“Look.”
Tolstoi took his ticket and very skilfully made it into a rather elaborate cockerel, which, when you pulled its tail, fluttered its wings.
An inspector entered the car and began checking the tickets. L. N., with a smile, held out the cockerel to him and pulled its tail. The cockerel fluttered its wings. But the inspector, with the stern expression of a business man who has no time for trifling, took the cockerel, unfolded it, looked at the number, and tore it up.
L. N. looked at me and said:
“Now our little cockerel is gone.” ...
I arrived at Yasnaya on July 6th after eleven o’clock at night.
I got up early in the morning and went to the river with L. N. to bathe. L. N. works every day from breakfast till lunch. He seemed to me to be in good spirits. In the morning at coffee he said:
“I feel as though I were nineteen or twenty.”
Yasnaya then used to be crowded and gay. Nearly all the children were at home. All the young people played tennis and enjoyed themselves. Occasionally L. N. would also play tennis. In the evening all used to go out for long walks in the woods. L. N. always loved to find short cuts, and would take us all into wonderful places in the forests. It must be admitted that the ‘short-cuts’ nearly always made the walks longer.