Tumashka, who was old and staid, who distinguished himself. He
was sick of hares, and made no great effort to run after them;
but with a fox he would gallop at full speed, and it was almost
always he who killed.

It would be late, often dark, when we got back home.



"ANNA KAReNINA"

I REMEMBER my father writing his alphabet and reading-book in
1871 and 1872, but I cannot at all remember his beginning "Anna
Karenina." I probably knew nothing about it at the time.
What did it matter to a boy of seven what his father was writing?
It was only later, when one kept hearing the name again and
again, and bundles of proofs kept arriving, and were sent off
almost every day, that I understood that "Anna Karenina"
was the name of the novel on which my father and mother were both
at work.

My mother's work seemed much harder than my father's,
because we actually saw her at it, and she worked much longer
hours than he did. She used to sit in the sitting-room off the
zala, at her little writing-table, and spend all her free
time writing.

Leaning over the manuscript and trying to decipher my
father's scrawl with her short-sighted eyes, she used to spend
whole evenings over it, and often sat up late at night after