I remember how, when I had already learnt French, I was made to teach her that alphabet. At first it went all right (we were both about five years old), but later she probably became tired, and ceased to name correctly the letters I pointed out. I insisted. She began to cry. I did the same, and when our elders came, we could say nothing owing to our hopeless tears. In his later recollections of her he says: She was not clever, but was a good, simple girl; and, above all, so pure that we boys never had any but brotherly relations with her. By which he means that there was no flirtation. The relations between the family and its servants, who were serfs (and of whom there were about thirty), were, as in many a Russian family, often really affectionate. One instance of a serf's devotion has already been quoted; and such cases were not rare. In _Childhood_ mention is made of the old housekeeper, Praskóvya Isáyevna, who was completely devoted to the welfare of the family, and Tolstoy says: 'All that I there wrote about her was actual truth.' Here is another example illustrating both kindly toleration of minor offences committed by a serf, and the family affection which sweetened life: My pleasantest recollections of my father are of his sitting with grandmother on the sofa, helping her to play Patience. My father was polite and tender with every one, but to my grandmother he was always particularly tenderly submissive. They used to sit--Grandma playing Patience, and from time to time taking pinches from a gold snuff-box. My aunts sit in arm-chairs, and one of them reads aloud. We children come in to say good-night, and sometimes sit there. We always take leave of Grandma and our aunts by kissing their hands. I remember once, in the middle of a game of Patience and of the reading, my father interrupts my aunt, points to a looking-glass and whispers something. We all look in the same direction. It was the footman Tíkhon, who (knowing that my father was in the drawing-room) was going into the study to take some tobacco from a big leather folding tobacco-pouch. My father sees him in the looking-glass, and notices his figure carefully stepping on tip-toe. My aunts laugh. Grandmama for a long time does not understand, but when she does, she too smiles cheerfully. I am enchanted by my father's kindness, and on taking leave of him kiss his white muscular hand with special tenderness. An important feature of the life in which Tolstoy grew up was furnished by the half-crazy saints who swarmed in Russia in those days, and are still occasionally to be met with. Readers of _Childhood_ will remember Grísha, an admirable specimen of that class, about whom Tolstoy makes the following characteristic note in his memoirs: