CHILDHOOD
BY
LEO TOLSTOY
TRANSLATED BY CJ HOGARTH
A PENN STATE ELECTRONIC CLASSICS SERIES PUBLICATION
Childhood by Count Leo Tolstoy, trans. C.J. Hogarth is a publication of the Pennsylvania
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Childhood by Count Leo Tolstoy, trans. C.J. Hogarth, the Pennsylvania State University, Elec-
tronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, Hazleton, PA 18201-1291 is a Portable Docu-
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3
Tolstoy
Childhood
By
Leo Tolstoy
Translated by CJ Hogarth
I
THE TUTOR, KARL IVANITCH
ON THE 12TH OF AUGUST, 18— (just three days after my tenth
birthday, when I had been given such wonderful presents),
I was awakened at seven o’clock in the morning by Karl
Ivanitch slapping the wall close to my head with a fly-flap
made of sugar paper and a stick. He did this so roughly
that he hit the image of my patron saint suspended to the
oaken back of my bed, and the dead fly fell down on my
curls. I peeped out from under the coverlet, steadied the
still shaking image with my hand, flicked the dead fly on
to the floor, and gazed at Karl Ivanitch with sleepy, wrath-
ful eyes. He, in a parti-coloured wadded dressing-gown fas-
tened about the waist with a wide belt of the same mate-
rial, a red knitted cap adorned with a tassel, and soft slip-
pers of goat skin, went on