It may be said that any department of life could be treated in this way: we have merely to invert an established order founded on the experience of men, and a topsy-turvy millennium is born. It may also be said that in the foregoing pages Tolstoy appears as the evangelist of an educational system founded on the free play of youthful instincts which, speaking merely the language of natural animal life, call for sympathetic discipline. But in his _Confession_ Tolstoy has treated his educational writings with such scant respect that criticism is disarmed; more especially as the actual working of his school was extremely interesting and much more successful than might have been expected. N. V. Ouspénsky, the writer, narrates that he visited Yásnaya Polyána in 1862, and Tolstoy, having to leave him alone for awhile, asked him to glance at some of the compositions the boys had written in school. Taking up one of these, Ouspénsky read: One day, Lyóf Nikoláyevitch (Tolstoy) called Savóskin up to the blackboard and ordered him to solve a problem in arithmetic. 'If I give you five rolls, and you eat one of them, how many rolls will you have left?'... Savóskin could nohow solve this problem, and the Count pulled his hair for it.... When Tolstoy returned Ouspénsky pointed out to him this essay, and Tolstoy, sighing heavily, crossed his hands before him and merely said: 'Life in this world is a hard task.' Ouspénsky considered that he had unearthed an extraordinary contradiction between theory and practice; but no one who realises the difficulty and novelty of Tolstoy's attempt, and how far he is from claiming perfection for himself or for his achievements, should agree with Ouspénsky. On the contrary, the essay proves a freedom of relation between teacher and pupil, which would certainly not have existed had the hair-pulling been other than impulsive and exceptional. The school was closed, or nearly so, during the summer, as most of the pupils then helped their parents with field work; obtaining, Tolstoy considers, more mental development that way than they could have done in any school. To make up for this, the hours of study in winter were long. The classes generally finish about eight or nine o'clock (unless carpentering keeps the elder boys somewhat later), and the whole band run shouting into the yard, and there, calling to one another, begin to separate, making for different parts of the village. Occasionally they arrange to coast down-hill to the village in a large sledge that stands outside the gate. They tie up the shafts, throw themselves into it, and squealing, disappear from sight in a cloud of snow, leaving here and there on their path black patches of children who have tumbled out. In the open air, out of school (for all its freedom) new relations are formed between pupil and teacher: freer, simpler and more trustful--those very relations which seem to us the ideal which School should aim at.