Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/210

196 not endure, are useful for a man. He does not need the three rubles, he will get them and have them as soon as he does need them, and he will learn to work without you just as he learned to breathe. He needs what you have been brought to by your life and that of ten generations of your ancestors, uncrushed by work. You have leisure to investigate, to think, to suffer—give to him the results of your sufferings—that is the only thing he needs.

And you, like the Egyptian priest, hide from him under a mantle of mystery, you bury in the earth, the talent given you by history. Do not be afraid! nothing human is injurious to man. Do you doubt it? Give way to your feeling, and it will not disappoint you. Trust your lad to nature, and you may be sure that he will take only what history commanded you to give him, what has grown in you through sufferings.

school is free, and at first the pupils came only from the village of Yasnaya Polyana. Many of these scholars left school because their parents did not consider the teaching good; many after they had learned to read and write ceased coming, and took service at the post-station, for that was the chief industry of our village.

Some came at first from the poor villages of the neighborhood, but on account of the inconvenience of getting back and forth, or the expense of meals which cost at the very least not less than two silver rubles a month, they were soon withdrawn.

Well-to-do muzhiks from more distant villages were attracted by the gratuitous instruction afforded, and by the report spread abroad among the people that there was good teaching at the Y. P. school, and sent us their children; but this winter with the opening of the village