the children of his host and devised entertainments
for the elders. He used often to spend
hours in the bazaars and streets and among the
common people, and it was in this way probably
that he became so familiar with the peasant life
of the country. When he came back from his
wanderings on the banks of the Volga he used to
mount to the village belfry, where he could write
undisturbed by the gnats and flies, and the children
found him there one day fast asleep among the
bells. A failure at forty, with the publication of
his first fables in verse he became famous, and
for many years he was the most popular writer
in Russia. He died in 1844 at the age of seventy-six,
his funeral attended by such crowds that the great
church of St. Isaac could not hold those who
wished to attend the service. Soon after, a public
subscription was raised among all the children
of Russia, who erected a monument in the
Summer Garden at Moscow.

There the old man sits in bronze, as he used to
sit at his window, clad in his beloved dressing
gown, an open book in his hand.

Around the monument (says his biographer) a
number of children are always at play, and the
poet seems to smile benignly on them from his
bronze easy chair. Perhaps the Grecian children
of long ago played about Aesop's statue in Athens,