Download PDF by Louis C Elson: EUROPEAN REMINISCENCES, MUSICAL ecu memories, musical and in a different way: being the memories of the holiday RECOLLECTIONS OF THE VACATION TOURS OF A MUSICIAN IN and give up. i'm a lot too strict, a lot too tricky for american citizens. but.
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- Memoirs of a Revolutionist
Gorman, Senator Arthur Pue, Sept. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Grey Falcon and the Union Man: Islands - Hoffman Island - [View of administration building Quarantine. Leslie, Ann 3 of 6. Letter from American Press Associates to W. Wilson at their Princeton home. Nothing But A Hired Hand: Occupations - Fortune telling - [Fortune told with the aid of small parrots. Occupations - Peddlers - Food - [Hot potatoes and baked apples. Prensa sensacionalista americana en el s. Repositorio Documental de la Universidad de Valladolid.
President Wilson taking oath of office on occasion of the inaugural ceremonies, Monday, March 5. An unsourced article in The Economist states that in October a law prevented bakers from working before 4 am, making it impossible to make traditional round loaves in time for customers' breakfasts. Switching from the round loaf to the previously less-common, slender shape of the baguette , the article claims, solved the problem, because it could be prepared and baked much more quickly. The law in question appears to be one from March , though some say it took effect in October It is forbidden to employ workers at bread and pastry making between ten in the evening and four in the morning.
The rest of the account remains to be verified, but the use of the word for a long thin bread does appear to be a 20th-century innovation. While a regular baguette is made with a direct addition of baker's yeast , artisan-style loaves are not unusually made with a preferment poolish to increase flavor complexity and other characteristics, as well as the addition of whole-wheat flour , or other grains such as rye.
Baguettes are closely connected to France, though they are made around the world. A short baguette is sometimes known as a baton stick , or even referred to using the English translation French stick. None of these are officially defined, either legally or, for instance, in major dictionaries, any more than the baguette.
French breads are also made in forms such as a miche , which is a large pan loaf, and a boule , literally ball in French, a large round loaf. Sandwich-sized loaves are sometimes known as demi-baguettes or tiers. In France a baguette must weigh grams 8. Baguettes, either relatively short single-serving size or cut from a longer loaf, are very often used for sandwiches , usually of the submarine sandwich type, but also a Panini.
As part of the traditional continental breakfast in France, slices of baguette are spread with butter and jam and dunked in bowls of coffee or hot chocolate.
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In the United States, French bread loaves are sometimes split in half to make French bread pizza. Baguettes are generally made as partially free-form loaves, with the loaf formed with a series of folding and rolling motions, raised in cloth-lined baskets or in rows on a flour-impregnated towel, called a couche , and baked either directly on the hearth of a deck oven or in special perforated pans designed to hold the shape of the baguette while allowing heat through the perforations.
American-style "French bread" is generally much fatter and is not baked in deck ovens, but in convection ovens. She spoke with tears in her eyes of the beautiful battle-ships which had to be sunk at the entrance of the harbor of Sebastopol, and she could not understand how the Russians would be able to defend Sebastopol from the land; there was no wall even worth speaking of.
I was in my thirteenth year when Nicholas I died. It was late in the afternoon, the 18 th of February 2d of March , that the policemen distributed in all the houses of Moscow a bulletin announcing the illness of the Tsar, and inviting the inhabitants to pray in the churches for his recovery. At that time, he was already dead, and the authorities knew it, as there was a telegraphic communication between Moscow and St Petersburg; but not a word having been previously uttered about his illness, they thought that the people must be gradually prepared for the announcement of his death.
We all went to church and prayed most piously. The news of the death of Nicholas reached us only about midday, through some servants who had been to the market. A real terror reigned in our house and in the houses of our relatives, as the information spread. It was said that the people in the market behaved in a strange way, showing no regret, but indulging in dangerous talk.
At St Petersburg, in the meantime, men of the educated classes, as they communicated to one another the news, embraced in the streets. In the country, during the summer of , the heroic struggle which was going on in Sebastopol for every yard of ground and every bit of its dismantled bastions was followed with a solemn interest. A messenger was sent regularly twice a week from our house to the district town to get the papers; and on his return, even before he had dismounted, the papers were taken from his hands and opened.
The reports which came of the last days of Sebastopol, of the awful bombardment, and finally of the evacuation of the town by our troops were received with tears. In every country-house round about, the loss of Sebastopol was mourned over with as much grief as the loss of a near relative would have been, although every one understood that now the terrible war would soon come to an end.
It was in August, , when I was nearly fifteen, that my turn came to enter the corps of pages, and I was taken to St. When I left home I was still a child; but human character is usually settled in a definite way at an earlier age than is generally supposed, and it is evident to me that under my childish appearance I was then very much what I was to be later on.
My tastes, my inclinations, were already determined. The first impulse to my intellectual development was given, as I have said, by my Russian teacher. It is an excellent habit in Russian families — a habit now, unhappily, on the decline — to have in the house a student who aids the boys and the girls with their lessons, even when they are at a gymnasium.
For a better assimilation of what they learn at school, and for a widening of their conceptions about what they learn, his aid is invaluable. Moreover, he introduces an intellectual element into the family, and becomes an elder brother to the young people, — often something better than an elder brother, because the student has a certain responsibility for the progress of his pupils; and as the methods of teaching change rapidly, from one generation to another, he can assist his pupils much better than the best educated parents could.
At that time, under the wild censorship of Nicholas I. As to other French novels, I have only begun to read them since Daudet and Zola came to the front. My brother Alexander had at that time a much more poetical turn of mind.
He wrote most romantic stories, and began early to make verses, which he did with wonderful facility and in a most musical and easy style. If his mind had not subsequently been taken up by natural history and philosophical studies, he undoubtedly would have become a poet of mark.
In those years his favorite resort for finding poetical inspiration was the gently slooping roof underneath our window. This aroused in me a constant desire to tease him. But Alexander was so devoid of revengefulness that peace was soon concluded, and we loved each other immensely. Among boys, scrimmage and love seem to go hand in hand. I had even then taken to journalism. In my twelfth year I began to edit a daily journal. As the Crimean war had not yet broken out, and the only newspaper which my father used to receive was the Gazette of the Moscow police, I had not a great choice of models.
As a result my own Gazette consisted merely of short paragraphs announcing the news of the day: In return, I accurately wrote out for my faithful subscriber a second copy. He obtained for the review a poem by one of his friends, and — still more important — the introductory lecture on physical geography by one of the Moscow professors. Of course this had not been printed before: Alexander, I need not say, took a lively interest in the paper, and its renown soon reached the corps of cadets. Some young writers on the way to fame undertook the publication of a rival. The matter was serious: They had a critic, and we had none!
He wrote an article for the first number, and his article was shown to my brother. It was rather pretentious and weak. Alexander at once wrote an anti-criticism, ridiculing and demolishing the critic in a violent manner. New surroundings and a quite new life were before me. I went away from home with regret, the more so because the whole distance between Moscow and St. Petersburg would be between me and Alexander, and I already considered it a misfortune that I had to enter a military school.
The long-cherished ambition of my father was thus realized. There was a vacancy in the corps of pages which I could fill before I had got beyond the age to which admission was limited, and I was taken to St. Petersburg and entered the school. Only a hundred and fifty boys — mostly children of the nobility belonging to the court — received education in this privileged corps, which combined the character of a military school endowed with special rights and of a court institution attached to the imperial household.
After a stay of four or five years in the corps of pages, those who had passed the final examinations were received as officers in any regiment of the guard or of the army they chose, irrespective of the number of vacancies in that regiment; and each year the first sixteen pupils of the highest form were nominated pages de chambre; that is, they were personally attached to the several members of the imperial family, — the emperor, the empress, the grand duchesses, and the grand dukes.
That was considered, of course, a great honor; and, moreover, the young men upon whom this honor was bestowed became known at the court, and had afterward every chance of being nominated aides-de-camp of the emperor or of one of the grand dukes, and consequently had every facility for making a brilliant career in the service of the state. Fathers and mothers of families connected with the court took due care, therefore, that their boys should not miss entering the corps of pages, even though entrance had to be secured at the expense of other candidates who never saw a vacancy opening for them.
Now that I was in the select corps my father could give free play to his ambitious dreams. The corps was divided into five forms, of which the highest was the first, and the lowest the fifth, and the intention was that I should enter the fourth form. However, as it appeared at the examinations that I was not sufficiently familiar with decimal fractions, and as the fourth form contained that year over forty pupils, while only twenty had been mustered for the fifth form, I was enrolled in the latter.
I felt extremely vexed at this decision. It was with reluctance that I entered a military school, and now I should have to stay in it five years instead of four. What should I do in the fifth form, when I knew already all that would be taught in it? With tears in my eyes I spoke of it to the inspector the head of the educational department , but he answered me with a joke. And yet, as I look back upon that remote past, I cannot but feel grateful for having been put in the lower form. Besides, I spent more than half of the first winter in the hospital.
Like all children who are not born at St. When I entered the corps of pages, its inner life was undergoing a profound change. All Russia awakened at that time from the heavy slumber and the terrible nightmare of Nicholas I. Our school also felt the effects of that revival. I do not know, in fact, what would have become of me, had I entered the corps of pages one or two years sooner. Either my will would have been totally broken, or I should have been excluded from the school with no one knows what consequences.
Happily, the transition period was already in full sway in the year But he was the nominal head only. People said he was a Jesuit, and so he was, I believe. His ways, at any rate, were thoroughly imbued with the teachings of Loyola, and his educational methods were those of the French Jesuit colleges. Imagine a short, extremely thin man, with dark, piercing, and furtive eyes, wearing short clipped mustaches, which gave him the expression of a cat; very quiet and firm; not remarkably intelligent, but exceedingly cunning; a despot at the bottom of his heart, who was capable of hating — intensely hating — the boy who would not fall under his fascination, and of expressing that hatred, not by silly persecutions, but unceasingly, by his general behavior, — by an occasionally dropped word, a gesture, a smile, an interjection.
His walk was more like gliding along, and the exploring glances he used to cast round without turning his head completed the illusion. A stamp of cold dryness was impressed on his lips, even when he tried to look well disposed, and that expression became still more harsh when his mouth was contorted by a smile of discontent or of contempt. With all this there was nothing of a commander in him; you would rather think, at first sight, of a benevolent father who talks to his children as if they were full-grown people. And yet, you soon felt that every one and everything had to bend before his will.
Woe to the boy who would not feel happy or unhappy according to the degree of good disposition shown toward him by the Colonel. Other officers went by their nicknames, but no one dared to give a nickname to Girardot. A sort of mystery hung about him, as if he were omniscient and everywhere present. True, he spent all the day and part of the night in the school. Even when we were in the classes he prowled about, visiting our drawers, which he opened with his own keys. As to the night, he gave a good portion of it to the task of inscribing in small books, — of which he had quite a library, — in separate columns, by special signs and in inks of different colors, all the faults and virtues of each boy.
Play, jokes, and conversation stopped when we saw him slowly moving along through our spacious rooms, hand in hand with one of his favorites, balancing his body forward and backward; smiling at one boy, keenly looking into the eyes of another, casting an indifferent glance upon a third, and giving a slight contortion to his lip as he passed a fourth: This dislike was enough to terrify most of his victims, — the more so as no reason could be given for it.
The inner life of the corps was miserable under the rule of the Colonel. In all boarding-schools the newly entered boys are subjected to petty persecutions. What are they worth? So it is in all schools and in prisons. His system was to give them carte blanche; to pretend that he did not know even the horrors they were enacting; and to maintain through them a severe discipline.
To answer a blow received from a page de chambre would have meant, in the times of Nicholas I. The moral conceptions which prevailed at that time, and the foul talk which went on in the school concerning what occurred at night after circus, were such that the least said about them the better. The Colonel knew all this. He had a perfectly organized system of espionage, and nothing escaped his knowledge. But so long as he was not known to know it, all was right. To shut his eyes to what was done by the first form was the foundation of his system of maintaining discipline. However, a new spirit was awakened in the school, and only a few months before I entered it a revolution had taken place.
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That year the third form was different from what it had hitherto been. It contained a number of young men who really studied and read a good deal; some of them became, later, men of mark. The third form did not bear the yoke of the pages de chambre with the same docility as their predecessors; they were disgusted with what was going on; and in consequence of an incident, which I prefer not to describe, a fight took place between the third and the first form, with the result that the pages de chambre got a very severe thrashing from their subordinates.
Girardot hushed up the affair, but the authority of the first form was broken down. The india-rubber whips remained, but were never again brought into use. The circuses and the like became things of the past. That much was won; but the lowest form, the fifth, composed almost entirely of very young boys who had just entered the school, had still to obey the petty caprices of the pages de chambre.
We had a beautiful garden, filled with old trees, but the boys of the fifth form could enjoy it little: A couple of days after I had entered the school, seeing how things stood in the garden, I did not go there, but remained upstairs. I was reading, when a page de chambre, with carroty hair and a face covered with freckles, came upon me, and ordered me to go at once to the garden to run the roundabout. Anger disfigured his never too pleasant face. He was ready to jump upon me. I took the defensive. He tried to give me blows on the face with his cap. I fenced as best I could. Then he flung his cap on the floor.
Such an act of disobedience was unheard of in the school. Why he did not beat me unmercifully on the spot I do not know. He was much older and stronger than I was. Next day and the following days I received similar commands, but obstinately remained upstairs. Then began the most exasperating petty persecutions at every step, — enough to drive a boy to desperation.
Happily, I was always of a jovial disposition, and answered them with jokes, or took little heed of them. Moreover, it all soon came to an end. The weather turned rainy, and we spent most of our time indoors. The pages de chambre severely punished any of the other boys whom they caught smoking, but they themselves sat continually at the fireside chattering and enjoying cigarettes. The small boys of the fifth form were taken out of their beds in turn, two at a time, and they had to loiter about the staircase till half past eleven, to give notice of the approach of the Colonel.
We decided to put an end to these night watches. Long were the discussions, and the higher forms were consulted as to what was to be done. At last the decision came: He knows it all, but then he will be bound to stop it. I was also in bed when the two came upon me, ordering me to take the watch. Thereupon, seizing two pairs of braces, — we always used to put our clothes in perfect order on a bench by the bedside, braces uppermost, and the necktie across them, — they began to flog me.
The whole school was disgusted at this Jesuitic speech. No need to say that that was the end of the watch-keeping, and that it gave a final blow to the worrying of the newcomers: He regarded our form, and me especially, with great dislike the roundabout affair had been reported to him , and he manifested it at every opportunity.
During the first winter, I was a frequent inmate of the hospital. After suffering from typhoid fever, during which the director and the doctor bestowed on me a really parental care, I had very bad and persistently recurring gastric attacks. Girardot recoiled two steps; his dark eyes glittered, his thin lip became still thinner. Well, we have in the hall two artillery guns: At last, an officer — the best teacher of drill in the school, a man simply enamored of drill — volunteered to teach me; and when he saw me performing all the tricks to his entire satisfaction, he undertook to introduce me to Girardot.
The whole character of the school was changing. For twenty years Girardot had realized his ideal, which was to have the boys nicely combed, curled, and girlish looking, and to send to the court pages as refined as courtiers of Louis XIV. Formerly, when Girardot had held rehearsals of court ceremonies, wrapping up a page in a striped red cotton cover taken from one of our beds, in order that he might represent the Empress at a baisemain , the boys almost religiously approached the imaginary Empress, seriously performed the ceremony of kissing the hand, and retired with a most elegant oblique bow; but now, though they were very elegant at court, they would perform at the rehearsals such bearlike bows that all roared with laughter, while Girardot was simply raging.
Formerly, the younger boys who had been taken to a court levee, and had been curled for that purpose, used to keep their curls as long as they would last; now, on returning from the palace, they hurried to put their heads under the cold-water tap, to get rid of the curls. An effeminate appearance was laughed at. To be sent to a levee, to stand there as a decoration, was now considered a drudgery rather than a favor.
And when the small boys who were occasionally taken to the palace to play with the little grand dukes remarked that one of the latter used, in some game, to make a hard whip out of his handkerchief, and use it freely, one of our boys did the same, and so whipped the grand duke that he cried. Girardot was terrified, while the old Sebastopol admiral who was tutor of the grand duke only praised our boy. A new spirit, studious and serious, developed in the corps, as in all other schools.
In former years, the pages, being sure that in one way or another they would get the necessary marks for being promoted officers of the guard, spent the first years in the school hardly learning at all, and only began to study more or less in the last two forms; now the lower forms learned very well. The moral tone also became quite different from what it was a few years before. Oriental amusements were looked upon with disgust, and an attempt or two to revert to old manners resulted in scandals which reached the St.
He was only allowed to retain his bachelor apartment in the building of the corps, and we often saw him afterward, wrapped in his long military cloak, pacing along, plunged in reflections, — sad, I suppose, because he could not but condemn the new spirit which rapidly developed in the corps of pages. All over Russia people were talking of education. As soon as peace had been concluded at Paris, and the severity of censorship had been slightly relaxed, educational matters began to be eagerly discussed.
The ignorance of the masses of the people, the obstacles that had hitherto been put in the way of those who wanted to learn, the absence of schools in the country, the obsolete methods of teaching, and the remedies for these evils became favorite themes of discussion in educated circles, in the press, and even in the drawing-rooms of the aristocracy. The first high schools for girls had been opened in , on an excellent plan and with a splendid teaching staff.
As by magic a number of men and women came to the front, who have not only devoted their lives to education, but have proved to be remarkable practical pedagogists: The corps of pages also felt the effect of that revival. Apart from a few exceptions, the general tendency of the three younger forms was to study. The head of the educational department, the inspector, Winkler, who was a well educated colonel of artillery, a good mathematician, and a man of progressive opinions, hit upon an excellent plan for stimulating that spirit. Instead of the indifferent teachers who formerly used to teach in the lower forms, he endeavored to secure the best ones.
In his opinion, no professor was too good to teach the very beginnings of a subject to the youngest boys. He sat amongst us, and had to answer questions like all the others.
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But he managed mostly, while the teacher spoke, to make drawings very nicely, or to whisper all sorts of droll things to his neighbors. He was good-natured and very gentle in his behavior, but superficial in learning, and still more so in his affections. For the fifth form the inspector secured two remarkable men. He entered our class-room one day, quite radiant, and told us that we should have a rare chance. Another university professor, Herr Becker, librarian of the imperial national library, would do the same in German.
The chance of having such a teacher was too good to be lost. He had thought aright. A tall man, with an immense forehead and very kind, intelligent eyes, not devoid of a touch of humor, came into our class, and told us in quite good Russian that he intended to divide our form into three sections. The four lines copied, you can do what you like; only do not hinder the rest. And I promise you that in five years you will learn something of German and German literature. Now, who joins the Germans? Perhaps some one of the Russians? They most conscientiously copied their four lines, — a dozen or a score of lines in the higher forms, — and Becker chose the lines so well, and bestowed so much attention upon the boys, that by the end of the five years they really knew something of the language and its literature.
I joined the Germans. My brother Alexander insisted so much in his letters upon my acquiring German, which possesses so rich a literature and into which every book of value is translated, that I set myself assiduously to learn it. I translated and studied most thoroughly one page of a rather difficult poetical description of a thunderstorm; I learned by heart, as the professor had advised me, the conjugations, the adverbs, and the prepositions, and began to read.
A splendid method it is for learning languages. Becker advised me, moreover, to subscribe to a cheap illustrated weekly, and its illustrations and short stories were a continual inducement to read a few lines or a column. I soon mastered the language. He little knew the unfathomable joy that that small square book gave me. I drank in the sense and the music of every line of it, beginning with the very first verses of the ideally beautiful dedication, and soon knew full pages by heart.
Every verse gradually became a dear friend. The whole is veiled with a sort of slight haze, which admirably suits poetry. Words, the trivial meanings of which, when one knows the language colloquially, sometimes interfere with the poetical image they are intended to convey, retain but their subtle, elevated sense; while the music of the poetry is only the more strongly impressed upon the ear. He was a small man, about fifty years of age, very rapid in his movements, with bright, intelligent eyes and a slightly sarcastic expression, and the high forehead of a poet.
When he came in for his first lesson, he said in a low voice that, suffering from a protracted illness, he could not speak loud enough, and asked us, therefore, to sit closer to him. He placed his chair near the first row of tables, and we clustered round him like a swarm of bees.
He was to teach us Russian grammar; but, instead of the dull grammar lesson, we heard something quite different from what we expected. It was grammar; but here came in a comparison of an old Russian folk-lore expression with a line from Homer or from the Sanskrit Mahabharata, the beauty of which was rendered in Russian words, there, a verse from Schiller was introduced, and was followed by a sarcastic remark about some modern society prejudice; then solid grammar again, and then some wide poetical or philosophical generalization.
Of course, there was much in it that we did not understand, or of which we missed the deeper sense. But do not the bewitching powers of all studies lie in that they continually open up to us new, unsuspected horizons, not yet understood, which entice us to proceed further and further in the penetration of what appears at first sight only in vague outline? As toward the end of the hour, his voice fell, the more breathlessly we listened. The inspector opened the door of the class-room, to see how we behaved with our new teacher; but on seeing that motionless swarm he retired on tiptoe.
In most of the others something good and elevated simmered at the bottom of their hearts, as if a vision of an unsuspected world was opening before them. In Western Europe, and probably in America, this type of teacher seems not to be generally known, but in Russia there is not a man or woman of mark, in literature or in political life, who does not owe the first impulse toward a higher development to his or her teacher of literature.
Memoirs of a Revolutionist
Every school in the world ought to have such a teacher. Each teacher in a school has his own subject, and there is no link between the different subjects. Only the teacher of literature, guided by the general outlines of the programme, but left free to treat it as he likes, can bind together the separate historical and humanitarian sciences, unify them by a broad philosophical and humane conception, and awaken higher ideas and inspirations in the brains and hearts of the young people.
In Russia, that necessary task falls quite naturally upon the teacher of Russian literature. As he speaks of the development of the language, of the contents of the early epic poetry, of popular songs and music, and, later on, of modern fiction, of the scientific, political, and philosophical literature of his own country, and the divers aesthetical, political, and philosophical currents it has reflected, he is bound to introduce that generalized conception of the development of human mind which lies beyond the scope of each of the subjects that are taught separately.
The same thing ought to be done for the natural sciences as well. The philosophy and the poetry of nature, the methods of all the exact sciences, and an inspired conception of the life of nature must make part of education. Perhaps the teacher of geography might provisionally assume this function; but then we should require quite a different set of teachers of this subject, and a different set of professors of geography in the universities would be needed.
What is now taught under this name is anything you like, but it is not geography. Another teacher conquered our, rather uproarious form in a quite different manner. It was the teacher of writing, the last one of the teaching staff. To be insolent with him was a sort of chic amongst the pages. His poverty alone must have been the reason why he kept to his lesson in our corps.
The old hands, who had stayed for two or three years in the fifth form without moving higher up, treated him very badly; but by some means or other he had made an agreement with them: One day, one of the residents of the remote peninsula soaked the blackboard sponge with ink and chalk and flung it at the caligraphy martyr. We were sure that this time Ebert would leave the room and report the fact to the inspector.
We looked stupefied and ashamed. Why, instead of reporting, he had thought at once of the agreement! The feeling of the class turned in his favor. The culprit went at once to make excuses. All became silent after that, and at the next lesson, as if we had settled it beforehand, most of us wrote in our best possible handwriting, and took our books to Ebert, asking him to correct them.
He was radiant; he felt happy that day. This fact deeply impressed me, and was never wiped out from my memory. To this day I feel grateful to that remarkable man for his lesson. With our teacher of drawing, who was named Ganz, we never arrived at living on good terms. He continually reported those who played in his class. This, in our opinion, he had no right to do, because he was only a teacher of drawing, but especially because he was not an honest man. In the class he paid little attention to most of us, and spent his time in improving the drawings of those who took private lessons from him, or paid him in order to show at the examinations a good drawing and to get a good mark for it.
Against those comrades who did so we had no grudge. But the teacher had no business to make drawings to order; and if he chose to act in this way, he ought to bear with resignation the noise and the tricks of his pupils. Instead of this, no lesson passed without his lodging complaints, and each time he grew more arrogant.
As soon as we were moved to the fourth form, and felt ourselves naturalized citizens of the corps, we decided to tighten the bridle upon him. One day, two excellent comrades of our form approached Ganz with cigarettes in their mouths, and asked him to oblige them with a light. Of course, that was only meant for a joke, — no one ever thought of smoking in the class-rooms, — and, according to our rules of propriety, Ganz had merely to send the two boys away; but he inscribed them in the journal, and they were severely punished.
That was the last drop. However, the plot offered many difficulties. In such enterprises unanimity is the first requisite, because the punishment, whatsoever it may be, is always lighter when it falls on the whole class instead of on a few. The difficulties were overcome with a truly Machiavellian craft. At a given signal all were to turn their backs to Ganz, and then, with the rulers laid in readiness on the desks of the next row, they would produce the required noise.
Ganz would be capable of naming any one of us as having whistled or sneezed. The signal must be a silent one. One of us, who drew nicely, would take his drawing to show it to Ganz, and the moment he returned and took his seat, — that was to be the time! All went on admirably. He returned at last to his seat; he stopped for a moment, looking at us; he sat down He stood there, murmuring something, and finally went out.
An officer ran in, — the noise continued; then the sub-inspector dashed in, and after him the inspector. The noise stopped at once. That spared me seeing what followed. The director came; Ganz was asked to name the ringleaders, but he could name nobody. Thereupon the form was taken downstairs, and although flogging had been completely abandoned in our school, this time the two who had been reported because they asked for a light were flogged with the birch rod, under the pretext that the benefit night was a revenge for their punishment.
I learned this ten days later, when I was allowed to return to the class. My name, which had been inscribed on the red board in the class, was wiped off. To this I was indifferent; but I must confess that the ten days in the cell, without books, seemed to me rather long, so that I composed in horrible verses a poem, in which the deeds of the fourth form were duly glorified.
Of course, our form became now the heroes of the school. For a month or so we had to tell and retell all about the affair to the other forms, and received congratulations for having managed it with such unanimity that nobody was caught separately.
And then came the Sundays — all the Sundays down to Christmas — that the form had to remain at the school, not being allowed to go home. Being all kept together, we managed to make those Sundays very gay. The mammas of the goody boys brought them heaps of sweets; those who had some money spent it in buying mountains of pastry, — substantial before dinner, and sweet after it; while in the evenings the friends from the other forms smuggled in quantities of fruit for the brave fourth form. Ganz gave up inscribing any one; but drawing was totally lost for us.
No one wanted to learn drawing from that mercenary man. My brother Alexander was at that time at Moscow, in a corps of cadets, and we maintained a lively correspond. As long as I stayed at home this was impossible, because our father considered it his prerogative to read all letters addressed to our house, and he would soon have put an end to any but a commonplace correspondence. Now we were free to discuss in our letters whatever we liked. The only difficulty was to get money for stamps; but we soon learned to write in such fine characters that we could convey an incredible amount of matter in each letter.
Alexander, whose handwriting was beautiful, contrived to get four printed pages on one single page of note-paper, and his microscopic lines were as legible as the best small type print. It is a pity that these letters, which he kept as precious relics, have disappeared. The state police, during one of their raids, robbed him even of these treasures.
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Our first letters were mostly about the little details of my new surroundings, but our correspondence soon took a more serious character. My brother could not write about trifles. He was very much in advance of me in his intellectual development, and he urged me forward, raising new scientific and philosophical questions one after another, and advising me what to read or to study. What a happiness it was for me to have such a brother! To him I owe the best part of my development. Sometimes he would advise me to read poetry, and would send me in his letters quantities of verses and whole poems, which he wrote from memory.
He himself was a poet, and had a wonderful facility for writing most musical verses; indeed, I think it a great pity that he abandoned poetry. I must say, however, that my favorite poet was none of those whom his poetical gift, his musical ear, and his philosophical turn of mind made him like best. Our father gave us very little spending money, and I never had any to buy a single book; but if Alexander got a few rubles from some aunt, he never spent a penny of it for pleasure, but bought a book and sent it to me.
He objected, though, to indiscriminate reading. I did not waste my time upon French novels, since Alexander, years before, had characterized them in one blunt sentence: The great questions concerning the conception we should form of the universe-our Weltanshauung , as the Germans say were, of course, the dominant subjects in our correspondence.