Ivanitch was fond of writing verses, I stole softly
upstairs to burrow among his papers, and found, among a number of German
verses, some in the Russian language which seemed to have come from his
own pen.

To L

Remember near
Remember far,
Remember me.
To-day be faithful, and for ever--
Aye, still beyond the grave--remember
That I have well loved thee.

"KARL MAYER."

These verses (which were written in a fine, round hand on thin
letter-paper) pleased me with the touching sentiment with which they
seemed to be inspired. I learnt them by heart, and decided to take them
as a model. The thing was much easier now. By the time the name-day had
arrived I had completed a twelve-couplet congratulatory ode, and sat
down to the table in our school-room to copy them out on vellum.

Two sheets were soon spoiled--not because I found it necessary to alter
anything (the verses seemed to me perfect), but because, after the third
line, the tail-end of each successive one would go curving upward and
making it plain to all the world that the whole thing had been written
with a want of adherence to the horizontal--a thing which I could not
bear to see.

The third sheet also came out crooked, but I determined to make it do.
In my verses I congratulated Grandmamma, wished her many happy returns,
and concluded thus:

"Endeavouring you to please and cheer,
We love you like our Mother dear."

This seemed to me not bad, yet it offended my ear somehow.

"Lo-ve you li-ike our Mo-ther dear," I repeated to myself. "What other
rhyme could I use instead of 'dear'? Fear? Steer? Well, it must go at
that. At least the verses are better than Karl Ivanitch's."

Accordingly I added the last verse to the rest. Then I went into
our bedroom and recited the whole poem aloud with much feeling and
gesticulation. The verses were altogether guiltless of metre, but I
did not stop to consider that. Yet the last one displeased me more than
ever. As I sat on my bed I thought:

"Why on earth did I write 'like our Mother dear'? She is not here, and
therefore she need never have been mentioned. True, I love and respect
Grandmamma, but she is not quite the same as--Why DID I write that?
What did I go and tell a lie for? They may be verses only, yet I needn't
quite have done that."

At that moment the tailor arrived with some new clothes for us.

"Well, so be it!" I said in much vexation as I crammed t