"What am I to say to him?" thought Yevgeny Petrovitch. "He's not
listening to me. Obviously he does not regard either his misdoings
or my arguments as serious. How am I to drive it home?"

The prosecutor got up and walked about the study.

"Formerly, in my time, these questions were very simply settled,"
he reflected. "Every urchin who was caught smoking was thrashed.
The cowardly and faint-hearted did actually give up smoking, any
who were somewhat more plucky and intelligent, after the thrashing
took to carrying tobacco in the legs of their boots, and smoking
in the barn. When they were caught in the barn and thrashed again,
they would go away to smoke by the river . . . and so on, till the
boy grew up. My mother used to give me money and sweets not to
smoke. Now that method is looked upon as worthless and immoral. The
modern teacher, taking his stand on logic, tries to make the child
form good principles, not from fear, nor from desire for distinction
or reward, but consciously."

While he was walking about, thinking, Seryozha climbed up with his
legs on a chair sideways to the table, and began drawing. That he
might not spoil official paper nor touch the ink, a heap of
half-sheets, cut on purpose for him, lay on the table together with
a blue pencil.

"Cook was chopping up cabbage to-day and she cut her finger," he
said, drawing a little house and moving his eyebrows. "She gave
such a scream that we were all frightened and ran into the kitchen.
Stupid thing! Natalya Semyonovna told her to dip her finger in cold
water, but she sucked it . . . And how could she put a dirty finger