart. He had
+just put two sheaves in when he stuck his fork straight into the devil's
+back; he raised it, and, behold, on the prongs was a live devil, and a
+bobtailed one at that, and he was writhing and twisting, and trying to
+get off.
+
+"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing! Are you here again?"
+
+"I am a different devil," he said. "My brother was here before. I was
+with your brother Semen."
+
+"I do not care who you are," he replied, "you will catch it, too."
+
+He wanted to strike him against the ground, but the devil began to beg
+him:
+
+"Let me go, and I will not do it again, and I will do for you anything
+you please."
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"I can make soldiers for you from anything."
+
+"What good are they?"
+
+"You can turn them to any use you please: they will do anything."
+
+"Can they play music?"
+
+"They can."
+
+"All right, make them for me!"
+
+And the devil said:
+
+"Take a sheaf of rye, strike the lower end against the ground, and say:
+'By my master's command not a sheaf shall you stand, but as many straws
+as there are so many soldiers there be.'"
+
+Ivan took the sheaf, shook it against the ground, and spoke as the devil
+told him to. And the sheaf fell to pieces, and the straws were changed
+into soldiers, and in front a drummer was drumming, and a trumpeter
+blowing the trumpet. Ivan laughed.
+
+"I declare," he said, "it is clever. This is nice to amuse the girls
+with."
+
+"Let me go now," said the devil.
+
+"No," he said, "I will do that with threshed straw, and I will not let
+full ears waste for nothing. I will thresh them first."
+
+So the devil said:
+
+"Say, 'As many soldiers, so many straws there be! With my master's
+command again a sheaf it shall stand.'"
+
+Ivan said this, and the sheaf was as before. And the devil begged him
+again:
+
+"Let me go now!"
+
+"All right!" Ivan caught him on the cart-hurdle, held him down with his
+hand, and pulled him off the fork. "God be with you!" he said.
+
+The moment he said, "God be with you," the devil bolted through the
+earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was left.
+
+Ivan went home, and there he found his second brother. Taras and his
+wife were sitting and eating supper. Taras the Paunch had not calculated
+right, and so he ran away from his debts and came to his father's. When
+he saw Ivan, he said:
+
+"Ivan, feed me and my wife until I go back to trading!"
+
+"All right," he said, "stay with us!"
+
+Ivan took off his caftan, and seated himself at the table.
+
+But the merchant's wife said:
+
+"I cannot eat with a fool. He stinks of sweat."
+
+So Taras the Paunch said:
+
+"Ivan, you do not smell right, so go and eat in the vestibule!"
+
+"All right," he said, and, taking bread, he went out. "It is just
+right," he said, "for it is time for me to go and pasture the mare for
+the night."
+
+
+V.
+
+That night Taras's devil got through with his job, and he went by
+agreement to help out his comrades,--to get the best of Ivan the Fool.
+He came to the field and tried to find his comrades, but all he saw was
+a hole in the ground; he went to the meadows, and found a tail in the
+swamp, and in the rye stubbles he found another hole.
+
+"Well," he thought, "evidently some misfortune has befallen my comrades;
+I must take their place, and go for the fool."
+
+The devil went forth to find Ivan. But Ivan was through with the field,
+and was chopping wood in the forest.
+
+The brothers were not comfortable living together, and they had ordered
+the fool to cut timber with which to build them new huts.
+
+The devil ran to the woods, climbed into the branches, and did not let
+Ivan fell the trees. Ivan chopped the tree in the right way, so that it
+might fall in a clear place; he tried to make it fall, but it came down
+the wrong way, and fell where it had no business to fall, and got caught
+in the branches. Ivan made himself a lever with his axe, began to turn
+the tree, and barely brought it down. Ivan went to chop a second tree,
+and the same thing happened. He worked and worked at it, and brought it
+down. He started on a third tree, and again the same happened.
+
+Ivan had expected to cut half a hundred trunks, and before he had
+chopped ten it was getting dark. Ivan was worn out. Vapours rose from
+him as though a mist were going through the woods, but he would not give
+up. He chopped down another tree, and his back began to ache so much
+that he could not work: he stuck the axe in the wood, and sat down to
+rest himself.
+
+The devil saw that Ivan had stopped, and was glad:
+
+"Well," he thought, "he has worn himself out, and he will stop soon. I
+will myself take a rest," and he sat astride a bough, and was happy.
+
+But Ivan got up, pulled out his axe, swung with all his might, and hit
+the tree so hard from the other side that it cracked and came down with
+a crash. The devil had not expected it and had no time to straighten out
+his legs. The bough broke and caught the devil's hand. Ivan began to
+trim, and behold, there was a live devil. Ivan was surprised.
+
+"I declare," he said, "you are a nasty thing! Are you here again?"
+
+"I am not the same," he said. "I was with your brother Taras."
+
+"I do not care who you are,--you will fare the same way." Ivan swung his
+axe, and wanted to crush him with the back of the axe.
+
+The devil began to beg him:
+
+"Do not kill me,--I will do anything you please for you."
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"I can make as much money for you as you wish."
+
+"All right, make it for me!"
+
+And the devil taught him how to do it.
+
+"Take some oak leaves from this tree," he said, "and rub them in your
+hands. The gold will fall to the ground."
+
+Ivan took some leaves and rubbed them,--and the gold began to fall.
+
+"This is nice to have," he said, "when you are out celebrating with the
+boys."
+
+"Let me go now!" said the devil.
+
+"All right!" Ivan took his lever, and freed the devil. "God be with
+you," he said, and the moment he mentioned God's name, the devil bolted
+through the earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was
+left.
+
+
+VI.
+
+The brothers built themselves houses, and began to live each by himself.
+But Ivan got through with his field work, and brewed some beer and
+invited his brothers to celebrate with him. They would not be Ivan's
+guests:
+
+"We have never seen a peasant celebration," they said.
+
+Ivan treated the peasants and their wives, and himself drank until he
+was drunk, and he went out into the street to the khorovod. He went up
+to the women, and told them to praise him.
+
+"I will give you what you have not seen in all your lives."
+
+The women laughed, and praised him. When they got through, they said:
+
+"Well, let us have it!"
+
+"I will bring it to you at once," he said.
+
+He picked up the seed-basket and ran into the woods. The women laughed:
+"What a fool he is!" And they forgot about him, when, behold, he was
+running toward them, and carrying the basket full of something.
+
+"Shall I let you have it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Ivan picked up a handful of gold and threw it to the women. O Lord, how
+they darted for the money! The peasants rushed out and began to tear it
+out of the hands of the women. They almost crushed an old woman to
+death. Ivan laughed.
+
+"Oh, you fools," he said, "why did you crush that old woman? Be more
+gentle, and I will give you some more." He began to scatter more gold.
+People ran up, and Ivan scattered the whole basketful. They began to ask
+for more. But Ivan said:
+
+"That is all. I will give you more some other time. Now let us have
+music! Sing songs!"
+
+The women started a song.
+
+"I do not like your kind of songs," he said.
+
+"What kind is better?"
+
+"I will show you in a minute," he said. He went to the threshing-floor,
+pulled out a sheaf, straightened it up, placed it on end, and struck it
+against the ground.
+
+"At your master's command not a sheaf shall you stand, each straw a
+soldier shall be."
+
+The sheaf flew to pieces, and out came the soldiers, and the drums began
+to beat and the trumpets to sound. Ivan told the soldiers to play songs,
+and went into the street with them. The people were surprised. The
+soldiers played songs, and then Ivan took them back to the
+threshing-floor, and told nobody to follow him. He changed the soldiers
+back into a sheaf, and threw it on the loft. He went home and went to
+sleep behind the partition.
+
+
+VII.
+
+On the next morning his eldest brother, Semen the Warrior, heard of it,
+and he went to see Ivan.
+
+"Reveal to me," he said, "where did you find those soldiers, and where
+did you take them to?"
+
+"What is that to you?" he said.
+
+"What a question! With soldiers anything may be done. You can get a
+kingdom for yourself."
+
+Ivan was surprised.
+
+"Indeed? Why did you not tell me so long ago?" he said. "I will make as
+many for you as you please. Luckily the girl and I have threshed a lot
+of straw."
+
+Ivan took his brother to the threshing-floor, and said:
+
+"Look here! I will make them for you, but you take them away, or else,
+if we have to feed them, they will ruin the village in one day."
+
+Semen the Warrior promised that he would take the soldiers away, and
+Ivan began to make them. He struck a sheaf against the floor, there was
+a company; he struck another, there was a second, and he made such a lot
+of them that they took up the whole field.
+
+"Well, will that do?"
+
+Semen was happy, and said:
+
+"It will do. Thank you, Ivan."
+
+"All right," he said. "If you need more, come to me, and I will make you
+more. There is plenty of straw to-day."
+
+Semen the Warrior at once attended to the army, collected it as was
+proper, and went forth to fight.
+
+No sooner had Semen the Warrior left, than Taras the Paunch came. He,
+too, had heard of the evening's affair, and he began to beg his brother:
+
+"Reveal to me, where do you get the gold money from? If I had such free
+money, I would with it gather in all the money of the whole world."
+
+Ivan was surprised.
+
+"Indeed? You ought to have told me so long ago," he said. "I will rub up
+for you as much as you want."
+
+His brother was glad:
+
+"Give me at least three seed-baskets full!"
+
+"All right," he said, "let us go to the woods! But hitch up the horse,
+or you will not be able to carry it away."
+
+They went to the woods, and Ivan began to rub the oak leaves. He rubbed
+up a large heap.
+
+"Will that do, eh?"
+
+Taras was happy.
+
+"It will do for awhile," he said. "Thank you, Ivan."
+
+"You are welcome. If you need more, come to me, and I will rub up some
+more,--there are plenty of leaves left."
+
+Taras the Paunch gathered a whole wagon-load of money, and went away to
+trade with it.
+
+Both brothers left the home. And Semen went out to fight, and Taras to
+trade. And Semen the Warrior conquered a whole kingdom for himself,
+while Taras the Paunch made a big heap of money by trading.
+
+The brothers met, and they revealed to one another where Semen got the
+soldiers, and Taras the money.
+
+Semen the Warrior said to his brother:
+
+"I have conquered a kingdom for myself, and I lead a good life, only I
+have not enough money to feed my soldiers with."
+
+And Taras the Paunch said:
+
+"And I have earned a whole mound of money, but here is the trouble: I
+have nobody to guard the money."
+
+So Semen the Warrior said:
+
+"Let us go to our brother! I will tell him to make me more soldiers, and
+I will give them to you to guard your money; and you tell him to rub me
+more money with which to feed the soldiers."
+
+And they went to Ivan. When they came to him, Semen said:
+
+"I have not enough soldiers, brother. Make me some more soldiers,--if
+you have to work over two stacks."
+
+Ivan shook his head.
+
+"I will not make you any soldiers, for nothing in the world."
+
+"But you promised you would."
+
+"So I did, but I will not make them for you."
+
+"Why, you fool, won't you make them?"
+
+"Because your soldiers have killed a man. The other day I was ploughing
+in the field, when I saw a woman driving with a coffin in the road, and
+weeping all the time. I asked her who had died, and she said, 'Semen's
+soldiers have killed my husband in a war.' I thought that the soldiers
+would make music, and there they have killed a man. I will give you no
+more."
+
+And he stuck to it, and made no soldiers for him.
+
+Then Taras the Paunch began to beg Ivan to make him more gold money. But
+Ivan shook his head.
+
+"I will not rub any, for nothing in the world."
+
+"But you promised you would."
+
+"So I did, but I will not do it."
+
+"Why, you fool, will you not do it?"
+
+"Because your gold coins have taken away Mikhaylovna's cow."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"They just did. Mikhaylovna had a cow, whose milk the children sipped,
+but the other day the children came to me to ask for some milk. I said
+to them: 'Where is your cow?' And they answered: 'Taras the Paunch's
+clerk came, and he gave mother three gold pieces, and she gave him the
+cow, and now we have no milk to sip.' I thought you wanted to play with
+the gold pieces, and you take the cow away from the children. I will not
+give you any more."
+
+And the fool stuck to it, and did not give him any. So the brothers went
+away.
+
+They went away, and they wondered how they might mend matters. Then
+Semen said:
+
+"This is what we shall do. You give me money to feed the soldiers with,
+and I will give you half my kingdom with the soldiers to guard your
+money." Taras agreed to it. The brothers divided up, and both became
+kings, and rich men.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+But Ivan remained at home, supporting father and mother, and working the
+field with the dumb girl.
+
+One day Ivan's watch-dog grew sick: he had the mange and was dying. Ivan
+was sorry for him, and he took some bread from the dumb girl, put it in
+his hat, and took it out and threw it to the dog. But the cap was torn,
+and with the bread one of the roots fell out. The old dog swallowed it
+with the bread. And no sooner had he swallowed it than he jumped up,
+began to play and to bark, and wagged his tail,--he was well again.
+
+When his father and his mother saw that, they were surprised.
+
+"With what did you cure the dog?"
+
+And Ivan said to them:
+
+"I had two roots with which to cure all diseases, and he swallowed one."
+
+It happened that at that time the king's daughter grew ill, and the king
+proclaimed in all the towns and villages that he would reward him who
+should cure her, and that if it should be an unmarried man, he should
+have his daughter for a wife. The same was also proclaimed in Ivan's
+village.
+
+Father and mother called Ivan, and said to him:
+
+"Have you heard what the king has proclaimed? You said that you had a
+root, so go and cure the king's daughter. You will get a fortune for the
+rest of your life."
+
+"All right," he said. And he got ready to go. He was dressed up, and
+went out on the porch, and saw a beggar woman with a twisted arm.
+
+"I have heard that you can cure," she said. "Cure my arm, for I cannot
+dress myself."
+
+And Ivan said:
+
+"All right!" He took the root, gave it to the beggar woman, and told her
+to swallow it.
+
+She swallowed it, and was cured at once and could wave her arm. Ivan's
+parents came out to see him off on his way to the king, and when they
+heard that he had given away the last root and had nothing left with
+which to cure the king's daughter, they began to upbraid him.
+
+"You have taken pity on the beggar woman, but you have no pity on the
+king's daughter."
+
+But he hitched his horse, threw a little straw into the hamper, and was
+getting ready to drive away.
+
+"Where are you going, fool?"
+
+"To cure the king's daughter."
+
+"But you have nothing to cure her with!"
+
+"All right," he said, and drove away.
+
+He came to the king's palace, and the moment he stepped on the porch,
+the king's daughter was cured.
+
+The king rejoiced, and sent for Ivan. He had him all dressed up:
+
+"Be my son-in-law!" he said.
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+And Ivan married the king's daughter. The king died soon after, and Ivan
+became king. Thus all three brothers were kings.
+
+
+IX.
+
+The three brothers were reigning.
+
+The elder brother, Semen the Warrior, lived well. With his straw
+soldiers he got him real soldiers. He commanded his people to furnish a
+soldier to each ten homes, and every such soldier had to be tall of
+stature, and white of body, and clean of face. And he gathered a great
+many such soldiers and taught them all what to do. And if any one acted
+contrary to his will, he at once sent his soldiers against that person,
+and did as he pleased. And all began to be afraid of him.
+
+He had an easy life. Whatever he wished for, or his eyes fell upon, was
+his. He would send out his soldiers, and they would take away and bring
+to him whatever he needed.
+
+Taras the Paunch, too, lived well. The money which he had received from
+Ivan he had not spent, but he had increased it greatly. He, too, had
+good order in his kingdom. The money he kept in coffers, and exacted
+more money from the people. He exacted money from each soul for walking
+past, and driving past, and for bast shoes, and leg-rags, and
+shoe-laces. And no matter what he wished, he had; for money they brought
+him everything, and they went to work for him, because everybody needs
+money.
+
+Nor did Ivan the Fool live badly. As soon as he had buried his
+father-in-law, he took off his royal garments and gave them to his wife
+to put away in the coffer. He put on his old hempen shirt and trousers,
+and his bast shoes, and began to work.
+
+"I do not feel well," he said. "My belly is growing larger, and I cannot
+eat, nor sleep."
+
+He brought his parents and the dumb girl, and began to work again.
+
+People said to him:
+
+"But you are a king!"
+
+"All right," he said, "but a king, too, has to eat."
+
+The minister came to him, and said:
+
+"We have no money with which to pay salaries."
+
+"All right," he said, "if you have none, pay no salaries!"
+
+"But they will stop serving you."
+
+"All right," he said, "Let them stop serving! They will have more time
+for work. Let them haul manure. They have not hauled any for a long
+time."
+
+People came to Ivan to have a case tried. One said:
+
+"He stole money from me."
+
+But Ivan replied:
+
+"All right, evidently he needed it."
+
+All saw that Ivan was a fool. His wife said to him:
+
+"They say about you that you are a fool."
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+Ivan's wife, too, was a fool, and she thought and thought.
+
+"Why should I go against my husband?" she said. "The thread belongs
+where the needle is."
+
+She took off her regal garments, put them in a coffer, and went to the
+dumb girl to learn to work. She learned, and began to help her husband.
+
+All the wise men left Ivan's kingdom, and only the fools were left.
+Nobody had any money. They lived and worked and fed themselves and all
+good people.
+
+
+X.
+
+The old devil waited and waited for some news from the young devils
+about how they had destroyed the three brothers, but none came. He went
+to find out for himself: he looked everywhere for the three, but found
+only three holes.
+
+"Well," he thought, "evidently they did not get the best of them. I
+shall have to try it myself."
+
+He went to find the brothers, but they were no longer in their old
+places. He found them in different kingdoms. All three were living and
+reigning there. That vexed the old devil.
+
+"I shall have to do the work myself," he said.
+
+First of all he went to King Semen. He did not go to him in his own
+form, but in the shape of a general. He went to him, and said:
+
+"I have heard that you, King Semen, are a great warrior. I have had good
+instruction in this business, and I want to serve you."
+
+King Semen began to ask him questions, and he saw that he was a clever
+man, and so received him into his service.
+
+The old general began to teach King Semen how to gather a great army.
+
+"In the first place," he said, "you must collect more soldiers, for too
+many people in your kingdom are walking about idly. You must shave the
+heads of all the young men without exception, and then you will have an
+army which will be five times as large as it is now. In the second
+place, you must introduce new guns and cannon. I will get you the kind
+of guns that fire one hundred bullets at once, as though pouring out
+pease. And I will get you cannon that burn with their fire: whether a
+man, or a horse, or a wall,--they burn everything."
+
+King Semen listened to his new general, and ordered all the young men
+without exception to be drafted as soldiers, and started new factories.
+He had a lot of new guns and cannon made, and at once started a war
+against a neighbouring king. The moment the enemy's army came out
+against him, he ordered his soldiers to fire at them with bullets and to
+burn them with the cannon fire. He at once maimed and burnt one-half the
+army. The neighbouring king became frightened, and he surrendered and
+gave up his kingdom to him. King Semen was happy.
+
+"Now I will vanquish the King of India," he said.
+
+But the King of India heard of King Semen, and adopted all his
+inventions and added a few of his own. The King of India drafted not
+only all the young men, but he also made all the unmarried women serve
+as soldiers, and so he had even more soldiers than King Semen. He
+adopted all of King Semen's guns and cannon, and introduced flying in
+the air and throwing explosive bombs from above.
+
+King Semen went out to make war on the King of India. He thought that he
+would conquer him as he had conquered before; but the scythe was cutting
+too fine,--the King of India did not give Semen's army a chance to fire
+a single shot, for he sent his women into the air, to throw explosive
+bombs on Semen's army. The women began to pour the bombs on Semen's
+army, like borax on cockroaches, and the whole army ran away, and King
+Semen was left alone. The King of India took possession of the whole of
+Semen's kingdom, and Semen the Warrior ran whither his eyes took him.
+
+The old devil had done up this brother, and he made for King Taras. He
+took the shape of a merchant and settled in Taras's kingdom. He started
+an establishment, and began to issue money. The merchant paid high
+prices for everything, and the whole nation rushed to the merchant to
+get his money. And the people had so much money that they paid all their
+back taxes and paid on time all the taxes as they fell due. King Taras
+was happy.
+
+"Thanks to the merchant," he thought, "I shall now have more money than
+ever, and my life will improve."
+
+And King Taras fell on new plans. He began to build himself a new
+palace: he commanded the people to haul lumber and stone, and to come to
+work, and offered high prices for everything. King Taras thought that as
+before the people would rush to work for him. But, behold, all the
+lumber and stone was being hauled to the merchant, and only the
+labourers were rushing to the king.
+
+King Taras offered higher prices, but the merchant went higher still.
+King Taras had much money, but the merchant had more still, and the
+merchant could offer better pay than the king. The royal palace came to
+a standstill,--it could not be built.
+
+King Taras wanted to get a garden laid out. When the fall came, King
+Taras proclaimed that he wanted people to come and set out trees for
+him; but nobody came, as they were all digging a pond for the merchant.
+
+Winter came. King Taras wanted to buy sable furs for a new coat, and he
+sent out men to buy them. The messenger came back, and said that there
+were no sables,--that all the furs were in the merchant's possession, as
+he had offered a higher price, and that he had made himself a sable rug.
+
+King Taras wanted to have some stallions. He sent messengers to buy them
+for him; but they came back, and said that the merchant had all the good
+stallions, and they were hauling water and filling up the pond.
+
+All the business of the king came to a stop. Men would not do anything
+for him, but worked only for the merchant; all he received was the
+merchant's money, for taxes.
+
+And the king collected such a mass of money that he did not know what to
+do with it, and his life grew bad. The king stopped planning things, and
+only thought of how he might pass his life peacefully, but he could not
+do so. He was oppressed in everything. His cooks, and his coachmen, and
+his servants began to leave him for the merchant. And he began to suffer
+for lack of food. He would send the women to market to buy provisions,
+but there was nothing there, for the merchant bought up everything, and
+all he received was money for taxes.
+
+King Taras grew angry and sent the merchant abroad; but the merchant
+settled at the border and continued to do his work: as before, people
+dragged for the merchant's money all the things from the king to him.
+The king was in a bad plight: he did not eat for days at a time, and the
+rumour was spread that the merchant was boasting that he was going to
+buy the king himself with his money. King Taras lost his courage, and
+did not know what to do.
+
+Semen the Warrior came to him, and said:
+
+"Support me, for the King of India has vanquished me."
+
+But Taras himself was pinched.
+
+"I have not eaten myself for two days," he said.
+
+
+XI.
+
+The old devil had done up the two brothers, and now went to Ivan. The
+old devil took the shape of a general, and he came to Ivan and tried to
+persuade him to provide himself with an army.
+
+"It will not do for a king to live without an army," he said. "Just
+command me, and I will gather soldiers from among your people, and will
+get you up an army."
+
+Ivan took his advice.
+
+"All right," he said, "get me up an army: teach them to play good
+music,--I like that."
+
+The old devil started to go over the kingdom, to gather volunteers. He
+said that they should go and get their crowns shaved, for which they
+would get a bottle of vodka each, and a red cap.
+
+The fools laughed at him.
+
+"We have all the liquor we want," they said, "for we distil it
+ourselves, and as for caps, our women will make us any we want, even
+motley ones, with tassels at that."
+
+Not one of them would go. The old devil went to Ivan and said:
+
+"Your fools will not go of their own will; you will have to force them."
+
+"All right," he said, "drive them by force!"
+
+And so the old devil announced that all the fools were to inscribe
+themselves as soldiers, and that Ivan would execute those who would not
+go.
+
+The fools came to the general and said:
+
+"You say that the king will have us killed if we do not become soldiers,
+but you do not tell us what we shall have to do as soldiers. They say
+that soldiers, too, are killed."
+
+"Yes, that cannot be helped."
+
+When the fools heard that, they became stubborn.
+
+"We will not go," they said. "If so, let us be killed at home! Death
+cannot be escaped anyway."
+
+"Fools that you are!" said the old devil. "A soldier may be killed or
+not, but if you do not go, King Ivan will certainly have you killed."
+
+The fools considered the matter, and went to see Ivan the Fool.
+
+"Your general has come," they said, "and tells us all to turn soldiers.
+'If you become soldiers,' he says, 'you may be killed, or not, but if
+you do not become soldiers King Ivan will certainly put you to death.'
+Is that true?"
+
+Ivan began to laugh.
+
+"How can I, one man, have you all put to death? If I were not a fool, I
+should explain that to you, but as it is, I do not understand it
+myself."
+
+"If so," they said, "we shall not become soldiers."
+
+"All right," he said, "don't."
+
+The fools went to the general and refused to become soldiers.
+
+The old devil saw that his business did not work, so he went to the King
+of Cockroachland, and got into his favour.
+
+"Let us go," he said, "and wage war on King Ivan, and vanquish him. He
+has no money, but he has plenty of grain, and cattle, and all kinds of
+things."
+
+The King of Cockroachland went out to make war: he had gathered a large
+army, and collected guns and cannon, and left his borders, to enter
+Ivan's kingdom.
+
+People came to Ivan and said:
+
+"The King of Cockroachland is coming against us."
+
+"All right," he said, "let him come."
+
+The King of Cockroachland crossed the border, and sent the
+advance-guard to find Ivan's army. They looked and looked for it, and
+could not find it. They thought that they might wait for it to show up.
+But they heard nothing about it,--there was no army to fight.
+
+The King of Cockroachland sent out his men to take possession of the
+villages. The soldiers came to one village,--and there the fools jumped
+out to look at the soldiers and to marvel at them. The soldiers began to
+take away the grain and the cattle: the fools gave it all up, and did
+not resist. The soldiers went to the next village, and the same
+happened. The soldiers walked for a day or two, and everywhere the same
+happened. They gave up all they had, and nobody resisted, and they
+invited the soldiers to come and live with them:
+
+"If you, dear people," they said, "have not enough to live on in your
+country, come and settle among us."
+
+The soldiers walked and walked, but no army was to be found; everywhere
+people were living, and feeding themselves and other people, and they
+did not resist, but invited them to come and live with them.
+
+The soldiers felt bad, and they came back to the King of Cockroachland.
+
+"We cannot fight here," they said, "so take us to some other place: war
+would be a good thing, but this is as though we were to cut soup. We
+cannot fight here."
+
+The King of Cockroachland grew wroth, and commanded his soldiers to
+march through the whole kingdom, and destroy villages and houses, and
+burn the grain and kill the cattle.
+
+"If you do not obey my command," he said, "I shall have you all
+executed."
+
+The soldiers became frightened, and began to carry out the king's
+command. They started to burn the houses and the grain, and to kill the
+cattle. And still the fools did not resist, but only wept. The old men
+wept, and the old women wept, and the children wept.
+
+"Why do you offend us? Why do you destroy the property? If you need it,
+take it along!"
+
+The soldiers felt ashamed. They did not go any farther, and the whole
+army ran away.
+
+
+XII.
+
+The old devil went away,--he could not get at Ivan by means of the
+soldiers. The old devil changed into a clean-looking gentleman, and went
+to live in Ivan's kingdom: he wished to get at him by means of money, as
+he had done with Taras the Paunch.
+
+"I want to do you good," he said, "and to teach you what is good and
+proper. I will build a house in your country, and will start an
+establishment."
+
+"All right," he said, "stay here!"
+
+The clean-looking gentleman stayed overnight, and the following morning
+he took a large bag of gold to the market-square, and a sheet of paper,
+and said:
+
+"You are all of you living like pigs. I will teach you how to live.
+Build me a house according to this plan! You work, and I will show you
+how, and will pay gold money to you."
+
+And he showed them the gold. The fools were astounded: they had no such
+a thing as money, and only exchanged things among themselves, or paid
+with work. They marvelled at the gold and said:
+
+"They are nice things."
+
+And for these gold things they began to give him what they had and to
+work for him. The old devil rejoiced and thought:
+
+"My affair is proceeding favourably. I will now ruin Ivan completely, as
+I have ruined Taras, and will buy him up, guts and all."
+
+As soon as the fools had any gold, they gave it all away to their women
+for necklaces, and their girls wove it into their braids, and the
+children began to play in the streets with those pretty things. When all
+had enough of it, they refused to get any more. The clean-looking
+gentleman's palace was not half done, and the grain and the cattle were
+not yet attended to for the year. And the gentleman demanded that they
+should go and work for him, and haul his grain, and drive his cattle; he
+promised them much gold for everything and for all work.
+
+But no one came to work, and they brought nothing to him. Only now and
+then a boy or girl would run in to exchange an egg for a gold coin;
+otherwise nobody came, and he had nothing to eat. The clean-looking
+gentleman was starved, and he went to the village to buy something to
+eat: he went into one yard, and offered a gold coin for a chicken, but
+the woman would not take it.
+
+"I have too many of them as it is," she said.
+
+He went to a homeless woman, to buy a herring of her, and offered her a
+gold coin.
+
+"I do not want it, dear man," she said. "I have no children, and so
+there is nobody to play with it; I myself have three of these for show."
+
+He went to a peasant to buy bread of him, but the peasant, too, would
+not take the money.
+
+"I do not want it," he said. "If you want bread, for Christ's sake,
+wait, and I will have my wife cut you off a piece."
+
+The devil just spit out and ran away from the peasant. Not only would he
+not take anything for Christ's sake, but it was worse than cutting him
+even to hear that word.
+
+And so he did not get any bread. Everywhere it was the same; no matter
+where the devil went, they gave him nothing for money, but said:
+
+"Bring us something else, or come and work for it, or take it for
+Christ's sake!"
+
+But the devil had nothing but money. He did not like to work, and for
+Christ's sake he could not take anything. The old devil grew angry.
+
+"What else do you want, if I give you money? You can buy anything for
+money, or hire a labourer."
+
+The fools paid no attention to him.
+
+"No," they said, "we do not want it. We have no taxes and no wages to
+pay, so what do we want with the money?"
+
+The old devil went to bed without eating supper.
+
+This affair reached the ears of Ivan the Fool. They went to ask him:
+
+"What shall we do? A clean-looking gentleman has appeared among us: he
+is fond of eating and drinking, and does not like to work, and does not
+beg for Christ's sake, but only offers us gold pieces. So long as we did
+not have enough of them, we gave him everything, but now we do not give
+him any more. What shall we do with him? We are afraid that he will
+starve."
+
+Ivan listened to what they had to say.
+
+"All right," he said, "we shall have to feed him. Let him go from farm
+to farm as a shepherd!"
+
+The old devil could not help himself, and he began to go from farm to
+farm. The turn came to Ivan's farm. The old devil came to dinner, and
+the dumb girl was just fixing it. Those who were lazy used to deceive
+her. Without having worked they came to dinner earlier and ate up all
+the porridge. And so the dumb girl contrived to tell the
+good-for-nothing by their hands: if one had calluses, she seated him at
+the table, but if not, she gave him what was left of the dinner. The old
+devil climbed behind the table; but the dumb girl took hold of his
+hands, and there were no calluses; the hands were clean and smooth, and
+the nails long.
+
+The dumb girl bawled, and pulled the devil out from behind the table.
+
+Ivan's wife said to him:
+
+"Don't take it amiss, clean gentleman! My sister-in-law will not let a
+man without calluses sit down at the table. Wait awhile! Let the people
+eat first, and then you will get what is left."
+
+The old devil was insulted, because at the king's house they would feed
+him with the swine. He said to Ivan:
+
+"What a fool's law you have in your country to let all men work with
+their hands! You have invented that in your stupidity. Do men work with
+their hands only? How do you suppose clever people work?"
+
+But Ivan said:
+
+"How can we fools know? We labour mostly with our hands and with our
+backs."
+
+"That is so, because you are fools. I will teach you," he said, "how to
+work with your heads. You will see that with your heads you can work
+faster than with your hands."
+
+Ivan marvelled.
+
+"Indeed," he said, "we are called fools for good reason."
+
+And the old devil said:
+
+"But it is not easy to work with the head. You do not give me anything
+to eat because I have no calluses on my hands, and you do not know that
+it is a hundred times harder to work with the head. At times it just
+makes the head burst."
+
+Ivan fell to musing.
+
+"But why do you torture yourself so much, my dear? It is no small matter
+to have your head burst. You had better do some easy work,--with your
+hands and back."
+
+And the devil said:
+
+"The reason I torture myself is because I pity you fools. If I did not
+torture myself, you would remain fools to the end of your days. I have
+worked with my head, and now I will teach you, too."
+
+Ivan marvelled.
+
+"Teach us," he said, "for now and then the hands get tired, and it would
+be nice to use the head instead."
+
+The devil promised to teach him.
+
+And Ivan proclaimed throughout his kingdom that a clean-looking man had
+appeared who would teach people how to work with their heads, that they
+could work more with their heads than with their hands, and that they
+should come and learn.
+
+In Ivan's kingdom there was a high tower, and a straight staircase led
+up to it, and at the top there was a spy-room. Ivan took the gentleman
+there so that he might see better.
+
+The gentleman stood up on the tower and began to speak from it. The
+fools gathered around to look at him. The fools thought that he would
+show them in fact how to work with the head instead of the hands. But
+the old devil taught them only in words how to live without working.
+
+The fools did not understand a word. They looked and looked and went
+away, each to his work.
+
+The old devil stood on the tower a day, and a second day, and kept
+talking. He wanted to eat; but the fools did not have enough sense to
+send some bread up to the tower. They thought that if he could work
+better with his head than with his hands, he would somehow earn bread
+for himself with his head. The old devil stood another day in the
+tower-room, and kept talking all the time. And the people came up and
+looked, and looked and went away.
+
+Then Ivan asked:
+
+"Well, has the gentleman begun to work with his head?"
+
+"Not yet," people said, "he is still babbling."
+
+The old devil stood another day on the tower and began to weaken; he
+tottered and struck his head against a post. One of the fools saw that,
+and told Ivan's wife about it, and she ran to her husband in the field.
+
+"Come, let us go and see," she said. "The gentleman is beginning to work
+with his head."
+
+Ivan was surprised.
+
+"Indeed?" he said. He turned in the horse, and went to the tower. When
+he came up to it, the old devil was weakened from hunger and tottering
+from side to side and knocking his head against the posts. Just as Ivan
+came up, the devil stumbled and fell and rattled down the stairs, head
+foremost: he counted all the steps.
+
+"Well," said Ivan, "the clean-looking gentleman told the truth when he
+said that at times the head bursts. This is worse than calluses: such
+works will leave bumps on the head."
+
+The old devil came down the whole staircase and struck his head against
+the ground. Ivan wanted to go and see how much work he had done, but
+suddenly the earth gave way, and the old devil went through the earth,
+and nothing but a hole was left.
+
+Ivan scratched himself.
+
+"I declare," he said, "it is a nasty thing! It is again he. He must be
+the father of those others. What a big fellow he is!"
+
+Ivan is still living, and people are all the time rushing to his
+kingdom, and his brothers, too, came to him, and he is feeding them all.
+If any one comes and says: "Feed me!" he replies:
+
+"All right, stay here, we have plenty of everything."
+
+They have but one custom in his country, and that is, if one has
+calluses on his hands, he may sit down at the table, and if he has not,
+he gets the remnants.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+  On page 133, the original read: "The Tartars after him. He into the
+  river."
+
+  This has been changed to "The Tartars after him. He threw himself into
+  the river."
+
+
+
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