Other thoughts occupied his sons. But more should be said about the sons. At twelve years old they were sent to the College of Kieff, because all' the important nobles of that time found it necessary to give an education to their sons, although it was apparently done merely for the purpose of their entirely forgetting it afterwards. Like all the collegians, they had something wild about them, having been brought up in perfect freedom. At the college, however, they got something of that external polish, which, being common to all collegians, made them so resemble one another. Ostap, the elder of the two, began his career by running away the very first year; he was brought back, mercilessly flogged, and once more set to his book. Four times did he bury his grammar in the ground, and four times, after having him horsewhipped without pity, a new one was bought for him. Yet he would no doubt have repeated the same attempt a fifth time, had not his father pledged him his word that he would have him shut up in a cloister for twenty years, and sworn that he should never see the Zaporoghian Ssiecha till he had been through the whole course of academic learning. It is worth notice that this was said by that same Tarass Boolba, who, as we have seen, laughed at all learning, and advised his children never to trouble themselves about it. From that time Ostap grew intensely assiduous, and was soon ranked among the best pupils. The education and the practical life of those times afforded the most striking contrast. All the scholastic, grammatical, and rhetorical subtleties were decidedly inappropriate to the epoch, inapplicable to anything, and of no use in after life. Even had the studies been much less scholastic, those who studied would have found nothing to which they could have been adapted. The first rate scholars of that time were the most ignorant people in practice, because they, more than others, were removed from the experience of life. The republican form of the academical administration, as well as the great concourse of full-grown, healthy young men, could not fail to give the pupils' minds a direction quite alien to their studies. At one time bad food, at others oft-repeated punishments by hunger, then, those impulses which arise in fresh, healthy, strong youths--all this combined to give them that enterprising spirit which afterwards attained its full expansion in the Zaporoghian Ssiecha. Hungry collegians rambled about the streets of Kieff, and rendered every one cautious. The market-women who sat in the market, as soon as they saw a collegian coming, quickly covered with their hands their pies, rolls, and pumpkin seeds, just as eagles cover their young with their wings. The _consuls_, whose duty it was to watch over such of their comrades as were placed under their orders, themselves wore trouser pockets of such frightful dimensions that they could hide in them the whole contents of a tray if the market-woman happened to look aside.