Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/329

Rh Afterward one sheet of the lost manuscript was found. In the story as it was printed I welded the two variants together by the aid of the sheet that was found and by bringing my recollection to bear upon it. The composition of this story took place in the early spring, before the end of our school year.

Owing to various circumstances I was prevented from making new experiments. Only one tale was written on a proverb, by two of the boys who were most ordinary in their talents and most sophisticated, being sons of house-servants. The story on the proverb, "He who is happy on a holiday is drunk before daylight," was printed in number three. The same occurrences took place again with these boys and with this story as with Semka and Fedka and the first story, only with the difference of degree of talent and degree of enthusiasm, and of my coöperation.

In the summer we have no lessons, have had no lessons, and intend to have no lessons. The reason why teaching is impossible in our school in summer we explain in a special article.

One part of the summer Fedka and the other boys lived with me. After they had bathed and played, they were thinking what they should do with themselves. I proposed to them to write a composition, and suggested several themes. I told them a very remarkable story of a robbery of money, the story of a murder, the story of a miraculous conversion of a Molokan to Orthodoxy, and again I proposed to them to write in the form of autobiography the story of a lad whose poor and dissolute father was sent off as a soldier, and on his return proved to be a reformed and excellent man. I said:—

"I should write it this way. 'I remember when I was a little fellow we had living at' home a mother, a father, and several other relatives,' and what they were. Then I should describe my recollection of how my father used to go on sprees, how my mother was always weeping, and how he beat her; then how they sent him as a soldier, how she wailed when we began to live