Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/315



N the fourth volume of the journal Yasnaya Polyana there was printed among the children's compositions by an editorial mistake "A History of how a boy was frightened in Tula." This little story was not written by a boy, but was made up by the teacher from a dream which he had, and which he related to the boys. Some of the readers, who followed the numbers of Yasnaya Polyana, expressed their doubts whether this tale really belonged to the boy. I hasten to apologize to my readers for this oversight, and seize the opportunity to remark how impossible are counterfeits in this class of work. This tale was detected, not because it was better, but because it was worse, incomparably worse, than all the compositions of the children. All the other tales belonged to the children themselves. Two of them, "He eats with your spoon but puts your eyes out with the handle" and "Life in a Soldier's Home," were written in the following way:—

The teacher's chief art in the teaching of language, and his chief exercise with this end in view, as he trains children to write compositions, consists in the giving of subjects; and not so much in the mere naming of them as in finding variety of subjects, in indicating the dimensions of the compositions, and the pointing out of elementary processes.