Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/188

174 round the corner. The little ones laughed; but the big boys, though they did not attempt to separate the contestants, looked at them rather seriously, and their looks and silence did not fail to have an effect upon Kuiska. He was conscious that he was doing wrong, and a smile began gradually to creep over his face, and by degrees he let go of the mathematician's hair. The mathematician suddenly twitched himself away, and gave Kuiska such a push as to knock his head against the wall, and then, being entirely quit of him, he ran away.

Kuiska burst into tears, darted in pursuit of his enemy, and hit him with all his might and main on the shuba, but did not hurt him. The mathematician was going to pay him back, but at that instant various dissuasive voices were heard:—

"See, he strikes a smaller boy!" cried the lookers-on; "off with you, Kuiska!"

And so the affair ended, as if it had not been at all, except, I may add, for the vague consciousness that each had of having fought disagreeably, because both had been hurt. And here I cannot refrain from calling attention to the sentiment of justice which prevailed in the crowd. How many times these affairs are settled in such a way that you cannot make out the principles on which the settlement is made, and yet satisfaction is given to both sides! How arbitrary and unjust in comparison with this are all "educational efforts" in such circumstances!

"You are both to blame! down on your knees!" says the disciplinarian; and the disciplinarian is wrong, because one is to blame, and this one is triumphant there on his knees chewing the cud of his not wholly evaporated passion, and the innocent is doubly punished.

Or, "You are to blame for doing such and such or such and such a thing, and you shall be punished," says the disciplinarian; and the one punished hates his enemy more than ever, because he has arrayed on his side despotic power, the fairness of which is beyond his comprehension.