d to write, and it continued with intervals till the middle of the
eighties.

It hung on the landing at the top of the stairs beside the grandfather's
clock; and every one dropped his compositions into it, the verses,
articles, or stories that he had written on topical subjects in the
course of the week.

On Sundays we would all collect at the round table in the zala, the
box would be solemnly opened, and one of the grown-ups, often my father
himself, would read the contents aloud.

All the papers were unsigned, and it was a point of honor not to peep at
the handwriting; but, despite this, we almost always guessed the author,
either by the style, by his self-consciousness, or else by the strained
indifference of his expression.

When I was a boy, and for the first time wrote a set of French verses
for the letter-box, I was so shy when they were read that I hid under
the table, and sat there the whole evening until I was pulled out by
force.

For a long time after, I wrote no more, and was always fonder of hearing
other people's compositions read than my own.

All the events of our life at Yasnaya Polyana found their echo in one
way or another in the letter-box, and no one was spared, not even the
grown-ups.

All our secrets, all our love-affairs, all the incidents of our
complicated life were revealed in the letter-box, and both household and
visitors were good-humoredly made fun of.

Unfortunately, much of the correspondence has been lost, but bits of
it have been preserved by some of us in copies or in memory. I cannot
recall everything interesting that there was in it, but here are a few
of the more interesting things from the period of the eighties.

THE LETTER-BOX

THE old fogy continues his questions. Why, when women or old men enter
the room, does every well-bred person not only offer them a seat, but
give them up his own?

Why do they make Ushakof or some Servian officer who comes to pay a
visit necessarily stay to tea or dinner?

Why is it considered wrong to let an older person or a woman help you on
with your overcoat?

And why are all these charming rules considered obligatory toward
others, when every day ordinary people come, and we not only do not ask
them to sit down or to stop to dinner or spend the night or render them
any service, but would look on it as the height of impropriety?

Where do those people end to whom we are under these obligations? By
what characteristics are th