"One cannot be a teacher without a knowledge of psychology. Before
teaching a boy I ought to understand his soul."

I told him that psychology alone would not be enough to make one
understand a boy's soul, and moreover psychology for a teacher who
had not yet mastered the technical methods of instruction in reading,
writing, and arithmetic would be a luxury as superfluous as the
higher mathematics. He readily agreed with me, and began describing
how hard and responsible was the task of a teacher, how hard it was
to eradicate in the boy the habitual tendency to evil and superstition,
to make him think honestly and independently, to instil into him
true religion, the ideas of personal dignity, of freedom, and so
on. In answer to this I said something to him. He agreed again. He
agreed very readily, in fact. Obviously his brain had not a very
firm grasp of all these "intellectual subjects."

Up to the time of my departure we strolled together about the
Monastery, whiling away the long hot day. He never left my side a
minute; whether he had taken a fancy to me or was afraid of solitude,
God only knows! I remember we sat together under a clump of yellow
acacia in one of the little gardens that are scattered on the
mountain side.

"I am leaving here in a fortnight," he said; "it is high time."

"Are you going on foot?"

"From here to Slavyansk I shall walk, then by railway to Nikitovka;
from Nikitovka the Donets line branches off, and along that branch
line I shall walk as far as Hatsepetovka, and there a railway guard,