Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/292

 288 BERDYCZEWSKI

I tell him, that if he would learn to read, he could study the whole thing by himself in a week; but he won't listen.

"Nobody," he says, "will ever ask my advice."

One thing always alarmed me very much: However was I to take part in the manoeuvres ?

I cannot lift a single pud (I myself only weigh two pud and thirty pounds), and if I walk three versts, my feet hurt, and my heart beats so violently that I think it's going to burst my side.

At the mano3uvres I should have to carry as much as fifty pounds' weight, and perhaps more: a rifle, a cloak, a knapsack with linen, boots, a uniform, a tent, bread, and onions, and a few other little things, and should have to walk perhaps thirty to forty versts a day.

But when the day and the hour arrived, and the command was given "Forward, march !" when the band struck up, and two thousand men set their feet in mo- tion, something seemed to draw me forward, and I went. At the beginning I found it hard, I felt weighted to the earth, my left shoulder hurt me so, I nearly fainted. But afterwards I got very hot, I began to breathe rapidly and deeply, my eyes were starting out of my head like two cupping-glasses, and I not only walked, I ran, so as not to fall behind and so I ended by marching along with the rest, forty versts a day.

Only I did not sing on the march like the others First, because I did not feel so very cheerful, and sec- ond, because I could not breathe properly, let alone sing.

At times I felt burning hot, but immediately after- wards I would grow light, and the marching was easy,