o not remember it
so well."

"What kind of poetry suits you best?" asked the boy, who seemed to be
tired of studying, or working, or perhaps playing, and therefore glad to
have a quiet talk with the old man.

"I like all kinds, Martin Ivanovitch. I used to sing a great deal, and
then I liked songs best. I think you have heard me sing some of my good
songs."

"Oh yes!" said Martin, "I remember that song about the young shepherdess,
who wanted to give her sweetheart something; and she could not give him
her dog, because she needed him, nor her crook, because her father had
given it to her, nor one of her lambs, because they all belonged to her
mother, who counted them every day, and so she gave him her heart."

"Yes, yes," said old Nicolai, smiling; "I like that song best of all. I
should be proud to have written such poetry as that. He must have been a
great poet who wrote that. But I do not hear many songs now. My little
Axinia is reading me a long poem. It is called the 'Dushenka.' Perhaps you
have heard of it?"

"Oh yes!" said Martin.

"Well, she is reading that to me. She likes it herself, I do not
understand it all; but what I do understand, I like very much. It is good
poetry. It must have been a grand thing to write such poetry as that," and
the old man laid down his knife and his stick, and took off his cap, as if
in involuntary homage to the author of "Dushenka," which is one of the
standard poems in Russian literature.

"You were not a gardener when you were a young man, were you, Nicolai
Petrovitch?" asked Martin.

"O no! But long before you were born I became a gardener. When I was a
young man I had a good many different employments. Being a serf, I paid a
yearly sum to my master, and then I went where I pleased. Sometimes I was
well off, and sometimes I was badly off. I have been out on the lonely
steppes in winter, often only three or four of us together, with our
horses and carts, when the snow came down so fast, and the wind blew so
fiercely, that we could scarcely make our way through the storm; and even
the colts that were following us could hardly keep their feet in the deep
drifts. Sometimes, we would lose our way in these storms,--when we could
see nothing a hundred feet from us,--and then we should have wandered
about until we died, if we had not given up everything to the horses. They
could always find their way home, even in the worst storms. And then,"
said old Nicolai, knocking from th