Different natures are so sharply expressed that we used to try the experiment of having the scholars guess who wrote such and such a composition, and in the first class they rarely made a mistake in their selection.
CHAPTER XXVII
SPECIMENS OF COMPOSITIONS
For lack of space we must omit the description of the teaching of language and other subjects and the extracts from the teachers' diaries; but here we will cite specimens of the compositions of two of the pupils in the first class, making no change in spelling or punctuation.
B, a very poor scholar, but a lad of keen and original mind, wrote compositions about Tula, and about his studies. The one about his studies had a great success among the scholars. B was eleven years old, and had been at school at Yasnaya Polyana three winters; but he had studied before.
"About Tula
"The other Sunday I went to Tula again. When we got there Vladimir Aleksandrovitch told me and Vaska Zhdanof to go to Sunday-school. We went and we went and we went,[1] and at last, after a great deal of trouble, we found it. We went in and found all the scholars sitting down; and I saw our teacher in botany. And so I said, 'How do you do sir?'[2] and he said, 'How do you do.' Then I went into the class, stood near the table, and I felt so confused that I took and went out into Tula. I went and I went and I saw a woman baking cakes.[3] I began to take my money out of my pocket, when I had got it out, I bought the cakes.
