s exercise. Sometimes he would take a dog and a gun, sometimes
ride, and sometimes merely go for a walk to the imperial wood.

At five the big bell that hung on the broken bough of an old elm-tree in
front of the house would ring and we would all run to wash our hands and
collect for dinner.

He was very hungry, and ate voraciously of whatever turned up. My mother
would try to stop him, would tell him not to waste all his appetite on
kasha, because there were chops and vegetables to follow. "You'll have
a bad liver again," she would say; but he would pay no attention to
her, and would ask for more and more, until his hunger was completely
satisfied. Then he would tell us all about his walk, where he put up a
covey of black game, what new paths he discovered in the imperial
wood beyond Kudeyarof Well, or, if he rode, how the young horse he was
breaking in began to understand the reins and the pressure of the leg.
All this he would relate in the most vivid and entertaining way, so that
the time passed gaily and animatedly.

After dinner he would go back to his room to read, and at eight we
had tea, and the best hours of the day began--the evening hours, when
everybody gathered in the zala. The grown-ups talked or read aloud or
played the piano, and we either listened to them or had some jolly game
of our own, and in anxious fear awaited the moment when the English
grandfather-clock on the landing would give a click and a buzz, and
slowly and clearly ring out ten.

Perhaps mama would not notice? She was in the sitting-room, making a
copy.

"Come, children, bedtime! Say good night," she would call.

"In a minute, Mama; just five minutes."

"Run along; it's high time; or there will be no getting you up in the
morning to do your lessons."

We would say a lingering good night, on the lookout for any chance for
delay, and at last would go down-stairs through the arches, annoyed at
the thought that we were children still and had to go to bed while the
grown-ups could stay up as long as ever they liked.

A JOURNEY TO THE STEPPES

WHEN I was still a child and had not yet read "War and Peace," I was
told that NATASHA ROSTOF was Aunt Tanya. When my father was asked
whether that was true, and whether DMITRY ROSTOF was such and such a
person and LEVIN such and such another, he never gave a definite answer,
and one could not but feel that he disliked such questions and was
rather offended by them.

In those remote d