himself. "No, I am a poor teacher of morality! If some schoolmaster
or one of our legal fellows could peep into my brain at this moment
he would call me a poor stick, and would very likely suspect me of
unnecessary subtlety. . . . But in school and in court, of course,
all these wretched questions are far more simply settled than at
home; here one has to do with people whom one loves beyond everything,
and love is exacting and complicates the question. If this boy were
not my son, but my pupil, or a prisoner on his trial, I should not
be so cowardly, and my thoughts would not be racing all over the
place!"

Yevgeny Petrovitch sat down to the table and pulled one of Seryozha's
drawings to him. In it there was a house with a crooked roof, and
smoke which came out of the chimney like a flash of lightning in
zigzags up to the very edge of the paper; beside the house stood a
soldier with dots for eyes and a bayonet that looked like the figure
4.

"A man can't be taller than a house," said the prosecutor.

Seryozha got on his knee, and moved about for some time to get
comfortably settled there.

"No, papa!" he said, looking at his drawing. "If you were to draw
the soldier small you would not see his eyes."

Ought he to argue with him? From daily observation of his son the
prosecutor had become convinced that children, like savages, have
their own artistic standpoints and requirements peculiar to them,
beyond the grasp of grown-up people. Had he been attentively observed,