Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/326

312 present, and knowing the spirit and idea of the story, they made suggestions and added their genuine strokes. Semka went away and stayed away. Only Fedka kept on with the story from beginning to end, and acted as censor on all the changes proposed.

There could be no doubt that this success is a matter of chance: we evidently struck accidentally on that method which was more natural and more stimulating than those we had tried hitherto. But all this was too unusual, and I did not believe in what was going on before my eyes. Something which seemed like an extraordinary chance was required to dissipate my doubts.

I had been away for several days, and the story remained unfinished. The manuscript—three large sheets fully written over—was left in the room of the teacher to whom I had been showing it.

Just before my departure, while I was engaged with the composition, a new pupil who had come had been showing the children the art of making fly-flappers out of paper, and throughout the whole school, as is apt to be the case, had come a time of fly-flappers, taking the place of snow-ball time, which in its turn had taken the place of carved sticks.

The fly-flapper time lasted during my absence. Semka and Fedka, who belonged to the choir, used to go to the teacher's room to sing, and they would spend whole evenings and sometimes whole nights there.

In the intervals and during the time of singing, of course, the fly-flappers were in full swing, and every available piece of paper which fell into their hands was turned into a fly-flapper. The teacher went to supper and forgot to caution the children not to touch the papers on his table, and so the manuscript containing the work of Makarof, Morozof, and Tolstoï was turned into fly-flappers.

On the next day, before school, the slapping had become such a nuisance to the pupils themselves, that they themselves declared a general persecution on fly-flappers; with a shout and a rush the fly-flappers were all collected, and with general enthusiasm flung into the lighted stove.