unusually good-humoured that day, and listened to everything with
a smile and a studied air of kindness. Even when I asked for the kvas I
did so politely, while I lost not a moment in agreeing with St. Jerome
when he told me that it was undoubtedly more correct to say "Je peux"
than "Je puis." Yet, I must confess to a certain disappointment at
finding that no one paid any particular attention to my politeness and
good-humour. After luncheon, Lubotshka showed me a paper on which
she had written down a list of her sins: upon which I observed that,
although the idea was excellent so far as it went, it would be still
better for her to write down her sins on her SOUL--"a very different
matter."

"Why is it 'a very different matter'?" asked Lubotshka.

"Never mind: that is all right; you do not understand me," and I went
upstairs to my room, telling St. Jerome that I was going to work, but in
reality purposing to occupy the hour and a half before confession time
in writing down a list of my daily tasks and duties which should last me
all my life, together with a statement of my life's aim, and the rules
by which I meant unswervingly to be guided.

V. MY RULES

I TOOK some sheets of paper, and tried, first of all, to make a list of
my tasks and duties for the coming year. The paper needed ruling, but,
as I could not find the ruler, I had to use a Latin dictionary instead.
The result was that, when I had drawn the pen along the edge of the
dictionary and removed the latter, I found that, in place of a line, I
had only made an oblong smudge on the paper, since the dictionary was
not long enough to reach across it, and the pen had slipped round the
soft, yielding corner of the book. Thereupon I took another piece of
paper, and, by carefully manipulating the dictionary, contrived to
rule what at least RESEMBLED lines. Dividing my duties into three
sections--my duties to myself, my duties to my neighbour, and my duties
to God--I started to indite a list of the first of those sections, but
they seemed to me so numerous, and therefore requiring to be divided
into so many species and subdivisions, that I thought I had better first
of all write down the heading of "Rules of My Life" before proceeding to
their detailed inscription. Accordingly, I proceeded to write "Rules of
My Life" on the outside of the six sheets of paper which I had made into
a sort of folio, but the words came out in such a crooked and uneven
scrawl that