Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/306

292 them to great neatness in regard to what they are designing. In a short time the best pupils attained to a very accurate and tidy use of the pencil, so that they could draw neatly and accurately, not only rectilinear figures, but also the most fantastic ones composed of curved lines.

I set some of the pupils to correcting the figures of the others when they had finished their own, and this exercise in teaching notably stimulated the pupils, for in this way they could immediately apply what they had learned.

Of late, I have occupied the older ones in drawing objects in the most varied positions in perspective, without holding exclusively to the well-known method of Dupuis.

summer we were coming home from bathing. All of us were feeling very gay. A peasant lad,—the very one who had been enticed by the domestic peasant lad into stealing books,—a wide-cheeked, thick-set lad, all covered with freckles, with crooked, knock-kneed legs, with all the ways of a grown-up muzhik of the steppe, but a clever, strong, and gifted nature,—ran ahead and sat in the wagon, which was proceeding in front of us. He picked up the reins, cocked his hat, spat to one side, and burst out into a dragging muzhik song—oh, how he sang!—with feeling, with repose, with the full power of his lungs! The children laughed:—

"Semka, Semka—lo! how cleverly he sings!"

Semka was perfectly serious.

"There, now, don't you interrupt my song!" said he, in a pause, using a peculiar and purposely hoarse voice, and then he went on with his song sedately.

Two very musical lads took their places in the cart