emotion!
After saying my prayers I would wrap myself up in the bedclothes. My
heart would feel light, peaceful, and happy, and one dream would follow
another. Dreams of what? They were all of them vague, but all of them
full of pure love and of a sort of expectation of happiness. I remember,
too, that I used to think about Karl Ivanitch and his sad lot. He was
the only unhappy being whom I knew, and so sorry would I feel for him,
and so much did I love him, that tears would fall from my eyes as I
thought, 'May God give him happiness, and enable me to help him and to
lessen his sorrow. I could make any sacrifice for him!' Usually, also,
there would be some favourite toy--a china dog or hare--stuck into the
bed-corner behind the pillow, and it would please me to think how warm
and comfortable and well cared-for it was there. Also, I would pray God
to make every one happy, so that every one might be contented, and also
to send fine weather to-morrow for our walk. Then I would turn myself
over on to the other side, and thoughts and dreams would become jumbled
and entangled together until at last I slept soundly and peacefully,
though with a face wet with tears.
Do in after life the freshness and light-heartedness, the craving for
love and for strength of faith, ever return which we experience in our
childhood's years? What better time is there in our lives than when
the two best of virtues--innocent gaiety and a boundless yearning for
affection--are our sole objects of pursuit?
Where now are our ardent prayers? Where now are our best gifts--the pure
tears of emotion which a guardian angel dries with a smile as he sheds
upon us lovely dreams of ineffable childish joy? Can it be that life has
left such heavy traces upon one's heart that those tears and ecstasies
are for ever vanished? Can it be that there remains to us only the
recollection of them?
XVI -- VERSE- MAKING
RATHER less than a month after our arrival in Moscow I was sitting
upstairs in my Grandmamma's house and doing some writing at a large
table. Opposite to me sat the drawing master, who was giving a few
finishing touches to the head of a turbaned Turk, executed in black
pencil. Woloda, with out-stretched neck, was standing behind the drawing
master and looking over his shoulder. The head was Woloda's first
production in pencil and to-day--Grandmamma's name-day--the masterpiece
was to be presented to her.
'Aren't you going to put a little more shadow there?' said Woloda to
the master as he raised himself on tiptoe and pointed to the Turk's
neck.
'No, it is not necessary,' the master replied as he put pencil and
drawing-pen into a japanned folding box. 'It is just right now, and
you need not do anything more to it. As for you, Nicolinka,' he added,
rising and glancing askew at the Turk, 'won't you tell us your great
secret at last? What are you going to give your Grandmamma? I think
another head would be your best gift. But good-bye, gentlemen,' and
taking his hat and cardboard he departed.
I too had thought that another head than the one at which I had been
working would be a better gift; so, when we were told that Grandmamma's
name-day was soon to come round and that we must each of us have a
present ready for her, I had taken it into my head to write some
verses in honour of the occasion, and had forthwith composed two rhymed
couplets, hoping that the rest would soon materialise. I really do not
know how the idea--one so peculiar for a child--came to occur to me, but
