Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/317

Rh it would mean that he had eaten with your spoon and put out your eyes with the handle."

"Well, how would you write it?" said Fedka and all the others, who had pricked up their ears; but suddenly they gave it up, persuaded that this task was beyond their strength, and resumed the work on which they had been engaged before.

"You write it for us," said one of them to me.

All were busy in their work; I took the pen and inkstand, and began to write.

"Now," said I, "who will write it the best? and I will try with you."

I began the story which is printed in the fourth number of Yasnaya Polyana and wrote the first page.

Every unprejudiced man with any feeling for art and nationality, on reading this first page written by me, and the following pages of the story written by the scholars themselves, will distinguish this page from all the others,—like a fly in milk,—it is so artificial, so false, and written in such a wretched style. It must be noted that in its first form it was still poorer, and has been much improved, thanks to the suggestions of the scholars.

Fedka kept looking up from his copy-book at me, and when his eyes met mine, he would smile and wink, and say, "Write, write! I will show you!"

It evidently interested him to have a grown person also write a composition. After finishing his composition, less carefully and more hurriedly than usual, he leaned over the back of my arm-chair, and began to read over my shoulder. I could not write any longer; others joined our group, and I read aloud what I had written. It did not please them; no one praised it.

I was mortified; and in order to soothe my literary vanity, I began to tell them my plan of what was to follow. As I went on telling them, I was carried away. I felt better in my mind, and they began to make suggestions.

One said that the old man should be a wizard.