Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/225

Rh in our literature. We tried "Robinson," but it did not work: some of the pupils wept with vexation, because they could not comprehend and relate the story; I tried to tell it to them in my own way and they began to believe in the possibility of comprehending the wisdom of it; they succeeded in getting at its meaning and in a month they were reading "Robinson," but it bored them and finally almost disgusted them. This labor was too great for them. They trusted more to their memories, and in repeating the story immediately after what had been read during a whole evening they retained snatches of it, but no one took it in as a whole. They remembered unfortunately certain words incomprehensible to them, and they began to use these words askew and amiss, as half-educated people are wont to do.

I saw that this was not good, but I did not know how to remedy the evil. To convince myself and clear my conscience, I began to give them to read various popular sophistications like "Dyadi Naumui" and "Tetushki Natali," though I knew in advance that they would not satisfy them; and my prognostication was verified. These books were more of a bore to the pupils than anything else, if they were required to recapitulate them.

After "Robinson" I tried Pushkin, notably his story "The Undertaker"; but unless they were helped they were even less able to tell about it afterward than they had been in the case of "Robinson," and "The Undertaker" seemed to them still more of a bore. The addresses to the reader, the un-serious relation of the author to his personages, the humorous characterization, his conciseness,—all this was so incompatible with what they wanted that I definitely abandoned Pushkin, whose stories had hitherto seemed to me by hypothesis most regularly constructed, simple, and therefore comprehensible to the people. Then I made the experiment with Gogol's "Night before Christmas."

As I read it to them, it pleased them at first very much, especially the older ones; but as soon as they were left to read it themselves, they could not