Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/226

212 it, and it bored them. Even when I read it, they did not ask me to go on. The richness of the coloring, the fancifulness, and the capricious method of construction were opposed to their habit of thought.

Then I tried them with a Russian translation of the "Iliad," and the reading of this caused a curious perplexity among them; they supposed that the original was written in French, and they could not at all understand even after I had told them its subject-matter in my own words; even then the fable of the poem did not make itself intelligible to their minds.

The skeptic Semka, a healthy, logical nature, was struck by the picture of Phœbus with the arrows rattling on his back, as he flew down from Olympus; but evidently he was at a loss what to make of this picture.

"How did he fly down from the mountain, and not dash himself to pieces?" he kept asking me.

"Why, you see, they supposed he was a god," I replied.

"How a god?"

"They had many of them."

"Then he must have been a false god, or else he flew down lightly from that mountain; otherwise he would have been dashed in pieces," he exclaimed, spreading his hands.

I tried George Sand's "Gribouille," some popular and military reading, and all in vain. We try everything we can find, and everything that is sent us, but we have very little hope in our experiments.

You sit down in school and open a so-called popular book just brought from the mail.

"Little uncle, let me read it, me! me!" cry various voices, and hands are eagerly thrust out. "Let us have it, we can understand it better!" You open the book, and read:—

"The life of the great Saint Alexis presents us with a model of ardent faith, piety, indefatigable zeal, and fiery love to his native land, to which this holy man performed important services."