Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/253

Rh and in the instructors note-book appeared remarks like the following: "I could not get a single word from Savin;" "Grishin had nothing to say;" "Petka's obstinacy amazed me, he would not say a single word;" "Savin was worse than before;" and so on.

Savin is the son of a householder or a merchant, a rosy, fat lad, with flashing eyes and long lashes, wearing a leather tulupchik, boots big enough for his father, a red Alexandrisky shirt and drawers. This lad's pleasant and attractive personality especially struck me, because he was at the head of the arithmetic class, by his readiness in calculation and his gay liveliness. He reads and writes also far from badly.

But as soon as he was asked a question he would hang his pretty curly head to one side, tears would trickle down his long lashes, and it would seem as if he were trying to hide out of sight; it was evident he was suffering unendurably. If you compel him to recite, he will speak, but either he cannot or will not form a sentence by himself. God only knows whether it is the terror inspired by his former teacher,—he had been taught before by a person in the ecclesiastical profession,—or whether it is lack of self-confidence or conceit, or the awkwardness of his position among boys whom he considers inferior to himself, or vexation because in this one respect he is behind the others, because once already he has been in the teacher's bad graces, or whether this little soul has been affronted by some inconsiderate word hastily spoken by the teacher, or whether it is a mixture of all; but this bashfulness, although it may be in itself a disagreeable trait, is nevertheless inseparably connected with all that is best in his young soul. To whip it out of him by a physical or moral discipline is possible, but at the risk of destroying at the same time the precious qualities without which the teacher would find it a hard task to take him farther.

The new teacher heeded my advice and let the pupils get down from the benches, and permitted them to