Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/193

Rh He had stolen twenty copper kopeks from the teacher's room, and they had caught him as he was hiding the money under the stairs.

Again we decorated him with the placard; again began the same ugly scene. I gave him a lecture, as all disciplinarians are accustomed to do. Now there happened to be present a grown-up boy, a chatterer, and he began to lecture him, repeating words such as he had unquestionably heard from his father, who was a farmer.

"He has stolen once, he has stolen twice," he said in a clear and deliberate voice. "It has become a habit; it won't do any good."

I began to grow vexed. I felt almost angry against the thief.

But as I looked into the culprit's face, which was more pale, wretched, passionate, and hard than ever, I seemed to see the face of a convict, and it suddenly appeared to me so wrong and odious, that I took off the stupid placard; I told him to go wherever he pleased, and I suddenly felt the conviction—felt it, not through my intellect, but in my whole being—that I had no right to punish this unhappy lad, and that it was not in my power to make of him what I and the dvornik's son might like to make of him. I felt a conviction that there are soul-secrets hidden from us on which life, but not regulations and punishments, may act.

And what nonsense! A boy had stolen a book,—by what a long, complicated process of feelings, thoughts, mistaken judgments he was induced to take a book that did not belong to him!—and hid it in his box, and I fasten to him a tag with the word "THIEF" on it, which means something entirely different.

Why?

To punish him by making him ashamed, some one will say.

Why? What is shame? And have I any proof that that shame will put an end to his inclination to steal?