Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/214

200 before the teacher, I made him do an algebra example. The mother climbed up on the oven, and we forgot all about her as her son carefully and boldly formed his equation, and said:—

"2 ab minus c, equals d divided by three."

She all the time was covering her mouth with her hand, and trying to restrain herself, but at last she burst out laughing, and could not explain to us what she was laughing at.

Another father, a soldier, who came to fetch his son, found him in the drawing class; and when he saw his son's skill, he began to address him with the respectful you instead of thou, and could not make up his mind during the class to give him the present which he had brought him.

The general impression, it seems to me, is this: "It is superfluous and idle to teach everything, as in the case of the children of the nobility, but here reading and writing are taught with despatch—therefore we can send our children."

Injurious rumors about us circulate, but they are beginning to find less credence. Two fine boys lately left school on the ground that writing was not properly taught.

Another soldier was on the point of sending his son, but, after questioning the best of our boys, and finding that he stumbled in reading the Psalter, he made up his mind that learning was poor business, and only glory was good.

Some of the Yasnopolyansky peasants still have some apprehension lest the rumors that were once in circulation may have some foundation; they imagine we are teaching for some ulterior end, and that before they know it they will be bundled into carts and carried off to Moscow.

There is now scarcely any dissatisfaction because we do not punish by whipping, and because we have no rank-list; and I have often had occasion to notice the perplexity of some parent who came to school after his son, and found the running, confusion, and scuffling going