Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/213

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views of the people have changed since the first in regard to the school. Of their former ideas of it we shall have occasion to speak in the history of the Y. P. school; even now it is said among the people "that everything—all the sciences—are taught there, and the teachers are so extraordinary there—why! they even make thunder and lightning! In other respects the boys learn well, and know how to read and write!" Some rich householders send their children, out of vanity, to go through the whole course, so that they may learn "division"—division being for them the highest concept of scholastic wisdom. Other fathers consider that learning is very advantageous; but the majority send their children without reasoning about it, yielding merely to the spirit of the times. Of these children, who form the larger number, the most gratifying result to us is shown in the fact that these thus sent have come to be so fond of study that their fathers yield to their children's desires, and begin themselves unconsciously to feel that something good is doing for their children, and so cannot make up their minds to take them away.

One father was telling me how he once burned out a whole candle, holding it above his son's book, and he was loud in his praises both of his son and of the book. It was the Testament.

"My pa, also," said one of the boys to me, "the other day listened as I was reading one of my stories; he laughed at first, but when he found that it was religious, he sat up till midnight to listen, and he himself held the light!"

I went with one of the new teachers to a pupil's house, and in order to have the boy make a good showing