Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/211

Rh schools they withdrew them again and placed them in the village schools, where a price was charged.

There remained in the Y. P. school the children of the Yasnopolyansky peasants, who go in the winter time, and in summer from April to the middle of October work in the fields, and the children of peasant farmers, overseers, soldiers, domestic servants, tavern-keepers, sacristans, and rich muzhiks, who come from a radius of thirty or fifty versts around.

The total number of pupils reaches forty, but rarely more than thirty are present together. Of girls there are three or five—from six to ten per cent. The ages of the boys are generally between seven and thirteen when the school is of normal size.

Moreover, every year there are three or four adults who come for a month or even for all winter, and then leave entirely. For these adults who come to school individually the school method is very trying, for by reason of their age and their sense of dignity they are prevented from taking part in the life of the school, and they cannot help feeling scorn for the children, and so they remain perfectly isolated. The animation of the school only confuses them. They come for the most to finish their studies, having already had some little instruction, and persuaded in their own minds that study is merely the perusal of some book about which they have heard, or which they have in times past had some little experience of.

In order to come to school the adult must surmount his timidity and shyness, and endure the family storm and the ridicule of his comrades:—

"Oh, would you see, the old nag has come to school!"

And then, besides, he has the constant feeling that every day wasted in school is a day lost for his work, which constitutes his only capital, and therefore all the time he is in school he finds himself in a state of nervous excitement and haste which is most injurious for his studies.

At the time which I am writing about there were