Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories Part 40

"Sit down, granny! Don't stand up. Sit down here, and take off your wallet," he said.

"There is not enough room to turn around as it is. Take her to the 'black' room," said a woman.

"This comes straight from Madame Chalme," said a young lackey, pointing to the iris design on Tikhonovna's peasant coat, "and the pretty stockings and shoes."

He pointed to her leg-rags and bast shoes, which were new, as she had specially put them on for Moscow.

"Parasha, you ought to have such."

"If you are to go to the 'black' room, all right; I will take you there." And the old man stuck in his awl and got up; but, on seeing a little girl, he called her to take the old woman to the black room.

Tikhonovna not only paid no attention to what was being said in her presence and of her, but did not even look or listen. From the time that she entered the house, she was permeated with the feeling of the necessity of working for G.o.d and with the other feeling, which had entered her soul, she did not know when, of the necessity of handing the pet.i.tion. Leaving the clean servant room, she walked over to the deacon's wife and, bowing, said to her:

"Mother Paramonovna, for Christ's sake do not forget about my affair!

See whether you can't find a man."

"What does that woman need?"

"She has suffered insult, and people have advised her to hand a pet.i.tion to the Tsar."

"Take her straight to the Tsar!" said the jesting lackey.

"Oh, you fool, you rough fool," said the old shoemaker. "I will teach you a lesson with this last, then you will know how to grin at old people."

The lackey began to scold, but the old man, paying no attention to him, took Tikhonovna to the black room.

Tikhonovna was glad that she was sent out of the baking-room, and was taken to the black, the coachmen's room. In the baking-room everything looked clean, and the people were all clean, and Tikhonovna did not feel at ease there. The black coachmen's room was more like the inside of a peasant house, and Tikhonovna was more at home there. The black hut was a dark pine building, twenty by twenty feet, with a large oven, bed places, and hanging-beds, and a newly paved, dirt-covered floor. When Tikhonovna entered the room, there were there the cook, a white, ruddy-faced, fat, manorial woman, with the sleeves of her chintz dress rolled up, who with difficulty was moving a pot in the oven with an oven-fork; then a young, small coachman, who was learning to play the balalayka; an old man with an unshaven, soft white beard, who was sitting on a bed place with his bare feet and, holding a skein of silk between his lips, was sewing on some fine, good material, and a s.h.a.ggy-haired, swarthy young man, in a s.h.i.+rt and blue trousers, with a coa.r.s.e face, who, chewing bread, was sitting on a bench at the oven and leaning his head on both his arms, which were steadied against his knees.

Barefoot Nastka with sparkling eyes ran into the room with her lithe, bare feet, in front of the old woman, jerking open the door, which stuck fast from the steam within, and squeaking in her thin voice:

"Aunty Marina, Simonych sends this old woman, and says that she should be fed. She is from our parts: she has been with Paramonovna to wors.h.i.+p the saints. Paramonovna is having tea.--Vlasevna has sent for her--"

The garrulous little girl would have gone on talking for quite awhile yet; the words just poured forth from her and, apparently, it gave her pleasure to hear her own voice. But Marina, who was in a perspiration, and who had not yet succeeded in pus.h.i.+ng away the pot with the beet soup, which had caught in the hearth, shouted angrily at her:

"Stop your babbling! What old woman am I to feed now? I have enough to do to feed our own people. Shoot you!" she shouted to the pot, which came very near falling down, as she removed it from the spot where it was caught.

But when she was satisfied in regard to the pot, she looked around and, seeing trim Tikhonovna with her wallet and correct peasant attire, making the sign of the cross and bowing low toward the front corner, felt ashamed of her words and, as though regaining her consciousness after the cares which had worn her out, she put her hand to her breast, where beneath the collar-bone b.u.t.tons clasped her dress, and examined it to see whether it was b.u.t.toned, and then put her hands to her head to fasten the knot of the kerchief, which covered her greasy hair, and took up an att.i.tude, leaning against the oven-fork and waiting for the salute of the trim old woman. Tikhonovna made her last low obeisance to G.o.d, and turned around and saluted in three directions.

"G.o.d aid you, good day!" she said.

"You are welcome, aunty!" said the tailor.

"Thank you, granny, take off your wallet! Sit down here," said the cook, pointing to a bench where sat the s.h.a.ggy-haired man. "Move a little, can't you? Are you stuck fast?"

The s.h.a.ggy man, scowling more angrily still, rose, moved away, and, continuing to chew, riveted his eyes on the old woman. The young coachman made a bow and, stopping his playing, began to tighten the strings of his balalayka, looking now at the old woman, and now at the tailor, not knowing how to treat the old woman,--whether respectfully, as he thought she ought to be treated, because the old woman wore the same kind of attire that his grandmother and mother wore at home (he had been taken from the village to be an outrider), or making fun of her, as he wished to do and as seemed to him to accord with his present condition, his blue coat and his boots. The tailor winked with one eye and seemed to smile, drawing the silk to one side of his mouth, and looked on. Marina started to put in another pot, but, even though she was busy working, she kept looking at the old woman, while she briskly and nimbly took off her wallet and, trying not to disturb any one, put it under the bench. Nastka ran up to her and helped her, by taking away the boots, which were lying in her way under the bench.

"Uncle Pankrat," she turned to the gloomy man, "I will put the boots here. Is it all right?"

"The devil take them! Throw them into the oven, if you wish," said the gloomy man, throwing them into another corner.

"Nastka, you are a clever girl," said the tailor. "A pilgrim has to be made comfortable."

"Christ save you, girl! That is nice," said Tikhonovna. "I am afraid I have put you out, dear man," she said, turning to Pankrat.

"All right," said Pankrat.

Tikhonovna sat down on the bench, having taken off her coat and carefully folded it, and began to take off her footgear. At first she untied the laces, which she had taken special care in twisting smooth for her pilgrimage; then she carefully unwrapped the white lambskin leg-rags and, carefully rubbing them soft, placed them on her wallet.

Just as she was working on her other foot, another of awkward Marina's pots got caught and spilled over, and she again started to scold somebody, catching the pot with the fork.

"The hearth is evidently burned out, grandfather. It ought to be plastered," said Tikhonovna.

"When are you going to plaster it? The chimney never cools off: twice a day you have to bake bread; one set is taken out, and the other is started."

In response to Marina's complaint about the bread-baking and the burnt-out hearth, the tailor defended the ways of the Chernshev house and said that they had suddenly arrived in Moscow, that the hut was built and the oven put up in three weeks, and that there were nearly one hundred servants who had to be fed.

"Of course, lots of cares. A large establishment," Tikhonovna confirmed him.

"Whence does G.o.d bring you?" the tailor turned to her.

And Tikhonovna, continuing to take off her foot-gear, at once told him where she came from, whither she had gone, and how she was going home.

She did not say anything about the pet.i.tion. The conversation never broke off. The tailor found out everything about the old woman, and the old woman heard all about awkward, pretty Marina. She learned that Marina's husband was a soldier, and she was made a cook; that the tailor was making caftans for the driving coachmen; that the stewardess's errand girl was an orphan, and that s.h.a.ggy-haired, gloomy Pankrat was a servant of the clerk, Ivan Vasilevich.

Pankrat left the room, slamming the door. The tailor told her that he was a gruff peasant, but that on that day he was particularly rude because the day before he had smashed the clerk's knickknacks on the window, and that he was going to be flogged to-day in the stable. As soon as Ivan Vasilevich should come, he would be flogged. The little coachman was a peasant lad, who had been made an outrider, and now that he was grown he had nothing to do but attend to the horses, and strum the balalayka. But he was not much of a hand at it.

ON POPULAR EDUCATION

1875

ON POPULAR EDUCATION

I suppose each of us has had more than one occasion to come in contact with monstrous, senseless phenomena, and to find back of these phenomena put forward some important principle, which overshadowed those phenomena, so that in our youthful and even maturer years we began to doubt whether it was true that those phenomena were monstrous, and whether we were not mistaken. And having been unable to convince ourselves that monstrous phenomena might be good, or that the protection of an important principle was illegitimate, or that the principle was only a word, we remained in regard to those phenomena in an ambiguous, undecided condition.

In such a state I was, and I a.s.sume many of us are, in respect to the principle of "development" which obfuscates pedagogy, in its connection with the rudiments. But popular education is too near to my heart, and I have busied myself too much with it, to remain too long in indecision.

The monstrous phenomena of the imaginary development I could not call good, nor could I be persuaded that the development of the pupil was bad, and so I began to inquire what that development was. I do not consider it superfluous to communicate the deductions to which I have been led during the study of this matter.

To define what is understood by the word "development," I shall take the manuals of Messrs. Bunakov and Evtushevski, as being new works, which combine all the latest deductions of German pedagogy, intended as guides for the teachers in the popular schools, and selected by the advocates of the sound method as manuals in their schools.

In discussing what is to form the foundation for a choice of this or that method for the teaching of reading, Mr. Bunakov says:

"No, an opinion about the method of construction based on such near-sighted and flimsy foundations (that is, on experience) will be too doubtful. Only the theoretical substratum, based on the study of human nature, can make the judgments in this sphere firm and independent of all casualties, and to a considerable degree guard them against gross errors. Consequently for the final choice of the best method of teaching the rudiments, it is necessary first of all to stand on theoretic soil, on the basis of previous considerations, the general conditions of which give to this or that method the actual right to be called satisfactory from the pedagogical standpoint. These conditions are: (1) It has to be a method which is capable of developing the child's mental powers, so that the acquisition of the rudiments may be obtained together with the development and the strengthening of the reasoning powers. (2) It must introduce into the instruction the child's personal interest, so that the matter be furthered by this interest, and not by dulling violence.

(3) It must represent in itself the process of self-instruction, inciting, supporting, and directing the child's self-activity. (4) It must be based on the impressions of hearing, as of the sense which serves for the acquisition of language. (5) It has to combine a.n.a.lysis with synthesis, beginning with the dismemberment of the complex whole into simple principles, and pa.s.sing over to the composition of a complex whole out of the simple principles."