y years ago, there sat upon a log, in a garden
in Russia, an old man, who was mending a rake. The rake was a wooden one,
and he was cutting a tooth to take the place of one that was broken. He
was a stout, healthy old fellow, dressed in a coarse blue blouse and
trousers; and as he sat on the log, whittling away at the piece of wood
which was to become a rake-tooth, he sang, in a voice that was somewhat
the worse for wear, but still quite as good a voice as you could expect an
old gardener to have, a little song. He sang it in Russian, of course, and
this was the way it ran:

"Zvoeri raboti ne znaiut
Ptitzi zhivut bes truda
Liudi ne zvoeri ne ptitzi
Liudi rabotoi zhivut."

Expressed in English, this ditty simply set forth the fact that the beasts
and the birds do not labor, but Man, who is neither a beast nor a bird, is
obliged to work.

The old fellow seemed to like the lines, for he sang them over several
times, as he went on with his whittling. Just as he was about to make a
new start on his "Zvoeri raboti," a boy, about fifteen years old, came
out of the house which stood by the side of the garden, and walked toward
him.

"Nicolai Petrovitch," said the boy, sitting down on a wheelbarrow, which
was turned over in front of the gardener, "why is it that you are so fond
of singing that song? One might suppose you are lazy, but we know very
well you are not. And then, too, there is no sense in it. Birds don't
work, to be sure, but what have you to say about horses and oxen? I'm sure
they work hard enough--at least, some of them."

"Martin Ivanovitch," said the old man, as he took up the rake and tried
the new tooth, to see if it would fit in the hole, "this stick will have
to be cut down a good deal more; it is hard wood. What you say about the
beasts is very true. But I like that song. It may not be altogether true,
but it is poetry, and it pleases me."

"You like poetry, don't you?" said Martin.

"Yes, indeed, little Martin, I like poetry. If it had been possible, I
should have been a poet myself. I often think very good poetry, but as I
cannot read or write, there is no sense in my trying to make use of any of
it."

"But how did you learn to like poetry, as you cannot read?" asked Martin.

"Oh! I heard a great deal of very good poetry when I was a young man, and
then I learned to like it. And I remembered almost all I heard. Now, my
daughter Axinia reads poetry to me every Sunday, but I d