I was not a good student, always concentrating exclusively upon the subject which I liked. For instance, I liked literature very much. I was carried away by Russian literature and read a great many books, getting the oldest books and manuscripts from the university library, beginning with the chronicles and ending with the latest Russian writers. I was fascinated and surprised that the Russian tongue should have developed out of the feeble beginnings in monastic writings into the language of Pushkin. It was like the growth of a living creature. In my youth Tolstoy's _Childhood_ and Dickens's _David Copperfield_ made the greatest impression on me. I copied out and learnt by heart passages in _Childhood_ which I particularly liked, for instance: "Will one ever get back the freshness, the freedom from care, the desire for love, and the power of belief which one possessed in childhood?--" When I finished _David Copperfield_, I cried as though I were being separated from a close friend. I did not like studying history from the text-books; in mathematics I only liked algebra, and that, owing to a complete lack of mathematical gifts, I soon forgot. I was successful in the university examinations; in both Russian and French I received the mark "excellent," and I was given a diploma of which I was very proud. Later, I remember, I was pleased at hearing Professor Tikhonravov praise my essay on "Music" to my husband; he added: "That is just the wife you need. She has a great _flair_ for literature; in the examination her essay was the best of the year." Soon after the examination I began writing a story, taking as the heroines myself and my sister Tanya, and calling her Natasha. Leo Tolstoy also called the heroine in his _War and Peace_ Natasha.{13} He read my story{14} some time before our marriage and wrote of it in his diary: "What force of truth and simplicity." Before my marriage I burnt the story and also my diaries, written since my eleventh year, and other youthful writings, which I much regret. Of music and drawing I learnt little; I did not have enough time, though throughout my life I have loved all the arts and have more than once returned to them, using the little leisure left to me from a life which, in my girlhood and particularly during my marriage, was always busy and hardworking. III